Maynard Institute archives

“Majority Minority” Newsrooms?

by richard0462

Bar Raised on Goal of Parity With Community

“The minority population in the Washington region will become the majority in well under a decade,” D’Vera Cohn reported Saturday in the Washington Post.

“When it hits the majority-minority threshold, the Washington region will join a handful of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas, among them Miami, Houston, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The New York City region will soon be among them.”

As such changes reconfigure an area’s political, economic and social identity, they might also reconstruct newsrooms.

That’s because the American Society of Newspaper Editors, with its participating members, has set as a goal that by 2025 or sooner, “At a minimum, all newspapers should employ journalists of color and every newspaper should reflect the diversity of its community.”

Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. said today of the “majority-minority” projection, “Our goal has always been to reflect the community as much as we can. This doesn’t change it.”

However, Sharon Rosenhause, who chairs the ASNE’s Diversity Committee, told Journal-isms, “It would seem to make the goal that much harder to reach.”

Two weeks ago, when the Post announced it was trimming the equivalent of 80 full-time news positions, Downie said the paper would use three hiring criteria: whether the prospect has special expertise, whether the journalist is outstanding and is available because of downsizing at another news outlet, and whether the hiring would increase diversity — not necessarily in that order. The Post reported 21.4 percent news professionals of color in the 2005 ASNE census.

“I know the issue well because we face it here in South Florida,” Rosenhause, who is managing editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, said of the rapidly changing demographics.

“The community is changing faster than we can, and we’re working hard at changing. In five years, our newsroom has gone from being about 15% diverse to about 30%. But the community in some places is 40% or more diverse. You always feel like you’re pushing the boulder up the hill.” The Sun-Sentinel reported 28.3 percent news professionals of color in last year’s ASNE census.

At the New York Times, in a report made available to staffers this month, an in-house Diversity Council warned management, “The Times is joined at the hip with the nation’s slowest-growing market segment, as is the newspaper industry in general.” It also emphasized the changing coloration of the New York City market. The Times reported 16.7 percent news professionals of color in the 2005 ASNE census.

Miami and Dade County, Fla., reached “majority minority” status during the 1980s, Herald Executive Editor Tom Fiedler told Journal-isms today. “For us,” he said of reaching parity with the population, “it’s not just something we should strive to do — it’s absolutely imperative to get our numbers there.”

The Herald’s newsroom is 30 to 35 percent Hispanic, he said, about 20 points short of the parity goal, and about 15 percent black, in a market where blacks include Haitians and others from the Caribbean. “We want to be at our demographic” target “by the end of the decade,” he said. “As a company we’re getting close. As a newsroom, we have a long way to go.” “The company” includes the Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald and the business operations of both papers. The Knight Ridder papers’ new owners, the McClatchy Co., will be equally committed to diversity, Fiedler said. The Herald reported 29.9 percent news professionals of color in the most recent ASNE census.

In San Francisco, another “majority minority” city, San Francisco Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein told Journal-isms that meeting the spirit of the ASNE goal “is entirely doable,” though the newsroom might not be “an exact mirror” of the population.

In the last three or four months, the paper has hired 12 to 15 people, perhaps eight to 10 of them journalists of color, Bronstein said. In San Francisco proper, 30 percent of the population is Asian. Along with hiring members of that broad ethnic group, it is also important to reflect the various Asian communities, Bronstein said.

Bronstein said newspapers could use their Web sites to involve citizens more and to increase “community involvement in the paper.” And of course inside the newsroom, “you want to make sure people who you promote also represent the diversity of the community you represent.” The Chronicle reported 16.8 percent news professionals of color in the most recent ASNE census.

The Los Angeles Times, Houston Chronicle, New York Daily News and Washington Times did not respond to requests to comment on the implications of the demographic shift in their markets.

[Added March 29: Jeff Cohen, editor of the Houston Chronicle, said Wednesday, “the percentage of people of color in the newsroom is at a historical high. Those numbers need to continue to progress in the right direction. More important than numbers are that the newspapers cover all sections of the Houston community in an inclusive and populist way. I say we are. I ask the decision-makers in the newsroom to factor that into their assessment” of the news.

[The Chronicle reported 21.3 percent people of color in the last ASNE census.]

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Puerto Rican Journalists Take Case to D.C.

