Culture

Unhappy Mass. Governor Defends “Important Voice” Federal agents shut down an unlicensed radio station in Boston Thursday, sending “shockwaves through Boston’s African-American community, where the station filled a vacuum on the airwaves after the station WILD-AM was sold,” Meghan E. Irons reported Friday for the Boston Globe. Gov. Deval Patrick sharply criticized federal agents for the…

NYPD Disbands Muslim-Tracking Unit Exposed by AP “A special New York Police Department unit that sparked controversy by tracking the daily lives of Muslims in an effort to detect terror threats has been disbanded, police officials said Tuesday,” Jake Pearson and Tom Hayes reported for the Associated Press. “NYPD spokesman Stephen Davis confirmed that detectives assigned to the unit had been…

Free Press Columnist Wrote Passionately About Fiscal Crisis Stephen Henderson, editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press, won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary Monday “for his columns on the financial crisis facing his hometown, written with passion and a stirring sense of place, sparing no one in their critique.” Henderson appeared to be the…

In Newsrooms, “Still a Small Tilt in Merit Pay to Men” The pay disparity between men and women that grabbed the attention of the White House and Capitol Hill this week has nearly vanished from newspaper newsrooms, Bernie Lunzer, president of the Newspaper Guild, Communications Workers of America, told Journal-isms on Friday. “Likely still a…

Activist Says, “I Wasn’t With the Rats — I’m a Cat” “Some of today’s New York newspaper front pages were pretty remarkable,” Josmar Trujillo wrote Wednesday for Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting. “Both the New York Post (4/9/14) and the Daily News (4/9/14) sensationalized, for the second day in a row, revelations that Al Sharpton…

Inattention Worsening Humanitarian Crises, Officials Say In 1985, there was Live Aid, a live concert with a global audience of 1.9 billion across 150 nations, organized by the Irish singer-songwriter Bob Geldof to benefit Ethiopian famine relief. Millions of dollars was raised. A decade earlier, as a former Beatle, George Harrison gathered musician friends for…

“A Firebrand With Unassailable Journalistic Credentials” Charles Sumner (Chuck) Stone, newspaper editor, professor, columnist, former Tuskegee Airman and founding president of the National Association of Black Journalists — a legend to many — died Sunday at 89, according to news reports. “Stone died in his sleep early this morning at an assisted-living home in Farmington,…

People of Color Were Subjects, Creators of Excellence From the ABC drama “Scandal” to miniseries on the histories of Latinos and of African Americans to close-up looks at urban high schools and NPR’s “The Race Project,” the George Foster Peabody Awards announced Wednesday were enriched by the lives and work of people of color. “The…

FCC Vote Praised as Saving Jobs, Ownership Diversity By 3-2, Panel Takes Action Against Media Consolidation Though the final vote was the result of compromise, advocates of minority broadcast ownership and jobs for journalists of color each took comfort Monday in a 3-2 vote by the Federal Communications Commission “to bar companies from controlling two…

Author Says Papers Have Not Kept Up With Today’s Readers The black press was not part of the “State of the News Media 2014” report issued this week by the Pew Research Center — the center says it is saving that for later — but a new book by an expert on that slice of…