Washington Post Co., Henry Louis Gates Team Up Online
Originally published Jan. 28, 2008
Lynette Clemetson had been going to work in Washington’s Dupont Circle neighborhood for the past two months engaged in a secret project. On Monday, she returned to those temporary quarters, but her project was no longer a secret: She could tell that because of the number of e-mails she had received. The response to its debut was “overwhelming.”
Clemetson is managing editor of the Root, a new daily online magazine from the Washington Post Co., conceived by Post Co. Chairman Donald Graham and celebrity scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. , Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard and director there of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.
The Root’s opening day was heavy on Topic A: The victory by Sen. Barack Obama in Saturday’s Democratic primary in South Carolina and the endorsements by Caroline Kennedy, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and novelist Toni Morrison that went public soon afterward. The site was continually updated throughout the day, which distinguished it from most other Web sites targeting African Americans. A challenge to the notion, posted during the day, that Morrison was the first to call Bill Clinton America’s “first black president” was posted by late evening. A short piece by Jack E. White, former Time magazine columnist, was headlined, “Thanks Toni, I Got This.” A spokeswoman said there was no way to gauge first-day viewership.
According to a news release, “the Root” “will feature penetrating, lively commentary on political, social and cultural issues and will showcase the breadth and depth of viewpoints currently shaping black culture. The site will also feature multimedia including slide shows and videos interviews.”
It continued: “‘This is an historic endeavor — “The Root” is one of the world’s first web-based magazines dedicated to reporting and commenting upon the interests, concerns, and achievements of African Americans and people of African descent throughout the world,’ said Gates, Editor in Chief of ‘The Root.’ ‘Black journalists have long dreamed of creating a national black newspaper and since W.E.B. Du Bois created The Crisis Magazine in 1910 and John H. Johnson created Ebony in 1945, black people have demonstrated a profound devotion to periodicals targeted to their aspirations, dreams and challenges. ‘The Root’ fulfills both of these goals and through the power of the Internet creates a truly interactive community.
“In addition to Gates, Lynette Clemetson joins ‘The Root’ as Managing Editor from The New York Times. Previously an award-winning national and foreign correspondent for Newsweek magazine, Clemetson, has covered race, ethnicity and shifting demographics both in the United States and abroad. Terence Samuel, a top political reporter formerly of U.S. News & World Report and AOL Black Voices, will serve as Deputy Editor of ‘The Root.’ Omar Wasow, co-founder of BlackPlanet, one of the largest communities of African Americans online, and Doctorate student in Harvard’s department of African and African American studies, is a strategic advisor for tools and community elements on the site.” Also on board is Natalie Hopkinson, formerly an editor in the Post’s Outlook section.
The site also is distinguished by the emphasis on news — “A lot of what exists on the Web is entertainment with news as an extra as opposed to news being the foundation,” Clemetson said — and the presence of Gates.
Part of the site’s purpose is to call attention to African American genealogy, an interest of Gates’. He is executive producer of PBS’ “African American Lives” and co-founder of the testing site AfricanDNA.com. “The Root” hosts an interactive section to trace genealogy and heritage. Gates is a hands-on editor, Clemetson said, and his involvement alone was enough to get writers to contribute. The pay for writers isn’t much. “We’re a startup. It’s a symbolic project. We can’t pay by the word,” Clemetson said, but the opportunity for exposure among such select company is apparently enough of a drawing card.
Among the contributors are Malcolm Gladwell, Thelma Golden, William Julius Wilson, John McWhorter, Charlayne Hunter- Gault, Sam Fulwood and Alice Bonner.
Gates sold the fruits of a similar effort, the Web site africana.com, to AOL Time Warner in 2000. It became absorbed into what became AOL Black Voices. “The Root” starts out published by a mainstream media company, the Washington Post Co.’s Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive.
Writers may reach Clemetson at this e-mail address.
