About the Site

Rubbed Out is an experiment in digital history that draws on public and private archival sources to present in-depth, investigative material. It’s about a violent chapter in American journalism, and how to engage an audience by providing numerous entry points to a narrative. Investigative reporter James Eli Shiffer independently researched the project and collaborated with Ewen Media to present his findings on the Web.

Rubbed Out includes three short stories on Arthur Kasherman’s death, including his Hell-Raising Tradition, his Last Chow Mein and the Aftermath. The project’s short documentary is available on YouTube and Vimeo. There’s also an interactive map of Minneapolis at the time of Kasherman’s death.

McKenna Ewen worked with James Shiffer to build the independent investigation into an online multimedia project. Ewen used historical images from the Hennepin County Library and Star Tribune, in addition to historical footage from the Prelinger Archives, to produce the Rubbed Out documentary. He built the interactive map using UMapper, a web-based map application with the Yahoo maps framework. The site was powered by WordPress and designed by Graph Paper Press. If you have any further questions, you may contact McKenna Ewen at mewen@ewenmedia.com.

Help share Arthur Kasherman’s story

If you enjoyed this project, please take a moment to share and recommend it to others. You may also use the following promotional text and images if preferred. Ewen Media launched this project independently and needs your help to make it a success. We appreciate your support.

Promotional text:
Minneapolis, MN – In 1945, newspaper publisher Arthur Kasherman was gunned down on a snowy street. Was he a crusader for justice, or a low-life who angered the underworld once too many? Watch the video, read the stories and maybe you’ll solve a 65-year-old murder mystery.

Download the promotional images:
http://ewenmedia.com/rubbedout/rubbedout590x350.jpg
http://ewenmedia.com/rubbedout/rubbedout320x190.jpg
http://ewenmedia.com/rubbedout/rubbedout170x100.jpg

Here’s a link to the Almanac segment where I previewed the Kasherman project. I was also joined by professor Jane Kirtley and MPR’s Bob Collins to discuss the some of the latest media controversies of the week.

Interested in partnering with Ewen Media?

Ewen Media is a multimedia production company that uses interactive multimedia to share meaningful stories. The organization’s mission is to use purpose-driven journalism to explore the world in its current state and the world that it could become. McKenna Ewen would like to collaborate with local news organizations and nonprofits to help create similar projects. If you are interested, you may reach him by phone at 952-212-3013 or by email at mewen@ewenmedia.com. He is also available on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Thank you very much for your interest in this project and please let us know what you think. Thanks!

As a Minnesotan, I was born loving Herb Brooks’s famous “miracle” speech. There isn’t anyone, even this kid, who can deliver the speech that he did. However, “Rizzo” made this speech his own. In the same light, when I look at the current journalism environment, I am always looking for ways to compete with traditional journalists by making these stories my own. I ask two questions:

1) How has this story been told?
2) How have I told similar stories?

Then, I do the opposite. These two questions have been very powerful tools for me. The first question is your competitive advantage in a given market. This defines the work that you can do that no one else can. The second question is your area for growth. I consider this the “wouldn’t it be cool if…” philosophy.

For example, “wouldn’t it be cool if a 4-year-old kid could imitate Herb Brooks on YouTube and become a viral sensation?” Yeah, I think that’d be pretty cool.

Individual journalists should think like publicly traded companies (I know… stay with me). If you’re not learning and growing, then you’re losing your marketability. No one wants to invest in last year’s Turbo-Man.

Most of my projects have been inspired by other journalists’ work. When I started college, I really wanted to produce a video piece similar to Lou Raguse’s “Road Trip (2004).” As a result, I started learning Final Cut Pro and similar video editing tools. Similarly, when I produced Times of Recession, I was first inspired by Ohio University’s Soul of Athens project (2007). So I always ask one more question:

3) Who’s telling this story better than I am?

There are a lot of innovative journalists out there who are doing really great stuff. There’s nothing more humbling and motivating than watching some of the finest in online multimedia. When I see great journalism, I study these pieces and learn from them. Then, I try to figure out how they’re made. That’s the fun part.

Lastly, here’s my “hit list.” These are works that are so amazing that they make me want to learn.

1) Choosing a President
2) Crisis of Credit
3) Charity Water
4) Times of Crisis
5) Auto-Tune the News (just because)