About
Rubbed Out is an experiment in digital history that draws on public and private archival sources and presents a story in multimedia. It’s about a violent chapter in the history of American journalism, and it’s about how to engage an audience by providing numerous entry points to a narrative. Please tell us what you think by leaving a comment or send us an email.
James Eli Shiffer is an investigative reporter and editor who writes the Star Tribune’s Whistleblower column and blog. He gets his stories from readers who call and write in to the newsroom, as well as from public records. He is fascinated with the power of stories to make people’s lives better. A native of Scarsdale, N.Y., Shiffer previously worked at The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
Ewen Media is a multimedia production company based in Minneapolis, MN, that uses interactive multimedia to share meaningful stories. McKenna Ewen recently founded the organization to produce purpose-driven journalism that explores the world in its current state and the world that it could become. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Minnesota in 2009.
Acknowledgments
Our thanks to the Star Tribune for permission to use images from its photo archives, the Hennepin County Library for the use of images from its Minneapolis collection, the Minneapolis Police Department for holding onto the Kasherman file and making it available and the Minnesota Historical Society for its many archival sources. We want to give a special thanks to Paul Maccabee, gangster historian, who fought for and obtained the heavily redacted FBI file for Arthur Kasherman back in the 1980s and shared it with us.
