a blog by Jack Limpert, Editor of The Washingtonian for more than 40 years.
From a New York Times obit by Katharine Q. Seelye headlined “Laura Foreman, Reporter Whose Romance Became a Scandal, Dies at 76”:
Laura Foreman, a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer in the 1970s, was surely not the first journalist to become romantically involved with a source. But she was among the first to have that romance, with a powerful politician, blow up into a public scandal.
From a New York Post story by Jesse O’Neill headlined “Facebook cracks down on discussing ‘hoes’ in gardening group”:
Facebook’s censors are digging deep — flagging the word “hoe” in a western New York gardening group because they apparently confused the tool for a disparaging term for women.
A group called WNY Gardeners has been repeatedly flagged by the social network for “violating community standards,” when its more than 7,500 members discussed the long-handled bladed implement, which is spelled with an “e,” unlike the offensive term.
From a Jack Shafer Fourth Estate column on politico.com headlined “Is a New York Times Columnist Seriously Running for Governor?”:
For at least a century or more after our republic was founded, it was considered both poor political etiquette and undignified to advance your own candidacy for higher office. Like a prophet from god, you were supposed to simply wait for the call. In politics, this meant biding time until your party, or a newspaper under the spell of your party, selected you to run….
From an Inside the Times story by John Otis headlined “‘A Journalistic Test’: Covering a Restricted Tokyo Olympics”:
Times journalists attending the Olympics do much more than break down the play-by-plays and report the winners of each event. They tap into the local color of the host city, get behind the scenes of the vast operation and explore the lives of the athletes in intimate and organic ways.
“One of the joys of reporting on the Olympics is the randomness, the serendipity that comes from being at an event with representatives from 200 countries,” said Ken Belson, a sports reporter who is one of more than 30 people in Japan to cover the Tokyo Games for The Times.
From an AP story headlined “Former AP sports writer Stephan Nasstrom dead at age 70”:
Stephan Nasstrom, who spent nearly 40 years covering sports for The Associated Press, has died. Nasstrom’s family confirmed that he died Tuesday in Lima, Peru, where he lived after retiring in 2010 from the AP.
Based in Stockholm, Nasstrom covered eight Olympics and numerous World Cups during his career. His specialties were skiing, soccer, tennis and track and field. But he also wrote about a variety of other sports, including Olympic wrestling, which he once said “reminds me of what the original Olympics in Greece must have looked like.”…
From a New York Post column by Keith J. Kelly headlined “A fond farewell from Keith J. Kelly as Media Ink comes to an end”:
This is my farewell column for Media Ink, which is going out of publication with my retirement.
I know some of you were expecting a state of the industry address, but we always covered media as a contact sport, with the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. So I’d prefer to give a snapshot of the most memorable behind-the-scenes moments and the larger-than-life characters I experienced in my 23 years writing the column.
From a story on theatlantic.com by Helen Lewis headlined “This Will End With President Tucker Carlson”:
The United States is responsible for so many questionable transatlantic exports—The Apprentice, gray squirrels, dressing your dog up for Halloween—that we in Britain deserve to have our revenge. As if sending you James Corden wasn’t enough, our latest gift is that quintessentially British figure, the journalist turned politician. The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is considering a run for governor of Oregon in 2022, a development unusual enough to make headlines in state and national media. “I have friends trying to convince me that here in Oregon, we need new leadership,” he wrote.
From a Los Angeles Times story by David Wharton headlined “Olympians, media get settled in Tokyo”:
After a few days inside the so-called “Olympic bubble,” I’ve got another moniker: “The Saliva Games.”
The daily coronavirus tests required of journalists involve spitting into a clear plastic tube, trying to fill the thing to an inscribed black line. It’s a lot harder than it might sound, especially the first time, when you get off a plane after 11 dehydrating hours.
From a New York Times story by Katie Robertson headlined “A Washington Post reporter sues the paper and its top editors, claiming discrimination”:
Felicia Sonmez, a Washington Post reporter, on Wednesday filed a discrimination lawsuit against the newspaper and some of its top editors, claiming they had discriminated against her by barring her from covering stories related to sexual assault after she went public as a victim of assault.
Ms. Sonmez, who has covered breaking political news at The Post since 2018, said that she had been subjected to a hostile work environment after her editors put in place two bans over nearly two years that prevented her from excelling at her job….
It’s the birthday of novelist S. E. Hinton, born Susan Eloise Hinton in 1948 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Growing up she loved to read but her biggest dream in life was to be a cowboy. So she wrote a couple of books about cowboys and then, when she was 15, she started working on a book called The Outsiders. She said, “Nobody believes that, so I usually say 16. My editors say 17, just in case.”
