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.

Halloween to the Max

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Doug Cumming

Happy Halloween, pagans and Christians all! It’s interesting to read our mashup culture in the costumes. (How do you dress up like a Republican-majority Senate?) Our son Daniel visited us last week, and spent his most creative hours working on … Continue reading →

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Church pledge as investment

Posted on October 19, 2014 by Doug Cumming

Here is the layman sermon on stewardship I was asked to give at R.E. Lee Memorial Church. Given Oct. 19. This is not an interruption in your regular programming. This is not like the two weeks of fund-raising that intrudes … Continue reading →

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Connecting intro and outre class experiences

Posted on October 17, 2014 by Doug Cumming

The course of study for majors in our department runs in a sequence designed to build on a foundation, layer by layer. In teaching the foundational JOUR201 Intro to News Writing, I’m now giving students exposure to what they will … Continue reading →

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“Mr.” R. E. Lee, Without the Flags

Posted on October 6, 2014 by Doug Cumming

The Confederate flags are now gone from around the recumbent marble Robert E. Lee, at eternal rest with his riding boots on in the innermost sanctuary of Lee Chapel. That is as it should be, for many reasons. One is … Continue reading →

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Outstanding in our fields

Posted on September 26, 2014 by Doug Cumming

Two photos from across the sea. One is by Life photographer Howard Sochurek (1924-94), of Frost in England in 1957. The other of me, in Le Marche region of Italy, in 2012, don’t know who took it.

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Making a Case for Higher Ed

Posted on September 16, 2014 by Doug Cumming

My next column in Clio Among the Media, the quarterly newsletter of the History Division of AEJMC (the organization of journalism professors). What history do we [media historians] teach in a communication school or journalism department? In the past we … Continue reading →

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The Second Greatest Invention Ever

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Doug Cumming

I’ve let too many emails pile up in my Outlook — thousands upon thousands. So I’ve been deleting them by the score these last few days. I’m up to the year 2009. But I won’t do a wholesale delete (even … Continue reading →

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The Knot of Self

Posted on August 31, 2014 by Doug Cumming

We are leaking all over the place To relieve the knot inside Of the pressure of needing more space Lest in captive heat it gets fried. Call it soul. It goes out of its mind (I think it must be) … Continue reading →

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Stilled Fiddles

Posted on August 12, 2014 by Doug Cumming

Last Thanksgiving, our house was filled with fiddle music. Old-time fiddling spilled out of the road-worn fiddles of two of William’s friends, Hunter Riccio and Cyrus Carawan. It was a beautiful sound, as if the fog had come rolling down … Continue reading →

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A Memory

Posted on August 2, 2014 by Doug Cumming

The spring air filled the car as I drove through the dark neighborhoods around Emory University, gracious curving roads of stately homes and lawns like fairways. It was as if the car needed to gulp that flowery night air to … Continue reading →

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