There is a move afoot for newspapers and other news organizations to refer to the Washington Redskins as “Washington,” or to otherwise avoid using the name of the team which many people consider to be an epithet. Now at least one newspaper is extending that practice to racist imagery as well. The New York Daily News:

Yesterday, the News published this great editorial about the Washington team name. Today, we can also tell you that the paper will no longer use the Cleveland Indians’ logo, Chief Wahoo. Another obvious and positive development, and one that won’t prevent us from continuing to call on the team and others in media to do the same. In reporting on this issue in the recent past, it became clear to me that Native American groups consider Chief Wahoo offensive, which is enough for the rest of us to deem it inappropriate.

We at HBT have refrained from using Wahoo in stories about the Indians for several years now (it’s still used, occasionally in stories about the logo itself). It seems like an easy decision, especially considering the team itself no longer considers Wahoo its primary logo. Just because the Indians still put it on hats, uniforms and merchandise doesn’t mean anyone else has to go along with it. If a team put a picture of a guy in blackface on its caps, no one would run it. Why Wahoo?

Here’s hoping that more news outlets make the same choice the Daily News does.

In other news, I put the number of comments before we see someone making a dumb argument about this somehow violating the Indians’ First Amendment rights at, oh, 8.