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Does Obama Seem “Remote” to the Press? Yes and No
“When reporters filed onto Barack Obama‘s press plane after his acrimonious debate with Hillary Rodham Clinton last week, one thing was noticeably missing amid the wine and snacks on the Boeing 737,” Howard Kurtz wrote Monday in the Washington Post.
“There was no high-level campaign spinner to argue that Obama had gotten the better of the exchanges or that the verbal fisticuffs were part of some precisely calculated strategy. On the press bus the next day, mid-level aides dealt with travel logistics but made no attempt to shape the coverage.
“In an age of all-out political warfare, the Obama campaign is a bit of an odd duck: It is not obsessed with winning each news cycle. The Illinois senator remains a remote figure to those covering him, and his team, while competent and professional, makes only spotty attempts to drive its preferred story lines in the press.
“‘There is no charm offensive from the candidate toward the press corps,’ says Newsweek correspondent Richard Wolffe. “The contact is limited. . . . They see the national media more as a logistical problem than a channel for getting stuff out.'”
Black journalists interacting with Obama report varying experiences.
Chicago journalist Monroe Anderson, who is covering Obama for the Afro-American newspapers, told Journal-isms, “We crossed paths in New Hampshire when he stopped at a crafts store next door to the coffee shop where the press pack was waiting. I was in the crafts store because I knew I wouldn’t have been able to hear or see anything stationed behind the media mob. In the store, he spoke to me and asked how I was doing. Then moved on. I could have pressed him with a question but chose not to. Minutes later, I ran into Michelle,” the candidate’s wife, “who gave me a big hug, also asking how I was doing.”
Mary C. Curtis of the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer said, “I wasn’t on the bus with the national traveling press, so I can’t speak to that. It wasn’t that hard for me to get a few minutes with him, though. And he was pretty open.”
Another member of the traveling press corps said, “Obama is an equal-opportunity snubber. He is polite, but his campaign pretty much kept most print reporters away from him. I only traveled with him since Iowa, and during that time he stayed away from everybody.”
DeWayne Wickham, columnist for USA Today and Gannett News Service, said, “I haven’t had a problem getting to Sen. Obama. I’ve had two in-person interviews with him since October and three telephone interviews. I recently missed an opportunity to have dinner with Sen. Obama in South Carolina because I couldn’t fit that meeting into my schedule.
“I’ve gotten a tentative commitment from him to make a major statement about civil rights and race relations at an observance of the 40th anniversary of the Kerner Commission report at North Carolina A&T on Monday, Feb. 25 — a gathering that will be attended by 15 black columnists from around the nation.”
Meanwhile, Obama enjoyed mostly positive national press coverage after his victory in South Carolina on Saturday, with the Clintons coming under fire as racially divisive.
Gal Beckerman noted on the Columbia Journalism Review Web site that as Obama’s handlers prepared the stage for his victory speech, “They put middle-class-looking white families right in the middle of the bandstand, including one older man in a business suit and his blond wife together with their teenaged son, mop-topped and wearing a tie. The skin tone got darker on the edges of the stand and reflected more the make-up of the audience.
“Look, there’s nothing wrong with this,” she continued. “Even though I stood by a group of reporters who commented about it and giggled as we saw it happening, nobody was going to write about it. Use of people as backdrops has become standard practice and if that’s what it took to subliminally send the message into millions of homes that Obama’s win was as inclusive as it really was, so be it.”
Fishbowl NY reported, “Don Imus got into an animated discussion this morning about former President Bill Clinton‘s comparison of Obama’s South Carolina primary victory over Senator Clinton to Jesse Jackson. ‘If I had made that comparison to Jesse Jackson,’ I have a feeling that I’d be talking to Al Sharpton again,’ Imus told Michael Graham of Boston’s WTKK.”
In the newsroom of the Greenville (S.C.) News, “People who never speak to me, never even think of speaking were coming up to me in the newsroom on Saturday, as Barack was wiping Hillary’s clock,” reporter E. Richard Walton, a black journalist, told Journal-isms. “And I mean they came up to me with all this combination of excitement, wonderment mixed with dread: the subtext was, ‘What is going to happen if y’all take over?'” More in the Feedback section, below.
