Paper Praised for Publishing Rights-Era Photos
Phone calls from the news media rang the phone off the hook at the Birmingham (Ala.) News today, reacting to the paper’s publication of a special section of “lost, sold, stolen or stored” photographs from the civil rights era that some editors initially were lukewarm about making public, reporter Barnett Wright told Journal-isms.
The calls, many bearing praise, came from around the world, said Wright, who wrote the Sunday story.
“Hundreds of photos from that era were lost, sold, stolen or stored in archives,” the story said. “Some of those pictures appear today for the first time in the newspaper, in an eight-page special section titled ‘Unseen. Unforgotten.’
“The section is the result of research by Alexander Cohn, a 30-year-old former photo intern at The News. In November 2004, Cohn went through an equipment closet at the newspaper in search of a lens and saw a cardboard box full of negatives marked, ‘Keep. Do Not Sell.'”
One discovery was a picture from inside the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 1963, moments after explosives blew the face of Jesus from a stained-glass window and killed four little girls, the story explained.
“I shot a picture of Jesus, and everything was intact except his face; his face was blown out,” photographer Tom Self, 71, recalled in the story. “It was an eerie feeling to look up there and see the whole frame of the window and just the face was gone.” Other photos showed the Freedom Riders, civil disobedience, and school desegregation and voting rights efforts. The church bombing earned the city the nickname “Bombingham.”
Cohn, a master’s student at the University of Missouri, told Journal-isms that the words “Keep. Do Not Sell,” came from editors at the time who “didn’t want anything negative about Birmingham to get out.”
Even for this project, said Wright, a former managing editor of the black-oriented Philadelphia Tribune, some editors feared publication would make the paper look bad. Publisher Victor Hanson III, however, thought “it would be good for the newspaper and for the community.” After Cohn’s discovery, the photo editor suggested Wright work on the story, he said.
“In all, Cohn said, he found 5,000 images from 1950 to 1965 in the cardboard box. He examined 2,000 and estimated that most had not been published,” the story said.
Cohn, who is white, amazed Wright with his knowledge of Birmingham and the civil rights movement. “In high school, I learned a little bit,” Cohn said, and after discovering the negatives, “I started poking around.” According to the story, “Cohn interviewed dozens of photographers, clergymen, elected officials, civil rights movement participants, historians and other witnesses to the events.”
Many of the negatives had no captions or incomplete identification, so Cohn began his interviews, with Wright providing backup and fact-checking.
The newspaper noted Sunday: “Eighteen years ago, in a centennial edition, The News made this observation about its coverage of the civil rights movement: ‘The story of The Birmingham News’ coverage of race relations in the 1960s is one marked at times by mistakes and embarrassment but, in its larger outlines, by growing sensitivity and acceptance of change.'”
Cohn, who is back in Missouri, returned to Birmingham to work on the News effort after his internship ended. “I wanted these pictures to see the light of day,” he said. “The best way for me to get a grip on it was to turn it into a master’s project.” He said he wanted the project to run during Black History Month, and during 2006, the 50th anniversary of such civil rights milestones as the culmination of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the court battle to admit Autherine Lucy as the first black student at the University of Alabama.
“It’s been nothing but positive all the way through,” Cohn said of the cooperation he received. As for his future, “I’m still looking for a job.”
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Critic Elvis Mitchell Didn’t Go to “The Other Side”
Elvis Mitchell returned to National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition Saturday” this month for the first time in a year, since it was announced that the former New York Times film critic would head the East Coast office of Columbia Pictures with veteran producer Deborah Schindler.
“We have not received the final word that Elvis is taking the job, but if he does in fact take the job with Columbia, he will no longer review movies for Weekend Edition,” Campbell told Journal-isms a year ago.
As it turns out, Campbell said today, “He never actually took the job with Columbia so there is no conflict of interest.”
On Feb. 4, Mitchell discussed how the movies had dealt with race over the years, and on Saturday critiqued “The Pink Panther.” He had been reviewing films for “Weekend Edition Saturday” since the show’s inception in 1985.
Mitchell’s job with Columbia Pictures had been taken as a done deal. “The idea of Mitchell crossing over to the other side had been the stuff of rumors for several years now,” critic Richard Horgan wrote last year on FilmStew.com.
“Over a decade ago, Mr. Mitchell did a brief tour of duty at Paramount Pictures as a director of development,” Jake Brooks wrote then in the New York Observer. “Either unwilling or ignorant of the potential conflict of interest, Mr. Mitchell continued to do film reviews for NPR after being hired at Paramount. His stint as a studio executive lasted six months. Thankfully for Mr. Mitchell, the dynamic at Columbia is a bit different. He has been assigned the welcome task . . . of trolling film festivals for potential acquisitions and evaluating the Columbia library for potential remakes.”
