When I first met Bill Morlin, he was already a legend among news reporters in the Pacific Northwest. I’ll admit I was a bit starstruck: This was the man—on paper, a simple crime reporter for the Spokane Spokesman-Review, but much more than that—who had relentlessly covered the Aryan Nations and The Order. He was the first to report on the Ruby Ridge standoff, before it was even a standoff. His journalism was not just first-rate, it was courageous and groundbreaking. It was early April 1996, and we both had come out to the frozen windblown wasteland of eastern Montana to cover the armed standoff by the far-right Montana Freemen at a ranch near Jordan. I had only begun covering right-wing extremism as a beat; Morlin was the first reporter any of us knew who had treated it as a beat—a true pioneer. Over the ensuing years, we became close friends. The two of us liked to joke that we were “partners in crime” for the six years we worked together for the Southern Poverty Law Centers. The harrowing nature of the work cemented the bond, but so did the many good times we had together. We lost Bill this week at the age of 75. It’s a deeply personal loss for me and many others who knew him. But it’s a tragic loss for us all: for journalism, for the nation, and for our democracy. He was the rare journalist whose dogged reporting makes the world a better place, and we all will be poorer for it. Read more