Pam Sohn is the Times opinion editor, representing the left-leaning side of the Chattanooga Times Free Press opinion pages. Sohn has been reporting or editing Chattanooga news for 30 years. A Walden's Ridge native, she began her journalism career with a 10-year stint at the Anniston (Ala.) Star. She came to the Chattanooga Times Free Press in 1999 after working at the Chattanooga Times for 14 years. She has also been a city editor, Sunday editor, wire editor, projects team leader and assistant lifestyle editor. As a reporter, she covered the police, courts, health, education and environment beats. She has won dozens of writing and editing awards in both Alabama and Tennessee, including first-place honors for breaking news, investigative news, public service, features, reporting without a deadline and editorial writing. During her tenure as Sunday editor at the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the paper received the 2002 first-place honors for Best Sunday editions and Sweepstakes Award — Best Paper in the State. She has been married for 41 years to photographer, Louis Sohn. They have a grown son, Mitch, as well as three dogs and a grand cat. When not working, Pam gardens, researches family roots and plays piano. Contact her at psohn@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6346.
Over this week, as we've waited for the Tennessee Republican Party State Executive Committee to consider the challenge to the outcome of the Republican primary for county mayor.
by Pam SohnFirearms were the leading cause of death for children ages one and older for the first time in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The leading cause of deaths for children used to be from motor vehicle accidents.
by Pam SohnTime and again, we've written with regret about Tennessee's seemingly inexorable roll toward charter schools and school vouchers, which we generally see as siphons of money away from struggling public schools. Not today.
by Pam SohnPolitical insanity appears to be contagious.
by Pam SohnWith nationalism sweeping across too-big swaths of the country, it's hard to be surprised — horrified certainly — but hard to be surprised at incidents like the straight-up race hate that led an 18-year-old in Buffalo, New York, to embrace the far-right racist ideology of "replacement theory" before he killed 10 people and wounded three in a grocery store. The victims were mostly Black and the shooter was white.
by Pam Sohn"Show me your papers!" That is the chilling authoritarian demand that became the first line in the 1942 movie "Casablanca" about encroaching Nazi control in French Morocco.
by Pam SohnThe "big lie" about an election has come to a mayor's office near you.
by Pam SohnLast week, Hamilton County Commissioners got a visit from Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Hammond, who was holding his hand out again, this time for a $6.5 million budget increase that would primarily go toward the recruitment and retention of qualified corrections officers.
by Pam SohnFrom the looks of the headlines about pending development in the Chattanooga area, conversations about ensuring many of us can afford to continue living here have either taken a backseat or simply aren't being heard above the clinking of big developers' gold coins.
by Pam SohnAs fatigued as we all are of COVID-19, it would be disrespectful today not to recognize and mourn the horrible milestone we'll likely cross by Monday - the deaths of 1 million Americans to a virus that could and should have been snuffed out last year had it not become another ridiculous political culture war talking point.
by Pam SohnSuppose you're a Hamilton County commissioner. And suppose you read in the Times Free Press on Tuesday that the Hamilton County Board of Education may come to you soon to request $10 million in recurring maintenance money. That's $10 million over the $456 million fiscal 2023 budget the school board just voted to send you. You read that they want the extra money so they can "begin" tackling the school system's nearly $1 billion in deferred building repairs.
by Pam SohnTime's a-wasting. "Earth given 50-50 chance of hitting key temperature mark by 2026," screams Tuesday's headline at the top of Page A5 in the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
by Pam SohnBeyond thinking about specific stadium plans and wastewater treatment and how to improve schools, a city and a county like ours must have broader goals - broader, but not so broad that they become mere platitudes.
by Pam SohnLost amid the election hubbub of the week were headlines about Gov. Bill Lee on Monday signing into law the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement Act.
by Pam SohnSuppose a plane powered solely by solar power circumnavigated the Earth without using a drop of fuel.
by Pam SohnThe primary morning-after newness is starting to sink in, and with new political leaders springing up here like May flowers, it's a new day in Hamilton County, Tennessee.
by Pam SohnThere is no greater testament to the adage, "election's matter," than today's screaming headline across the country about a leaked Supreme Court draft of a majority opinion striking down the landmark 1973 abortion rights decision, Roe v. Wade.
by Pam SohnVoting locally is complicated these days. Far more complicated than calling yourself a Democrat or a Republican or an independent.
by Pam SohnSheriff Jim Hammond was described on this paper's front page Friday as "defiant" as he responded during a news conference to complaints that his department has presided over incidents of violence involving some of his deputies, the public and among inmates at Silverdale Detention Center.
by Pam SohnIt is always gratifying to hear the words Chattanooga and "new" or "2nd Volkswagen plant" in the same sentence, so this week's Times Free Press headline saying an expansion might happen here for VW's ID.Buzz - an electric version of the iconic Volkswagen bus - is music to our ears.
by Pam Sohn