More Meetings Set at Washington Post
The Washington Post plans a follow-up session on diversity after African American and other journalists questioned the paper’s commitment to the concept at a staff meeting Thursday.
“I’m meeting informally with anyone who wants to talk with me at [an] internal meeting being convened by Keith Alexander in December,” Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. said in an e-mail to Journal-isms today. Alexander, a business reporter at the paper, is also president of the Washington Association of Black Journalists.
As reported yesterday, the questions about diversity were precipitated by Downie’s selection of a white male, Phil Bennett, assistant managing editor for foreign news, as the next managing editor.
Among the finalists reportedly were Eugene Robinson, assistant managing editor for the Style section, an African American who had been called the newsroom favorite, and Liz Spayd, the assistant managing editor for national news, who would have been the first woman to hold the post.
The Post ran a story on the meeting today by business reporter Frank Ahrens. Downie said he had not had much reaction since the discussion became public, but Darryl Fears, a national reporter who had called two meetings of black journalists at the paper after the appointment, said he had received “a lot of calls” from people in the newsroom expressing support.
Fears also said he had reserved the paper’s auditorium for a meeting at 6:30 p.m. Monday with any other concerned staff members, in preparation for the December meeting with Downie.
Alexander said that meeting, open to the newsroom, would take place Dec. 1 and that the three top newsroom editors would be present. He said “non-minorities” had told him that yesterday’s session was “an eye-opener” and that “people were surprised” by “the reaction and the feelings.”
Meanwhile, Rick Weiss, a national reporter who is a Newspaper Guild leader at the Post, said that Downie had misspoken at the meeting in denying a disparity in newsroom salaries between men and women and whites and people of color. He told Journal-isms that the Guild had documented the disparity and would release more supportive data soon.
The Post story today quoted both Bennett and Robinson.
“I didn’t take this personally,” Bennett said in the story. “I felt several people made clear that there wasn’t hostility toward me as much as a very legitimate series of questions and concerns about the newsroom’s commitment to diversity.”
“I was disappointed not to get the job, and it was gratifying to hear all those expressions of support at the meeting,” Robinson was quoted as saying.
[Added Nov. 20: In the Washingtonian magazine, Harry Jaffe wrote that, “As Downie was choosing Bennett, Baltimore Sun editor Tim Franklin was courting Robinson as his paper?s managing editor.”
[Robert Blau, a top projects and investigations editor at the Chicago Tribune, was named to the Sun’s managing editor job on Oct. 12.
[“Robinson?s staff gave him a bottle of fine tequila,” Jaffe also said.]
Columnists Weigh In on Race, Towel Incident
“Adding to the pile of analysis regarding the Terrell Owens/Nicollette Sheridan ‘Monday Night Football’ controversy, people in TV are marveling that the buzz is more than ABC could have expected,” writes Bill Fleischman in the Philadelphia Daily News.
“The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday was still counting the phone calls, emails and other communiques from viewers over Desperate star Nicollette Sheridan’s towel-dropping routine on Monday Night Football. Per FCC spokeswoman Rosemary Kimball, more than 50,000 comments have been received,” added Joel Ryan for EOnline.
“The FCC can’t yet say how many of those comments are complaints. Publicly, the chorus of critics is growing.
“The Philadelphia Eagles, whose star wide receiver Terrell Owens costarred in the bit with Sheridan, said the team ‘wish[ed] it hadn’t aired.’ Owens, who earlier joked he used the segment to showcase his acting skills, apologized–sort of.
“. . . In a routine press conference Thursday in Philadelphia, the outspoken Owens, no stranger to controversy, said he was sorry if the Desperate Housewives opening had been ‘taken out of context [by] a lot of people.
“‘I felt like it was clean, the organization thought it was a clean skit,’ Owens said, per the Eagles’ official Website. ‘For a Monday Night Football game, we were just trying to have some fun. I thought it was a fun skit. That was it,'” Ryan wrote.
Meanwhile, the racial overtones of the incident — Sheridan is white and Owens is black — were the subject of commentary by African American and other columnists:
- Greg Cote, New York Daily News: Owens’ antics now tired cliché
- L.A. Parker, The Trentonian, Trenton, N.J.: That towel can?t hide our racial inhibitions
- Bob Raissman, New York Daily News: Dismissing race in Owens-Sheridan sexy scene is just plain naive
- Deborah Simmons, Washington Times: Ready for some football, eh?
