N.Y. News Drops E.R. Shipp

Pulitzer Winner Says, “I Was Fired. I Had No Clue”

“OUR SHIPP SAILS AWAY WITH PULITZER,” the New York Daily News trumpeted in 1996, when its columnist E.R. Shipp brought home the Pulitzer Prize, the first time in 10 years the News had won the award.

On Tuesday, the News told Shipp it was dropping her column at the end of November.

“I was fired,” Shipp told Journal-isms. Arthur Browne, who became editorial page editor in 2003, “called me and said they want to move in a different direction.”

How does she feel? “I can’t really tell you,” Shipp said. “This came out of the blue. I had no clue. I have no idea what’s going on.”

Shipp’s column, once twice a week, was cut back to twice a month for the summer, she said. She writes under contract for the News and is also the Lawrence Stessin distinguished professor in journalism at the Hofstra University School of Communication and a regular panelist on the “News & Notes” show on National Public Radio. From 1998 to 2000, she was the Washington Post’s ombudsman.

Browne told Journal-isms, “Periodically we change the voices on our op-ed pages and elsewhere, changing the mix a little bit.

“Part of what’s been happening on our op-ed pages is that we have added guest columnists, increasing the proportion of guest writers, experts in particular subjects. We have substantially increased the number of those type of contributions and we want to keep going in that direction and we only have a certain number of spaces.”

Browne noted that he had reduced the number of in-house columnists over the last two years. He dropped Mike Barnicle, formerly of the Boston Globe; A.M. Rosenthal, the late former editor of the New York Times; Lou Dobbs, the CNN host; Richard Schwartz, former News editorial page editor and one-time senior adviser to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani; and Zev Chafets.

He said he had added Errol Louis, an African American who also joined the editorial board, and editorial-board member William Hammond, based in Albany, the state capital.

“We’re always in the market for new voices,” he said.

Louis told Journal-isms Wednesday, “I’ve been hearing that for a number of months now. That’s what they told me when I was hired—that they’re looking for new voices. Nobody here is considered irreplaceable. It’s just part of the job.”

“I join the rest of my journalistic generation of pioneers who don’t have the jobs they thought they had,” Shipp, 51, told Journal-isms.

Shipp was a reporter and editor at the New York Times from 1980 to 1993, joining the News in 1994. She has an M.S. in journalism, another master’s in history and a law degree from Columbia University. She taught at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism before moving to Hofstra in 2005. She was a co-author of the 1990 book “Outrage: The Story Behind the Tawana Brawley Hoax.”

In awarding her the Pulitzer for commentary in 1996, the Pulitzer Board said, “Through her weekly opinion column, Shipp has distinguished herself as one of New York’s most intelligent, unpredictable and interesting voices. She tries to leave no feathers unruffled as she examines a broad array of public policy issues, including violence, the quality of our schools and education system, affirmative action and the future of Africa.”

Editor & Publisher reported, “Shipp said one of her winning entries involved” O.J. “Simpson defense attorney Johnnie Cochran’s unabashed use of the race card during the so-called trial of the century. She said she was particularly offended when Cochran implored African American newspeople to ‘be part of team O.J.'” during the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention. “She also opined in her space on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ ‘very complicated sense of racial pride.’

“While hard pressed to pinpoint the subject that most got her blood boiling, the columnist offered up welfare reform and affirmative action as two possibilities.

“‘If you feel passionate about a subject, the columns almost write themselves,’ she said.”

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Ira Harkey, Courageous Miss. Editor, Dies at 88

Ira B. Harkey Jr., a Mississippi newspaper owner, publisher and editor who was vilified by his fellow whites after winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1963 for advocating the peaceful integration of James Meredith into the University of Mississippi, died Sunday at age 88 of Parkinson’s Disease.

Harkey owned the Chronicle Star, predecessor of the Mississippi Press in Pascagoula, which recalled in an editorial Tuesday: “In a 2004 article about his life published in Tulane University Magazine, Harkey said, ‘I had the feeling—and I hate to say this because I sound like a jerk—I had the feeling I could make a difference. That I could really teach these people that the black man was a human being and not an animal. That he deserved the same rights as everyone else.’

