Saturday Evening Owls: Shade reporters combat towards journalism that may solely be seen by white filters

More than 50 years later, after another summer of protest and the racial bill, too much of what the commission wrote is still true. While there is no definitive data on the percentage of black workers in the US newsroom today, research has shown that it is less than 8 percent – still far too low. Overall, the newsrooms are only about half as diverse as the US workforce as a whole.

Controversies over insensitive and racist reporting have great legacies and digital media, including the Los Angeles times and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Refinery29 and the wrestler. At the The Philadelphia Inquirer, a story about the impact of civil unrest on urban infrastructure entitled "Buildings Matter Too," resulted in a staff strike, a public apology and the resignation of a senior editor. At the The The New York Times, a statement from Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton, called for military intervention to quell protests, which resulted in the overthrow of another senior editor. Many of the newspaper's own reporters took to Twitter to explain that the comment "puts Black @nytimes employees at risk".

At the same time, energy and interest in more diverse, fairer and more inclusive media has never been so intense. The need wasn't greater either. What has changed is who is leading the way. Media diversity advocates have stopped waiting for the establishment to fix itself. Instead, a new group of reformers are staging their own insurrection, working outside the traditional media and often in spite of everything. "I don't know if we can integrate fairly at this point," says Angela Ford, founder of the black media start-up Obsidian Collection. "It is time for the world to hear the black voice from a black filter." (…)

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“However, a progressive policy needs more than just a major break with the economic and moral assumptions of the past 30 years. A return to the belief that economic growth and the prosperity that goes with it is a means, not an end, is needed. The end is what it does to people's life, life chances and hopes. Look at London. Of course, it is important to all of us that the London economy flourishes. However, the test of the tremendous wealth being generated in parts of the capital is not that it contributed 20-30% of Britain's GDP, but how it affects the lives of the millions who live and work there. What kind of life are available to them? Can you afford to live there? If they can't, it doesn't make up for it that London is also a paradise for the ultra-rich. Can they get decently paid jobs or jobs at all? If they can't, don't brag about all the Michelin-starred restaurants and their self-dramatic chefs. Or school for children? Inadequate schools are not made up for by the fact that London universities could put together a soccer team of Nobel Prize winners. " ~~ Eric Hobsbawn, The Age of Extremes: The Brief Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (1994)

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"About three months after their acute illness, more than half of our patients have at least some mild cognitive impairment," said Dr. Ann Parker, who runs a post-Covid clinic at Johns Hopkins. "We are also seeing significant psychological impairments."

– Dr. Kathleen Bachynski (@bachyns) December 5, 2020

BLAST FROM THE PAST

At Daily Kos that day in 2009—Baucus Nominated Mistress for US Attorney:

Add Max Baucus to the list of all too typical politicians:

The office of Senate finance chairman Max Baucus confirmed late Friday night that the Montana Democrat was having an affair with his state bureau director Melodee Hanes when he appointed her as a US attorney in Montana.

According to a source familiar with their relationship, Hanes and Baucus began their relationship in the summer of 2008 – almost a year before Baucus and his wife Wanda officially split in April. The senator has now divorced his wife.

Hanes left Baucus earlier this year.

The learning curve among politicians about these things does not exist. You just don't learn. The relationship wasn't the cause of either party's divorce, Baucus spokesman says, and Baucus didn't help her achieve her current position in the Justice Department. However, this is a move that Dems really didn't need, given Baucus’s prominent role in the healthcare reform debate and the number of troubles they are already facing.