Fabled Editor, Dead at 93, Acknowledged His Ignorance After Benjamin C. Bradlee entered hospice care in mid-September, this columnist asked a few female reporters and black journalists who worked under Bradlee in the Washington Post of the 1970s to assess him, anticipating the inevitable. Most declined. It is clear, however, that while the Bradlee era…

Online News Assn. Conference Makes Strides in Diversity When the Online News Association ended its three-day convention in Chicago on Saturday, 35 percent of the presenters had been people of color, and half were women, according to its organizers. That’s the most diversity the ONA — founded in 1999 and the newest kid on the…

Questionable Framing of Story on “Scandal” Creator It was just three weeks ago that the New York Times was vilified over a story calling the slain 18-year-old Michael Brown “no angel,” a mistake partly attributed to insensitive editing. On Friday, critics paid and unpaid leaped on a Times story in which the error was not just…

St. Louis Paper Compiles “Most Comprehensive” Account The St. Louis Post-Dispatch told readers Sunday that it had “put together the most comprehensive public account chronicling the police response” in the hours after the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., last month. “To determine why the body remained on the street for…

In Prime Time, Obama Declares Campaign Against Sunni Militants Outrage at the beheading of two American journalists buttressed public support for the kind of U.S. action against terrorism outlined Wednesday night by President Obama, according to commentators analyzing the president’s speech. “The public has decided that people who cut off the heads of journalists are…

Does TMZ Deserve Kudos After Rice Suspension? Debate Over Who Was Gutless and Who Unethical “Running back Ray Rice was cut by the Baltimore Ravens Monday and suspended indefinitely by the NFL after TMZ Sports released a video of him hitting his then-fiancee (now wife) Janay Palmer in February,” as Jonathan Kuperberg reported for Broadcasting &…

Richard Prince’s Book Notes™: Journalists’ Fall Offerings (Part 1) Mark Whitaker, a former network news executive who spent the bulk of his career at Newsweek magazine, has produced a reader-friendly biography of entertainer Bill Cosby, an icon who has been part of American life for 50 years. The book seems destined for the fall best-seller…

How Media Skew Our Views of Race, Crime Distortions Bolster Harsher Penalties, Study Finds “Skewed racial perceptions of crime — particularly, white Americans’ strong associations of crime with racial minorities — have bolstered harsh and biased criminal justice policies [PDF],” the nonprofit Sentencing Project reported Wednesday, outlining the role played by the news media in skewing…

How Did “No Angel” Line About Ferguson Victim Get Through? Writer Says Having More Black Editors Might Help In many ways, the reaction last week to a New York Times writer’s profile of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old whose death at the hands of a Ferguson, Mo., policeman prompted national outrage, was a black journalist’s nightmare.…

Police Slaying, Aftermath Are Topic A — Outside Convention As the nation followed the aftermath of the police shooting death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in suburban Ferguson, Mo. — including the detention of two journalists and the tear-gassing of at least one camera crew, many journalism organizations rushed to condemn what they considered the unfair…