Culture

GOP Chairman Was Sure to Be Questioned About Breitbart The advance team for Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele told the National Association of Black Journalists on Friday that Steele was canceling the panel discussion scheduled later in the day at its convention in San Diego because of food poisoning, NABJ announced. An RNC statement…

“The article was largely buried in most newspapers, if run at all,” columnist Edward Schumacher-Matos wrote Thursday for the Washington Post Writers Group. “So many bodies of unauthorized migrants are being found in the Arizona desert this month, the Associated Press reported, that the Pima County Medical Examiner was stacking them like boxes of fish…

The firing of Agriculture Department staffer Shirley Sherrod — over racial remarks that were taken out of context — raises judgment questions not only about the Obama administration and the NAACP, whose president is a former journalist, but about the news media. “This whole saga confirms, as if it needed confirmation,” veteran journalist Paul Delaney…

It’s not every day that commentators Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune, Juan Williams of Fox News and NPR, Errol Louis of the New York Daily News, Roland Martin of CNN and TV One, and the editorial pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette are in agreement. And that such agreement…

Even Journalists Raise Questions After Latest Victory “I’ve been scratching my head over this for the past year: Does President Obama get credit for the things he does right?” media writer Howard Kurtz wrote for the Washington Post on Friday. “We all know about the things he does wrong, because the media have made that…

Six weeks after the arrival of former White House social secretary Desiree Rogers, and two weeks after the naming of a new editor-in-chief for Ebony, Johnson Publishing Co. Monday announced the resignation of Anne Sempowski Ward, its president and chief operating officer. Ward was on maternity leave. Rogers, a longtime friend of Chairman and CEO…

The decision by LeBron James to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat made for television with through-the-roof ratings, the Nielsen Co. announced, even if journalists panned as over-the-top the ESPN production during which James made the announcement. The NBA superstar’s move had a less-noticed side benefit: On James’ new home turf, he’ll be…

“Did ESPN just get ‘mediajacked’?” Brian Steinberg asked Wednesday on AdAge.com. “Normally, an event as important and interesting as basketball wunderkind LeBron James announcing what team he has chosen to play for would be a national, even global, event — with coverage supplied by hundreds of different media outlets. “Come Thursday, in prime time no…

End of Strained Relationship Means “Sky’s the Limit” Sports commentator Stephen A. Smith, who finally returned to the Philadelphia Inquirer in February after a two-year feud with his employer of 15 years, left the paper by mutual agreement on Tuesday. “I’m as happy as I’ve been for a long time,” Smith told Journal-isms on Wednesday.…