ABC’s “This Week” to Drop Diverse Roundtable
ABC-TV’s Sunday “This Week” show is expected to relaunch Sept. 7 “with a new set, fancy graphics and one glaring omission: The journalists’ roundtable, the opinionated give-and-take that has been the program’s signature for 22 years, has been axed,” Howard Kurtz reports in the Washington Post. The show is in third place among the broadcast network talk shows.
ABC’s “This Week” roundtable is the most diverse of the interview panels on the Sunday talk shows, and that didn’t happen by accident.
Michel Martin, correspondent for ABC-TV’s “Nightline,” won a permanent spot on the roundtable a year ago after a summer of tryouts by people of color in ABC’s effort to end the segment’s all-white perspective. Martin, who is African American, joined continuing regular George Will and Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek, who was added at the same time.
However, new producer Tom Bettag, who came from “Nightline,” told Kurtz, “You can now see roundtables 24 hours a day on three cable networks. Whatever they’re going to say, you’ve already heard a thousand times.”
Not really. This column gave an example of Martin’s value in June when the panel discussed new census figures.
Kurtz continued that, “Bettag says the three will still appear periodically — by themselves — for debriefing sessions with [host George] Stephanopoulos that will stress their reporting and analysis, not opinion-mongering. Other ABC News staffers will also pop up for these chats — including ‘Nightline’ correspondents and, on occasion, Ted Koppel — along with reporters from other news organizations.”
The exit of Martin and Zakaria leaves Juan Williams on “Fox News Sunday” as just about the only permanent Sunday panelist of color. As we all recall, Black Entertainment Television last year axed “Lead Story,” its long-running news panel show that presented an African American perspective.
Battle Creek Loses Only TV News Operation
WOTV Channel 41 in Battle Creek, Mich., abruptly closed its news operation last week, leaving the city without a locally anchored television newscast.
The Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo-Battle Creek market is the nation’s 38th largest.
“Channel 41’s sister station, NBC affiliate WOOD TV-8, will put its Grand Rapids-based newscast on the air to fill the void. In Battle Creek, Channel 41 will carry the same newscasts as Channel 8,” the Battle Creek Enquirer reports.
“Poor finances and too much competition were cited as the reasons that 24 out of 28 news jobs have been cut at the station.”
Among those on the news staff was Portia Young, a member of the National Association of Black Journalists who produced and anchored the weekend 6 and 11 p.m. news and reported throughout the week, according to the station’s Web site.
Young told Journal-isms that the two other people of color, photographers Regiland Espolon, an Asian American, and Paulino Villegas, who is Hispanic, were among four people who would remain to run the Battle Creek bureau for the Grand Rapids operation, at least for the time being.
“I have an agent. I’m going to collect my 60 days’ severance and look for a job,” Young told Journal-isms. “I’m from Detroit. I’d like to go to Detroit, but I’ll go anywhere.”
“Before coming to 41 News, Portia was a reporter/photographer at WKOW, Madison, Wisconsin. She spent three years in Wisconsin, gathering, shooting, editing and writing stories for the weekday newscasts. Portia interned at WTTW PBS in Chicago and at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Agency in Rochester, New York,” the station’s Web site said.
“Portia received her bachelor’s degree in journalism at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She also minored in French.
“The School District of Janesville, Wisconsin placed Portia on the state education council’s honor roll for ‘fair and accurate’ coverage of school issues in the Spring of 2002. Portia has also been honored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Battle Creek as ‘Media Person of the Year’ 1998,” the Web site said.
C-SPAN, N.Y. Times Excelled with March Coverage
C-SPAN and the New York Times were among the media outlets that excelled in their coverage of the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington. C-SPAN not only carried the event live, but aired interviews with Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., the only surviving speaker from the original march, and Drew W. Hansen, whose new book “The Dream: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Speech that Inspired a Nation,” talks about the origins of the march, the import of King’s speech and how the march’s significance has evolved over time.
The Washington Post ran a review of the book Sunday by Jabari Asim.
