Medrano to ABC, Will Have Highest Latino Profile
Manny Medrano, a prosecutor-turned-television reporter for KNBC in Los Angeles, is heading to Washington as ABC News’ Supreme Court reporter, making him likely the highest profile Latino in network television news.
Medrano has not officially signed with ABC, sources told Journal-isms, but his last day at the NBC-owned station in L.A. was Friday, and his colleagues threw a party for him.
“His ascension to Washington may not have come in time to save Michael Eisner’s career, but ABC News will be the better for it for a long time to come,” KNBC News Director Bob Long wrote in a note to his staff. The reference was to the decision last week by shareholders at Disney, which owns ABC, to remove Eisner from one of his two top jobs there.
Medrano’s official bio says, “He has provided legal analysis and commentary on complex cases during NBC4’s coverage of the trials involving Rodney King, Reginald Denny, the Menendez Brothers and O.J. Simpson, among others.”
It also says that from 1983 to 1993, Medrano, a graduate of both Harvard’s undergraduate and law schools, “was an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, where he prosecuted several high profile cases.
“In addition to successfully prosecuting the persons responsible for the 1985 kidnapping, torture and murder of DEA agent, Enrique Camarena, Medrano served as Deputy Chief of the Criminal Complaints Unit, where he supervised the unit responsible for the investigation and indictment of 80 percent of the cases in California’s Central District, and as Chief of the Asset Forfeiture Section, where he supervised a ten attorney unit that led the nation in assets seized and forfeited.”
In its most recent “Network Brownout Report,” the National Association of Hispanic Journalists said, “Despite the enormous growth of the nation’s Latino community, Latinos continued to be marginalized on the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC in 2002.
“Of the four networks, ABC led the way with more balanced coverage of Latinos and with stories on a wider range of topics.
“NAHJ believes the lack of Latinos working in network newsrooms and in broadcast management is a major reason for the poor coverage of the Latino community. For several years, NAHJ has called on the networks to report annually the racial and ethnic make up of their newsrooms. The networks have so far refused the association’s request.”
In a recent survey, Chicago-based Jim Avila of NBC had the most stories among Hispanic reporters on the network evening news last year, but Avila left the network in January, reportedly for ABC’s newsmagazines, though no announcement has been made by ABC.
It was just last year that Stephen Henderson of the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, who is African American, became the first person of color assigned to cover the Supreme Court for a general-circulation newspaper.
Despite Publicity, Jayson Blair Book Slow to Sell
Despite the publicity blitz, Nielsen Bookscan — a service that measures sales at the nation’s leading book store chains — reports that Jayson Blair’s memoir “Burning Down My Masters’ House” sold only 422 copies nationwide last week. The figure includes pre-orders as well as those sold on Saturday, the book’s publication date.
Susan Pavliscak, Nielsen Bookscan’s manager for sales and administration, told Journal-isms that the count includes such retail stores as Barnes & Noble, B. Dalton, Waldenbooks, Costco, Borders, Musicland and Amazon.com.
On Amazon, the book ranked 346 today.
Meanwhile, the disgraced former New York Times reporter continued his march toward media appearances, while reviewers who weighed in on his book were uniformly negative.
“One other thing I learned about Jayson Blair from interviewing him that I haven’t seen anywhere else: He changed his name from Jason to Jayson in eighth grade, but gave no reason why,” Joe Strupp wrote after Blair met with the staff of Editor & Publisher.
“He said he did not change it legally so, in a sense, even his very name is a lie.”
On Monday, the New York Daily News reported that the Times, which has made no secret of its loathing of Blair’s efforts to capitalize on the paper’s embarrassment, could gain financially from Blair’s book.
“Deep inside The New York Times headquarters, a handful of people may secretly be hoping Jayson Blair’s new book, ‘Burning Down My Master’s House,’ does a scorching business,” John T. Ward wrote. “The Times, it turns out, is a creditor to the book’s insolvent Beverly Hills-based publisher, New Millennium Entertainment.”
Barnicle Says He’ll Provide Social Security Numbers
“The Boston Herald’s announcement that it has hired former Globe columnist Mike Barnicle generated criticism from inside the Herald yesterday,” Mark Jurkowitz wrote Tuesday in the rival Boston Globe.
“Herald columnist Howie Carr, a longtime Barnicle antagonist, weighed in during his WRKO-AM radio show yesterday. ‘It could have been worse,’ he said, responding to a caller’s criticism of the Herald’s decision to hire Barnicle. ‘It could have been Jayson Blair.'”
