A story on the New York Times website today illustrates the problems of narrating New Orleans from a distance.
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New Orleans is 62 percent African American. Now, I’ve never done a desk-by-desk census of the newsrooms in the city’s major media outlets, but my experience – and some byline checking at the The Times-Picayune and New Orleans City Business – leads me to believe that newsroom demographics don’t exactly jibe with those of the city’s mostly black neighborhoods.
released Thursday, revealed that America’s newsrooms became less diverse in 2008 from the year before. The percentage of journalists of color in the nation’s newsrooms dropped from 13.5% in 2007 to 13.4% in 2008. The percentage of journalists of color in…
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IRE Medal winner: Lee Zurik of WWL-New Orleans for “NOAH Housing Program.” In a rolling investigation of 50 television segments, WWL-TV of New Orleans uncovered corruption in a city agency charged with helping rebuild homes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Following a source’s tip, reporter Lee Zurik and his team examined New Orleans Affordable Housing records and found that money was paid to contractors to repair homes that never received any improvements—or didn’t exist at all.
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