Social Media Quick to Comment on Media Coverage “The scene in Waco on Sunday was like something off a TV show,” Dan Solomon wrote Monday for Texas Monthly. “Broad daylight shoot-outs between rival gangs that leave nine dead and eighteen others hospitalized rarely happen in Texas strip malls, but the biker-themed event at the Twin Peaks…

Slaver Is Omitted, His Story “Just Wasn’t as Interesting” Actor Ben Affleck asked Henry Louis Gates Jr. to edit out the fact that one of his ancestors owned slaves from Gates’ PBS series “Finding Your Roots,” according to messages in the massive November hacking of emails at Sony’s movie studio. The information did not appear…

Video Responsible for Quick Firing of S.C. Policeman The news competition was fierce on a day when the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing trial was found guilty, but “NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt had set up shop Wednesday in North Charleston, S.C. He delivered the goods, snaring the first interview with the bystander…

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,…

Mitzi Miller Wants to Create Stories for TV, Film Mitzi Miller, editor-in-chief of Ebony magazine, announced Friday that she is leaving Johnson Publishing Co. She has been Ebony editor for less than a year, assuming that role after spending more than three years as editor of its sister publication Jet, which ended its print edition.…

Pop Culture Still an Attraction for Black Web Visitors BET.com, MadameNoire.com and TheRoot.com were big winners among African American-oriented websites in 2014, according to figures for unique visitors provided to Journal-isms by the comScore, Inc. research company. For the first time, the figures include both desktop and mobile data. Previous figures measured desktop use only.…

News Outlets Split on Best Ways to Cover the Topic With the New York Times moving Tanzina Vega, the paper’s sole reporter on a national race and ethnicity beat, to cover the Bronx courthouse, a larger question is at play, Chris Ip wrote Wednesday for Columbia Journalism Review. “What happens to her national race and…

Filmgoers Should Have a Chance to See the Documentary Judy Richardson was a worker for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia from 1963 to 1966, the time depicted in the movie “Selma.” She began a career in filmmaking as associate producer of “Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1985,”…

Beverly Johnson Charges Surface Talk of Lies, Death Threats CNN replied Monday to a scathing letter from Bill Cosby’s lawyer accusing the network of unethical reporting tactics with a scathing letter of its own. The network’s lawyer ripped into the character of a former boyfriend of supermodel Beverly Johnson, who, following accusations by other women,…

Pullback of Movie Demonstrates “All Films Are Political” “Black leaders, angered by racially insensitive emails sent by Amy Pascal, the movie chief at Sony Pictures Entertainment, emerged from a meeting with her on Thursday saying they had reached an understanding about how to move forward,” Brooks Barnes reported for the New York Times. “Ms. Pascal,…