“From now on,” Carr told his listeners, “I’d like everyone to refer to me as the nonfiction columnist at the Boston Herald,” according to Jurkowitz.
Barnicle’s first column for the Herald ran Tuesday.
In the New York Times, Jacques Steinberg wrote Tuesday that, “Mr. Barnicle, 60, who was criticized by many Globe colleagues in the weeks leading up to his resignation for sometimes writing columns about people without providing such basic details as their last names, said he felt that journalistic standards had tightened in recent years.
“‘The rules were much looser,’ he said, referring to the early years of his column. ‘You could get by with giving them a nickname. You didn’t have to give their shoe size, their hair color.’
“He added that he had already devised a way to make his work for The Herald bulletproof.
“‘I am now going to provide people’s Social Security numbers in the paper next to their names,’ he said.”
Barnicle’s quick rebound — since his firing, he also worked at the New York Daily News and on MSNBC — has been cited as an example of how the old boys’ network helps white journalists who land in hot water.
White Reporters Raise Racial Issue in Macon Case
While race did not come up publicly when editors at Georgia’s Macon Telegraph held staff meetings Monday over the firing of reporter Khalil Abdullah for plagiarism, “there are questions among some members of the reporting staff about what role race may have played in Khalil’s hiring,” reporter Travis Fain confirms.
The racial issue is a “byproduct of the Jayson Blair case and the realities that come when newspapers, as most do, place a premium on diversity in hiring, which leads to a situation of supply and demand,” Fain, who is white, told Journal-isms.
Abdullah, who became president of the local chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, got a second chance at the Macon paper after having left the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, also owned by Knight Ridder. He had been accused there of copying material from another publication.
Executive Editor Sherrie Marshall, who is African American, told Journal-isms Monday that she explained to staffers that, “I gave him a second chance because I believe that under certain circumstances, people deserve a second chance. I talked about it with people within this organization and at his previous paper, and we all thought that he had potential.”
She said today the paper is continuing to investigate his work.
Fain said, “I have no personal knowledge whether race played any role in his hiring. The question has not been asked directly to Sherrie that I know of, but I expect it will be eventually, either by someone here, or someone in the media covering this situation.
“I suppose it’s a fair question, but to me it’s ancillary — we hired a man who lied to our readers, period. We’ve got to make it right, period.”
Fain, a 27-year-old county government reporter, is among those named to a newsroom committee on next steps. ” We hope to have a plan ready within 10 days, hopefully sooner,” he said.
Meanwhile, other plagiarism cases, involving white journalists and even an academic, are surfacing.
- “Richard Judd’s presidency of Central Connecticut State University is once again in jeopardy Tuesday as college officials, students and others debate whether he plagiarized material for a recently published article,” the Hartford Courant reports.
- At the News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., reporter Bart Ripp resigned after 32 years in the newspaper business after an editor could not verify a name in an article Bart wrote, Executive Editor David Zeeck reported.
- And last week, the Chicago Tribune fired freelance reporter Uli Schmetzer for falsifying the name of a person he quoted in a story.
News Worsens for Indicted Cincinnati Reporter
“Cincinnati Police said they were stunned to the point of disbelief when four young boys told them WCPO reporter Stephen Hill had pretended to be a woman so he could perform oral sex on them,” Kimball Perry writes in the Cincinnati Post.
“Police believed it, though, after they viewed pictures of the boys with their shirts over their heads as makeshift blindfolds and Hill performing oral sex on them, law enforcement officials said Monday after he was indicted for sex crimes involving minors. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 60 years in prison.
“When Cincinnati Police arrested Hill at his Avondale home Feb. 27, they also confiscated videotapes that Hill had tried to destroy just before he slashed his neck in two places and slit both of his wrists. Police found some videos submerged in what they believed to be cleaning solution in a bucket inside Hill’s house.
“After Hill, 45, was indicted Monday on eight counts of sexual battery and four counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, his attorney called a press conference to say the media attention in the case was unfairly preventing Hill from getting a fair trial.”
“There are two sides to every story,” lawyer Ken Lawson said in the story.
“‘Once you hear the evidence — you’ll understand everything that happened, too,’ he said, declining to give Hill’s version of what happened,” Perry wrote.
Bill Fee, the station’s general manager, told Journal-isms today that Hill was on “administrative leave” at the station, remaining an employee.
Asian Journalists Protest Dry-Cleaning Story
The Asian American Journalists Association is protesting a Feb. 27 story on the “CBS Evening News” about efforts to keep the low-price chain Dryclean Depots out of local communities.
“In the Washington, D.C., area, a consortium of Korean Americans dominates the market. They pooled their money and clout to keep Dryclean Depots out of local neighborhoods,” said the story by Sharyl Attkinsson.
