National Press Club

A five-member panel of educational experts concluded at an Aug. 23 Newsmaker that the nation has failed to achieve racially integrated schools.

Housing patterns are a major reason, said Alex Medler, vice president for policy and advocacy of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. "Housing is one of the most segregated things in America. Choice of schools comes by where you live."

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Sister Mary Hughes, past president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), told a club luncheon audience August 16 that she felt “humiliated” when a Vatican representative told her in April that the Vatican was appointing three U.S. bishops to oversee the LCWR, revise its statutes and review its programs.

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The Consumer Product Safety Commission staffs the nation's 300 ports with just 550 people, Commission Chairwoman Inez Tenenbaum said Thursday at a Newsmaker event.

“We’re working to find the proper balance between the flow of commerce and detaining dangerous consumer products," she said.

During 2011, CPSC’s Office of Import Surveillance found more than 1,100 violations of safety standards and halted the entry of 4.5 million unsafe products into the United States, many of which were designed for children, she said.

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Improvements to safety and oil production in the Gulf of Mexico remain a mixed picture two years after the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill, panelists said at a Newsmaker event Friday on the future of energy activity in the Gulf.

Drilling in the Gulf contributes 28% of annual U.S.fossil fuel production, making it a critical part of the nation's energy infrastructure.

The U.S. energy industry still needs to balance safety and oil production, said Jennifer Dlouhy, Washington correspondent for the Houston Chronicle.

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In 1967, Andrew Price came to the National Press Club as a 20-year-old busboy. Much has changed since then, but Mr. Price has remained an enduring, if unassuming, presence at the Club for all the years since.

Mr. Price worked his final Press Club Luncheon on July 24, serving a head table that included PBS news anchors Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff. When NPC President Theresa Werner announced to the gathering that Mr. Price would retire on Aug. 3 – 45 years to the day after he went to work at the Club – he received a standing ovation.

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Distinguished journalists Marie Colvin and Anthony Shadid and freelance photographer Remi Ochlik were honored posthumously with the John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award at the National Press Club for the courageous work covering the Syrian civil war that claimed their lives earlier this year.

The journalists were determined to make sure the Syria story was told, no matter the cost, friends, family and colleagues said.

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PBS Newshour co-anchors Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff promised the show’s viewers greater in-depth coverage of the political conventions this year than they have ever seen.

“We believe the architecture of democracy matters,” Ifill told a National Press Club luncheon audience on July 24, expressing the philosophy that suffuses the show's award-winning coverage and serves as the foundation for its plans to cover the conventions exhaustively.

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U.S. hospitals must find new ways to halt the nation's soaring health care costs, Dr. Delos Cosgrove, president and chief executive of the Cleveland Clinic, said at a July 20 National Press Club luncheon.

One step they should take is to put all doctors on salary, as the Cleveland and Mayo Clinics do, according to Cosgrove.

Most doctors charge patients based on tests and other services they perform.

"Doctors on salary are paid the same no matter the number of tests and other services," Cosgrove said.

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The wave of consolidation in the airline industry has benefitted customers, employees and communties – and that would be particularly true of a proposed merger of US Airways and American Airlines when American comes out of its bankruptcy, said Douglas Parker, chairman and CEO of US Airways, at a National Press Club luncheon July 18.

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William J. Raspberry, the retired Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and 2004 recipient of the National Press Club's Fourth Estate Award, died Tuesday, July 17, at his Washington home. He was 76 and had battled prostate cancer for the past year.

Raspberry was a 43-year employee of The Post, including more than 39 years spent as a columnist. At the time of his retirement at the end of 2005, his work was syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group to more than 200 newspapers, making him one of the nation's most prominent and respected African American journalists.

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