- Stephen A. Smith, Philadelphia Inquirer: The issue was skin – both black and white
- Art Spander, Oakland Tribune: Apologies for lead-in to ‘MNF’ ring hollow
- Jason Whitlock, ESPN.com: Shocked, stunned and . . . jealous
“Liberals” Urged to Denounce Condi Cartoons
Rush Limbaugh and others on the right wing are undertaking a campaign to denounce “liberals” for not condemning certain cartoons and commentary about Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice.
On a Web site of a group called the Democracy Project, Winfield Myers writes, “It seems that Madison, Wisconsin, radio host John Sylvester, like the cartoonists I’ve catalogued over the past few days, assumes that liberals can hurl racist comments with no worry because, after all, they’re well-meaning, thoughtful, progressive types who just couldn’t be racists themselves.
“Sylvester took to the airwaves to call Condoleezza Rice an ‘Aunt Jemima’ because, the AP reports, because he wanted to describe ‘Rice and other blacks as having only a subservient role in the Bush administration.'”
Another group called the International Women’s Forum issued a news release:
?’The depiction of Dr. Condoleezza Rice by Jeff Danziger, Pat Oliphant and Garry Trudeau as an ebonics speaking, big lipped, black mammy who just loves her “massa” is a disturbing trend in editorial cartoons,’ said Michelle D. Bernard, senior vice president of the Independent Women?s Forum. ‘These cartoons take the racism of the liberals who profess respect and adoration for black Americans to a new level,'” the release said.
As reported Oct. 25, the Danziger cartoon was withdrawn and was not published anywhere, to the syndicate’s knowledge.
The conservatives’ objection to Oliphant might be based on a Nov. 16 cartoon that showed Rice as a loyal bird.
270 Honor Asian American J-Pioneers at N.Y. Gala
Some 270 people attended a $250-a-person “endowment dinner” for the Asian American Journalists Association Wednesday at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, at which five veteran journalists were honored with “Pioneers in Journalism” awards, according to the association.
The five were: Peter Bhatia, executive editor of The Oregonian in Portland, whose Asian Indian roots make him the country’s highest-ranking newspaper editor of Asian American ethnicity; Connie Chung, three-time Emmy Award winner and the second woman, after Barbara Walters, to co-anchor an evening news program (and who was unable to attend); Ken Kashiwahara, two-time Emmy winner who was the first male Asian American correspondent on network news; Dith Pran, a photojournalist with the New York Times who was a “Cambodian Holocaust” survivor and the subject of the film “The Killing Fields”; and Helen Thomas, Hearst Newspapers columnist and a Lebanese-American, widely regarded as the dean of the Washington press corps.
The event officially launched AAJA’s $2 million endowment campaign, with more than $523,000 in charter gifts, the organization said. “Proceeds from the gala event and additional live pledges are expected to generate an additional $50,000 for the endowment,” according to a news release.
Violence at Vibe Awards Good for Ratings
“Rap producer Dr. Dre may have been bruised and shaken and a few attendees may have been bloodied during a brawl at Vibe magazine’s music awards ceremony Monday in Santa Monica, but the publicity apparently contributed to a ratings boost for the UPN television network when the show was broadcast the following night,” write Randy Lewis and Baz Dreisinger in the Los Angeles Times.
“The whole affair has saddened and angered members of the hip-hop community — at least those who would agree to talk about the incident, in which Dr. Dre was punched in the face several times by a man who was then stabbed by one or more of the other attendees.
“‘The unfortunate truth is that [violence] can be good for ratings,’ said Stephen Hill, BET’s senior vice president for music programming and talent, who works on the annual BET Awards. ‘Organizers are certainly not including violence in their marketing plan, but unfortunately, it does end up promoting the event.’
“In fact, overnight ratings from Tuesday’s telecast indicate it attracted about 5.4 million viewers, up 26% from the audience that tuned in to the more smoothly run 2003 Vibe awards.