Caroline Kennedy‘s widely noted endorsement of Obama in a Sunday New York Times op-ed piece was of such interest that the New York Times Syndicate decided to offer it to other newspapers, Editor & Publisher reported on Monday.
Armando Acuna, Sacramento (Calf.) Bee: When the subject is a poll’s accuracy, size matters
Amy Alexander, theNation.com: A Torch Passed
Monroe Anderson blog: Was South Carolina’s primary a race race?
Gal Beckerman, CJR Daily: Waiting for Obama
Mary C. Curtis, Charlotte (N.C.) Observer: Winner’s hope contrasts week of rough politics
George Diaz, Orlando Sentinel: Sound bites en Español don’t cut it
Brian Gilmore, ebonyjet.com: Are the Clintons playing the race card? the envelope, please.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson, syndicated: ‘Nevada Phenomenon’ Bigger Peril to Obama than the Bradley Effect
Errol Louis, New York Daily News: Army of youth is Obama’s secret weapon
Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times: On the trail with Michelle Obama: ‘What are they waiting for?’
Les Payne, Newsday: Despite gains, Barack Obama still faces challenge
Nedra Pickler, Associated Press: Racial divide in S.C. vote could spell trouble for Obama in future primaries
Barry Saunders, Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer: No time to wait for kooky uncles
Wilbert A. Tatum, New York Amsterdam News: Hillary Rodham Clinton for president
Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: New president will be faced with long-term economic woes
Ed Wiley III, BET.com: Shock factor
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“Behold the Filmmaker!” Hundreds Honor St. Clair Bourne
By Audrey Edwards
for Journal-isms
In some ways it resembled a final casting call. Players notable and ordinary, famous and notorious, turning out by the hundreds at the Riverside Church in New York to celebrate the life of one of their own, renowned independent filmmaker St. Clair Bourne, who died at 64 on Dec. 15 of complications following surgery.
An “indy” is by definition active and creative, political and daring. So, too, were most of those in the group gathered to pay final respects at Bourne’s memorial service on Friday. Bourne’s best friend, Tanoa Rodgers, who is responsible for media relations at the church, said more than 1,000 people were present. Writer and activist Amiri Baraka was front and center, serving as emcee, recalling Bourne as “one of the greats in a grand generation,” and telling the audience, “I can’t remember a time when Saint wasn’t on the set, and I’ll never get used to him not being on the set.”
With more than 40 independent films to his credit, including the celebrated “Let the Church Say Amen;” “Langston Hughes: The Dream Keeper;” “The Black and the Green”; and “John Henrik Clarke: A Great and Mighty Walk,” Bourne’s scope as a filmmaker was matched only by the depth of his passion and commitment to documenting all aspects of the black experience. “Saint always talked about the importance of African Americans telling our stories,” remembered his friend Sam Pollard. “He always had at least 10 film projects running through his head at one time. He was indomitable.”
Fellow filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles termed Bourne a man “who made great films and kept great friends.” When he heard of Bourne’s death, from a blood clot that developed in his lung after surgery for a benign brain tumor, “I felt a pain in the pit of my stomach that I hadn’t felt since my grandmother died.”
Rodgers told the audience that Bourne’s tumor had actually been diagnosed 12 years ago, but he chose not to deal with it then, and to not disclose it. “He didn’t tell anyone —except me,” said Rodgers, who had known Bourne since they were high school students in Brooklyn. “I cried in waves that I’d never cried before,” he said when Bourne died at age 64.
A recurring theme throughout the service was the scope not only of Bourne’s film passions, but his romantic ones. Twice married, he remained close friends with both wives and his many girlfriends, among them political activist Kathleen Cleaver, who spoke of her nine-year relationship with Bourne. Poet Sonia Sanchez gave a fiery call to the ancestors —both living and dead — as she added Bourne’s name to the honor roll, and then shouted: “Behold the filmmaker! I shall look for you in the clouds, my brother, and hold the stars in my teeth.”