The New York Times, with coverage led by Lynette Clemetson and Steven A. Holmes, ran a front-page piece evaluating changes in the movement over the last 40 years, complete with graphs, and in the Week in Review section, ran remembrances from people who marched in 1963.
In the Raleigh News and Observer, a piece by Cindy George that included remembrances from Chuck Stone, founding president of the National Association of Black Journalists, anchored a package that included a news quiz on the march.
And in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Ernie Suggs conducted a q-and-a with John Lewis, whose own speech 40 years ago had been overshadowed by King’s.
$1 Million from Joyner to Aid Morris Brown Students
Syndicated radio host Tom Joyner announced last week that he is offering $1 million to help students at Morris Brown College complete their education.
Joyner said on his show Thursday that his Tom Joyner Foundation had earmarked money to help reenrolling students pay any outstanding academic-related debt they owed to Morris Brown.
?The foundation?s charter simply states that we are in the business of helping students stay in school,? Joyner said. ?We want to help these students at Morris Brown to finish school, get their degree and not have to worry about these bills.? He said more than 200 students? futures were in jeopardy since Morris Brown lost its accreditation in April.
Joyner’s four-hour drive-time show is aired in more than 110 markets and claims more than 1 million listeners a day.
No “Kill Fee” for Jayson Blair, but Charity Benefits
Disgraced reporter Jayson Blair won’t be collecting a “kill fee” from Esquire, which canceled a movie review it commissioned him to write, a spokesman for Esquire tells Journal-isms. Instead, a donation in lieu of a kill fee is to be made to charity.
Blair, who resigned from the New York Times after editors learned he had embellished and plagiarized stories, was to have reviewed “Shattered Glass,” a film about another fabricator, Stephen Glass. But Esquire reversed its decision after news of Blair’s assignment became public, with editor David Granger saying that, “All the news reports took away that element of surprise. Mr. Blair never got to see the movie and was very understanding when we told him of our decision,” as the Associated Press reported.
The Esquire spokesman said the amount of the donation and where it will go had yet to be determined. He recalled that Granger had said that the makers of “Shattered Glass” insisted that Blair donate his fee, described as modest, to charities of his choosing.
Ron Nixon Leaves IRE for Minneapolis Paper
Ron Nixon, who has trained thousands of journalists across the globe in computer-assisted reporting for Investigative Reporters and Editors and the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, will become the computer-assisted reporting editor on the projects team at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis in early September, IRE announces.
“As the training director for IRE and NICAR, Ron logged countless miles to help print and broadcast journalists do their jobs better and, in the process, earned their praise. He’s trained in newsrooms, national journalism association events and at events conducted by IRE and NICAR.
“Ron joined IRE and NICAR as the director of the Campaign Finance Information Center and later moved into the top training post. Before joining IRE and NICAR, Ron was an investigative reporter for The Roanoke (Va.) Times with years of experience working with local, state and federal campaign finance data.
“Ron’s last official day with IRE and NICAR is Aug. 29. Drop him a note at ron@ire.org and join us in wishing him well as he returns to newspaper journalism.”
Those interested in Nixon’s IRE job should contact Brant Houston, executive director, IRE and NICAR, at brant@ire.org
Mark Trahant’s Editorial Page Says “Fire Rumsfeld”
No way is Maynard board chairman Mark Trahant, who became editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial pages in April, shying away from controversy. Yesterday, his editorial board called for President Bush to fire Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
“The president needs a Defense Department in which professional views about what military force levels hold sway, change can occur without perpetual turmoil and military planning avoids undermining diplomacy. None of that is likely under the domineering Rumsfeld,” the editorial said.
It couldn’t be determined whether any other mainstream newspapers had taken such a position, but if the P-I isn’t the only one, it’s certainly one of a small number.
“Thought we’d stir discourse,” Trahant told Journal-isms.
Too Frugal to Fly, but Setting Up Scholarship
“I was having breakfast with one of my mentors recently when he asked a question that gave me pause,” Michelle Singletary wrote in her syndicated “Color of Money” financial advice column in the Washington Post Sunday.
