Author Archives: Doug Cumming

My daddy, now 90, entertains us with an endless scroll of family stories, and I had never heard this one until recently. One year, when he was a boy, he rode his father’s horse in the Confederate Memorial Day parade … Continue reading →

Tom Wolfe, you old rascal! You’ve done it again. You’ve taken on the entire academic field of linguistics – as an outsider, a mere journalist – and played your snappy Emperor-has-no-clothes game on them. Bingo! And once again, you’ve stolen … Continue reading →

JOUR395 F17 Specialty Reporting (Education) Douglas O. Cumming, associate professor Notes toward a SYLLABUS – 8/27/16 This course fulfills the requirement for a 3-credit specialty reporting class required for majors in the Journalism sequence. Journalism and Strategic Communications majors must … Continue reading →

It’s a convenient catastrophe for us, another post-Katrina experience just an hour and fifteen minutes to the west. There is a house in Caldwell, W. Va., one among hundreds, soaked by the Flood of ’16 and abandoned by a widow … Continue reading →

In the 1920s, according to the sign outside the heavy door, DeWitt Wallace spent countless hours in the high-ceilinged sanctum within, reading and condensing magazine articles. This was how he filled Reader’s Digest, the unorthodox little magazine he and his … Continue reading →

I just received the sad news that Lou Hodges, the elder statesman of this Journalism & Mass Communications department,  has died at the age of 83. Farmer, preacher, professor, profane and funny Christian ethicist, the grumpy and joyous man who … Continue reading →

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. Nov. 16, 2015 The lay governing body of Lexington, Va.’s historic Episcopal church voted 9-6 to remove the name R.E. Lee from the church’s name, falling one vote short of the super-majority of 10 it needed to … Continue reading →

The late Marshall Frady, a New Journalism magazine writer from Georgia, wrote in a way that gave some of us a sugar high. Others felt his prose was too rich. Anyway, when I dip back into his books, I find … Continue reading →

from the book Bylines: Writings from the American South, 1963 to 1997, by Joseph B. Cumming, Jr., 2010. Joe Cumming was a most unusual sort of journalist. For twenty-two years he covered the American South for Newsweek magazine, the very … Continue reading →

They tied a body bag around Cyrus Hall McCormick. The next day, I discovered what they were doing to this bronze campus statue of one of our biggest donors. They were catalyzing the greenish patina back to its original bronze … Continue reading →