Bob Bennett, 37 Years in Business, Dead at 64
Bob Bennett was a retired Detroit television reporter “who coworkers affectionately call Boomer, who the late Coleman Young not so affectionately called “that little mother” and who the public knows as the man who’s always out there on the streets — sunshine or snowstorms — reporting on everything from the jelly-filled Polish doughnuts called paczki to homicides,” in the words of a 2000 profile in the Detroit Free Press. He was found dead Saturday in the Saint Clair River.
Bennett had retired from WDIV-TV four years ago and moved to Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, to spend time fishing and relaxing.
“The circumstances surrounding the death were still unknown late Saturday, and police were continuing their investigation,? Shawn D. Lewis reported Sunday in the Detroit News.
“Bennett, . . . whose real name was Robert Lee Billups, had undergone hip surgery in the past six months and walked with a cane. His only son, Christian Billups, 36, of Detroit said he also suffered from high blood pressure and a heart condition,” Lewis continued. She said he was “considered a ‘reporter’s reporter’ by his peers.”
When Bennett retired in 2000 and was about to be honored by the Detroit chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, Cassandra Spratling recapped his life in the Detroit Free Press:
“After graduating from Butler University in Indianapolis in 1962, he applied for radio reporting jobs all over the country. Back then, he says, disc jockey positions were the only jobs open to black men on radio. He mentioned his frustration to his doctor, who told Bennett to call a friend who owned a station outside of Detroit.
“That friend was the late Dr. Haley Bell; the station was WCHB-AM (1200) in Inkster.
“Bennett took a bus from Indianapolis to Detroit to make his case for a job.
“In 1963, he was hired to do gospel shows and the news.
“‘I didn’t know anything about gospel music, but I learned,’ Bennett recalls.
“Bennett says his favorite stories are those that uplift and inspire, like a recent profile he did of neurosurgeon Ben Carson, or positive stories that show the good things people are doing, like a recent story about workers at a Dearborn hair salon who held a cut-a-thon to raise money for a coworker stricken with cancer.
“One of his most troubling stories was that of two children, 6 and 8 years old, killed by a drug dealer to get revenge on their uncle, who owed a drug debt.
“Seeing their classmates coming out of the church after viewing the bodies got to me,” Bennett recalls of the 1974 story. “I went on vacation, went up to Montreal and applied for work there. I just wanted to get away from Detroit and America.”
“Despite an offer in Montreal, Bennett came back to Detroit,” Spratling wrote.
“Since beginning his broadcasting career in 1963, Bennett covered just about every area of news imaginable,” WDIV reported.
“In 1980, the Michigan Bar Association recognized him for his News-4 Extra report ‘Swift Justice,’ a five-part investigation of the problems within Michigan’s judicial and prison system. The Bar Association gave Bennett its Achievement of Justice award.
“For a kid from an Indianapolis ghetto to grow up and end up interviewing people like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and a variety of people in Detroit from diverse backgrounds that are as interesting as can be, that’s awesome,” Bennett said.
“Bennett is a throwback to the type of old-fashioned street reporter rarely seen these days of squeaky-clean TV personalities,” Tim Kiska added in the Detroit News in its own 2000 story. “He covered Detroit’s 1967 riot, drank with Coleman Young, rushed to dozens of grisly homicides, was in the front row asking questions at numerous city hall crises.”
Spratling said in her 2000 story that “a trend in news coverage disturbs Bennett.
“‘We’re so ratings-conscious, a lot of good positive stories just don’t make the air,’ Bennett says. ‘Our job is to make money,’ he says solemnly. ‘Public interest, what’s that?’
“And, he says, too often a pretty face trumps talent in TV news. But his success would contradict that. In a medium where on-air talent is overwhelming young, white or light-skinned, thin and pretty, he’s none of that. He’s a robust man with chocolate brown skin and salt-and-pepper hair.
“He laughs when he thinks about how he’s a contrast to the typical television prototype.
“Someone once said that one reason I’ve succeeded is that I look like a regular guy,” Bennett said in the piece. “I think there’s some truth to that.”