“Tuesday’s telecast included no footage of the violence, but there were clues.”
D.A. to Investigate Arrest of Raleigh Reporter
“Durham District Attorney Jim Hardin Jr. said this week he would investigate the recent arrest of a Raleigh newspaper reporter charged with making harassing telephone calls to a police employee that he wanted to interview,” John Stevenson reports in The Herald-Sun of Durham, N.C.
“But Hardin, who is at a statewide conference for district attorneys in Boone, won’t be able to ask about the arrest of News & Observer writer Demorris Lee until Monday at the earliest, he said.”
In separate statements, the Society of Professional Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists called on Hardin to drop the charge against Lee immediately.
“This situation is disturbing on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to begin to criticize it,” said Christine Tatum, secretary/treasurer of SPJ and a business writer at The Denver Post, in an SPJ statement.
“An arrest warrant of this nature should never have been obtained so easily. Press freedom is truly at stake. If magistrates were to apply the law in the same ridiculous way as this North Carolina magistrate, thousands of reporters could be sent to jail every day for making two, perhaps even three, phone calls to people who are unwilling to speak. Those calls are crucial to ensuring an ethical and responsible press, and they serve the public’s interest.”
Rafael Olmeda, chair of NAHJ?s issues committee, said in NAHJ’s statement, “This appears to be a blatant abuse of power; the charges should be dropped immediately and the circumstances surrounding this arrest should be fully investigated.”
The National Association of Black Journalists and its local chapter weighed in earlier.
Writers should not be jailed for asking questions (Wayne Dawkins, BlackAmericaWeb.com)
Charles Cherry, Activist, Media Owner, Dies at 76
Charles Cherry, a long-time activist, businessman and politician who founded Florida’s Daytona Times, died Tuesday at 76 after battling cancer, John Bozzo reports in the Daytona Beach News-Journal.
The paper “has grown over 27 years into a media company that covers Florida, Georgia and South Carolina with two newspapers and 11 radio stations, including WPUL (1590 AM) in Daytona Beach,” Bozzo wrote.
“Cherry fought for the black community on several fronts when Daytona Beach’s neighborhoods and beaches were still segregated,” added Jeff Libby in the Orlando Sentinel.
“As an activist in the 1960s and 1970s, he helped organize bus boycotts and pushed for better wages at area hospitals and voting districts for city commissioners so that a black person could represent the black community, said his son, who is vice-president of the family-owned Tama Broadcasting, the largest private black-owned media company in the state.”
An editorial in the News-Journal today said, “There are those in the city who admired him, and those who disdained him. Yet even his enemies appreciated his business skills, and most understood that his aim, at heart, was to advance opportunities for the black community. His death brings pause to the city. A voice has been silenced that attempted to secure rights promised to minorities during the civil rights era but never fulfilled.”
Miami Herald Carries Fake R. Kelly Story
“A false story wrongly attributed to The Associated Press and claiming that R&B singer R. Kelly had allegedly made sexual advances to a minor made it into The Miami Herald and on to the Knight Ridder/Tribune news wire earlier this week before editors discovered it was a hoax,” Joe Strupp reports in Editor & Publisher.
“The incident, which the AP and the Herald revealed as a fake in stories released Wednesday, not only drew the interest of AP’s legal department, but also pointed to the dangers of news coverage in the Internet age. The story reportedly first appeared on an unidentified Web site.
” . . . The news item appeared to be genuine because it included the byline of AP entertainment writer Nekesa Moody, [AP deputy managing editor/news Kristin] Gazlay said. But Moody had not written it.
“Herald executive editor Tom Fiedler told AP the story was given to an editor of the Herald’s celebrity news ‘by someone else in the newsroom.’ Fiedler believed the person picked it up off the Internet because it ‘had the appearance of an Associated Press story or seemed to be attributed to AP. The editor took it and unfortunately failed to verify it moved on the AP wire.’
“Knight Ridder/Tribune editors then moved the story on its entertainment wire, but removed it and ran a correction Tuesday, AP said.”
In Baghdad: “Keep Your Head Up — And On”
“Baghdad has never been tougher for journalists,” writes Hannah Allam, Baghdad bureau chief for Knight Ridder newspapers and the National Association of Black Journalists’ Journalist of the Year.
