Author Archives: Doug Cumming

About Doug Cumming

journalism professor at W&L

My comments to USDOT re: rulemaking phase of Bipartisan Infrastructure Act

Posted on January 15, 2022 by Doug Cumming

Agency: Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Department of TransportationDocket No. FHWA-2021-0022Jan. 14, 2022 I am a new EV owner, and instead of merely joining the chorus of complainers about the lack of charging stations, I’m trying to help my city of … Continue reading →

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Searching for the Origins of the Appalachian Trail

Posted on November 9, 2021 by Doug Cumming

The little trail we are hiking in the North Georgia woods belongs to us and the bears. The hardwoods overhead are as diverse as any in the Eastern United States. The ferns, galax, poison ivy and other native groundcover have … Continue reading →

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Louellen Wright Murray, 1951-2021

Posted on August 12, 2021 by Doug Cumming

This tradition of eulogies at Tate Annual Meetings has a certain shape. But no passing of those we love can really fit a pattern. The passing of my cousin Louellen Murray is especially hard and uncontainable. It comes way too … Continue reading →

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What’s a Southern Gentleman Today?

Posted on June 23, 2021 by Doug Cumming

Washington and Lee’s former SAE House, a lofty white plantation-style mansion on E. Washington Street in Lexington, Va., has stood nearly empty for seven years now. That’s because the chapter was suspended by the national fraternity and by the university … Continue reading →

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Bearing witness in Minneapolis

Posted on April 21, 2021 by Doug Cumming

“It’s been nights I stayed up apologizing and apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more and not physically interacting and not saving his life.”     –Darnella Frazier, who at age 17 made the video of Officer Derek Chauvin choking … Continue reading →

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Still We Rise

Posted on March 10, 2021 by Doug Cumming

You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I rise. Maya Angelou’s well-known poem, “Still I Rise,” is a swaggering song of pride and joy in the face of a past rooted in pain, “the nights of … Continue reading →

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King’s crusade when objective journalists took sides

Posted on February 20, 2021 by Doug Cumming

This ran as an op-ed in The Roanoke Times on Jan. 18, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. On Dec. 22, 1961, Martin Luther King Jr. composed a two-page, single-spaced typed letter to my father, the Newsweek bureau chief in Atlanta … Continue reading →

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‘Times a-Wasting’: A Life

Posted on January 12, 2021 by Doug Cumming

Avis Waring, who served in Occupied Japan and wrote economic reports for the CIA, died Monday (Jan. 11) of complications from Covid-19 at the Borden Center, Lexington, Va. The illness had been diagnosed on her 100th birthday two weeks earlier. … Continue reading →

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Indivisible Freedom: The Transnational Experience of South African Nieman Fellows

Posted on January 2, 2021 by Doug Cumming

Abstract: For 54 years, the Nieman Foundation of Harvard University included one or two top journalists from South Africa among its dozen or more fellows each year. To investigate the impact of this exchange as an experiment in transnational journalism, … Continue reading →

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A night at The Community Table

Posted on December 25, 2020 by Doug Cumming

LEXINGTON – The Monday nights when The Community Table hands out drive-thru takeout meals have grown cold and dark. Long gone are the twice-a-week meals served in a gesture of dignity and solidarity to all who came, ragged or spruce, … Continue reading →

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