Tag Archives: journalism

The wingnut/Moonie mouthpiece Washington Times is closing up shop as a “traditional” newspaper to reinvent itself as an opinion publication. Via Eric Boehlert at HuffPo: You’d think that somebody with a direct line to the Almighty, and tapped by Jesus to save mankind on Earth, would be able to come up with a better business plan for running a daily …

Larry Grard, an 18-year veteran of Maine’s Morning Sentinel, has been fired after his employers were notified by the Human Rights Campaign that he had sent them an “in your face” email from his personal account on the morning after the vote to repeal same-sex marriage. Larry Grard admits he had “a lapse in judgment.” But Grard – who’s been …

From the Washington Post: A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number. Get up-uh, get get get down.

Days after Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp announced a partnership with Microsoft to block their news stories from search engines, Google has revealed that they have created a program to restrict readers from reading too many stories on news sites without paying. Newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can …

In a joint project with the San Francisco Gay & Lesbian Historical Society, the Bay Area Reporter has created an online database of every obituary published since 1980. For years, especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s, people who had died from complications related to AIDS dominated the B.A.R. ‘s obituary pages. Tom Burtch, a volunteer at San Francisco’s …

In 2007 Los Angeles Times sports writer Mike Penner announced in his column that after a vacation, he would be returning to work as Christine Daniels, a transition that was met with surprising support from the sports world and Penner’s colleagues. But in a decision commonly called “transgender regret,” Penner revealed in February of this year that he was now …

Gawker has posted a gallery of photos of Katie Couric getting on down with her bad self. (And with another lady dancer.) Wingnuts will probably screech about this un-anchorly behavior, but Katie seems like a fun gal to take to a party.

Over on Mediaite, Michael Triplett of the National Gay & Lesbian Journalists Association covers the demise of the Washington Blade and other LGBT print titles and what physical gay newspapers have meant to us. Like other “minority” media, it is easy to underestimate the significance of the LGBT press for the gay community. For many of us, it was the …

Talk about quick! Staffers from the just-defunct Washington Blade will launch their new publication, DC Agenda, tomorrow. (With some help from the Gay Men’s Chorus.) Members of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C. presented the former Washington Blade with a check Wednesday night for a full-page ad in the newspaper’s new print iteration, the D.C. Agenda, which will be …

But they wouldn’t pay very much. Among regular Internet users in the United States, 48 percent said in the survey, conducted in October, that they would pay to read news online, including on mobile devices. That result tied with Britain for the lowest figure among nine countries where Boston Consulting commissioned surveys. In several Western European countries, more than 60 …

This weekend I noticed that the websites of the Washington Blade, Southern Voice, and several other titles published by Window Media had not been updated in a few days. Just now, Southern Voice posted this message to their Facebook fan page: With deepest regret, as editor of SoVo, I have to tell you that we arrived at the office to …

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and former Nixon White House speechwriter William Safire died this weekend at age 79. A columnist for the New York Times for more than 30 years, Safire won the 1978 Pulitzer prize for his writings on a now obscure scandal involving an appointee of President Jimmy Carter. He was on the Pulitzer board from 1995 to 2004. …

“I love the gay press. I really am impressed with gay journalists, as a group. I like reading the marriage issue in the gay press because they cover it as if what happens matters, whereas if you read The New York Times, it’s always about how this is going to affect who gets elected president.” – NOM founder Maggie Gallagher, …

“I’ve decided to move out of the Sunshine State. It’s a bit more chilly here than I had expected. Some may say good riddance, but I’m no longer willing to live in a place where I can’t get married, can’t adopt children and where there are no state laws to protect me from being fired because I’m gay. And so …

The ombudsman for the Washington Post has posted an apology for last week’s glowing profile of NOM’s executive director, Brian Brown. [I]t deprived readers of hearing from others who have battled Brown and find him uncivil and bigoted. To them, he represents injustice. They should have been heard, at length. “In a profile piece, for a controversial figure like that …

Recently fired Miami ABC News anchor Charles Perez has been granted a restraining order against his ex-boyfriend, saying Dennis Pena had physically threatened and sexually assaulted him. Miami-Dade County Judge Rosa Figarola ordered Dennis Ricardo Peña to stay at least 500 feet away from Perez for the next 24 months. Peña, an unemployed paralegal, has 30 days to appeal and …

Conservative columnist Robert Novak, known as the “Prince of Darkness” to his enemies, has died of brain cancer at the age of 78. Novak’s remarkable and long-running career made him a powerful presence in newspaper columns, newsletters, books and on television. On May 15, 1963, Novak teamed up with the late Rowland Evans Jr. to create the “Inside Report” political …

Rupert Murdoch, the largest owner of newspapers worldwide, says he plans to begin charging for access to all of their websites by next year. Stung by a collapse in advertising revenue as the recession shredded Fleet Street’s traditional business model, Murdoch declared that the era of a free-for-all in online news was over. “Quality journalism is not cheap,” said Murdoch. …

American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling greet their husbands and families after Bill Clinton helped negotiate their release from North Korea. The two women were pardoned after 140 days, having originally been sentenced to 12 years in prison for entering the country illegally. Laura Ling is the sister of famed television reporter Lisa Ling.

Miami news anchor Charles Perez has filed a sexual orientation discrimination complaint against his ABC employers, claiming he was demoted for acting “too gay.” A personal email forwarded to Perez’ bosses by his former boyfriend may have started it all. Perez, 46, claims station bosses demoted him to weekend anchor/reporter “because of their discomfort over the increasingly high profile of …