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.

Pluralism

Posted on December 14, 2024 by Doug Cumming

I have been thinking of boundaries, those imaginary lines that our public life has constructed. In the poetry of Robert Frost, whose entire body of work I will never stop learning from, boundaries are the rock wall he and his … Continue reading →

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Three Poems

Posted on November 25, 2024 by Doug Cumming
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A freedom song, for Election Day

Posted on November 5, 2024 by Doug Cumming

On this morning of Election Day, 2024, I am waving the flag of a poem by Richard Wilbur called “On Freedom’s Ground: A Cantata.” Read it aloud, slowly with a touch of drama. Record yourself doing so, as I did … Continue reading →

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Brief candle, against dark politics

Posted on October 24, 2024 by Doug Cumming

On April 3, 2008, a mother I did not know held her newborn daughter for 27 minutes of life in a Virginia hospital. The newborn, in utero, had developed with a chromosomal disorder called Trisomy 18, or Edwards Syndrome. The … Continue reading →

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The Sam Hose case, 1899

Posted on October 4, 2024 by Doug Cumming

In a 1963 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, I read an account by Ralph McGill, who was editor and publisher of the Atlanta Constitution when I was growing up in Atlanta, of his interview with the distinguished black scholar W.E.B. … Continue reading →

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Crypto- klepto-mania

Posted on August 30, 2024 by Doug Cumming

In the spring of 2014, I took a class of 14 students to New York City for three days to visit magazine offices. This was the first six spring-term courses that became my most popular and successful teaching at W&L, … Continue reading →

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Georgia votes on history’s hinge. Again.

Posted on August 22, 2024 by Doug Cumming
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Seeing “hot button” issues coolly

Posted on August 5, 2024 by Doug Cumming

Sometimes, it’s hard for people to connect the daily stuff of their own lives with Washington D.C. policies or even state-level politics. Military aid for Ukraine doesn’t seem to hamper our day-to-day struggles, but defending Ukraine against Putin’s Russia also … Continue reading →

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What’s the meaning of ‘meaning’?

Posted on July 29, 2024 by Doug Cumming
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Jazz Concert for Rick

Posted on July 16, 2024 by Doug Cumming

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, July 13, 2023 Contact: Doug Cumming, cummingd@wlu.edu 540-570-0293 Second Concert of the “Rick Saylor Memorial Jazz Series” Thursday, July 25, at First Christian Church of Decatur A jazz combo that grew from years of “workshopping” at the … Continue reading →

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