Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Drake Bentley is covering his hometown
Drake Bentley, the Journal Sentinel's night general assignment reporter, is not your traditional journalist.
He didn't study journalism for his undergraduate degree and took a very indirect route to the Journal Sentinel. Almost eight years ago, as he sat in his cubicle at a bank, he applied for a master's program in the hopes it would give him the chance to make a living doing what he loved — writing.
Joining the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2021, Drake has been covering his hometown with a curiosity and uniqueness that only a native can bring. Working the night shift keeps him involved in breaking news, and he's been involved in some of the city's highest profile crime stories the last four years.
But also, as a general assignment and trending reporter, Drake's contributed to stories all across JSOnline — politics, business, features, education, sports and investigations.
So, let's get to know Journal Sentinel reporter Drake Bentley:
My father could always be seen with two items in my childhood home on Milwaukee's northwest side — a tall glass of ice water and a copy of that day's Journal Sentinel.
While I go more for the caffeinated variety of drink, the tradition of valuing journalism has remained with me.
For my mother, it was all about the advertisements that came tucked inside the paper. On Thanksgiving, my siblings and I would scour the Journal Sentinel and point to toys and gadgets that we wanted Santa to bring us for Christmas.
When you would wake up at the crack of dawn in our home, you'd be met with headlights shining through the kitchen window from the driveway — the newspaper delivery guy.
The old Journal Sentinel newsroom was across the street from the Bradley Center. While leaving Bucks games, I'd always wonder what was going on in that building and how they magically produced a newspaper every single day.
I particularly loved reading stories from the Black columnists as they tackled the ever-present aspect of life in Milwaukee — race. As a biracial kid, my father is Black and my mother is white, moving through different spaces with people from different backgrounds has been my life.
Now as a journalist, I believe I have a duty to reflect my upbringing, which in large part revolved around the only place that I really wanted to give me a shot — the Journal Sentinel.
My life trajectory changed once I set foot on a college campus, which for me was almost a holy event as I'm truly a nerd at heart.
As a first-generation college student, I attended the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. This was the first time in my life that professors were teaching me about fascinating historical figures like Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Kwame Ture, and W.E.B. Du Bois.
I would hang out in the college department offices and got a job in the dean's office. One day, a department head asked me if I'd be interested in spending the summer in Washington, D.C., while earning course credits, and interning on Capitol Hill. Easy decision — yes.
As an intern, I did intern stuff. I made copies, wrote briefs, led tours of the Capitol. I would marvel at the Rotunda, tell stories of old timey politicians who were shot or attacked in the building, and stopped to show tour groups the statue of Wisconsin's Bob La Follette.
I spent so much time on the Hill, I was hooked, busy attending every committee hearing and speech I could get to, from Leon Panetta and Eric Holder to John McCain.
Former longtime Wisconsin congressman Jim Sensenbrenner and I chatted about Chapter 220, the now-defunct voluntary integration program in Wisconsin, and how he was in the state Senate when the legislation, aimed at promoting cultural and racial integration, passed in 1975 and made it possible for me attend Wauwatosa Public Schools as a Milwaukee resident.
The Hill was eye-opening, funny, and bizarre. Everyone should get a chance to see their government from the inside.
After graduating from Whitewater in 2014 with a business degree, I took jobs at financial institutions for a few years. It became clear to me that I didn't want to continue down that path and began looking at chances to return to school. I discovered a journalism program at the University of Nebraska. I decided writing from the outside of government is where I'm best and feel the happiest. I would get my chance to work for a newspaper in 2019.
The high school sports division at the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison was my first job in the news media. I collected scores, typed up agate, occasionally took a statement from a coach or athletic director and sometimes got to write a feature about a standout athlete or community hero. It was not often exciting, but I met dear friends working the night shift.
It also didn't pay the bills.
I was hired by the U.S. Census Bureau and helped complete the 2020 census as an administrative manager. The whole process to complete the count is a bit shocking, and then the pandemic happened and it really sent everything into chaos. I, meanwhile, decided to move back to Milwaukee, took any job willing to pay me, and drove for Uber, while searching for a Milwaukee media outlet to hire me.
I applied to the Journal Sentinel for a job opening and four years later, at 32 years old, Wisconsin is still providing interesting stories to write for you.
The best part about being a journalist is the people you get to talk to just about every day.
I had the honor to interview Donna Burkett, who along with Manonia Evans in 1971, applied for a marriage license with the Milwaukee County Clerk's Office. The Black lesbian couple were part of an early nationwide effort in the 1970s by LGBTQ couples seeking marriage equality.
"If you believe in it, you stand for it, you stand for something" Burkett told me in an interview.
I also like to think my hiring resulted in the biggest sports day in the city in 50 years as Giannis Antetokounmpo led the Milwaukee Bucks to an NBA championship. I lobbied then-editor George Stanley to put "Bucks in Six" on the front page of the paper if the Bucks won the title. The iconic phrase made it to the front of the sports section instead.