Bourne’s sister, Judith L. Bourne, gave the eulogy, but departed a minute from the script by saying, “I want to tell you some things about Saint you probably don’t know.” One of those things is that Bourne was born a twin and survived, while his sibling died at birth.
She spoke of her brother’s work with the Peace Corps and quitting in disillusionment, and then getting a scholarship to Columbia University’s Graduate School of the Arts to study filmmaking. But before Bourne could earn his master’s degree, he was part of the radical black student movement that took over the university’s administration building in 1968. He got arrested, then expelled. Even so, one of his professors was impressed enough with Bourne to recommend him for a job at “Black Journal,” the first black public affairs series airing on PBS. He got the job, starting out as an assistant producer but becoming a full producer within five months.
During his three years with “Black Journal,” Bourne helped the show win an Emmy and found his life’s passion as a maker of documentary films. When he left “Black Journal” in 1971, Bourne formed his own production company, initially named Chamba, and later changed to ChambaMediaWorks, which he ran until his death.
Young filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris spoke of Bourne’s spirit of generosity, noting that Bourne “was not ego-driven. He understood we can only make changes as a group.” Harris also talked about Bourne mentoring and tutoring so many younger filmmakers. “We are his heirs —the black documentarians of my generation— and to us, he represents the triumph of integrity.”
To his closest friends, Bourne was also a brother who loved to party. In closing the service, writer Thulani Davis reminded the audience of Bourne’s great passion for life, his political activism tempered by the recognition that it is important to love deeply and actively— and to certainly have a good time. He always said he wanted a party after he died, Davis said. He had one. Downstairs, after the service, in a large reception area of the church.
Friends and family, fans and the fabulous, here’s a who’s who of who Saint was watching over during his after-party:
Filmmaker Stanley Nelson and his sister, the writer Jill Nelson . . . the film historian and biographer Donald Bogle . . . actors Danny Glover and Roger Guenveur Smith . . . filmmaker Julie Dash . . . independent television producer Eric Tait . . . film executive Warrington Hudlin . . . literary agent Marie Brown . . . screenwriter Richard Wesley and his wife, the novelist Valerie Wilson Wesley . . . independent filmmaker Kathe Sandler and her mother, arts administrator Joan Sandler . . . book editor Maliaka Adero . . . actress Novella Nelson . . . literary agent Faith Hampton Childs and her husband, art dealer Harris Schrank . . . writer Clayton Riley . . . filmmaker Louise Fleming . . . architect J. Max Bond Jr. and his wife, the writer and activist Jean Carey Bond . . . novelist and activist Louise Meriwether . . . journalist Lena Sherrod . . . Newsday columnist Les Payne . . . journalist and editor Joel Dreyfuss and his wife, Veronica Pollard Dreyfuss . . . publicists Terrie Williams and Charles Richardson . . . television producer Marquita Poole.
Herb Boyd, theBlackWorldToday.com: Filmmaker St. Clair Bourne Remembered [Jan. 29]
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Copy Editors, Women Could Be at Highest Risk of Burnout
Journalism professor Scott Reinardy of Ball State University worked for five daily newspapers and knew firsthand the stress of being a journalist, Simon Owens wrote Thursday on his blog.
“So in early 2007, the professor sent emails to 1,452 U.S. daily newspapers . . . requesting the staff e-mail lists of their full-time newspaper employees. After emailing all the contact addresses that were given to him, he was able to get 770 journalists to fill out an online survey. . . . Reinardy tried to examine whether age, job title, and newspaper circulation would affect journalist job burnout.
“The average income of respondents was $48,493, and the average journalist was 41.6 years old with 17.8 years of journalism experience. The majority of the respondents were reporters, followed by news editors, copy editors, executive editors and photographers.
“When the journalists were asked if they had intentions to leave newspaper journalism, 25.7 percent answered ‘yes’ and 36.2 percent answered ‘don’t know,’ the study states. . . . Further examination reveals that 31 percent of young journalists (34 and younger) expressed intentions to leave the profession, and 43.5 percent answered ‘don’t know.'”