“Following the Pulitzer announcement, the editor of the Holmes County (Miss.) Herald wrote that he ‘read with a taste of gall on my [palate] where another Mississippian has collected his reward for playing the part of traitor, defecting to the Kennedy-King Klan.’

“While his journalistic peers turned their backs on Harkey, he also became a popular target for misplaced hate in his adopted hometown. He was shot at, received regular death threats and awoke one morning to find a cross burning in his yard.”

“One month after receiving the Pulitzer for editorial writing . . . Harkey sold the newspaper.”

In the Bradenton (Fla.) Herald, Geoff Pender wrote Tuesday: “George Thatcher, himself in the newspaper advertising business at another Coast publication at the time, said Harkey’s Chronicle, around 1949 or ’50, was the first Mississippi newspaper to use the titles Mr., Mrs. and Miss before the names of black people.

“‘It may sound like a very small thing these days, but that was a very great step for a newspaper back then,’ Thatcher said. ‘No Mississippi newspaper to my knowledge did so at that time.'”

• Vivian Austin, Biloxi (Miss.) Sun Herald: Pulitzer winner Ira Harkey dies at 88
• Editorial, Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger: Harkey: Southern journalist let truth be guide
• Sid Salter, Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger: Harkey lived long enough to see state embrace ideals

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Zakaria Joined Administration Strategy Session

“It was the kind of shadowy, secret Washington meeting that Bob Woodward is fond of describing in detail,” Julie Bosman wrote Monday in the New York Times. “In his new book, ‘State of Denial,’ he writes that on Nov. 29, 2001, a dozen policy makers, Middle East experts and members of influential policy research organizations gathered in Virginia at the request of Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense. Their objective was to produce a report for President Bush and his cabinet outlining a strategy for dealing with Afghanistan and the Middle East in the aftermath of 9/11.

“What was more unusual, Mr. Woodward reveals, was the presence of journalists at the meeting. Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International and a Newsweek columnist, and Robert D. Kaplan, now a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, attended the meeting and, according to Mr. Kaplan, signed confidentiality agreements not to discuss what happened . . .

“Mr. Zakaria said he felt participating was appropriate because his views, as a columnist for Newsweek, were public, although he has never divulged his involvement to his readers.

“‘My column is an analytical column,’ he said, adding that he gives advice to policy makers and elected officials: ‘If a senator calls me up and asks me what should we do in Iraq, I’m happy to talk to him.'”

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AP Explains Story on Black College Enrollment

The Associated Press is standing by its widely circulated September story that said enrollment was declining at historically black colleges and universities.

The article and the young black reporter who wrote it, Dionne Walker of the AP’s Richmond Bureau, who covers diversity issues, were denounced by Hampton University in a news release posted on its Web site. The release said, “It appears as if the reporter did not want to be confused with the facts,” and “the reporter acted in a very sophomoric manner.”

The United Negro College Fund also took issue with the story, but took a gentler tone and did not post its letter to Walker.

Kristin Gazlay, AP’s deputy managing editor responsible for its national report, told Journal-isms that the aim of the story “was to examine the underpinnings of a trend supported by U.S. Department of Education statistics—that historically black colleges are attracting a smaller percentage of America’s black students than they once did. The story appropriately describes this decline of more than 5 percent over 25 years as a ‘steady trickle.’ It also notes that 26 of 87 black schools profiled by the department—that’s almost a third—experienced enrollment declines from 1995-2004.

“Our goal was to explore what could be behind those numbers at these significant academic institutions. And, indeed, the story offers sources explaining several possible factors playing into the trend, including aging campuses, increased competition from predominantly white schools trying to become more diverse, changes in black students’ desires, and the greater opportunities available to black students in a society more integrated than that of their parents.

“It is true that the story opens with the experience of one student who chose a large public university over a historically black college, but that is in no way an indictment of all the good work the historically black colleges do. It’s merely an example of the trend in action: It’s why this particular student chose not to go to Hampton.

