Culture

Keith Clinkscales, who announced his departure as an ESPN senior vice president three weeks ago, filed a defamation suit Wednesday saying he was being slandered by a former colleague who is spreading a “flat-out lie” that he masturbated under an iPad while sitting in an airplane next to ESPN sports reporter Erin Andrews. “Clinkscales, who…

Year’s Posting Keeps Diversity Among Drive-Time Co-Hosts Audie Cornish, who began hosting NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday” just two months ago, will replace Michele Norris as co-host of “All Things Considered” while Norris takes a one-year leave from her hosting role, NPR announced on Wednesday. The move keeps an African American woman in the co-host slot.…

Richard Prince’s Book Notes: Journalists Explore Identity Identity issues dominate this continuation of our fall reading list of nonfiction books by journalists of color. (The first entries were listed Oct. 12.) Gary Younge, black British writer for the Guardian who covers the United States, points out that we all have identities we aren’t always aware…

“The Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times and several other East Bay newspapers will retain their own mastheads, and the Tribune will open two new community media laboratories in Oakland, executives of the papers’ parent company announced Thursday,” George Avalos reported for the Tribune. Martin G. Reynolds, editor of the Tribune, told Journal-isms on Friday that…

60 Percent of Those Who Follow News of Protests Favor Them The news media were initially accused of ignoring the Occupy Wall Street protests that have since spread across the country, and a new survey from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Washington Post finds a link between coverage…

Husband Takes Top Job With Obama Re-Election Campaign Michele Norris, co-host of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” is taking a leave from the hosting job until after the 2012 elections because her husband, Broderick Johnson, has “has just accepted a senior advisor position with the Obama Campaign,” Norris told NPR staff members on Monday. “I will…

“I Do Care, That’s Right. . . . Why Don’t You Care?” For more than a year, Republicans have taken to calling President Obama’s health care reform legislation “Obamacare” in an effort to disparage it. No Republican presidential candidates debate is complete without numerous uses of the term, and like “death tax” for “estate tax”…

Some Reports Keep Focus on Plight of Black Libyans Many African journalists reacted with relief Thursday at the killing of deposed Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, according to early reports. Some were focusing on the plight of black and dark-skinned Libyans who had been harassed and tortured by the victorious rebels because they had been or…