Mitchell also taught as a visiting lecturer at Harvard, where he was known to bring in show-business friends, such as Bill Murray.
He was introduced on NPR as host of “The Treatment” on KCRW-FM in Santa Monica, Calif., in which Mitchell interviews film personalities.
Steve Elzer, a spokesman for Columbia Pictures, did not provide a reason for Mitchell’s – or Columbia’s – change of heart, and Mitchell did not respond to an e-mail request for comment.
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In Poll, 38% of Blacks Pessimistic on New Orleans
“Six months after the massive destruction dealt by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region, a CBS News Poll and analysis by BET.com finds African Americans overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the efforts to rebuild in the stormâ??s aftermath,” BET announced in a news release today. “The CBS News Survey unit conducted the poll of 1,018 adults, including 207 African Americans. Margin of error for the poll is plus or minus seven points.
“Among the more eye-opening findings by CBS News is the pessimistic outlook that African Americans have for city of New Orleans. Survey results showed that 38 percent of African Americans believe much of that historic city will never be rebuilt compared to 26 percent of White respondents. On the topic of whether citizens displaced by the storm will ever return home, 33 percent of African-American respondents believe that White evacuees will return to New Orleans before the African Americans who were also forced to flee.
“African Americans surveyed were particularly critical of the way that President George W. Bush and his administration responded to the desperate needs of Hurricane Katrina victims. Only seven percent of African-American respondents approved of President Bushâ??s handling of the disaster, while 9 in 10 disapproved. Conversely, 36 percent of White respondents support the response by the Bush Administration.
â??’While the overall scope and findings of the poll are not a complete surprise, especially the divisions along racial lines, itâ??s eye-opening that the negative opinions still hold so true six months after the hurricane,’ said BET News Senior Political Producer Pamela Gentry. ‘There have been a number of attempts, including the current Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans, to further jumpstart the recovery. But the results of this poll indicate a long, long road still lies ahead.’â??
- Jarvis DeBerry, New Orleans Times-Picayune: Dome wasn’t fun, but it saved lives
- Glen Ford and Peter Gamble, BlackCommentator.com: Katrina Shock Therapy for Black America
- Bruce Hamilton, New Orleans Times-Picayune: Evacuees recount gunfire at bridge blockade
- Dawn Turner Trice, Chicago Tribune: A nation views Katrina through different lenses
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D.C. Post’s Ly Wins ASNE Diversity Writing Award
“Washington Post staff writer Phuong Ly has won the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ 2006 award for writing on diversity,” the Post reported yesterday.
“Ly won the Freedom Forum/ASNE Award for Outstanding Writing on Diversity for a variety of stories that chronicled facets of the immigrant experience in the Washington region.
“In ‘A Wrenching Choice,’ Ly examined the results of a Korean couple’s decision to educate their three children in the United States, even at the cost of long-term separations from their father. In another article, she told of three Vietnamese women whose lives here were shaped by their wartime experiences 30 years earlier.”
Runners-up were noted in their own papers.
“Don Aucoin of the Living/Arts section was chosen as one of three finalists in the Outstanding Writing on Diversity category for stories on the lives of blacks and Hispanics in Boston today, in the ‘How We Live Here’ series, the Boston Globe reported Sunday.
“Argus Leader reporter Steve Young was named a finalist Friday by the American Society of Newspaper Editors for . . . [a] series published in December that followed two Sioux Falls students — one white, one black — as they made the transition from elementary to middle school,” the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., wrote Saturday.
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Documentary on Gilliam, Withers to Go on Tour
The documentary “Freedom’s Call,” which tells the story of veteran journalist Dorothy Gilliam and photographer Ernest Withers, two African Americans who covered some of the key civil rights-related events of the 1950s and 1960s, “has filled numerous screens throughout Central New York in February and goes to Washington, D.C., in March,” Frank Herron wrote Sunday in the Syracuse (N.Y.) Post-Standard.
The hour-long film premiered in Syracuse in November.
Working with George Kilpatrick and Robert Short Jr., two producers from Syracuse, Richard Breyer, professor at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, took Gilliam and Withers on a road trip last summer to several places that the two visited while covering civil rights events more than 40 years ago, the story said.
“In those early days, she was a reporter for the Tri-State Defender, a black weekly newspaper in Memphis, Tenn. Withers, a lifelong resident of Memphis, often did freelance photography for the paper,” the Post-Standard reported.