The opportunity to speak to fellow native Milwaukeeans who have made an impact on the community is one of the more rewarding parts of the job. I reported the boxing comeback of an accomplished native who was ready to get back in the ring. and I've had a Black radio legend, that an entire generation of Milwaukeeans grew up listening to, reflect on his career with me.
Working a beat that includes tragedies and injustices can also lead to documenting the changes that can result from that coverage. When a 49-year-old South Milwaukee woman died at a bus stop less than a mile from where I grew up on a cold wintery night, it became clear through our reporting that an ambulance drove within feet of her distressed body prior to driving away. Within weeks, officials announced a change in policy requiring ambulance workers to leave their vehicles once at a call.
I can easily be trapped into watching an exhaustive reality competition television show like 'Survivor.'
In recent years, I more seriously began paying attention to the sport of boxing. There's so much history there, and it captivates me. I still hope for the return of the American heavyweight hero, like Muhammad Ali, but Terrance 'Bud' Crawford and Gervonta 'Tank' Davis are must watch television.
I'm a longtime player of the Madden NFL video game. I've won multiple Lombardi trophies and rebuilt multiple franchises (check the numbers, folks).
I enjoy Denzel Washington and Nicolas Cage films. I've listened to a lot of Kanye West and Kid Cudi tracks. Ultimately, nine holes of golf at a county course with carts, surrounded by friends, is my jam.
Drake Bentley can be reached at DBentley1@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Drake Bentley is covering his hometown
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And here's just a sampling of some other disturbing attacks before that — the assassination of a health care executive on the streets of New York City late last year, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in small-town Pennsylvania during his presidential campaign last year, the 2022 attack on the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by a believer in right-wing conspiracy theories, and the 2017 shooting by a liberal gunman at a GOP practice for the congressional softball game. 'We've entered into this especially scary time in the country where it feels the sort of norms and rhetoric and rules that would tamp down on violence have been lifted,' said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at Georgetown University who studies extremism. 'A lot of people are receiving signals from the culture.' Politics behind both individual shootings and massacres Politics have also driven large-scale massacres. 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Little was known about the man police identified as a suspect in the Minnesota attacks, 57-year-old Vance Boelter. Authorities say they found a list of other apparent targets that included other Democratic officials, abortion clinics and abortion rights advocates, as well as fliers for the day's anti-Trump parades. Conservatives online seized on the fliers — and the fact that Boetler had apparently once been appointed to a state workforce development board by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz — to claim the suspect must be a liberal. 'The far left is murderously violent,' billionaire Elon Musk posted on his social media site, X. It was reminiscent of the fallout from the attack on Paul Pelosi, the former House speaker's then-82-year-old husband, who was seriously injured by a man wielding a hammer. Right-wing figures theorized the assailant was a secret lover rather than what authorities said he was: a believer in pro-Trump conspiracy theories who broke into the Pelosi home echoing Jan. 6 rioters who broke into the Capitol by saying: 'Where is Nancy?!' On Saturday, Nancy Pelosi posted a statement on X decrying the Minnesota attack. 'All of us must remember that it's not only the act of violence, but also the reaction to it, that can normalize it,' she wrote. Trump had mocked the Pelosis after the 2022 attack, but on Saturday he joined in the official bipartisan condemnation of the Minnesota shootings, calling them 'horrific violence.' The president has, however, consistently broken new ground with his bellicose rhetoric towards his political opponents, who he routinely calls 'sick' and 'evil,' and has talked repeatedly about how violence is needed to quell protests. The Minnesota attack occurred after Trump took the extraordinary step of mobilizing the military to try to control protests against his administration's immigration operations in Los Angeles during the past week, when he pledged to 'HIT' disrespectful protesters and warned of a 'migrant invasion' of the city. Dallek said Trump has been 'both a victim and an accelerant' of the charged, dehumanizing political rhetoric that is flooding the country. 'It feels as if the extremists are in the saddle,' he said, 'and the extremists are the ones driving our rhetoric and politics.' Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
San Francisco Chronicle
10 hours ago
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Political violence is threaded through recent US history. The motives and justifications vary
The assassination of one Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband, and the shooting of another lawmaker and his wife at their homes, is just the latest addition to a long and unsettling roll call of political violence in the United States. The list, in the past two months alone: the killing of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C. The firebombing of a Colorado march calling for the release of Israeli hostages, and the firebombing of the official residence of Pennsylvania's governor — on a Jewish holiday while he and his family were inside. And here's just a sampling of some other disturbing attacks before that — the assassination of a health care executive on the streets of New York City late last year, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in small-town Pennsylvania during his presidential campaign last year, the 2022 attack on the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by a believer in right-wing conspiracy theories, and the 2017 shooting by a liberal gunman at a GOP practice for the congressional softball game. 'We've entered into this especially scary time in the country where it feels the sort of norms and rhetoric and rules that would tamp down on violence have been lifted,' said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at Georgetown University who studies extremism. 