Leukemia Patient Told His Position Was Eliminated
Tim Chavez, a columnist for the Nashville Tennessean, was diagnosed with leukemia in late 2005 and eventually had to stop writing his column. When the doctor told him late last month that the chemotherapy had worked well enough for him to return to work, he contacted the paper.
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The Tenneseean, Chavez told Journal-isms on Friday, told him his job had been eliminated.
On Thursday, the alternative paper, the Nashville Scene, wrote about Chavez’s situation under the headline, “Afflict the Afflicted.” It noted that the paper started running a column by a Sunday talk-radio host who “regularly features mean-spirited anti-immigration rhetoric” on his show.
The Scene story is “not true as it’s portrayed. This is the usual twisted, vitriolic drivel from a local alternative newspaper. We don’t comment on their fiction,” Tennessean publisher Ellen Leifeld told Journal-isms.
When those words were repeated to Chavez over the telephone, he was obviously stunned. He said, “You learn.
“I gave 14 years to the company,” speaking of Gannett, which owns the Tennessean. “They didn’t say, ‘thank you for your years of service’ . . . never did contact me and see how I was feeling or anything. It’s just them taking advantage of my [situation].
“The Scene article is very accurate,” he said.
“It really makes recovery a little more difficult. When the going gets tough, you find out who’s who and what’s what.” He paused again.
“That’s tough to take. It’s their newspaper and they can do what they want,” he said. “I’m sorry to hear that.
“Gosh.”
Was it all a big misunderstanding?
Chavez, 48, is awaiting a stem-cell match, and said the doctor told him that a columnist’s office environment “would have the flexibility I need to eliminate the danger of a relapse of leukemia. You have the isolation” necessary to prevent others from harming your immune system.
About the time Chavez left, E.J. Mitchell was editor, Sandra Roberts was editorial page editor and Leslie Giallombardo was publisher. All three are gone, and their successors have not contacted him.
In a follow-up e-mail, Leifeld said:
“Phil Valentine,” the talk show host, “is a freelance columnist. He writes one column per week.
“Tim Chavez was a full-time columnist. The addition of the Valentine column has nothing to do with Tim Chavez, whose column has not appeared in the newspaper for at least a year.
“To tie the two events together is, as I said in the previous note, twisted and vitriolic fiction.
“Here is the story, simple and true:
“Tim Chavez is out on long-term disability. He told HR Director Kathy Cheatham that he HOPES to get the green light from his doctor in March 2008. We have NOT been given any release from his doctor. We cannot even begin to have discussions until we understand what it is that he can do.
“It is true that his PREVIOUS position doesn’t exist. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other things for which he would be considered. It’s possible that another such role could include, in part, a weekly column. We haven’t had the opportunity to have that discussion yet. It sounds to me like he’s jumping to a lot of conclusions.”
Conveyed this message by telephone, Chavez noted the prospect of a weekly column and said, “It’s nice that if they weren’t going to talk to me [about that], at least they talked to Richard Prince.
“These are dangerous times” for diversity in the age of cutbacks, he said.
He said he would have his doctor write a note to the Tennessean saying that while he might not be ready for other jobs until March, he can handle a columnist’s job now.
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7 Black Journalists Leaving St. Louis Post-Dispatch
At least seven black journalists are exiting the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, five of them among 39 newsroom employees — 60 building-wide — taking advantage of the paper’s offers of voluntary early retirement.
They include Cynthia Todd, director of newsroom recruitment; Linda Lockhart, wire editor; reporters Yvonne Samuel and Paul Harris; and photographer Odell Mitchell, Todd told Journal-isms.
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Moreover, Ron Harris, Washington correspondent, resigned, and home editor Jamila Robinson said she is leaving for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to help start a new, service-oriented publication aimed at getting nonsubscribers to read newspapers. Her husband, Post-Dispatch graphic designer Daryl Swint, is on a year’s leave of absence at the Medill School of Journalism in Chicago and will likely want to be with his wife in Atlanta.
“It’s a very difficult time for people of color at this newspaper,” Robinson said, contending that the newspaper articulates the right sentiments about diversity but they weren’t reflected in the people populating the executive suites or in promotions.
Editor Arnie Robbins disagreed, saying, “We’ve made a real commitment to diversity in our hiring and our content. . . I’m proud of the work we’ve done in terms of diversity,” though he said, “we want to do better.”
In the most recent census of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Post-Dispatch reported 16.0 percent people of color: 3.5 percent Asian American, 11.3 percent African American, 1.2 percent Hispanic and no Native Americans.