“My 26th birthday party was perfect.
“Stars glittered over the Baghdad hotel where I blew out the candles on a cake decorated by my four closest Iraqi friends. We stayed up until the dawn call to prayer rang from a nearby mosque, telling stories and debating the future of a country I’d grown to cherish.
“A year later, only one of those friends is still alive. The poolside patio where they sang ‘Happy Birthday’ in Arabic is empty most days, because foreign guests are afraid of snipers and mortars. The hotel has become a prison, and every foray outside its fortified gates is tinged with anxiety about returning in one piece.
“. . . I just turned 27. With the war still raging and the heartbreaking absence of my four Iraqi friends, there seemed little to celebrate. Still, several journalist colleagues sent me inspirational messages laced with the gallows humor of our trade.
“One wrote: ‘Keep your head up — and on.'”
Black Columnist Defends Not Voting
James Ragland, Dallas Morning News local columnist and immediate past president of the Dallas Association of Black Communicators, writes that “I was raked over the coals” by readers after telling them that he does not vote.
“I most assuredly understand the struggles that my forefathers endured so I could gain a voice in the voting booth. So I didn’t make such a decision lightly,” Ragland wrote Wednesday.
But, “I’m saying I believe so strongly in the so-called veil of objectivity that the public should expect of journalists that I took the extraordinary step of disengaging myself from a fundamental part of the political process ?- voting.”
Geraldo Rivera Sells N.J. Weekly
“Geraldo has left the building. The Two River Times, an award-winning weekly newspaper in Red Bank, N.J., has a new owner,” reports Editor & Publisher.
“Longtime Two River Times owner and publisher, Geraldo Rivera, also known as a television celebrity, has completed the sale of the paper to Michael J. and Diane Gooch of Rumson, N.J. Rivera has owned the paper for 14 years.
“. . . Rivera became the paper?s sole owner in 1996 and later assumed the role of publisher, which he held until last Thursday. During recent years, the paper won numerous awards.”
Ted Chen Co-Anchors “Today in LA”
The quest to put more Asian American men on the air as news anchors has received a small boost.
Ted Chen has been named co-anchor of the weekend editions of “Today in LA” at KNBC in Los Angeles, where he is also general assignment reporter for the Channel 4 News, the Asian American Journalists Association reports.
Radio One Acquires Charlotte Station
Radio One, Inc. has completed the acquisition of the assets of radio station WPZS-FM (formerly known as WABZ-FM) for approximately $11.5 million in cash, and has moved the station to Radio One’s existing facilities located in Charlotte, N.C., the company announces.
Earlier this month, Radio One began to operate the station and changed the format of the station to gospel.
Radio One says it is the nation’s seventh largest radio broadcasting company, based on 2003 net broadcast revenue, and the largest company that primarily targets African American and urban listeners. It owns and/or operates 69 radio stations in 22 urban markets.
Election Coverage for Immigrants: Different Spins
Editors covering the presidential election for immigrant groups in New York City tailored their stories to their different concerns, as freelance writer Jonathan Schienberg illustrates in Newsday.
“Our reporters in Florida found that many Haitians believed if a Democrat were elected president, he would return Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power,” Schienberg quoted Garry Pierre-Pierre, editor of the Brooklyn-based Haitian Times, as saying.
“Jonghun Kim, editor of a Queens-based Korean daily, scoured the mainstream U.S. media for Bush statements on immigration, trying to decipher an issue barely mentioned during the campaign,” Schienberg wrote.
“Bush’s policy seemed to favor more globalization. He didn’t speak out so strongly against outsourcing like [Democrat John] Kerry did, and the issue of outsourcing is very significant to Indian-American relations,” said Sujeet Rajan, editor of The Indian Express, a weekly with offices in Manhattan.
“The Manhattan-based Russian Forward’s lead column by its editor, Ari Kagan . . . explained that approximately 60 percent of the typically Democratic Russian Jews voted for Bush because they appreciated his strong pro-Israel stance.
“Russians have no problem with restrictions on civil liberties, and they like tough and decisive leaders when it comes to terrorism,” Kagan wrote, according to the Newsday story.
