On Monday, the last two credentialed Australian journalists in China boarded a flight to Sydney after a five-day diplomatic standoff. The expulsion occurred as relations between Australia and China have deteriorated and the Chinese government continues its crusade to rid the country of foreign reporters.

A church I was a member of 30 years ago published a daily Bible-reading schedule showing several chapters, along with a list of many more labeled “For the Hearty Ones.” I believe those of you who regularly read our Saturday Series are also hearty ones, so this is the place to extend an invitation to the World Journalism Institute’s annual mid-career course. The next course, No. 12, will meet Jan. 7–13, 2021.

Whatever the nature of the voyage’s travails, the Cunard Line steamship company had this goal for its transatlantic steamers a century ago: “to keep the ship sweet.” 

Below deck the stokers could be working 100 men to a shift, shoveling coal to keep the boilers primed, but diners above should be able to murmur in conversation and eat from polished silver unawares. Passengers must journey unburdened by the cares of the ship.

WORLD readers (and listeners!) are typically surprised when I tell them that the idea for such a magazine was originally born out of a ministry to children. It’s a story worth retelling.

“Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor.”

I should do a victory dance—and I’m very sad to do it.

When Joel Belz started WORLD in 1986, I was writing a book entitled Prodigal Press: The Anti-Christian Bias of the American News Media. He and I did not yet know each other, but we had arrived at the same conclusion: The days of Christians being able to write on the pages of big secular newspapers and magazines were coming to an end.

After a seven-decade career that involved 10,000 hours in front of a camera, newsman Hugh Downs died on Wednesday. He was 99. His two children, Hugh Raymond Downs and Deirdre Lynn Downs, survive him, along with two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.