To "N-Word" or not to "N-Word"

Washington Post assistant managing editor, Don Podesta, has called for the newspaper's writers not to substitute the word "nigger" with "the N-word."



"We've used this euphemism in more than a dozen stories in the last month. It's trivializing and almost cutesy, as in 'Johnny said the f-word in school today, Mom,' " Podesta wrote in a memo to staffers last week. He said it would be better for reporters to use a phrase such as "a well-known racial epithet."

The shame of it is not that the Washington Post has printed the "N-Word" 1,254 times since 1977, but that people are using the word so much to describe other people. Here's my suggestion to Washington Post editors—-Why not write more stories about racial tolerance to help alleviate the need to use the word anywhere?

Here's the Editor & Publisher article on the topic.