Bennett took the ‘high road’ in journalism (Mekeisha Madden, Detroit News)
Kathleen Hauke, Biographer of Ted Poston, Dies at 68
Kathleen Hauke, a white English professor who ‘always wanted to make some contribution re: race’ and went on to write three books about the New York Post’s pioneering black journalist Ted Poston, the first African American to spend his career at a mainstream daily, died July 30 in Arlington, Va., after battling cancer.
Notice of her passing has been scant. A paid death notice ran in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, hometown paper for three schools where she had taught, Emory, Morris Brown and Spelman. Columnist Jennifer P. Brown of the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville wrote a remembrance Friday called, ?How to Live a Complete Life,? and Native columnist John Christian Hopkinson wrote in the Westerly (R.I.) Sun about how Hauke had inspired him 26 years ago when he was ?a frightened freshman at the University of Rhode Island.?
In 1998, after ?Ted Poston: Pioneer American Journalist” was published, she told this columnist that she had visited the National Association of Black Journalists offices in Reston, Va., seeking information about Poston, and had become an associate NABJ member.
“When I was studying journalism at the University of Michigan (1954-58),” she wrote, “we were exposed to ONE black journalist, W. Beverly Carter of the Pittsburgh Courier. Then I became a mom and diapers intervened. When my four kids were all in school, one thing I COULD do was go back to school and study what interested me. I did my doctoral dissertation on Langston Hughes and during that study I found an article on Hughes by Ted Poston and love the man?s style – Poston’s. After talking with Henry Lee Moon, the executor of Poston’s estate, and he suggested I write the life of Ted Poston, I thought, ‘THIS will be my contribution to the racial struggle and to the profession.’
“You wondered why no one had done such a biography before,” she continued. “I figure it’s because research does not pay; my husband was paying my rent and feeding me, so I was able to concentrate on the work.”
Her three Poston books were, “The Dark Side of Hopkinsville” (1991), a collection of Poston?s childhood short stories; “Ted Poston: Pioneer American Journalist” (University of Georgia Press, 1998); and “First Draft of History” (1999), a collection of Poston?s best journalism.
“Long interested in minority issues, in the 70s, she was active in the Rhode Island chapter of CANE (Citizens to Advance Negro Education), an organization committed to promoting racial equality in education,” Hopkins wrote in his Westerly Sun column.
“She was there in 1987 when I went to Forsythe County, Ga., for a civil rights march. I called her that night and she invited me and a friend over. Stumbling through a rare Georgia snowstorm, we straggled over to her house – where she had dinner waiting, and hot baths, too!
“In 1994, at the first-ever Unity Conference” — the largest gathering of minority journalists – “Kathy came to encourage me as I was asked to speak on a national panel. I managed to sneak her into the conference so she could hear some of the speakers.
“Later, she returned the favor by taking me to visit New Echota, birthplace of the Cherokee ‘Phoenix,’ the first Indian newspaper.”
Brown wrote that, ?Poston, who died in 1974, remains one of the most important African-American writers of the 20th century. He was the first black reporter to make a career at a white mainstream newspaper in the United States and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1949. However, without Kathleen’s work, the significance of many of his contributions would be lost.”
It was continually frustrating to Hauke that she could not interest more journalists – including black journalists – in Poston.
“Before her death, Kathleen learned that the University of Georgia Press planned to ‘remainder’ her unsold Poston books,” Brown wrote. “The books were not selling well, so Kathleen was offered the opportunity to buy copies at a reduced rate before the remaining lot was sold off to a discounter. She did purchase several copies and left instructions with her husband about how to distribute the books. She wanted them to go to people who would continue to share Ted Poston’s story with others.”
Reporter: “It Is Really Tough to Write About Race”
“It is really tough to write about race,” says Natalie Hopkinson, who writes for the Washington Post’s Style section.
In 2001, she caught criticism when she wrote about the gentrification of much of the District of Columbia, as she and her husband were looking for a house.
“No doubt many white people also see their renovated rowhouses as more than a financial investment, and don’t think they’re just jumping on the it’s-cool-to-live-in-the-city bandwagon. Many whites want to help out, too, and their privileged racial status can only improve the city’s prospects,” she wrote in that piece.
“But this is the Chocolate City. It’s our responsibility as black people to return to these historically black communities that are finally rebounding,” she continued. “There is a real sense among black Washingtonians that the city is slipping away from us.”
