What John Lewis can teach the press

On Friday, John Lewis, the civil rights icon and longtime Georgia congressman, died. He was eighty, and had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He addressed the March on Washington, in 1963; had his skull fractured by state troopers on “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama, in 1965; and served as chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee until his ouster by Stokely Carmichael, in 1966. Over the weekend, tributes to Lewis poured forth, including in the press. By the time of his...