by Melanie Levs
A few months after a moving and powerful speech to the Atlanta Press Club, Hamilton Jordan, former President Jimmy Carter’s chief of staff, died Tuesday of cancer. According to a statement, the 63-year-old Atlantan died peacefully at home. We at the Press Club offer sincere condolences to Mr. Jordan’s friends and family, including President and Mrs. Carter. We are honored Mr. Jordan spoke to our members in one of his last public appearances.
by Melanie Levs
Beating out the magazines New York, The New Yorker, GQ and Vanity Fair, Atlanta magazine has won its first National Magazine Award in the publication’s 47-year history. The award, which is the Oscar of the industry, is for Paige Williams’ incredible story from October 2007 about a refugee living in Atlanta. I remember being riveted by the piece when I read it…and still was when I reread it. Congratulations, Paige and Atlanta magazine!
by Melanie Levs
I agree with columnist James Poniewozik’s essay in this week’s Time magazine. He points out that while a woman and an African American man are running for President, nearly all the most prominent faces at TV news divisions (except Katie Couric at CBS, rumored to be leaving her post) are what Poniewozik calls “white guys.” “It should be embarrassing that presidential politics…is moving forward as TV news is moving back,” he writes
I admit I am not an evening news watcher (I get most of my news online or from CNN), but Poniewozik’s arguments reminded me of a five-year study by The White House Project on the absence of women “talking heads” on Sunday morning talk shows on the five major networks: ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX and NBC. In 2001, men outnumbered women 9 to 1. In 2005, more than half the shows did not include a single woman.
So…what role does — and should — gender identity politics play in the news today?