“By the time you wrote, one of our news managers in the AP’s Richmond bureau already had spoken to the university at length about its complaints about the story, and that talk ended on a positive note.”

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Reminder of Media Influence on Young Indians

“A recent conference in South Dakota was an eye-opener for me regarding new issues in Indian country. And it helped me realize that as a member of the media, I can [effect] positive changes on reservations,” Dorreen Yellow Bird wrote Wednesday in the Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald.

“The conference, called the 2006 Native American Media Symposium, was held at South Dakota State University in Brookings.

“. . . Way back in the 1940s and ’50s, tribal leaders answered questions [from reporters] as best they could. I remember how some of those interviews read in the paper: The misinformation was laughable at times and gave such an awful spin to Indian life that we cringed at the reaction we’d get the next time we went to town.

“That has changed. Back then, newspapers would identify ‘Indians’ while not identifying other people, especially when reporting a bad-news story. Today, race can be mentioned only if it’s important to the story.

“But the dilution of the Indian culture is the main issue for me. Much of what’s happening in Indian country today hinges on how much we have lost, as a people and culture.

“Young people today are influenced by the media—TV, the Internet, magazines, newspapers and so on. On most reservations, you’ll find young people looking as if they just walked out of a hip-hop neighborhood in New York City, complete with baggy pants, chains, bandanas and jive talk,” she continued.

“In the media, we see poverty, alcoholism and such” on reservations, but “we don’t see the gentle, peaceful elders and spiritual leaders or the woman who cares for a large family with a smile and good humor. We often don’t see the gifts the Creator gave to Indian people in the form of ceremonies, knowledge of the land and creatures as well as powerful, spiritual beliefs.”

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Mascot Foes Said to Feel “Fear and Intimidation”

Gannett News Service columnist George Benge attended the University of Illinois homecoming game to write the second in a series of columns describing a Native American’s experience attending games of football teams with American Indian mascots or names.

“I came to this leafy, quintessentially Midwestern campus on homecoming weekend to see the Illiniwek spectacle for myself,” Benge wrote.

“During my time here, I also saw that:

• “After eight decades of institutionalized cultural insensitivity, the timing is right for the university to officially terminate the demeaning fantasy of Chief Illiniwek and the equally demeaning nickname ‘Fighting Illini.’
• “The university dogma that has perpetuated Chief Illiniwek has no basis in coherent reality.
• “A climate of fear and intimidation permeates the lives of Native American administrators, faculty members and students who exercise their First Amendment freedom to speak out against Chief Illiniwek.
• “Sanctions imposed on the university by the National Collegiate Athletic Association because of Chief Illiniwek have created hope that the chief’s retirement might come soon.
• “The Illiniwek culture is so deeply ingrained — from cradle to grave — that loyalists hope to somehow keep the chief alive even after the university’s board of trustees delivers the inevitable coup de grace.”

In the Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa, Benge’s column was followed by unsympathetic reader comments.

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Which Africa to Report, and Who’s to Blame?

As reported Monday, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, the veteran journalist who is touting “New News Out of Africa” in a new book, said in an interview with allAfrica.com, “I don’t have a problem with reporting death, disease, disaster and despair, because all of the above exist.

“But that is not all there is to Africa. And when you have crises to which the international community should respond, increasingly there is a reluctance to do so because, after all of this negative reporting, there is a feeling: What’s the point?”

Hunter-Gault reports for National Public Radio, among other outlets. Elsewhere on NPR this week, correspondent Jason Beaubien seemed to be taking a different view. His five-part series, “Why Are They Poor?” “examines how armed conflict, poor agricultural practices, disease, lousy governments and foreign trade practices contribute to making Africa the poorest continent in the world.”