The Post’s ombudsman, Michael Getler, wrote then, “Of those who wrote or called me, the overwhelming view was that this was a ‘highly offensive’ and ?racist? article, an example of a ‘double standard’ at The Post in which blacks are allowed to express views that would not be allowed from white reporters.”
But, he concluded, “My view is that Hopkinson’s thoughts are revealing and worth knowing.”
Now, Hopkinson, 27, has stirred the pot again. On Aug. 10, the Post ran a Hopkinson piece, “Tempest in a T-Shirt” .
“It reports on the efforts of the Unity Clothing Association, a group formed by local, independent, African American-owned clothing stores to ‘educate’ the public about the ‘true’ ownership — meaning Korean, not black — of the Visionz line,” Getler wrote on Sunday. “It does this in part through a flood of fliers handed out at clubs, basketball courts and shopping malls. The story was accompanied by images from two of those fliers, one of which is starkly racist.”
Getler agreed with critics who said, “The racism invoked in this campaign is allowed to just stand there. No member of the Unity Clothing Association, and no one in the story, was questioned about the racist content of the campaign and the fliers.”
Hopkins wrote Journal-isms that, “It is really tough to write about race. If you are honest nobody’s ever happy about what you say. (I heard it from both sides on this story.)
“It always gets everybody excited and people always want to make snap judgments about who is right and who is wrong. I appreciate that Getler seemed to understand that we assumed people would see for themselves what the fliers were about and comment from Korean associations would have definitely added to the story. I know when I first saw the fliers, I felt a physical pang rush through me, they were so painful to look at.
“That said, I would not personally use the word ‘racist’ to describe the fliers. ‘Racially offensive,’ ‘race-baiting,’ maybe, all those things apply, but there were so many dynamics at play, in history, culture and the lengthy relationship between Mr. Kang and the black T-shirt designers that I don’t think the word ‘racist’ exactly fit.
“If racist applies, that means that DC’s whole high-end T-shirt industry is racist, because it is partly built on a racial appeal for self-empowerment and black enterprise. That’s why Mr. Kang, understanding this, had a black person front for his company. In their own incredibly coarse and downright mean-spirited and nasty way, that was the black designer’s way of letting the public know that, using language that taps into a very real and very old history of tensions between blacks and Koreans.”
Ben Holden Named Editor in Columbus, Ga.
Ben Holden, 41, deputy managing editor for nondaily publications at the Desert Sun in Palm Springs, Calif., has been named vice president and executive editor of Georgia’s Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, effective Sept. 7, Knight Ridder announces,
The appointment puts African American editors at both Knight Ridder newspapers in Georgia, the other being the Macon Telegraph, edited by Sherrie Marshall.
“He’s practiced corporate law in California, covered business as a Wall Street Journal reporter and held various editing jobs at newspapers in the West.
“Now, Ben Holden, whose family roots lie in the sharecropper dirt of Mississippi and the urban sprawl of St. Louis, is moving into the executive editor’s office at the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. He also becomes vice president at the newspaper,” wrote Tony Adams in the Columbus paper.
“As a former corporate attorney with a master’s in business administration, Holden plans to focus on boosting business coverage. He also wants more enterprise or ‘impact journalism’ in the newspaper,” his piece continued.
“My third priority is to open up the newspaper, to let the community know this is their newspaper,” Holden said of the publication, which has a circulation of 47,763 daily and 64,858 Sunday.
Joel Dreyfuss to Edit Red Herring Technology Pubs
Veteran journalist Joel Dreyfuss, who already must have one of the longest resumes in the business, has joined Red Herring technology publications as editor-in-chief, to oversee Red Herring’s Web site, newsletters, and the magazine to be launched later this year, Red Herring announced today.
“Red Herring, Inc., founded in 1993, covers technology innovation, venture financing, and the deals that make a difference. Its award-winning journalists go deeper, providing a comprehensive, critical analysis of what’s new and why it matters,” the company says in describing itself.
The appointment means that Dreyfuss will leave the East Coast, where for three years he has been a senior writer in New York for Bloomberg Markets covering technology. Red View is based in Mountain View, Calif.
“Prior to joining Bloomberg, Dreyfuss was the editor-in-chief of Urban Box Office, an Internet startup targeting an international urban audience. Before that he was a senior editor and technology columnist for Fortune magazine, writing ‘The Dreyfuss Report.’ Earlier, he was the editor-in-chief at Information Week and the editor of PC Magazine,” his bio says.