“‘Michelle, what do you spend your money on?’ he asked.
“The question came up because he was chuckling at the fact that I had driven with two friends more than 24 hours from Washington to Dallas to a journalism convention,” she continued, speaking of the annual National Association of Black Journalists meeting. “The reason I drove? To save money on airfare.”
“It’s not that I was unable to afford the airfare. I just didn’t want to spend the money.”
But, she continues, “I sweat the small stuff because I have big plans for my money.
“For one thing, I’ve always wanted to help lower-income students, especially black kids, attend college.
“So this year, with the help of a matching grant from my employer, my husband and I have established a scholarship to allow a student with lots of potential and no money to attend a local community college to study journalism. Once she’s finished there, my husband and I plan to help her obtain a bachelor’s degree from a four-year university.
“I don’t mind spending money for something like this because, more than 20 years ago, I was that girl. Thankfully, I also won a scholarship. And I have never forgotten that generosity.”
NAJA’s Pember Has Little Sympathy for Student
A Native American high school senior who wants to protest her school’s decision to get rid of its “Redskin” mascot is getting little sympathy from at least one Native journalist.
“Stacey Stahl, a proud Indian who claims bloodlines to the Incas, is dressing for a culture clash — buckskin skirt, fringed leather blouse and beaded belt,” began a story in the Plain Dealer of Cleveland on Saturday.
“The high school senior who plans to enter Massachusetts Institute of Technology next year intends to show up in full regalia at tonight’s Anderson High School football game to protest her school’s decision to permanently sideline its mascot, the ‘Redskin,’ as racially insensitive.
“She won’t dance. She won’t shout war whoops. She won’t paint her face. And she won’t do the tomahawk chop. She just wants to walk around in traditional Indian clothing,” and might even file a lawsuit to assert her right to do so, the story says.
But the piece goes on to quote Mary Annette Pember, a member of the Red Cliff Ojibwa tribe who lives in the school district.
“‘It’s nice to see a young person have passion about something, but what she’s doing really displays terrible ignorance,’ said Pember, who stepped down as executive director of the Native American Journalists Association last June.
“‘If she wants to wear native regalia, she should choose something from Ecuador or Peru, where the Incas are from. She ought to talk to her elders. If she wants to trash somebody’s regalia, if she wants to trash a culture, she should trash her own.’
“Pember dismissed Stacey’s buckskin suit ‘as just a hodgepodge of stuff, a foolish outfit’ that is not linked to any tribe in North America.”
Reader Rep: Days of Scotch in Drawer Are Gone
The Sacramento Bee reporter who was fired for writing about a Giants baseball game as if he were in the ballpark, when he actually watched it on television, gets the back of the hand from Bee ombudsman Tony Marcano.
Marcano writes that Jim Van Vliet thought he was punished too severely.
But, Marcano told readers, “zero tolerance for ethics transgressions is a harsh but necessary reality, particularly in the post-Blair era.
“His case aside, all journalists nowadays should realize that standards in this industry have never been static, and that there have always been protestations that it’s unfair to hold someone accountable today for what was acceptable yesterday.
“I’ve heard that sentiment from the start of my career, at the Daily News in New York. In those days, there were bottles of Scotch in reporters’ desk drawers, if not actually out on the desk. The place had all of the sophistication of a high-school locker room. What would have been considered bawdy banter in those days would get a newsroom employee fired today.
“Eventually, standards got tougher. The bottles of Scotch disappeared. Most people adapted, but some decried the changes as the death knell of the spirit and camaraderie that kept newspapers lively. Some just couldn’t let go, and they were left out in the cold.”
Marcano became ombudsman only in June, coming from the New York Times. He was a 1985 graduate of the Maynard Institute’s Summer Program for Minority Journalists, a program manager for Maynard’s 1993 Los Angeles Total Community Coverage program, and took part in the 1994 TCC program in Atlanta as well as the 2000 TCC Trainers Program in Oakland.