Africans themselves are of more than one mind on who is to blame for the continent’s image. Writing this week in the Accra Mail in Ghana, Godwin Yaw Agboka said:

“For me, refrains like ‘the western media is painting Africa black’ among others, are becoming a cliche. We have been hearing the western media argument for years now. It is an open secret that the western media is so much to blame for the way Africa is perceived by people for whom Africa is alien but for how long can we (Africans) continue trumpeting how this and that have caused our woes without accepting that we are part of the problem we accuse other people of creating?”

• Rick Martinez, Raleigh News & Obeserver: Africa, graveyard of hope

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Lad Magazine “Used Only Certain Quotes”

“Since joining Miami’s Fox affiliate WSVN in 2004, Elita has done more than Ace Ventura to protect South Florida. And she has also done it with a better figure than Al Roker,” according to FHM, the lad magazine whose readers voted Elita Loresca “sexiest newscaster” and featured her in its October issue.

Elita Loresca

“‘People in Miami embrace curves,’ says the 29-year-old Philippines-born beauty,” the magazine copy continued. “‘Here, I can wear a cute sweater and still be professional.'”

“The magazine used only certain quotes that I gave in order to appeal to its readership,” the Orange County (Calif.) Register’s Katherine Nguyen today quoted Loresca as saying. “I think there were people here who worried that the quotes of me joking about how I didn’t know a thing when I first got into weather reporting and how the women dress in Miami made it sound like I wasn’t credible.”

Nguyen told readers, “She’s actually a year away from completing meteorology school and was a news assignment editor at an NBC affiliate in Bakersfield before joining WSVN in 2004 . . . She’s come a long way from fetching faxes in the obits department as a former news assistant at The Orange County Register.”