“He has been a reporter at the Washington Post, New York Bureau Chief for USA Today, Executive Editor at Black Enterprise magazine and, in previous stint, an associate editor at Fortune, where he wrote corporate and CEO profiles, a financial column and served as the magazine’s Tokyo bureau chief. His freelance articles and essays have appeared in many national publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Salon.com, The Progressive, and Tikkun. He started his journalism career as a reporter for the Associated Press. He is co-author (with Charles Lawrence III) of “The Bakke Case: The Politics of Inequality (Harcourt Brace 1979),” it continues.
Dreyfuss is also a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists.
New Latino Magazines Target Men, College Students
Hombre, a bilingual glossy magazine that bills itself as the first national magazine geared to Latin men, plans to hit newsstands on Oct. 8, while iCaramba U, a quarterly touted as the only national Latino college magazine, is due Sept. 15.
Crain?s New York Business reports that Hombre plans to distribute 100,000 copies and that its premier issue will include interviews with actor Jimmy Smits and boxer Oscar de la Hoya. Puerto Rican actress Roselyn Sanchez is featured on the cover.
Lisa Granatstein reports in Media Week that iCaramba will also boast a 100,000 circulation, ?targeting some 2 million Latinos enrolled in colleges and universities, as well as some high schools, across the country. Among the 100 schools that will carry the title are Harvard, UCLA and Rutgers University. It will be distributed via dedicated racks, Latino fraternities and sororities, and college papers.”
Publisher Jesus Diaz told Journal-isms that “iCaramba is derived from ‘Hay caramba,’ which is a famous Spanish saying, made popular in mainstream culture by Bart Simpson. The saying translates to something of an emphatic ‘Wow’ or ‘Holy Cow!’ or ‘Oh my God’ in English, but it isn’t exactly that. Some things in Spanish are difficult to accurately translate.? He said free-lance writer Jennifer Rodriguez, 22, will be editor.
TV Anchor Michael Scott Lands in Kansas City
Michael Scott joins KCTV-TV in Kansas City on Sept. 2 as co-anchor of the 5, 6 and 10 p.m. news, the station announces.
Scott most recently anchored and reported at WBTV-TV in Charlotte, N.C. He spent four years at KXAS-TV, where he anchored and reported for Dallas’s highest-rated morning news show, the announcement said.
As reported in May, his Charlotte news director, Dennis Milligan, said in a joint statement with Scott, “‘We had hoped that Michael’s style, which was well-accepted in Dallas, would be a hit with Charlotte viewers, but it became evident that it was not a good fit for the marketplace.”
Spike Lee Interviewer “Not Losing Any Sleep”
As reported Aug. 11, Spike Lee asked the Detroit Free Press not to ask the same writer who interviewed him to review his new film, “She Hate Me.” But Todd Spangler, assistant features editor at the Free Press, would not say who the writer was.
The interview, by free-lancer John Monaghan, finally ran last week, and Monaghan tells Journal-isms he doesn’t understand Lee?s posture.
“When I heard that Mr. Lee didn’t want me to review his film, I was surprised and kind of hurt. In listening to the interview tape shortly after in preparation for writing a story, I thought he was very straightforward in answering questions I had about ‘She Hate Me’,” Monaghan said by e-mail.
“I think the printed interview confirms this. I was never slated to review the film. Ironically, I would have given ‘She Hate Me’ two stars out of four (Terry Lawson, Free Press film critic, gave it one) because I think it floats some intriguing ideas, even if it is a mess. I think this is the worst-reviewed film of his career. I would be interested to know what problems Mr. Lee had with me or his interview, but I’m not losing any sleep over it.”
Arthel Neville to Co-Host Morning Show
“Veteran television personalities Debbie Matenopolous and Arthel Neville have been named the new co-hosts of “Good Day Live,” joining Steve Edwards on the popular nationally syndicated morning news, talk and entertainment program,” a news release from Twentieth Television announces.
“Currently in its second season and produced by Small Cages Productions, Inc. in association with distributor Twentieth Television, ‘Good Day Live’ is cleared in more than 90% of the country.”
