Culture

Defending N-Word in NFL Puts Writers in Awkward Position Newsrooms Don’t Allow Words for Which Athletes Get a Pass The NFL is considering penalizing players 15 yards if they use the N-word on the field, leaving sportswriters and columnists who question such a penalty in an ironic position: They would be sanctioning language that they…

Tamron Hall Named Co-Host for Third Hour of “Today” “Tamron Hall has officially been named a co-host of the 9 a.m. hour of the ‘Today’ Show,” Katherine Fung reported Monday for the Huffington Post. “Hall, who is a frequent fill-in host on the show, joined the rest of the co-hosts on the ‘Today’ sofa when the news was…

“Arsenio Hall is one of the most enduring names in late night history, and so he was more than a little P.O.ed that his name was excluded in an NBC report on the late night wars and Jimmy Fallon’s ascendancy,” Josh Feldman reported Wednesday for Mediaite. “Hall called out Brian Williams for his exclusion, and Williams apologized on the air tonight for…

The jury verdict Saturday in the killing of Jordan Davis lit up the black blogosphere over the weekend, with comparisons to the plight of young black men and the “Stand Your Ground” case of Trayvon Martin, another slain, unarmed black Florida teenager who claimed national attention last year. The “Democracy, Now!” radio and television show…

Report: Medical Examiner Cites Natural Causes Angelo B. Henderson, a Detroit radio personality who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1999 while at the Wall Street Journal, died in his home in Pontiac, Mich., Saturday, according to Detroit news reports. Henderson died “after being rushed to the hospital in the morning. The 51-year old had been…

Jury Weighs ‘Loud-Music’ Killing: ‘Florida Again, Seriously?!’ Media Await Verdict in Death of Teenager Jordan Davis “In the national coverage of the first-degree murder case of Michael David Dunn, Jacksonville itself hasn’t really been a focus of the story,” Matt Soergel wrote this week for the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. “Instead, attention has been squarely…

BET Honors Show Makes Time for Affordable Care Act Aretha Franklin closed the show, Smokey Robinson delivered a stunning rendition of “The Tracks of My Tears,” and Ice Cube, Berry Gordy, photographer Carrie Mae Weems and American Express President Kenneth Chenault got their props, but in between was a public service ad for the political football known as the Affordable Care Act. The occasion…

Who “won” in Bill O’Reilly’s pre-Super Bowl interview with President Obama? Was it the public? “Remember how much was at stake in February 2011: The GOP had just started running the House; we all knew huge showdowns were coming; and of course all of it was prelude to 2012,” Michael Tomasky wrote Sunday for the Daily Beast. “That O’Reilly interview —…

Writer Says Most Blacks on Show Have Not Been Happy “In the early part of the past decade, I wrote biographies of two famously deceased actors from Saturday Night Live, John Belushi and Chris Farley,” Tanner Colby wrote this month for Slate. “Having exhausted the dead, fat comedian genre, I decided to write a somewhat…

Police Sought “Hispanic” but Arrested a “Black Male” Police arrested a Queens, N.Y., man Tuesday in the beating of Randy Gener, an openly gay arts journalist who remained in critical condition after undergoing brain surgery as a result of the attack, New York news media reported. The suspect, Leighton Jennings, was described by police Wednesday…