'A lot of people are receiving signals from the culture.' Politics behind both individual shootings and massacres Politics have also driven large-scale massacres. Gunmen who killed 11 worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, 23 shoppers at a heavily Latino Walmart in El Paso in 2019 and 10 Black people at a Buffalo grocery store in 2022 each cited the conspiracy theory that a secret cabal of Jews were trying to replace white people with people of color. That has become a staple on parts of the right that support Trump's push to limit immigration. The Anti-Defamation League found that from 2022 through 2024, all of the 61 political killings in the United States were committed by right-wing extremists. That changed on the first day of 2025, when a Texas man flying the flag of the Islamic State group killed 14 people by driving his truck through a crowded New Orleans street before being fatally shot by police. 'You're seeing acts of violence from all different ideologies,' said Jacob Ware, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who researches terrorism. 'It feels more random and chaotic and more frequent.' The United States has a long and grim history of political violence, from presidential assassinations dating back to the killing of President Abraham Lincoln to lynchings and violence aimed at Black people in the South to the 1954 shooting inside Congress by four Puerto Rican nationalists. Experts say the past few years, however, have likely reached a level not seen since the tumultuous days of the 1960s and 1970s, when icons like Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Ware noted that the most recent surge comes after the new Trump administration has shuttered units that focus on investigating white supremacist extremism and pushed federal law enforcement to spend less time on anti-terrorism and more on detaining people who are in the country illegally. 'We're at the point, after these six weeks, where we have to ask about how effectively the Trump administration is combating terrorism,' Ware said. 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Little was known about the man police identified as a suspect in the Minnesota attacks, 57-year-old Vance Boelter. Authorities say they found a list of other apparent targets that included other Democratic officials, abortion clinics and abortion rights advocates, as well as fliers for the day's anti-Trump parades. Conservatives online seized on the fliers — and the fact that Boetler had apparently once been appointed to a state workforce development board by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz — to claim the suspect must be a liberal. 'The far left is murderously violent,' billionaire Elon Musk posted on his social media site, X. It was reminiscent of the fallout from the attack on Paul Pelosi, the former House speaker's then-82-year-old husband, who was seriously injured by a man wielding a hammer. 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American Press
20 hours ago
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The Informer: Five killed in 1971 blast at chemical plant
1/3 Swipe or click to see more A fallen tank lies amid PPG blast debris on Dec. 23, 1971, as workers inspect damage at the plant. Sam Guillory / American Press Archives) 2/3 Swipe or click to see more The frame of the vinyl top of this convertable stands erect after an explosion at the PPG plant rocked employee cars in an adjacent parking lot. (Sam Guillory / American Press Archives) 3/3 Swipe or click to see more A worker uses a respirator while inspecting damage to the plant. (Sam Guillory / American Press Archives) Two days before Christmas in 1971, the unthinkable happened. Four men were killed instantly and another three were badly burned after an explosion ripped through the new solvents section of the Plate Glass Industries chemical plant. The explosion occurred at about 4:30 a.m. in the perchloroethylene and trichloroethylene unit, which manufactures solvents used for dry cleaning and degreasing, according to the Dec. 23, 1971, front page of the American Press. The unit had only been in operation 'a couple of days' when the explosion occurred, plant officials told the newspaper. A large area surrounding the complex was shaken by the blast. Residents in the Westlake area reported articles knocked from their shelves. 'When the explosion occurred, a distillation tower estimated to be about 100 feet in height toppled to the ground. The unit is located on the west side of Columbia Southern Road near the main entrance to the plant,' the newspaper reported. 'Metal parts of the unit weighing a ton or more were hurled more than a hundred yards from the center of the blast. The major force of the blast appeared to be in an easterly direction, directly toward the offices and the older units located across Columbia Southern Road.' A flash fire accompanied the blast, but was contained by plant employees on site. Several cars and trucks belonging to employees of the plant were damaged or destroyed by the explosion. The parking lot was located about 100 yards northeast of the destroyed unit. 'One car apparently exploded and went up in flames after its gasoline tank was struck by the hot metal,' the newspaper reported. 'The roof of a pickup truck was smashed flat by a portion of the unit which smashed into it. Windshields and windows in the cars were shattered or broken out.' Ceiling tile from offices across the road from the plant were also heavily damaged. Metal door frames were twisted and large windows were shattered. When a headcount of employees was conducted after the explosion, it was discovered that Lowell Laughlin was unaccounted for. 'Shortly before the explosion occurred, Laughlin climbed up a ladder to close a valve on a pipe through which chlorine was flowing,' manager A.T. Raetzsch told the American Press. The explosion occurred almost simultaneously with his closing the valve. 'Technical personnel at the plant stated that this could not have caused the explosion and, on the contrary, was a beneficial act in that the chlorine flow was cut out from the explosion area,' Raetzsch said. PPG employees, Boy Scouts, classmates of Laughlin's 1957 graduating class, a U.S. Army helicopter, and officers on horseback scoured the area around the plant in search of Laughlin — who they felt may have been dazed after the blast and suffering from amnesia-like symptoms. The search went on for 15 days before Laughlin's body was discovered in a drainage line. The discovery brought the death toll from the explosion to five.
