Author Says Southerners Wanted to Keep Slave Patrols As Hollywood puts slavery back in the American consciousness and the reaction to the Newtown, Conn., shootings has the Second Amendment on the front burner, an author and talk-show host links the two in an intriguing way. “The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery,” reads the…

“Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained’ has become embroiled in the second major controversy of awards season,” Steve Pond wrote Wednesday for the Wrap. “The director’s liberal use of the N-word, and his temerity in tackling the issue of slavery, has drawn fire from some prominent African-Americans and impassioned defenses from others. “Like the turmoil stirred up…

Diversity’s Greatest Hits, 2012 1. Neither GOP Nor News Media Looked Like America 2. Social Media Can Mean Trouble: Ask Martin, Whitlock, Lee or Williams 3. Trayvon Martin Case 4. Unity Coalition Changes Course 5. New NAHJ Leadership After Brutal Campaign 6. The Numbers 7. Fellowship Breakthrough at Stanford 8. NBC News to Pay Its…

Program to Air Weekly as Ratings Disappoint BET announced Monday that it is scaling back its much-anticipated late-night, half-hour vehicle for T.J. Holmes, the former CNN anchor, from half an hour Monday through Thursday to an hour once a week. The show launched Oct. 1. CEO Debra Lee said last month the show is “designed…

President Obama was judged the winner of Monday night’s final debate of the campaign season, with challenger Mitt Romney leaving pundits debating why he now agreed with the president on so many foreign policy issues. “If this debate had gone on for 30 more minutes, Romney was going to endorse Obama,” Van Jones, the former…

Poverty Issue “Nearly Invisible” in Election Coverage “ ‘Middle Class First,’ said the placards on display as Bill Clinton addressed the Democratic convention. And indeed, speaker after speaker has invoked the party’s devotion to the lot of middle-class Americans in 2012,” David Crary reported Friday for the Associated Press. “The rich also have featured in…

Rumor, Fact Follow Sherman Hemsley, Sally Ride Deaths On Facebook Tuesday, Joyce Ladner, a former interim president of Howard University, posted a notice about the death of actor Sherman Hemsley of television’s “The Jeffersons” and praised him as “out and proud.” Friends approved with a “like.” No point in being in the closet one’s whole…

U.S. to Review the Record After ProPublica Stories “The Obama administration has asked for a fresh review of an Alabama federal inmate’s commutation request and directed the Justice Department to conduct its first ever in-depth analysis of recommendations for presidential pardons, according to several officials and individuals involved,” Dafna Linzer reported Wednesday for ProPublica. “The…

Lynn Hoppes, senior director/entertainment at ESPN, former newspaper sports editor and former president of Associated Press Sports Editors, has been scolded for “journalistic laziness” after the Deadspin website found that he had been “shall we say, over-reliant on Wikipedia as a research tool,” as Deadspin put it. ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz told Journal-isms Friday by…

Was the absence of black people in Andy Griffith’s Mayberry, set in North Carolina and broadcast as the civil rights movement intensified during the 1960s, a problem? Not really, according to African American columnists with ties to the state who weighed in on Tuesday’s death of the beloved Griffith at age 86. Television historians have…