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Short Takes

• Crystal Johns has been named director, career development and diversity recruiting for CBS News, effective Oct. 16, CBS announced Tuesday. Johns is to report to Linda Mason, CBS News senior vice president, standards and special projects. Johns was a coordinating producer for Allen/Nee Productions from 1999 to 2003. From 1992 to 1999, she served as special projects manager for WJZ-TV, the CBS-owned station in Baltimore.
• Little, Brown book publisher has acquired “Brothers (and Me)” by Washington Post columnist Donna Britt for fall 2008 publication, Publishers Weekly reported Monday. When Britt was in grad school, her brother Darrell, 26, was shot to death under suspicious circumstances by police in Gary, Ind. “Britt will look at how the death of her brother moved her to be more present for the men in her life, particularly black men. Britt will also examine the complex relationship between black women and men, and how women generally need to find balance in their relationships with men,” the article said. Britt, whose column last appeared June 9, told Journal-isms she would be on book leave for about a year and a half.
• Deborah Garcia moves home to New York as a reporter at WCBS-TV from WKMG-TV in Orlando, the N.S. Bienstock Inc., agency reported in the newsletter ShopTalk.
• Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Terrell Owens might not have generated big numbers in his return to Philadelphia Sunday, but the same can’t be said about Fox’s coverage of the game, Ben Grossman told readers of Broadcasting & Cable on Tuesday. The Cowboys-Eagles matchup drew 22.1 million viewers, up 29 percent over the comparable telecast last year. According to Fox Sports, the game gave Fox the second highest-rated program of the day, trailing only “Grey’s Anatomy” on ABC, Grossman reported.
• “Is it fair to ask the president who named Jesus as his favorite philosopher, ‘What would Jesus do when interrogating terrorist suspects?'” columnist Mary C. Curtis of the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer asked Tuesday on NiemanWatchdog.org.
• “Frank Turner ended his local TV news career Monday, leaving WXYZ-TV (Channel 7) to pursue Christian evangelism full time,” John Smyntek reported Tuesday in the Detroit Free Press. “In his final on-air utterance just before 6 p.m. Monday, Turner paid tribute to colleagues, his audience—’loyal, supportive, wonderful’—and moved his partner Robbie Timmons to tears as he announced ‘the beginning of his new life as a man of God,’ including a broadcast ministry.”
• Calvin Hughes of KYW-TV in Philadelphia is joining WPLG-TV in Miami as anchor and reporter, the William Morris Agency reported in ShopTalk.
• Wen Tung joins KNSD-TV in San Diego as a news producer. She previously worked as a news producer/fill-in reporter at KSEE-TV in Fresno, Calif., and WEEK-TV in Peoria, Ill., the William Morris Agency reported in ShopTalk.
• In a letter to the editor of Editor & Publisher, Soren Triff, a writer with El Nuevo Herald, took issue with criticism from Miami Herald Editor Tom Fiedler. “The prevalent perception in the newsroom of certain Cuban Americans as the threatening ‘Other’ resulted in an attack to the credibility of another business owned by the same holding company and an anomalous relationship with part of the consumers the Herald serves. This attitude—if proven to be true—is morally unacceptable and it surely won’t increase the value of McClatchy stocks neither improve the public service both newspapers provide to the community,” Triff wrote.
• “Continuing a long tradition of war coverage, The Afro-American Newspapers has announced plans to send reporter Leonard Sparks to Baghdad to be embedded with American troops for three weeks in October,” Michael H. Cottman wrote Tuesday on BlackAmericaWeb.com. “The newspaper plans to offer readers weekly news stories from Baghdad and daily updates, entitled ‘Today in Baghdad,’ which will include audio and video feeds through its Web site.” Sparks has already begun writing about families of service members in Iraq in preparation for the trip, publisher Jake Oliver said in August.
• “One of the more comprehensive collections of African-American historical artifacts in the Midwest has escaped being forever locked behind the closed doors of a defunct firehouse, but it still faces an uncertain future, the victim of governmental bureaucracy, a lack of money, tax problems and administrative missteps,” Michael E. Ross wrote Wednesday on MSNBC.com, speaking of the Black Archives of Mid-America Inc., in Kansas City.
• “A new Spanish-language parenting magazine catering to Latinos in the Pacific Northwest is expected to debut next month with a monthly frequency,” Moses Frenck reported Tuesday in Marketing y Medios. “Padres de Hoy, published by Seattle-based Northwest Parent Media Inc., which also publishes Seattle’s Child and Puget Sound Parent magazines, yesterday announced it will launch the title with the December 2006 issue.”
• Peter Gamble, continuing as publisher of blackcommunicator.com after the departure of co-founder Glenn Ford, announced an editorial board of African American activists: Carl Bloice, Julian Bond, Rose Brewer, Imani Countess, Bill Fletcher Jr., James Jennings, Badili Jones, Julianne Malveaux, Leith Mullings, Steven Pitts, Maya Rockeymoore, Jamala Rogers, William L. (Bill) Strickland, Chuck Turner, Emira Woods and Jeanne Woods. Ford and senior editors Bruce Dixon and Margaret Kimberley left to launch BlackAgendaReport.com, which is online with its inaugural issue.
• George E. Curry, editor of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service, proposed in his column that black Marylanders “teach both parties a lesson by voting for the Black Republican, Lt. Gov. Michael Steele” for the U.S. Senate. Curry said Democrats disrespected African Americans with their treatment of Kwesi Mfume, who lost in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate nomination.
• Reporters Without Borders called on Nigerian authorities to redouble their efforts to identify those responsible for the murder of Omololu Falobi, founder and executive director of Journalists Against AIDS and former features editor of the privately owned daily The Punch, who was gunned down Oct. 5 in Lagos. In the United States, the Black AIDS Institute said, “the world lost one of its most talented and caring voices in the struggle against HIV/AIDS.” Falobi, 35, was an institute board member.
• Jack Nduri, a journalist with Kenya’s Standard Group of newspapers, told police a top politician threatened to kill him for allegedly refusing to carry a story in the politician’s favor, and Nduri is now in hiding, Robert Nyasato reported Wednesday in the Nairobi’s East African Standard.
• In Guinea, Ibrahima Sory Dieng, managing director, and Alhassane Souare, editor-in-chief of the state-owned newspaper Horoya, were suspended indefinitely by the minister of information for not publishing a photograph of President Lassana Conte alongside his speech, the Media Foundation for West Africa reported over the weekend.