Complaints by Puerto Rican journalists that they were pepper-sprayed by FBI agents last month as they were covering a raid are to be aired in a “briefing” on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.

The complaints are to be part of a broader inquiry into alleged FBI abuses in Puerto Rico. The event is called a “briefing” because the Republican majority would have to authorize a “hearing.”

The Association of Puerto Rican Journalists held a news conference in Washington today along with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists to call attention to the Feb. 10 pepper-spraying incident, which involved 20 to 25 members of the news media.

“Last month, the FBI conducted raids in Puerto Rico in an effort to thwart what it called an alleged ‘domestic terrorist attack’ planned by an island pro-independence group,” NAHJ explained in a statement. “During the raid, FBI agents showered Puerto Rican journalists covering the operations with pepper spray, shoved them and beat them, in some cases, while they were on the ground. Reporters and media organizations have condemned the actions of the FBI as abusive and a press freedom violation.”

The incident followed an FBI raid on Sept. 23 in which Filiberto Ojeda Ri­os, a convicted bank robber, fugitive and pro-independence activist, was killed.

“The purpose of this Congressional briefing is threefold: (1) First, to examine the historical presence of the FBI in Puerto Rico; (2) Second, to better assess if the FBI’s conduct on September 23, 2005, and February 10, 2006, was reasonable and warranted; (3) And third, to determine how Puerto Rico and Federal law enforcement can work together in the future to ensure law and order in Puerto Rico,” Conyers’ office announced.

Oscar Serrano, president of the Puerto Rican journalists association, who was at today’s news conference, is among those scheduled to testify.

The Miami Herald posted a video of the pepper-spraying incident and the Herald’s Frances Robles added from San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital, today:

“The Puerto Rico Department of Justice sued the FBI last week in federal court, saying the agency is obstructing local law enforcement investigations into the two incidents. Puerto Rico’s Justice Secretary recently traveled to Washington to lobby Congress to pressure the FBI into releasing information about them.

“Citing an ongoing investigation into Ojeda Ríos’ death, the FBI officials declined to be interviewed for this article. In media releases, the FBI said it acted in good faith when facing an armed fugitive as well as reporters who were impeding an investigation by crossing a police line.”

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Immigration News Raises Disclosure, Usage Issues

“As protestors march in the streets and debate intensifies in Congress over how to fix the nation’s immigration laws, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists calls on our nation’s news media to use accurate terminology in its coverage of immigration and to avoid dehumanizing undocumented immigrants,” the association said late today.

“NAHJ is concerned with the increasing use of pejorative terms to describe the estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the United States. NAHJ is particularly troubled with the growing trend of the news media to use the word ‘illegals’ as a noun, shorthand for ‘illegal aliens.'”

Meanwhile, “Newsrooms are struggling with the dilemma of whether to use the names of illegal immigrants. Anonymous sources are under fire as threats to credibility. Yet identifying undocumented immigrants could lead to their deportation,” the American Journalism Review notes in its April/May issue, over a story by Lucy Hood.

“. . . the undocumented are retreating, becoming less willing to talk, while interest in immigrant issues is on the rise. That means reporters and editors often must decide if they are willing to conceal the identity of an illegal immigrant if that’s what it takes to get the story. And if they do, how do they do it? Do they use the first name, or the last? Which details do they include and which ones do they leave out? Is it ethical to use a name, even with permission, if it could get someone deported?” Hood wrote.

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Film on Civil Rights Journalists Seeks Viewers

The producers of the first film about black journalists’ role in the civil rights movement are looking for a mass audience after the hour-long work completed two days of screenings in the nation’s capital.

“What we want to do is to get it on television, that’s our next goal,” said Robert Short, executive producer of “Freedom’s Call,” in which longtime Washington Post reporter and editor Dorothy Gilliam and photographer Ernest Withers revisit early civil rights battlegrounds they covered in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Short also said he wanted eventually to get the film into schools and colleges.

The Washington screenings were accompanied by interaction with the audience. On Thursday night at the Avalon Theater, audience members often identified the Southern towns they came from. “You were the only woman I could read who was close to what was really happening,” Shirley Harrington, originally from Jackson, Miss., told Gilliam, who is also a member of the Maynard Institute board of directors. “You were truly the ones who made our story come to life.”

