Harold “Hal” Prince, producer and director, died at age 91 on July 31.  It got me thinking about musicals and lyrics and how today’s aspiring writers, including humble magazine columnists, could do worse than study the old heyday Broadway songs. All writing is problem-solving, and it’s fun to see how the best of the best solved their “problems,” and had a blast doing it.

The social media giant said Thursday it had taken down a network of covert Saudi-led propaganda accounts. It removed more than 370 inauthentic Facebook and Instagram profiles, pages, and groups that had gained more than 13.7 million followers. It was the first time Facebook has unearthed an influence campaign linked to the officials in the Saudi government.

Kristin Hull, CEO of the Nia Impact Capital investment firm, was sitting at her computer reading emails when she received a notification about a pro-abortion ad that would take up a full page in The New York Times. “I thought, ‘Oh this is so fantastic.’” Almost immediately, she decided to add her signature to the growing list, because “it was very clear to me that this was the right thing to do.”

A New York moment: 

This week I talked to Jason Yu, a journalist who has covered Korean pop culture for the last decade, for a story I’m writing about KCON, a Korean pop culture convention that came to New York recently. Korean music has spread across the globe through social media, so now Yu’s primary way to report on K-pop is through his YouTube channel, Popsori, where about half of his audience is from North America. 

Twelve times my wife and I in our living room have shown small groups of WORLD readers how to become WORLD writers. During a week of 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. reporting, writing, and editing, the students ranging in age from 27 to 72 have improved their understanding, story sense, and writing. I’ve just checked our masthead and seen that 31 are now WORLD correspondents.

From remarks to the 2019 State Department Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C.

Despite being a religiously based journalist writing for a religiously based magazine, I am a convert to the importance of reporting on religious oppression, telling the stories of persecuted people. I began covering wars as most any journalist would—starting in the 1990s with the Bosnian War and then the civil war in Sudan.

So a rabbi walks into a room full of journalists, turns a light on—and it’s no joke.

Lord Jonathan Sacks, for 22 years the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, was the keynote speaker for London’s 2019 Religion Media Festival this spring, one of those unheralded events that signifies more than it advertises.