Short Little Span of Attention

Patience wears thin these days. Few take the time for anything approaching a full accounting of the news, what former Washington Post publisher Phil Graham called the first rough draft of history. He’s widely credited with being the first to describe it in those terms back in 1963, but almost certainly wasn’t.

Graham’s not alone in this regard. Christopher Columbus didn’t discover America. Henry Ford did not build the first automobile. The Wright brothers were not the first to fly an airplane. Galileo did not invent the telescope, or Thomas Edison the lightbulb, or Abner Doubleday baseball. Yet they all were credited with doing these things at one point, whether through misunderstanding, happenstance or connivance.

The inner-city schoolkids who produce the Simpson Street Free Press know better than to take even the most familiar claims at face value. They learn at an early age to scrutinize. The slogan “Never Hand in Your First Draft” appears on the masthead of every edition of their st…