On Friday, after the film was shown at the University of the District of Columbia, an 11-year-old black girl took the microphone to say that a classmate had told her African Americans “look like burnt marshmallows.” Now, after seeing scenes from the civil rights struggle, she said she just wanted to announce, “I feel stronger about myself.”

Others wondered how they could better pass along civil rights history to the current generation. “Many young people take for granted what they have now,” said one woman, in an oft-repeated sentiment. Gilliam, who now works with high school journalists at a program called Prime Movers, headquartered at George Washington University, said that lack of “grounding in who they are . . . the disconnection from the history” is one reason for some of the problems of today’s younger people.

She also noted, as the Syracuse (N.Y.) Post-Standard reported last year, “that white journalists who came from the North to cover this struggle for equal rights also experienced ‘some discomfort,’ [but] . . . it was not a 24-hour challenge as faced by black reporters and photographers.

“‘They (white journalists) kind of took for granted . . . how they could sit in the lobby (of their hotels) at night at the end of the day and have a drink and talk about the day. . . . That was just a privilege that was not afforded black reporters,’ she says.” For her, sleeping quarters could be in a funeral home, or places where women worried about their safety.

The film grew out of a February 2004 symposium coordinated by Charlotte Grimes, Knight Chair in Political Reporting at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, marking the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education school desegregation decision. It brought together journalists who covered the civil rights movement.

Gilliam and Withers were among them, and the two, who had worked together at the Tri-State Defender, a black newspaper in Memphis, agreed there was a special role that black journalists played during the movement.

Short may be contacted for DVDs of the film or for further information at (315) 263-4510.

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Rice Accepts Fired Radio Host’s Apology

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday accepted the apology of a St. Louis disc jockey who was fired after saying the word “coon” in describing her, but she used the occasion to defend the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Dave Lenihan, who was in his second week as a morning show host on KTRS (550 AM), was fired almost immediately after saying ‘coon’ while describing why Rice would fit well as commissioner of the National Football League,” as Jake Wagman reported Thursday in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

“She’s been chancellor at Stanford. I mean she’s just got the patent resume of somebody that’s got some serious skill,” Lenihan said, according to a recording provided by KTRS. “She loves football. She’s African American, which would kind of be a big coon. . . .”

“‘A big coon?’ Oh my god,” Lenihan said during the morning broadcast. “I am totally, totally, totally, totally, totally sorry for that. OK? I didn’t mean that. That was just a slip of the tongue.” He said he meant to say “coup.”

On “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace asked Rice, “As someone who grew up in the segregated South, are you surprised that in the year 2006 this kind of thing still happens?

“RICE: Well, first, let me say that my understanding is that he apologized, said he didn’t mean it. I accept that, because we all say things from time to time that we shouldn’t say or didn’t mean to say.

“And so I accept it.

“We all carry, I think, deep scars of how the United States came into being with slavery as an initial birth defect for this country, of years and years of racial separation, of racial tension, of years and years of not being able to come to terms with what ‘we, the people’ really meant.

“And what it says to me is that even mature democracies like the United States—we still have our difficulties. And it reminds me that when people say well, why haven’t the Iraqis achieved this, or why haven’t the Afghans achieved this, that maybe Americans should be a little bit more humble about how hard it is to build democracy, particularly to build multi-ethnic democracy.

“WALLACE: How serious a problem do you think this country still has with racism?

“RICE: Oh, I think the United States still bears the scars of our founding and still bears the scars of how hard it has been to overcome it. But, Chris, anyone who says that we haven’t come a very, very long way, and that for the most part Americans interact with each other as Americans, I think is also not giving you the full picture.

“I was just recently in Australia, and I noted for the students in Australia that should I serve to the end of my term, it would have been 12 years since there was a white man as secretary of state in the United States. Given our history, we’ve come a long way.”

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Student Off Team; Chose J-Meeting Over Practice

“A Tennessee State tennis player was kicked off the team and had her scholarship revoked last month after she missed three days of practice to attend a collegiate journalism conference on behalf of the university,” Nate Rau reported Thursday in the Nashville City Paper.

“Junior Melaney Whiting traveled to the Historically Black Colleges and Universities National Newspaper Conference in North Carolina on Feb. 8-11 instead of attending practices in preparation for the upcoming tennis season.

