The White, White House Press Corps; Does an Obama White House need more black reporters?

excerpt:"Jesse Jackson's 1984 presidential campaign boosted—no, it actually created—the careers of a whole cadre of black political reporters.

Barack Obama's historic capture of Oval Office? Well, not so much.

The reasons behind the white-out of the Obama campaign are varied and complex, ranging from the reduction of general political coverage by mainstream media to fewer experienced black political reporters to the persistence of racism in the doling out of coveted newsroom assignments.

A generation ago, as the peripatetic preacher crisscrossed the country to the chants of "Run, Jesse, Run!" black journalists—among them Gwen Ifill of The (Baltimore) Evening Sun, Julie Johnson of The (Baltimore) Sun and later The New York Times and ABC News, George Curry of the Chicago Tribune, Ron Smothers of The New York Times, Milton Coleman of The Washington Post, Kevin Merida of The Dallas Morning News and Kenneth Walker of ABC News—traveled along, reporting and interpreting the historic political campaign.