“Identifying the consortium as ‘Korean American’ implies that the business owners’ ethnicity plays a significant role in the way they conduct business or in their opposition to having Dryclean Depots,” wrote Aki Soga, chairman of AAJA’s Media Watch, to CBS News President Andrew Hayward.
“Nothing in the news report suggests or backs that premise. The mention of ethnicity is insensitive and irresponsible because it conditions the viewers to take note but fails to tell them why. It is all the more egregious given that CBS made the decision to do so after its reporter discussed the issue with the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium.
“The news report would have been far more instructive had it identified more relevant aspects of the opposition. Is the consortium made up of independent businesses? Is there price collusion . . .?”
CBS News spokeswoman Andie Silvers told Journal-isms today that Hayward’s office said he had not yet received the letter.
Bill Drummond Teaching “Emotional Balance”
Bill Drummond, who has taught radio broadcast journalism at the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism for two decades, has launched a new course: “Emotional Balance for Working Journalists,” Annie Nakao reports in the San Francisco Chronicle.
In 1967, Drummond, now 59, became the third black reporter at the Los Angeles Times; he was a foreign bureau chief there and later was an editor and national security correspondent for National Public Radio.
“These days, Drummond’s thinking about journalism reflects his own professional and personal evolution, especially since the illness and death last year of his wife, KTVU reporter Faith Fancher,” writes Nakao, who coincidentally is a 1976 graduate of the Maynard Institute’s Summer Program for Minority Journalists.
“Journalists are storytellers,” Drummond says in the story. “When they tell stories of trauma, loss, suffering, they do not walk away clean. Yet as an industry, the news media offers little if any preparation or comfort to its workers, who face this kind of emotional meat grinder. Instead, the journalists are expected to suck it up and move on.”
“Drummond’s class, with its hands-on emphasis on Eastern holistic healing, is novel. Each student must take at least six sessions of an energy- based exercise, such as tai chi, yoga or qui gong. And each student must get at least one bodywork session from a certified therapist and make a presentation on it to the class,” Nakao continues.
3 in Chicago Mending After Hospital Stays
“Journalist Vernon Jarrett is recovering very nicely from throat surgery at the University of Chicago Hospital. . . . . Target Market News’ Ken Smikle is now resting (Ha!) at home after having a heart attack,” Chicago Sun-Times columnist Stella Foster reported Tuesday.
Last Thursday, Foster mentioned that “Channel 5’s Renee Ferguson is convalescing from surgery at home.” Ferguson and Smikle are wife and husband.
Ga. Aims to Create Savvy Media Consumers
Georgia education officials plan require “for the first time that public schools teach pupils to be savvy viewers of television news, commercials, movies, music videos and other media,” Bridget Gutierrez reports in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“Under Georgia’s proposed revised curriculum, which the State Board of Education is expected to vote on in June, all students would be expected to demonstrate mastery of ‘viewing’ in their English classes, along with traditional skills like reading, writing, speaking and listening.
“‘When our students go home from school, they watch TV, they rent movies, they play video games, they surf the Internet ? they live in a world of visual text,’ said Gerald Boyd, associate director of curriculum and instructional services for the Georgia Department of Education.
“‘But . . . students don’t have the discernment skills for visual text,’ Boyd said. ‘That’s what we’re trying to give them with these standards.'”
Linda Fung Promoted at Dow Jones News Service
“Linda Fung has been named deputy managing editor for Dow Jones News Service. Ms. Fung, who prior to this appointment was an assistant managing editor for Dow Jones News Service, replaces Gene Colter, who recently joined The Wall Street Journal as an editor with the Money and Investing section,” a news release says.
“In her new role, Ms. Fung will be responsible for the day-to-day coverage running on the market-leading, real-time service, will supervise the editorial and reporting staff and will manage special projects.”
Maria Salinas Named “Outstanding News Anchor”
María Elena Salinas, co-anchor for the Univision Network?s national newscast, “Noticiero Univision,” received the National Hispanic Media Coalition?s ?Outstanding News Anchor Award? for 2004 last Friday in Beverly Hills, Univision announces.
Salinas has co-anchored “Noticiero Univision” since 1987 and has covered U.S. presidential elections, the funeral of Princess Diana in London, Pope John Paul II?s historic visit to Cuba, and the war with Iraq, a news release said.
The National Hispanic Media Coalition is described as” a non-profit coalition of Hispanic-American organizations that have joined together to address a variety of media related issues that affect the Hispanic-American community across the nation.”