“Whiting is on staff at the school’s student paper, The Meter, and was the tennis team’s No. 1 singles player. Her trip to the conference was fully funded by the school and approved by Director of Student Publications Pamela Foster and by Interim Vice President for Student Affairs Dorothy Lockridge.

“But when Whiting asked Gerald Robinson, TSU’s tennis coach, if she could skip practice, he refused. Whiting attended anyway.

“As a result, she was first suspended indefinitely by Robinson and then received a letter saying her scholarship had been revoked.”

In today’s edition of the Meter, Lavonte Young and Eddie R. Cole Jr. reported that the Athletics Department said the decision to attend the conference led to an evaluation, which in turn led to a revocation of the scholarship.

“Although the University cannot disclose academic information, it can conclusively state that it has no record that the conference Ms. Whiting attended was tied to any academic course or academic requirement at TSU,” the department said in an official statement.

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Role of Culture Assessed in Plight of Black Men

The New York Times gave splashy op-ed display Sunday to a commentary by Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson on new studies about the plight of uneducated black men.

“The important thing to note about the subculture that ensnares them is that it is not disconnected from the mainstream culture,” Patterson wrote. “To the contrary, it has powerful support from some of America’s largest corporations. Hip-hop, professional basketball and homeboy fashions are as American as cherry pie. Young white Americans are very much into these things, but selectively; they know when it is time to turn off Fifty Cent and get out the SAT prep book.

“For young black men, however, that culture is all there is â?? or so they think. Sadly, their complete engagement in this part of the American cultural mainstream, which they created and which feeds their pride and self-respect, is a major factor in their disconnection from the socioeconomic mainstream.”

Other commentaries:

 

 

 

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Short Takes

  • “‘If we keep going the way we are,’ the PBS television host Tavis Smiley told a packed auditorium in San Francisco earlier this month, ‘this book is going to hit the New York Times best-seller list. I hope you understand the statement this will make . . . when we put this book on the list and force everyone to talk about it,'” Dwight Garner wrote yesterday in the New York Times Book Review. “The book Smiley was selling is called ‘The Covenant With Black America’ (Third World Press), and it is indeed on this week’s list â?? it enters the paperback nonfiction rankings at No. 6.”
  • “The city’s largest black-oriented newspaper, the Philadelphia Tribune, may be hit by a strike on Wednesday if a new contract is not reached with the union that represents its editorial employees, Tom Schmidt reported Friday in the Philadelphia Daily News. Sixteen workers in the bargaining unit of District 1199C, Health Care Workers, are threatening to walk off the job at 12:01 a.m. that day. Management of the Tribune vowed to keep publishing if there’s a strike.”
  • The Farmington (N.M.) Daily Times ran a five-part series last week “examining the findings of the United States Commission on Civil Rights report released earlier this year entitled, ‘The Farmington Report: Civil Rights for Native Americans 30 Years Later.'” It began Tuesday and ended Saturday.
  • The Asian American Journalists Association is objecting to “use of the word ‘Jap’ in a recent broadcast about the Japanese national team in its win in the World Baseball Classic championship title game.” The broadcast took place on WXMI-TV in Grand Rapids, Mich.
  • “WHNT-TV 19 morning anchor/reporter LaTonya Norton has left Channel 19 to take a job with WDSU-TV, the NBC affiliate, in New Orleans. Starting April 10, she will be anchoring the weekend morning newscasts and reporting during the week,” Chris Welch reported Sunday in the Huntsville (Ala.) Times.
  • Agnes Cammock, fashion market, news and trends director for Suede magazine, which went on “hiatus,” is joining Essence magazine as fashion director, and Jean Griffin, vice-president, group design director of Fairchild Publications, is joining as creative director, Essence announced Thursday.
  • Roland S. Martin, editor of the Chicago Defender, was credited for the verbal spanking he gave Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg. “On March 14, John Stroger was felled by a stroke, and Steinberg wrote the next morning that his first assumption on hearing that the ‘wily, 76-year-old Cook County Board president and Democratic Party dinosaur’ had checked into the hospital was that Stroger was faking to win votes,” Michael Miner wrote in the March 24 edition of the Chicago Reader.
  • CBS, NBC and ABC all had women anchoring their Friday night newscasts, Brian Stelter reported today in his TV Newser blog. “Elizabeth Vargas anchored on ABC, Campbell Brown subbed for Brian Williams, and Lesley Stahl filled in for Bob Schieffer on CBS.”

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