Gay Talese is a giant in the world of narrative journalism. He is 84 and white. Nikole Hannah-Jones, who is African American, is an investigative reporter who was named the National Association of Black Journalists’ Journalist of the Year for 2015. She is 39 and black. When they met last weekend at Boston University’s The…

Lynette Clemetson, a veteran journalist and a news executive at NPR, has been named director of the Knight-Wallace Fellowships and Livingston Awards at the University of Michigan, the school announced Tuesday. The appointment apparently makes Clemetson the first person of color to lead one of the big three journalism fellowship programs, which provide the means…

With the Obama administration set to require every big company to report salary data based on race, gender and ethnicity, and the Dow Jones Co. CEO decrying pay disparities by race and gender, the president of the NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America said Friday that the guild would be “going after this information with gusto” at…

A Pittsburgh anchor who posted a racially inflammatory Facebook message after a shooting that left five black people dead has been fired, the station announced on Wednesday. Wendy Bell, who is white, had been at WTAE-TV for 18 years and won 21 Emmy Awards. On March 23, she posted a lengthy Facebook message that read,…

“It’s bad enough that an outrage was perpetrated last week against the voters of Maricopa County, Ariz.,” columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote Sunday in the Washington Post. “It would be far worse if we ignore the warning that the disenfranchisement of thousands of its citizens offers our nation. In November, one of the most contentious…

Can you guess where the headline writers’ sympathies lie? “Girl yanked from foster home for being 1/64th Indian” (USA Today from Newser) “Girl, 6, removed from foster family of four years under law about her 1.5% Choctaw heritage (VIDEO)” (Daily News, New York) ” ‘Devastated’ Foster Parents of Part Native American Girl Taken From Home…

“Media, experts, and civil rights groups are all criticizing Ted Cruz’s call to ‘patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods’ in the wake of terror attacks in Brussels, Belgium, seemingly inspired by ISIS,” Nick Fernandez wrote Wednesday for Media Matters for America. “The plan has been called ‘counterproductive and unconstitutional’ and ‘the exact opposite of what we…

“In a stunning diplomatic display, U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President tussled in the Cuban capital Monday over human rights, democracy and the U.S. trade embargo as an American leader visited for the first time in decades,” Josh Lederman reported Monday for the Associated Press. “Castro, who rarely takes questions from the media, fielded…

The chief executive of J. Walter Thompson, one of the biggest and oldest advertising agencies in the world, resigned Thursday after one of his executives accused him of making racist and sexist comments. “The allegations that Gustavo Martinez often mocked women and minorities left many wondering if Mad Men’s portrayal of leering, intolerant ad executives…

President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court, announced Wednesday, appears to meet with the overwhelming approval of the nation’s editorial pages, according to an informal survey. The opinion writers are validating Obama’s statement that the majority of the public is opposed to the declaration by Senate Republicans that they will refuse…