“When those who said they wanted to leave the profession were asked why, ’36 percent said money or salary was the reason, 27 percent said hours or schedule and 19 percent said stress or burnout. Also, a reference to family life was mentioned in 13 percent of the responses.’
“After the study was completed, Reinardy concluded that though newspaper journalists had a high level of cynicism about their professions, they only had moderate rates of exhaustion and professional efficacy. And of the different job titles, copy editors at smaller papers experienced the highest level of burnout.
Reinardy told Journal-isms he did not have a large enough pool to draw conclusions about burnout among journalists of color.
But he said that women reported higher levels of exhaustion and cynicism than men. He said 74.5 percent of women ages 35 or younger said they intended to leave the profession or answered “don’t know.”
He cautioned, however, that the respondents were self-selected, so it could be that those who were most dissatisfied chose to respond.
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Short Takes
Michael Wilbon, Washington Post sports columnist and ESPN commentator, suffered a mild heart attack on Monday “while at his second home in Scottsdale, Az. Thankfully, his wife rushed him to a local hospital. Doctors found minor blockage and conducted an angioplasty to clear things out. He’s doing okay now, he told me tonight,” Roy S. Johnson on his blog.
“Morning show co-anchor Monica Jackson is on the hot seat at KVVU-Channel 5 for her shaky coverage of the Monte Carlo fire.” Norm Clarke reported Sunday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Jackson’s inaccurate reports, including claims of trapped workers and evacuations at Bellagio and City Center, came under criticism from several news outlets, including a rare on-air rebuke from a fellow anchor.”
Meredith Corp., KPHO-TV in Phoenix and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University are calling their second annual nationwide fellowship program a success for both the participants and the organizers. “The students got hands-on, professional experience, and we had the opportunity to preview talented students for possible work at our 12 broadcast stations,” said Paul Karpowicz, president of the Meredith Broadcasting Group, in a news release. “Twelve top minority broadcast journalism students from colleges across the country spent a week earlier this month working with instructors from the Cronkite School and KPHO managers and staff,” the release said.
Native American columnist Tim Giago, who objected in the “Feedback” section of Friday’s “Journal-isms” to Arizona Republic Editor Randy Lovely‘s claim of Native American heritage because he had not enrolled in a tribe, expanded on that theme in his weekly column on Monday.
“McDonald’s Corp.’s connection with buns is getting the hamburger chain no love among some black female consumers,” Cheryl V. Jackson reported last week in the Chicago Sun-Times. “The women are objecting to the Oak Brook-based company’s advertisements that appear alongside images of nearly naked women on an Internet site designed by Black Entertainment Television. The site was created to add a marketing dimension to advertisers’ appeal to people of color.”
“In Kenya, which is undergoing violent outbreaks in the wake of a Dec. 27 presidential election many say was stolen by incumbent Mwai Kibaki, “a human rights group Sunday demanded the lifting of the ban on live broadcasting of political events,” the Nation newspaper reported on Monday. The group “Release Political Prisoners said the ban is against the principles and values of human rights, democracy, open governance and the rule of law. RPP said in a statement that since the ban, Kenyans have suffered as they cannot access timely and accurate information on what is happening around them.”
In Israel, panelists discussed how Arab citizens could be better integrated into Israeli media or whether there should be efforts to have them integrated at all,” Rachelle Kliger reported on Friday for The Media Line. “Veteran journalist Anat Saragusti is training an Arab from northern Israel to be a part of the mainstream Channel Two news team. The law, she said, is very vague about quotas for minorities in the media. ‘There’s affirmative action for women and there’s affirmative action for Arab minorities in the government, but not in private organizations,’ she said.”
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Feedback: Don’t Be Ignorant About “House Negroes”
A friend circulated a column on Bill and Hillary Clinton by author Stephen Pizzo that said:
“A couple of hundred years ago, back in the old South, white folk made a distinction between ‘good’ negroes and the not-so-good negroes. ‘Good’ negroes stayed in line, were deferential to whites and didn’t make trouble. Those were the negroes whites assigned jobs in and around their houses, rather than in the fields. They even had a term for them— though I have to clean it up a bit: ‘house negroes.'”
