Pesca, a public radio veteran who has been hosting Slate‘s daily news podcast, The Gist, since 2012, was suspended indefinitely without pay this week in the wake of a debate among staffers on the company’s Slack channel about whether it is ever acceptable for a white journalist to use the n-word itself in a discussion of the slur’s use or history. While Pesca argued that referential or descriptive use should be allowed under certain circumstances, he did not use the word in that chat; he had, however, done so twice in 2019. – Defector