The EF5 tornado—the most powerful on the Fujita scale, with winds topping 200 mph—wiped out 25 to 30 percent of Joplin. It demolished 8,000 structures. The newspaper lost 1,500 subscriber homes in minutes, and at the same time, 100 advertisers. One year later, the town and its newspaper, the Joplin Globe, are "displaying remarkable resilience, and some might say the paper is stronger and better than ever. This is happening, of course, amid sadness," remembering the 161 friends and neighbors who were killed.

Photo: The wreckage of an AT&T Mobility store where five CWA Local 6312 members were trapped during the storm; member Sharyl Nelsen was killed.

Twice married and twice divorced, Valerie Trierweiler covered French politics as a journalist for more than 20 years with no inkling that she would one day become France's first lady, certainly not when she fell for Francois Hollande a jovial, unglamorous leftist politician who hardly seemed like presidential material. They are the first unmarried couple to occupy the presidential Élysée Palace together, following close on the heels of the new president of Germany, Joachim Gauck, whose live-in companion is also a journalist. That these arrangements were no bar to office is a sign of how European attitudes about families have changed.

In an amusing post, Poynter links to a Daily Beast piece on correspondence from former Washington Post executive editor Bill -- oops, Ben -- Bradlee. 

In one of series of essays marking the Baltimore Sun's 175th anniversary, former police reporter-turned-TV writer David Simon celebrates the  rewrite man and night editor who taught him how to be a reporter, David Michael Ettlin, a classic newsroom character. "The wardrobe was disastrous. He made the rest of the slumming metro veterans look almost plausible. His laugh was a cackle, employed liberally against the farts and foibles of the important and famous. From humanity, he expected farce and scandal at all points, adoring an absurd, senseless murder most of all. He never lost at Scrabble, he had 10 different ways of saying anything in print, and yeah, if he acted as if he'd seen it all without ever leaving a newsroom, it was only because he had." Find all the essays here.