Small Business, Big-Hearted Personality
President Trump might not even be mentioned in these articles, conceived under the in-house rubric “Fault Lines.”
“What we desperately want is for our stories to shed light, to tell our readers things about America they do not already understand, with fairness, clear eyes
and empathy in abundance,” David Halbfinger, who was the deputy national editor, wrote to us in an email.
Their subjects include a look at the religious left, the collision of two worlds in an act of vandalism at an Arkansas mosque, an immigrant’s choice to “self-deport” from Iowa
and a dispatch of mine from an Illinois truck stop about long-haul drivers.
But the answers to that question (educational disparities
and the opioid crisis, among others) quickly became less interesting to me than the individuality and daily gains and setbacks of the factory’s owner, Anita-Maria Quillen
Early this year, The Times brought together a group of national correspondents to write in-depth stories about regions
and people who might have received short shrift in the run-up to last November’s election.
