Clarence Page
Twice a week, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Clarence Page addresses the social, economic and political issues affecting Americans. Writing with passion and style, Page delivers lively commentary on today's pressing issues, such as crime, education, housing, hunger and bigotry. He is syndicated by Tribune Media Services in more than 200 papers nationwide.
Page started his journalism career as a freelance writer and photographer for the Middletown (Ohio) Journal and Cincinnati Enquirer. A columnist and member of the editorial board at the Chicago Tribune since 1984, Page worked as director of community affairs and as an on-air reporter at Chicago CBS affiliate WBBM-TV. Prior to his television career, he held various positions in the Tribune's newsroom for 11 years, including neighborhood news reporter and assistant city editor.
Page is the author of the book "Showing My Color: Impolite Essays on Race and Identity" (1996, HarperCollins). He has published articles in Chicago Magazine, the Chicago Reader, Washington Monthly, The New Republic, the Wall Street Journal, New York Newsday and Emerge. He is a regular essayist for "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" on PBS and has served as a panelist/commentator for a variety of news programs, including "The McLaughlin Group," "Hardball" with Chris Matthews, Black Entertainment Television's "Lead Story" news panel program, ABC's "This Week" roundtable news program and National Public Radio's "Weekend Sunday." He also has hosted several PBS documentaries.
In 1992, Page was inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame. He is the winner of the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for commentary and was also part of the Chicago Tribune task force investigation on voter fraud that won a Pulitzer in 1973. His other awards include a 1980 Illinois UPI Award for community service for an investigative series titled "The Black Tax" and the Edward Scott Beck Award for overseas reporting of a 1976 series on the changing politics of South Africa.
Clarence Page Samples
On press freedoms, Obama races Nixon to bottom
Despite what you may hear from some of his more fevered critics, President Barack Obama's recent scandal-quakes don't appear to fall anywhere near the level of Richard Nixon's Watergate disaster.
Time to update Census' race questions
A notable example of how Americans fall through the cracks in Census data gathering caught my attention while Web surfing. The "one drop" is a reference to the old racial rule that one drop of black blood in your veins makes you black.
Obama's second-term blues
Was President Obama really joking at Saturday's White House Correspondents' Association dinner?
Give 'bomb control' a chance
He thought his wife was in love with another man, police say, so James L. McFillin of Baltimore decided to blow the other man up. It was 1979 in Baltimore.
When profiling becomes a real menace
Some media found the possibility that foreign terrorists bombed the Boston Marathon to be too tantalizing an explanation to pass up, even when it snares the wrong suspects.
Gun vote reveals new GOP divide
It pains me to congratulate the National Rifle Association, but their help in the Senate's defeat of background checks for gun purchases was an impressive victory -- against common sense.
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