A small exhibition of Withers’ work, “One Day Is Not Enough: Memphis Desegregation through the Eyes of Ernest Withers,” is showing at the Memphis Pink Palace Museum in Withers’ hometown through June 5.
Gilliam directs Prime Movers, a program based at George Washington University that is designed to start and strengthen high-school student media and develop women and journalists of color as mentors.
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Short Takes:
- “The Detroit News announced to its newsroom staff Monday that it will offer up to 20 buyouts as it eliminates its Neighborhood News sections, tabloids that circulate weekly as part of the regular paper to targeted communities in Southeast Michigan, said Lou Mleczko, president of the Newspaper Guild of Detroit AFL-CIO,” Tom Henderson reported in Crain’s Detroit Business.
- Marcia Slacum Greene, assistant D.C. editor for politics and government and a 22-year veteran of the newspaper, today was named city editor of the Washington Post. Prior to becoming an editor, she worked for the paper’s Metro projects team, writing about the impact of illegal drugs and violence on urban communities and the lives of young people, the Post noted. She succeeds Gabriel Escobar, who last month became associate director/editorial at the Pew Hispanic Center. Greene is married to Jackie Greene, director of technology planning and fulfillment at USA Today, former treasurer of the National Association of Black Journalists and former president of Unity: Journalists of Color.
- “A professional sin of omission – the failure to get all the facts by shying away from asking a newsmaker his or her sexual orientation – still clouds the media’s actions,” Eric Hegadus, president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, wrote Sunday in the San Francisco Chronicle. “And in the case of Olympic figure skater Johnny Weir, the problem becomes far more glaring. Stereotype-drenched speculation, gossip and wink-wink hearsay have taken the place of a sound journalistic practice: Asking the pertinent question. In this case, that question is: ‘Are you gay?'”
- NBC’s Tom Brokaw told the story of Vernon Baker, a World War II soldier who is the only living black veteran to receive the Medal of Honor, before Sunday’s closing ceremonies of the Olympics. Tom Dorsey of the Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal wrote about Brokaw’s plans on Saturday.
- More than 8,000 people registered to attend the Tavis Smiley-hosted “State of the Black Union” conference Saturday in Houston, “and by 8:30 a.m. the 5,500-seat sanctuary was filled to capacity,” Shannon Buggs wrote Sunday in the Houston Chronicle. “Those who made it inside the church listened to about 45 panelists discuss economic empowerment, political activism and emerging leadership.”
- Penguin Books’ Riverhead imprint withdrew a two-book offer to James Frey, the author of “A Million Little Pieces” whose embellishments earned a televised scolding from Oprah Winfrey, who had endorsed the book, Judith Rosen reported Friday in Publishers Weekly.
- A poll released Feb. 15 by AOL and the Associated Press that showed Jesse Jackson and Condoleezza Rice topping the list of “most important black leader” was the subject of at least two commentaries by black columnists. “It’s one thing to be a black leader and quite another to be a leader of the black community,” wrote Lawrence Aaron Friday in the Record of Hackensack, N.J. “From the way news organizations framed the results, you’d think that Jesse Jackson, who got the most votes, 15 percent, had a mandate from the NAABP (National Association of All Black People),” Wendi C. Thomas said last week in the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
- Keith Hadley, photographer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is embedded in Iraq for two months. Hadley is a founder of the Visual Task Force of the National Association of Black Journalists, and NABJ is carrying his blog on its Web site.
- “The Radio-Television News Directors Association called on President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines to rescind measures she has taken to limit press freedoms in her country. As part of a state of emergency, Arroyo gave herself the authority to seize news media outlets. CNN reports that early on Saturday, Manila police raided a pro-opposition newspaper, The Daily Tribune, gathering documents, confiscating copies from the printing press and padlocking the office, RTNDA said today.
- Joe Madison of Washington’s WOL-AM was the highest ranking African American on Talkers magazine’s list of “the 250 most important radio talk show hosts in America.” Madison ranked no. 20. Rush Limbaugh headed the list.
- “In a first-ever alliance between an alternative newspaper and a Spanish-language paper, the San Diego Weekly Reader will publish two pages of news in Spanish from Diario San Diego,” Editor & Publisher reported today. “According to their joint announcement, the new content in the Reader will be taken from recent front pages of Diario San Diego, a two-year-old paper established by Jose S. Healy, who ran the daily El Imparcial in Hermosillo, Mexico, and founded newspapers in Mexicali and Tijuana before beginning this first U.S. venture.”
