Maya J. Randall   It is always sad when a young person loses a battle with life. I am particularly saddened at the news that my friend, Harold Jackson recently lost his daughter, Maya. to a rare form of leukemia. Maya was a colleague —  a consumer finance reporter at the Wall Street Journal. […]

In 2006 the Region III (southeast) conference of the National Association of Black Journalists met in Montgomery, Ala. A fledgling group of journalists came together to host the convention. We were small, not very strong, but somehow, we managed to pull together a pretty good program of discussions about digital skills and covering civil rights […]

Broadcast correspondent Byron Pitts speaking at Region III NABJ conference in Charlotte, NC, on the campus of Johnson C. Smith University   The National Association of Black Journalists — the largest organization of journalists of color — has annual conventions in big cities, sometimes so big and so expensive that many of our members are […]

  Wanda Lloyd, speaking at Leadership Montgomery’s Lunch with Leaders series, First United Methodist Church I was honored to be the speaker for the March 13 Leadership Montgomery Lunch with Leaders series. The most common question was “Will there always be a newspaper?” My response later. My presentation, “The Evolution of News,” included a […]

Tina McElroy Ansa (left) and Wanda Lloyd — in our younger years Do you have a close friend that you don’t hear from for a long, long time, and then when you do get on the phone together, it is almost like it was yesterday when you last spoke? I had that experience this week when I got a […]

Ronnie Agnew and Wanda Lloyd at Jackson State University’s Media Day 2013 What happens when two former newspaper editors get together? A lot of war stories are told. That was the case this week when I traveled to Mississippi to be the keynote speaker for Mass Communications Day at Jackson State University. The highlight, of […]

Al Neuharth has passed away. He was 89. Neuharth was a giant of a newsman. He was also a self-described SOB who wrote a book —  “Confessions of an S.O.B.” — to prove it. Neuharth, who is known as the founder of USA TODAY and who wrote a column for that newspaper until the end of […]

No matter where I go, when I tell people my hometown is Savannah, Ga., one of the first things they ask me is if I have been to Paula Deen’s Lady and Sons southern cuisine restaurant, or to her brother’s Uncle Bubba’s, a seafood eatery. I always respond “Yes, but … ,” often adding “it’s just fried chicken.” A […]

It isn’t often that I call someone the dean of some industry or group of people. The word doesn’t always fit. But I have to say that upon hearing about the retirement of Bennie Ivory, executive editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, Bennie Ivory is the dean of the club of people who are or have […]

 Much has been written and said, including in this blog, about the embattled Paula Deen, who admitted in a deposition that she has used a derogatory racial slur. Now comes word that a company that manufactures furniture is sticking by Savannah’s food diva with a furniture line in her name. Here is the report from the […]

     Leave it to fellow journalist and venerable recruiter Reggie Stewart to pick up on the trend that some universities are hiring seasoned media professionals to lead their journalism and mass communications departments — Dorothy Bland, DeWayne Wickham and yours truly among them. Stewart’s article appears in Black Issues in Higher Education. Here […]

Dori J. Maynard American journalism has lost a valued voice of diversity. Many, many groups and individuals are expressing their sorrow over the loss of Dori J. Maynard, president of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.  Dori and I were colleagues and friends. We traveled together to do media diversity training. We shared stages where […]