Diversity Advocate “Planned for My Retirement Since . . . 21” Paula Madison, executive vice president and chief diversity officer for NBCUniversal, is retiring on May 20 after more than 35 years in the news media, NBCUniversal intends to announce on Monday. Madison, 58, a board member of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and…

Bob Herbert, the first African American op-ed columnist at the New York Times, is leaving the paper after 18 years, the Times said on Friday. His last column appeared on Saturday. “I have been writing a column for 25 years, nearly 18 at The New York Times,” Herbert said in a note to the Times…

Samuel F. Yette, a reporter, teacher, author and photojournalist whose publication of the 1971 book “The Choice: The Issue of Black Survival in America” coincided with his dismissal as the first black Washington correspondent for Newsweek magazine, died Friday at an assisted living facility in Laurel, Md. He was 81 and had Alzheimer’s disease, a…

College to Own First Black-Owned Building in Chicago’s Loop Johnson Publishing Co. has sold its historic building on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue to Columbia College Chicago, the company announced on Tuesday. It has not yet selected a new home and is to remain in the building for 18 months. “The sale of 820 S. Michigan is…

Did White House Decide Who Represents Trotter Group? An attempt by the White House to reach out to the nation’s organization of African American columnists has resulted in anger and resentment on the part of those in the group who were ignored or, worse, disinvited. Some lost money when they made travel arrangements to Washington…

Tuesday marked the 30th anniversary of the day these words appeared on the front page of the Sunday Washington Post: “Jimmy is 8 years old and a third-generation heroin addict, a precocious little boy with sandy hair, velvety brown eyes and needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin brown arms. “He nestles in a…

“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…

A handful of Malcolm X scholars say the 45-year-old mystery of who really pulled the trigger and killed the iconic black leader has been solved, and are wondering why the news media aren’t giving it more attention. Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, a historian who writes for the Woodson Review and other publications of the respected Association for…

NBC and ABC demonstrated this week that newsmagazines have not lost their ability to be provocative — or offensive, depending on your point of view. Detroit leaders, accompanied by Vickie Thomas, president of the Detroit Chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, and Bankole Thompson, senior editor of the Michigan Chronicle, a black weekly,…

The Detroit Chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists issued this statement on Saturday: The Detroit Chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists does not necessarily dispute the accuracy of the narrow scope of what was reported in NBC’s “Dateline” piece, but is concerned about the balance of its content. “Any journalist working…