Bill Lascher 3/26/24 Bill Lascher 3/26/24

Introducing A Danger Shared

Read an excerpt and view photos from the book A Danger Shared: A Journalist’s Glimpses of a Continent at War (Blacksmith Books, 2024), which features photography by wartime foreign correspondent Melville Jacoby and accompanying text by Bill Lascher.

Bill Lascher 12/7/17 Bill Lascher 12/7/17

Infamy in Manila

Today is the anniversary of the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines that brought the United States into World War II as a combatant. In Manila, reporters Melville Jacoby, Annalee Whitmore Jacoby, and Carl Mydans sprung into action to cover the conflict. Here's an excerpt from the book Eve of a Hundred Midnights, by Bill Lascher and published by William Morrow, describing their experience of that harrowing first day.

Bill Lascher 4/25/17 Bill Lascher 4/25/17

Appreciation

Last night, April 24th, 2017, the Oregon Book Awards took place in Portland. Eve of a Hundred Midnights was nominated for the Frances Fuller Victor award for general nonfiction. While the book didn't win, it was such an honor to be chosen a finalist. Moreover, being asked to write some remarks in case I did win proved to be a wonderful opportunity to reflect on all of the people I appreciated for making this book possible. Here's what I would have said, because it's all still true.

Bill Lascher 2/23/17 Bill Lascher 2/23/17

Into the Blackness Beyond

"We are remembering MacArthur’s men, how hard it was to finally leave, how lucky the three of us are."

Bill Lascher 1/31/17 Bill Lascher 1/31/17

On Protest and Reporting

Today, Poynter ran a piece titled "Should journalists protest in Trump's America?" It was mostly focused on newsroom journalists. In reply, I wrote up my thoughts about how it applies to me as a freelancer.

Bill Lascher 11/24/16 Bill Lascher 11/24/16

75 Years Ago, When War Seemed a Million Miles Away

75 years ago, today, Pearl Harbor was on the horizon, but for one couple in Manila, war briefly felt a million miles away.

Bill Lascher 11/10/16 Bill Lascher 11/10/16

To Tell this World's Stories

Today I drive to one of Oregon's many red counties to read a story about a man who sacrificed everything to report on a besieged world.

Bill Lascher 8/4/16 Bill Lascher 8/4/16

Shanghai Takes it On the Chin

“I hate to see the rich kids in the cabarets, I hate to see the refugees, I hate to see the lousy foreigners in Packards and minks. Lots of money is being made now on the market and in business—but the Chinese peasant is taking it on the proverbial chin.”

Bill Lascher 8/2/16 Bill Lascher 8/2/16

Bombing Season

Three quarters of a century ago, today, at the height of “bombing season,” World War II correspondent Melville Jacoby took a brief break from his radio broadcasts for NBC, his writing and photography for Time and Life magazines to write to his mother and stepfather about life in wartime Chungking, or Chongqing, then the capital of China.

Bill Lascher 7/28/16 Bill Lascher 7/28/16

The Year that Changed Mel...And China

Melville Jacoby's interest in China can be traced back to 1936. That year and into 1937, during what would have been Mel's junior year at Stanford University, he went to China as an exchange student. There, he studied in the southern port city of Canton (that was the English transliteration of the time; it is now commonly transliterated as Guangzhou). He joined other American and Chinese students on the campus of Lingnan University (which still exists in another form in Hong Kong, while its original campus remains as part of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou).