Culture

150 Protest “60 Minutes” Pieces With No Blacks in View Howard W. French, former New York Times correspondent covering West and Central Africa, author of two books on Africa and  an associate professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, had already complained. “There’s a large literature of what’s meant by Africa w/out Africans,” French tweeted last…

Texas Dailies Say Keep Confederate Flag Off Plates The Sons of Confederate Veterans continued to fight the Civil War all the way to the Supreme Court on Monday, but Texas’ major dailies oppose the group’s demand for a Texas specialty license plate that features the Confederate battle flag. “The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) insist…

Newspaper Joins Coffee Shops in “Race Together” Project “In this country, the only thing more mockable than a white liberal trying to do the right thing when it comes to race is when a corporation, burdened by alternating priorities of profit and conscience, tries to get a piece of the righteous action,” Tony Norman wrote…

Voting Rights Act Isn’t Only Great Society Law in Peril Along with the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery March and the Voting Rights Act, this year marks another milestone: 1965 saw passage of the education law designed to help disadvantaged and special-needs children, particularly those of color. The law is up for renewal this year,…

Barons of D.C. Journalism Take Steps Toward Diversity The Gridiron Club, celebrating its 130th anniversary dinner Saturday night, is evolving. This year’s gathering of Washington journalists and the people they cover took place with an African American president of the club and a black president of the United States, both on the dais. A veil…

Company Maintains Advertisers Shortchange Black Media The March issue of Ebony magazine was never published because the parent Johnson Publishing Co. was in a dispute with advertisers over rates, CEO Desireé Rogers told Journal-isms on Friday. The dispute has been settled to Johnson’s satisfaction, and a combined March-April issue is planned, Rogers said by telephone.…

Some Say Assignment Demonstrates Power of Journalism “In the wrong writer’s hands, an obituary can be a dull collection of biographical facts, the type of article that journalism professor William Drummond calls the ‘lowest common denominator’ of newspaper writing,” Chris Megerian wrote last week in the Los Angeles Times, in a piece accompanied by a…

Long-Overlooked Story Told of Continent’s “Palestine” A year ago, the Moroccan government paid expenses for representatives of the U.S. black press to visit their country. Morocco controls what is called “Africa’s last colony,” but that was hardly mentioned. That “last colony” — Western Sahara — is a place that few Americans are familiar with. It…

“Around the time the 2020 Census is conducted, more than half of the nation’s children are expected to be part of a minority race or ethnic group,” the U.S. Census Bureau reported on Tuesday. “This proportion is expected to continue to grow so that by 2060, just 36 percent of all children (people under age…