Culture

“The remarkable shift in how the United States views gay rights and gay people could be easily understood just by following the way the media covered the Supreme Court’s historic rulings on the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8 on Wednesday,” Jack Mirkinson reported Thursday for Huffington Post. “Just as LGBT people have become ever more visible…

“At the end of this month, President Obama will begin his trip to Africa, visiting South Africa, Senegal (in West Africa) and Tanzania (in East Africa),” Jonathan Berman wrote Monday for Harvard Business Review. “The trip will be expensive, and The Washington Post has highlighted the large cost at a time of budget tightening. However, even the myopia…

How desperate are some journalists to find newspaper work in this era of cutbacks and layoffs? Nine or 10 journalists are reported to have fallen for a scam in which a 25-year-old accused con artist created a fake online newspaper. They joined his “staff.” Joshua Brian Randolph was in the Hall County, Ga., Detention Center…

“Let me put it this way,” began Salim Muwakkil, the veteran Chicago writer, in a Facebook posting Wednesday. “I’ve known Assata Shakur from the days when she was known as Joanne Chesimard. “What’s more, while working as a journalist for the Associated Press, I covered the deadly encounter on the NJ Turnpike that resulted in…

Majority of Americans Say Security Is the Bigger Priority African Americans are more likely than others to believe that the government should have access to telephone records, monitor email and investigate possible terrorist threats even if it intrudes on privacy concerns, according to a poll released Monday by the Pew Research Center and the Washington…

Was first lady Michelle Obama right to face down a heckler at a Democratic Party fundraiser Tuesday night? The commentariat was not of one mind on Wednesday. Peter Wallsten reported in the Washington Post, “Obama was addressing a Democratic Party fundraiser in a private Kalorama home in Northwest Washington when Ellen Sturtz, 56, a lesbian…

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. told visiting journalists of color Monday that if the Justice Department had to conduct its recent leak investigations over again, it would give news organizations notice “so as not to give the impression that journalists were feeling criminalized and the target of the investigation,” according to Hugo Balta, president of the…

Citing the stipulation that the meeting would be off the record, the National Association of Black Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association and the news service representing black newspapers said Sunday that they would not attend Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s Monday meeting with journalists of color to refine guidelines on dealing with journalists…

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is following up on his promise to meet with news media representatives Thursday and Friday in the wake of outrage over the Justice Department’s leak investigations, but it’s an open question whether journalists of color will be present. Holder “is expected to meet this week with the Washington bureau…