The departure of the seven comes after three other black journalists left the paper in the last few months: Deborah L. Shelton, an editorial writer who went to the Chicago Tribune as a health reporter, Norman Parish, who went to the Chicago Sun-Times as a reporter, and photographer Gabriel B. Tait, who was on a leave of absence in Africa studying the ministry and decided to leave the paper and attend seminary, Todd said.
Jeremiah Williams reported in the Post-Dispatch on Friday, “The net reduction in staffing will total less than 60, because key positions in the newsroom and elsewhere will need to be refilled, said Kevin Mowbray, the newspaper’s publisher.
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“The annual savings from the Post-Dispatch’s early retirement program is estimated at between $3.9 million and $4.4 million. The initial cost will total about $10.6 million and will be recognized in the 2007 fiscal year of Lee Enterprises Inc., the paper’s Davenport, Iowa-based parent company.”
Robbins told Journal-isms, “It’s a challenging time for the industry and all papers as we reduce our staffs to keep diversity up where it” should be. He said the paper accepted the first 60 people who took early retirement irrespective of the effect on diversity.
Todd, who had been at the Post-Dispatch for 24 years, including service as a reporter and running a suburban bureau, said the paper was still hiring and that despite the departures, the paper still had a number of African American journalists, particularly as editors.
They include Andre Jackson, assistant managing editor for business, Larry Starks, assistant managing editor for sports, Rod Hicks, night news editor, Ron Wade, Sunday editor, Courtney Barrett, copy desk chief, Irvin Harrell, political editor, and Debra Bass, fashion editor. She said she knew of no Hispanics or Asian Americans who were leaving.
Todd said she was “actively seeking another position” in St. Louis “in communications, marketing or recruiting for another industry.”
Harris told Journal-isms, “I was among those leaving in lieu of a possible reduction in the Washington bureau.” His eight years at the paper included time as an editorial writer, assistant metro editor and metro reporter.
Harris was embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq and created a stir with his 2005 report that “former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who will listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq. . . . Each of his claims is either demonstrably false or exaggerated.” He also covered the Hurricane Katrina evacuees in the Houston Astrodome.
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Body Identified as That of Missing Woman
“Dental records today identified the badly decomposed body of a woman
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found early Thursday in south suburban Calumet City as Nailah Franklin, the 28-year-old pharmaceutical representative reported missing more than a week ago, Chicago police said,” the Chicago Tribune reported on its Web site Friday.
Franklin is a 2001 graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who helped start the student chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists at that school. She disappeared in Chicago last week.
“An autopsy was performed today on the badly decomposed body. Police, who are now conducting a death investigation, said the cause of death is ‘inconclusive,'” the Tribune said.
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Tavis Smiley’s GOP Debate: “Wack” or “Dope?”
In the “spin room” at Hill Field House at Morgan State University on Thursday night, it was the camera crew with the white English guy and his African American sidekick that the Republican presidential candidates wanted to be sure not to miss.
The two men put on straight faces and they baited the candidates with such questions as, “It was almost like a white debate, wasn’t it?” prompting such responses such as “they were impeccably behaved” and that it was the white audiences that can become unruly.
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John Oliver |
The reference was to Fox commentator Bill O’Reilly’s recent comment that dining in Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem was “exactly the same” as going to an Italian restaurant.
The two questioners were John Oliver and Larry Wilmore, comedians who play newsmen on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central, a program from which lots of people now receive their news.
Oliver told Journal-isms he had skipped Tavis Smiley’s “All-American Presidential Forums on PBS” with the Democratic candidates at Howard University in June, but made sure to cover this one because the failure of the front-running Republican candidates to show up was “disgraceful.”
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Larry Wilmore |
He echoed the theme of the night — the no-shows, their missed opportunity and their disrespect of communities of color — but wildly exaggerated it.
“What do you make of the racists” who did not show up to debate? Oliver asked former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. “They weren’t afraid of the debate. They were afraid of the post-debate,” Huckabee gamely replied, a reference to having to face the fake newsmen’s questions.
The no-shows on the historically black Baltimore campus also included journalists. Deprived of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, former senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., many journalists just took a pass. Some 251 media credentials were issued, but the media room contained only a fraction of that number.
Comparing the ambiance in this media room to that at its Democratic counterpart at Howard University, Bob Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, quipped, “It’s the difference between a rock concert and a cello quartet.”
For some who did make it, however, the Republican debate was worth it.
Instead of front-runners, viewers saw Sen. Sam Brownback of Texas, Huckabee, Reps. Duncan Hunter of California, Ron Paul of Texas and Tom Tancredo of Colorado, and Alan L. Keyes, the social-conservative activist and onetime Reagan administration official.
