Media

NPR Hiring for New Race-Relations Reporting Team In a sign of hunger for the topic or perhaps an indicator of the  journalism job market, or both, NPR has received more than 1,300 applications for four positions on its new race-relations reporting team, according to Matt Thompson, the NPR journalist who is heading the team. “We’re…

Vargas Reopens Debate on “Illegal Immigrant” “Jose Antonio Vargas is a man on a mission,” Margaret Sullivan, public editor of the New York Times, wrote on Monday. “The journalist turned immigration activist wants news organizations to stop using the term ‘illegal immigrants,’ which he finds disparaging and inaccurate. He’s particularly focusing on The Times and…

Obama Concedes Failure to Reform Immigration Univision’s televised forums this week with President Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney were ratings and journalistic hits, as Univision moderators Maria Elena Salinas and Jorge Ramos posed questions they maintained would not be asked in the mainstream debates scheduled to start Oct. 3 in Denver. Ramos said as…

Candidate Repeats “100%” in Try for Damage Control “Mitt Romney, recognizing the damage to his campaign, Wednesday night backed off his statement from earlier this year that he wouldn’t contend for the support of the 47 percent of Americans who don’t pay income taxes,” Jonathan Martin reported from Coral Gables, Fla., for Politico. ” ‘My…

Company Restricts Access Abroad but Not at Home “Google [Inc.] rejected a request by the White House on Friday to reconsider its decision to keep online a controversial YouTube movie clip that has ignited anti-American protests in the Middle East,” Gerry Shih reported for Reuters from San Francisco on Friday. “The Internet company said it…

“He Can Be in a Room but Detach Himself” A writer granted rare access to President Obama for six months said Wednesday that the politically costly charge that the president is aloof grows out of a personality trait he shares with journalists: “It’s the personality trait of a writer.” Michael Lewis, the best-selling author of…

Neighbors Buttonholed Staffers Over Missing Coverage “My favorite caller of the week was an erudite, sharp-witted woman who said she had been a Post subscriber since 1962,” Ombudsman Patrick B. Pexton wrote Sunday to readers of the Washington Post print edition. “After going through her entire paper on Wednesday morning, she said, ‘I couldn’t believe…

Poverty Issue “Nearly Invisible” in Election Coverage “ ‘Middle Class First,’ said the placards on display as Bill Clinton addressed the Democratic convention. And indeed, speaker after speaker has invoked the party’s devotion to the lot of middle-class Americans in 2012,” David Crary reported Friday for the Associated Press. “The rich also have featured in…

“Not Quite” the Image Presidential Campaign Paints “. . . Governor Deval Patrick, speaking Tuesday night at the Democratic National Convention, assailed his predecessor’s economic record, pointing to anemic job growth and deep budget cuts that affected education, transportation, and other programs that support the state’s economy,” Megan Woolhouse and Michael Rezendes reported Wednesday for…

“A few years back, the Los Angeles Times considered joining a runaway industry trend,” Erik Wemple wrote Friday for the Washington Post. “Everywhere you clicked on the political web, it seemed, someone was putting the drywall and paint on a stand-alone, cleverly branded fact-checking machine or at least some sort of discrete truth-outing posts. “.…