Press Club Board Discussing “Coloring the News” Again
The board of governors of the National Press Club is taking up a request from a National Association of Black Journalists committee to re-examine its award to William McGowan‘s book,”Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism.”
The Press Club declared McGowan’s book the winner in its press criticism book category, even though it was the only entry. The NABJ Media Monitoring Committee argued that the book is shoddy journalism unworthy of the award.
Associated Press reporter Jonathan D. Salant, who chairs the Press Club board, told his colleagues that “because the objections have come from such a reputable organization, I am asking the Board of Governors to decide whether to reconsider our action. . . . Groups such as NABJ who raise objections to a decision deserve a fair hearing by the board. Even if we decide not to act, they at least know we have considered their arguments.” Board members were to let Salant know their thoughts by Thursday. Full disclosure: This columnist chairs the NABJ Media Monitoring Committee.
Ted Williams‘ record on race relations wasn’t a highlight of the tributes that ran after the legendary outfielder died Friday at age 83. But Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam reports that New York sportswriter Howard Bryant will soon publish a book that deals with Williams’ role in the long-delayed 1959 integration of the Red Sox, the last team in major league baseball to include black players.
“Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston” runs through horror stories from the old days, such as the Sox’ memorable, off-day 1945 tryout of Jackie Robinson, who was passed over and who hated owner Tom Yawkey (“one of the most bigoted guys in baseball” – Robinson) for the rest of his life.
Elijah “Pumpsie” Green was the first African American to take the field for the Sox. “If Pumpsie Green was unsure of what to expect from his teammates, Ted Williams provided the answer,” Bryant writes. “The great, aging star chose Green to warm up with him before every game. It was the symbolic gesture of a true leader, for even if anyone did harbor a problem with Green’s arrival, no one would cross the mighty Williams.”
Green’s career fizzled, but Bryant caught up with him in California, after Williams had used his 1966 Hall of Fame induction ceremony to bemoan the absence of Negro League players in the Hall. ”After hearing of Williams’s speech, Green remembers smiling to himself,” Bryant writes. ”Green remembers Williams as one of the few players that first year that made him feel like both a ballplayer and a man.”
Gephardt Aide’s Job: Hispanic Journalists
House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt, D-Mo., has focused intensely on the Latino vote lately, studying Spanish in Mexico, appearing almost weekly on Spanish-language television and hiring a full-time aide to reach out to Hispanic journalists, reports Juliet Eilperin in the Washington Post. The aide is Fabiola Rodriguez, director of media outreach.
Gephardt issues a weekly column in Spanish, holds roundtables with Spanish-language reporters and editorial boards and, like the White House, now has a Spanish-language Web site, Eilperin writes in a story about the battle for the Latino vote.
Patty Talahongva Leads Native American Journalists
Patty Talahongva of Tempe, Ariz., an independent multimedia journalist who contributes to the national radio talk show “Native America Calling” and serves on the board of the Radio and Television News Directors Association, is the new president of the Native American Journalists Association.
Talahongva, a Hopi who was NAJA’s vice president, was elected by the board members June 22 during NAJA’s convention in San Diego. She replaces Mary Annette Pember, Red Cliff Band of Wisconsin Ojibwe, a freelance photographer from Cincinnati who was elected vice president, reports the Associated Press.
Andre Morriseau, Ojibwe, a freelance broadcaster from Toronto, was elected secretary. Lori Edmo-Suppah, Shoshone-Bannock, editor of the Sho-Ban News of Fort Hall, Idaho, was re-elected as the group’s treasurer.
L.A.’s Popular Laura Diaz Switches Stations
KCBS-TV in Los Angeles has hired popular Laura Diaz away from KABC-TV, where she has spent 19 years, the last five as anchor of its 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts, reports Electronic Media. Don Corsini, the general manager of KCBS-TV amd KCAL-TV, said Diaz would become “the lead female anchor at Channel 2.”
Corsini said the hope is that Diaz, a first-generation Mexican-American born to field laborers in Santa Paula, Calif., who was reared in northern Los Angeles County and is very active in the Latino community, will bring her following with her. KABC-TV had said that when Diaz began anchoring its 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts in 1997, she became the first Hispanic in the city to hold such a position.
Sports Columnist Bryan Burwell Heads to St. Louis
Bryan Burwell, who has written columns for USA Today and the Detroit News and has worked at the New York Daily News and New York Newsday, is joining the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as a sports columnist in early August.
“Burwell has an excellent track record of writing strong, opinionated, insightful columns.” said Larry Starks, assistant managing editor for sports at the Post-Dispatch. Burwell is also a correspondent for HBO’s “Inside the NFL.”
Web Site Seeks to Link Jobs, Journalists of Color
When reporter Eric Wee left the Washington Post in March, where he had worked since 1993, “I could see that there needed to be one place where media companies could go easily to recruit journalists of color.” The result is Wee’s new Web site, www.journalismnext.com, a free job board and discussion board specifically for journalists of color.
“For the employers (especially smaller papers) and job seekers of color who can’t afford to go to job fairs, this is a good alternative. Hopefully it’ll help the overall effort to make newsrooms more diverse,” Wee told Journal-isms.
“Job seekers can post their resumes and can send them to employers using the site. Job seekers can also put their resumes up anonymously . . . They can also set things up so they are notified when certain jobs are posted that meet their requirements.
“Finally there’s a discussion board on the site to better connect all journalists of color,” he wrote to the National Association of Black Journalists listserve.
