A sensible antidote to the latest round of racially-tinged “knockout game” hysteria. 

[Photo credit: Eva-Lotta Lam, Creative Commons.]

Two Ohio Walmarts are hosting food drives for their own associates this holiday season. “A lot of associates can’t even afford to buy a small turkey,” Ricki Hahn, a seven-year employee of Wal-Mart, told the local Fox News station that broke the story. That’s not surprising considering that more than half of all Walmart employees make less than $25,000 a year, according to the company’s CEO, a wage that would make a family of four eligible for food stamps. The food drives have ignited controversy over Walmart’s poverty wages ahead of Black Friday, which has become a flashpoint for labor unrest at Walmart stores in recent years. The employee group OUR WALMART is keeping the pressure on. The National Labor Relations Board recently handed Walmart employees a major victory, ruling that the retailer cannot retaliate against workers for protesting Walmart’s poverty wages. 

The call for entries for the 2014 Hillman Prizes is now open. The Hillman Prizes recognize outstanding achievements in socially conscious journalism in the following categories: 

1. Book (bound volumes and ebooks)

2. Newspaper Journalism (story or series/in print or online) 


3. Magazine Journalism (story or series/in print or online) 


4. Broadcast Journalism (story or series/at least 20 minutes in total package length) Open to television, web TV, radio, podcast, and documentary film.

5. Web Journalism (publication/story or series/multimedia media project) Open to blogs, computer-assisted reporting, new investigative tools, mapping, crowd sourcing, and other multimedia media projects. Entries should feature both text and visual components.

6. Opinion & Analysis Journalism (any medium) Includes all types of advocacy, opinion, commentary and analysis, normally short-form and/or frequent, regardless of medium. Open to newspaper and magazine columnists, TV and radio presenters, podcasters, blogs, and bloggers.

7. The Canadian Hillman Prize. Awarded for outstanding journalism published in a Canadian media outlet. 

All applications must be received by Jan 31, 2014, except applications for the Canadian Hillman Prize, which are due Jan 9, 2014. 

The prize is a $5000 honorarium and travel to New York City to receive the award.

Full application details here. 

The Best of the Week’s News

• A faith-healing sect in Idaho is killing children by withholding medicine for treatable infections.

• Kathryn Joyce investigates the abuse of Ethiopian adoptees in the United States.

• Historian Rick Perlstein explains why the Tea Party is nothing new in Republican politics.

• Spousal trauma: The military’s hidden mental health crisis

• Attention, non-fiction writers: the deadline for the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award has been extended until Dec 10, 2013. Enter to win $30,000 to help finish your book.