Author Archives: Doug Cumming

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About Doug Cumming

Doug Cumming is an associate professor emeritus of journalism at Washington & Lee University with 26 years experience at metro newspapers and magazines. After getting a Ph.D. at UNC-Chapel Hill in mass communications, he taught multimedia reporting and feature writing at Loyola University-New Orleans and at W&L in Virginia. Earlier, he worked at the newspapers in Raleigh, Providence and Atlanta; was editor of the Sunday Magazine in Providence; and helped launch Southpoint monthly magazine in Atlanta. He won a George Polk Award and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.

A Letter to Our Congressman

Dear Congressman Goodlatte: Thank you for your email of May 22 responding to our concerns about the American Health Care Act that you support. Our concerns can be divided into two classes: One, our moral commitment to what is best … Continue reading

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Lee at Tivoli Circle

“So this monument, lifted far above our daily strife of narrow interests and often narrower passions and misunderstandings, becomes a monument to more than its one great and rightly loved original. It symbolizes our whole South’s better self; the finer … Continue reading

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Endnotes in Strange Times

The research papers came in on the All-Academic website. I sent them out to reviewers. Then by May 1, the reviews came in, and we’re off to the races. What an amazing system! And what a privilege for me. I … Continue reading

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Dispatch from Atlanta

“The committee further recommends that the name of the church be officially restored to its former name of Grace Episcopal Church, to be completed no later than the last meeting of the current vestry.” From “Final Report,” Conflict Transformation Process … Continue reading

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A theory of the leisure class

The release by the White House of the financial worth of President Trump’s top advisors, in a Friday night dump timed for underplaying bad news (an April Fool’s joke on us?), was a face punch that we needed. While we … Continue reading

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Sharing our healthcare story with Donald Trump

A friend sent us the invitation from the White House to share our story about Obamacare. I was glad to do so, below. Obamacare: Share Your Story http://www.whitehouse.gov Obamacare has led to higher costs and fewer health insurance options for … Continue reading

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When fact-finding was a practice

Objectivity is not neutrality, as historian Thomas L. Haskell puts it. In my years as a news reporter in the last quarter of the 20th century, journalistic objectivity was not stenography either. For us, it involved moving around, hanging out … Continue reading

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Counting the Cost

A letter to my parish church, Feb. 28. “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he … Continue reading

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Defense, Defense.

Southerners are said to be obsessed with their own history. It’s true, belying that old dictum that history is always written by the winners. Even now, well into the 21st century, I find myself wading into the murky waters of … Continue reading

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‘Lucky Me’

For Pam I was just beginning, in that clammy August, to pick up the riff of the teaching gig when I flew from New Orleans off to Miami, the two U.S. cities we journalists dig. It felt like betrayal of … Continue reading

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