Journalists Honored for Americas Coverage
Journalists from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Washington Post, Dallas Morning News and Miami Herald were among the U.S. winners of the Inter-American Press Association’s annual awards. Its grand prize for press freedom went to Mexican journalist Jesús Blancornelas, of the weekly magazine Zeta in Tijuana, for courageous coverage of the most notorious Mexican drug cartels.
The U.S. winners were:
–Peter Andrew Bosch, of the Miami Herald, photography award for his portfolio of images showing prisoners left to die in their cells in Haiti.
–Tim Collie, Michele Salcedo and Vanessa Bauza of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, feature writing award for a story on the alarming spread of AIDS in the Caribbean.
–Lucy Hood, Sharon Hughes, Edmund Tijerina and Edward Ornelas of the San Antonio Express-News, the Newspapers in Education award, for their collaboration with a Texas public high school during a full school year to document how dropout rates are underreported to make schools appear more successful.
–Timothy O’Leary, Dallas Morning News, editorial writing award for his “clear and singular voice among American editorial writers on all hemispheric topics.”
–Scott Wilson of The Washington Post, the news coverage award for a series about Colombian paramilitaries.
Winners are to receive $2,000 at the IAPA’s 58th general assembly in Lima, Peru, in October.
Honorable mentions went to Javier Erik Olvera of the Fresno Bee, who wrote a 10-page special section in which he described his life as a farmworker for 5 1/2 months; John Otis of the Houston Chronicle, for a story on Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the oldest guerrilla army in Latin America; and Peter Fritsch of the Wall Street Journal, for work on the story of a Mexican actress framed in the death of a TV personality.
Williams Sisters Score With Viewers
NBC’s coverage of the Wimbledon Championships women’s final Saturday between sisters Venus and Serena Williams produced a 4.6 overnight rating/14 share, a 31 percent increase over last year’s telecast, reports Broadcasting and Cable.
This year’s rating tied the contest in 1999, Steffi Graf vs. Lindsay Davenport.
Both matches were the highest-rated since the 1995 final (Graf vs. Aranxta Sanchez Vicario), which generated a 3.5 rating/18 share.
Univision Claims Ratings Record
Univision Communications Inc. said its coverage of the World Cup Final June 30 (7 a.m to 9 a.m. EST) set a new record for highest share delivered by any single Spanish-language program, with 66 percent of U.S. Hispanic TV-viewing homes tuning in, says Broadcasting and Cable.
The network also said its stations in Los Angeles, Miami, Houston, Chicago, Dallas, San Antonio and Phoenix delivered more viewers than ABC (the English-language rights holder) in those markets.
More Hispanic viewers tuned to the World Cup final than this year’s National Basketball Association Finals, last year’s World Series or most of the recent Olympic Games telecasts, Univision said.
Nate Tillman, One of Florida’s First Black Columnists
Nathaniel Tillman, a former columnist for the Gainesville (Fla.) Sun and one of Florida’s first black columnists, died at 75 last Thursday from complications from prostate cancer, the Sun reports.
Tillman was hired at the Sun in 1974 as a copy editor and columnist and was credited with helping break down racial barriers. He wrote a weekly column of soft-edged commentary on social issues and reports on friends and local events. His journalism career began in Louisville, Ky., at the Defender, a black newspaper where he worked as a reporter and editor. He later worked for the Louisville Courier-Journal and Times.
“In his column, he always had a good, common-sense slant on life’s situations,” said Margaret Warrington, who served as Tillman’s editor for much of his 14 years at the newspaper. “When he was growing up, he of course couldn’t use the public library. His greatest pleasure when he returned to Gainesville was to go to the library. And to me that was heartbreaking.”
Journalists of Color Are “Bolsheviks”
Of all the reviews of William McGowan‘s “Coloring the News,” few quite approached the hysteria of one that moved Monday on the UPI financial wire, by John Bloom:
A passage follows:
I don’t know when or why it ended — McGowan doesn’t go into it — but the era of the journalist as a cynical loner who doesn’t join any organizations is obviously over. McGowan attends a convention called UNITY ’99 at which the Black, Latino, Asian-American and Native American Journalists Associations all came together for a job fair and seminars on news coverage. (What? No Islamic Journalists Association? No Catholic Journalists to handle spin control on abusive priests?) I’d heard of these organizations, but had no idea they thought of themselves as insider “watchdogs” that are supposed to police the newsrooms of America in support of a concept called “diversity.” (Remember the subtitle of the book is “How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism.”)
Their received mythology involves seeing all big media organizations as historically racist, white-dominated oppressors and exclusionists, and their various agendas involve destroying that bias. This is why I called them Bolsheviks. It’s an almost classic political science case study — using historical victimization to justify taking any measures necessary, including polite lies, in the present. They also have a Soviet-style tendency to rewrite history in such a way that the original bogeyman — white middle class America — remains strong, vicious and worthy of ceaseless warfare.
If you’re wondering why the managing editors don’t just weed these people out and say, “You can join the Black Journalists Association, but don’t expect to be assigned to any black issues if you do,” it’s because the managing editors are either members themselves or supporters of the same organizations. In a way this is more frightening than the idea that a lot of young reporters are carried away by various enthusiasms. (Kara Briggs, president of the Native American Journalists Association, says without apology, “I was born into a tribe, not a newspaper.”) In other words, Lou Grant has left the building.
