ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
It's time now for your letters. And this week, our inbox filled with questions about our choice of gender pronouns. This came after our interview Tuesday with Buzz Bissinger, who wrote the article that accompanied Caitlyn Jenner's Vanity Fair cover.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Ben Clausen of Denver, Colo. took issue with the fact that Bissinger and our colleague, Melissa Block, used male pronouns to refer to Jenner throughout the interview. Here's a bit of that.
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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
You describe then Bruce Jenner in the 1980s after this Olympic gold medal going to meetings, giving speeches, you know, basking in his fame and wearing pantyhose and a bra underneath his suit.
BUZZ BISSINGER: Bruce was living a false life. He wasn't living a true life 'cause he was afraid of expressing himself, afraid of being his true soul.
SIEGEL: NPR's style guide dictates that we honor an individual's gender identity and, yes, that includes pronoun preferences.
CORNISH: So here is why you sometimes heard he. When Caitlyn Jenner refers to her past as Bruce, she has used male pronouns. In covering the story, we followed her lead.
SIEGEL: Others like Brian Haran of Hickory, N.C. asked why we're covering this. He writes, a single person changing his sex for a publicity-hungry family should not merit this amount of coverage. His private affair does not matter one whit to the average person.
CORNISH: And we wanted to squeeze in this update. We told you yesterday about a new visitor to the White House grounds, a red-tailed hawk. A class of fourth-graders from New Hampshire were charged with naming the bird. Ten-year-old Andrew Kriner ran down some of the early contenders.
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ANDREW KRINER: We had Virginia and we had Mary because Maryland and Virginia. The White House is right on the border.
SIEGEL: Well, today, the White House announced the winner. The bird will be known as Lincoln.
CORNISH: And the Twitter account already exists. Yes, a bird that tweets. Follow the antics @LincolnTheHawk.
SIEGEL: Follow our antics @RSeigel47 and @NPRMelissaBlock.
CORNISH: I'm @nprAudie and you can follow the show @npratc. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.