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Don Podesta, the Washington Post's assistant managing editor for copy desks, is asking that WaPo writers find a better way to refer to the n-word than "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. The memo was first published in Richard Prince's "Journal-isms" online column on the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education Web site.

Podesta wrote that it would be better for Post reporters to "take a few more words and say something like 'a well-known racial epithet.'"

Oh, but that's no fun — putting it like that could mean any racial epithet, and there are just so many to choose from! As an alternative, some African-American journos suggest we all get over it and print the damn word, though the WaPo has done exactly that 1,254 times since 1977. Just out of curiousity, we did a quick search on the Times' website, which revealed much more usage of "nigger" (OMG we typed it eek!) than we expected, though mostly in quotes or titles. There have been 934 instances since 1981 — and only 60 of those fell in the Sports section. Progress!

'Washington Post' Style Guru: Enough With The 'N-Word' [E&P]
Search Query [NYT]