And that was all right with Sandra Varner, who was covering the event for her Varner News Service, whose clients include the Oakland (Calif.) Post, part of the black press. “Their voice is devoid of some of the hype that surrounds the front-runners,” she told Journal-isms, speaking of the remaining candidates. “They don’t have to carry the party” as the others do. “They don’t have to placate. They can [express] what they see as the Republican agenda. They put a better face on the Republican party than the front-runners. They’re less compromised.”
Gordon Jackson, managing editor of the Dallas Examiner, a black weekly, was listening for good sound bites. He said he got them. “It made you forget the four who weren’t there,” he said of the front-runnerless event.
Brownback said he hoped to be the president who opened the national African American museum of history and culture on the Mall in Washington, and called for an official apology for slavery. Paul said he would repeal the war on drugs. Huckabee said he would spend more money on fighting diabetes and hypertension, which disproportionately affect blacks. Keyes opposed home rule for the District of Columbia, saying that those who wanted voting rights should move to Maryland or Virginia.
He said he favored capital punishment because black killers “mostly kill black folks and I wouldn’t want to send the message that when you kill another black human being, we somehow don’t take that seriously.”
On immigration, Keyes articulated publicly what many African Americans have contended among themselves: “You want to know who is first hurt by that cheapened price of labor?” he asked. “Black folks. As they’ve been hurt in the rebuilding of New Orleans and other parts of the United States affected by those hurricanes. It’s time we stop fooling around with this issue. I see people, especially black liberals, more worried about illegal immigrants than they have been about how to help black people who have been in this country all along.” Keyes is the only black GOP presidential candidate.
Others brought to the table another strain of Republican thought. “I believe there are a number of Republican presidents who have done a great deal for black Americans because they’ve done something for all Americans,” Tancredo said. “It is destructive to only talk about the politics of race and suggest that all of the actions taken and the specific programs we identify and talk about tonight should be focused on race. It really does not do a service I think to us as Americans.”
Viewers heard well-formulated questions. “To see the journalists of color ask these kind of Socratic questions . . . we don’t often see that in presidential primary debates,” academic celebrity Cornel West told Journal-isms in the spin room. In fact, the inquiries might have been too well-formulated. “Sometimes the question was longer than the time we got to answer it,” Huckabee said. Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, suggested it might be better to have the candidates ask each other questions, since there was little opportunity for follow-up, and candidates like to “duck and dodge.”
Still, as Smiley said, it was the first debate in which the Republican candidates had been asked about education, health care or criminal justice in a way that specifically targeted African Americans. Huckabee said it was the first time in six debates that he was asked about education at all.
Unlike Ruben Navarrette of the San Diego Union Tribune, who said after the Democratic debate at Howard that he did not get to ask a question about Latino issues, Ray Suarez of PBS’ “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” raised the topic of immigration reform as soon as he got the microphone.
Not just a television audience was watching. Seated before the candidates were black Republicans and whites, in about equal numbers, news reports estimated. Black Republicans such as Michael Steele, former Maryland lieutenant governor, said they were disappointed that their front-runners didn’t show. But they took comfort, as Steele said, that “this was an important seed that was planted tonight . . . the seed that the party is not afraid to come into the neighborhood and talk.”
Smiley said he had lunch this week with Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, about including journalists of color in the three presidential debates between the ultimate nominees next year.
Then, as now, many won’t be watching the actual debate, but the version filtered through the fake reporters on “The Daily Show.”
Their exchanges from Morgan State will air sometime next week, Oliver said.
Depending on which sound bites are chosen, viewers will hear the candidates asked whether they considered the event “wack” or “dope.”
Or they’ll hear Paul answer whether he was “the James Meredith, Rosa Parks or the Jesse Owens of black-sponsored debates,” with Wilmore noting that Owens outran a horse. Paul replied that he had to choose Parks, since “I owe something to Rosa,” having voted against creating a gold medal in her honor, calling it unconstitutional.
Another possibility is Wilmore asking a number of them, “what is the biggest, blackest issue?”
And Huckabee replying, “when the lights go out. I’m really afraid of the dark.” Or, as an alternative, “The black hole of space. If I’m president we’re going to explore the black hole.”
All four of the no-shows claimed a scheduling conflict.
Oliver asked Huckabee if he knew that Romney was actually spotted that night at an International House of Pancakes.
“Well, he’s getting some foreign policy experience,” the former governor replied.
- Gadi Dechter, Baltimore Sun: Right cheek or left, it still feels like a slap
- David Nitkin and Matthew Hay Brownadi, Baltimore Sun: Republican long shots get moment in spotlight
- Deborah Simmons, Washington Times: Color trumps America’s rainbow
