The personal became the professional this week as the sudden death at 57 Thursday of pop music icon Prince led news organizations to include the reminiscences of staff members who grew up listening to—or later reporting on—the superstar. That personal involvement was part of a flood of coverage that engulfed a news media seeking a…

When Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced on Wednesday that the face of abolitionist leader HarrietTubman would grace a new $20 bill, NPR reached out to Lonnie Bunch, founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. “For me, having Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill really says, first of all, that…

An expose of slavery in Southeast Asia’s fishing industry was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service Monday. The Washington Post won the Pulitzer for national reporting for its comprehensive study of fatal shootings by U.S. police officers, and Farah Stockman, who joined the New York Times just days ago as a national correspondent, won…

“The roof is coming apart,” Erick Johnson wrote Monday for the Chicago Crusader. “The creaky wooden porch is aging with growing cracks. And the navy blue paint that once adorned the steps is peeling away. Nearly 100 years ago, this white, two-story house in Chicago’s West Englewood neighborhood on the city’s south side became the…

The story of writer Gay Talese and his offensive remarks to New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones became a story about the Times itself Thursday when Executive Editor Dean Baquet rebuked the Times’ report on the incident and tied it to the news organization’s difficulties with newsroom diversity and inclusion. Talese, who at 84 has…

Gay Talese is a giant in the world of narrative journalism. He is 84 and white. Nikole Hannah-Jones, who is African American, is an investigative reporter who was named the National Association of Black Journalists’ Journalist of the Year for 2015. She is 39 and black. When they met last weekend at Boston University’s The…

Lynette Clemetson, a veteran journalist and a news executive at NPR, has been named director of the Knight-Wallace Fellowships and Livingston Awards at the University of Michigan, the school announced Tuesday. The appointment apparently makes Clemetson the first person of color to lead one of the big three journalism fellowship programs, which provide the means…

With the Obama administration set to require every big company to report salary data based on race, gender and ethnicity, and the Dow Jones Co. CEO decrying pay disparities by race and gender, the president of the NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America said Friday that the guild would be “going after this information with gusto” at…

A Pittsburgh anchor who posted a racially inflammatory Facebook message after a shooting that left five black people dead has been fired, the station announced on Wednesday. Wendy Bell, who is white, had been at WTAE-TV for 18 years and won 21 Emmy Awards. On March 23, she posted a lengthy Facebook message that read,…

“It’s bad enough that an outrage was perpetrated last week against the voters of Maricopa County, Ariz.,” columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote Sunday in the Washington Post. “It would be far worse if we ignore the warning that the disenfranchisement of thousands of its citizens offers our nation. In November, one of the most contentious…