Bre Payton, a staff writer for The Federalist, died unexpectedly Friday in San Diego after a sudden illness. She was 26. A California native, Payton graduated from the Western Christian High School Private Satellite Program in Upland, Calif., and earned a degree in journalism from Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Va. Since joining The Federalist in 2015, Payton frequently appeared as a political commentator on the Fox News Channel, the Fox Business Channel, and the One America News Network.

In 2018, WORLD’s online readers were drawn to major cover stories and timely features from the magazine, daily news reports from The Sift, and insightful Saturday Series essays.

Time magazine on Tuesday designated jailed and murdered journalists around the world as its 2018 Person of the Year. The magazine called the group “guardians” in the “war on truth” and selected four journalists to represent them: slain Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi; arrested Filipina reporter Maria Ressa; Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who have been detained in Myanmar, also known as Burma, for nearly a year; and the staff of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md., where five people were shot and killed at the newspaper’s offices in June.

Late in 1899 a magazine known as The Christian Oracle changed its name to The Christian Century. In January 1900, its editors predicted that “glory’s mantle shall enwrap the world, and golden years enfold in an unbroken round of sweet and happy peace.” World War I began 14 years later.

C.S. Lewis famously dismissed the journalism of his day. “I never read the papers. Why does anyone?” he wrote. “They’re nearly all lies, and one has to wade thru’ such reams of verbiage and ‘write up’ to find out even what they’re saying.” The notion, he quipped elsewhere, that journalists “can be saved is a doctrine, if not contrary to, yet certainly above, reason!”

“Trust,” said Ronald Reagan, “but verify.”

The three-word bit of wisdom has been widely—if casually—reported as coming from Reagan’s mind as well as his mouth. But it isn’t so. Some reporter somewhere was too quick to trust and too slow to verify. Others followed.

The proverb in fact finds its origins in Russia (Доверяй, но проверяй). The phrase became well-known in English only when Reagan jovially quoted it to Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, during nuclear disarmament talks in 1986. Dozens of TV cameras seemed to authenticate his authorship.

Have you heard any good news lately? In the clamor of furious partisans, furious weather, and furious rhetoric, it doesn’t seem like it. Random conversations on the bus or in the checkout line, if they go beyond cute shoes or that book I’m holding, often end with sighs and head-shaking. Prices going up, kids don’t listen, can’t afford my mortgage, worried about my health coverage. Wall Street banksters, rotten Republicans, demon Democrats—the world’s a mess.