I was stopped in my tracks by Pizzo’s assumptions of slave life.
Somebody please tell Mr. Pizzo, and others like him, that the folks up at the “Big House” were more often than not the ones who planned and executed plantation resistance movements. Many of their acts of defiance led to outright rebellions. Who else knew the comings and goings of “Massa” and “Mistress,” and most important, who better knew where the “herbs” were stored or grew?
I took the cliché about “house niggers” to heart and grew up agreeing with the unresearched, glib remarks from comedians and college-trained hipsters. When I researched my own family’s history and found that seventh-generation grandmother was a personal maid to Martha Washington, I was shocked. I had to know the truth — so I began researching what really happened back in the 1700s. Wow! What I discovered showed that comedians and backroom intellectuals never have had a handle on the enslaved house people — not at all!
My ancestor, Caroline Brannum, was constantly threatened with being sent to the fields because of her continuing acts of resistance. It was customary, so the records at Mount Vernon read, for her to take large amounts of cloth, so that she could make clothes for others on the plantation. Mount Vernon’s enslaved field workers were given only two pairs of socks, one pair of shoes, one outfit for winter and one for summer. Caroline delayed work and was one of the first of our people to understand the power (and joys) of “calling in sick.”
With all of the ways in which she stared the “devil,” known as slavery, in the eye, she was still the first one Mrs. Washington called when General Washington fell ill. My lesson learned: Never sell out, no matter where you find yourself, because once those in power know you’ve sold your soul, especially if you’ve given it away for free, you are of no more use to them.
There were others in the “house” whose descendants I wish I could meet. There was Charlotte, who cursed members of the “right” class for suggesting that she was wearing a dress that didn’t belong to her, and for that she paid the price. There were those who traveled with the general to Philadelphia, yet failed to show up on the day of departure. Valued enslaved people did not wait until “freedom” before leaving their enslavement. I hope that we can move away from the philosophy that proposes that black folks can be conquered by creating friction among them. Only cartoon figures are one-dimensional.
ZSun-nee Matema President, AFRIASIA: The Intercultural Education Exchange?Baltimore?Jan. 28, 2008??MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to send an e-mail about this column.
Feedback: Column Was Timely, Insightful, Informative
Richard Prince, for personal reasons, I think your Jan. 28 column is one of your absolute best: Timely, insightful, informative.
A) Couldn’t make Saint’s service/party, thus was very glad to see those details. Really glad for the details. Audrey Edwards wrote it the way we wanted to know about it: A bit of the emotion, a listing of who gave respects by being there, what got said, and some understanding of who Saint was.
When Saint died, it was such a reminder that there are people who truly dedicate their lives to us. We need to celebrate and assist those folks more while they are alive.
And so sad that Saint had financial problems that his people are asking for donations.
B) Wow, loved your details on “The Root.” Can you share any more details on Lynette Clemetson’s two-month secret operation? (After all, you didn’t fully back up your lead!!)
C) Damn nice to see the piece on house Negroes. Even Malcolm had that wrong, wrong, wrong. We need to see this more widely distributed.
Thanks, Richard Prince, for all your long hours and great work. You too should be acknowledged now for what you do for us.
Peter Alan Harper New York?Jan. 29, 2008??MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to send an e-mail about this column.
Feedback: Obama Confounds a Southern Newsroom
People think it’s kinda tough being a brother in the newsroom of a Southern newspaper. It is, but it isn’t. It’s kinda like being or riding the subways in Manhattan. The train stops. You hop on and look around. (Now, the subway can be a very unreal place. People who are normally talkative don’t rap on the subway, because you just don’t know who you’re talking to: a maniac or some student from Cooper Union.)
Another bro may acknowledge that you, maybe a white dude will. But mostly, people act as though you’re invisible. It’s pretty much the same thing in a Southern newsroom. I mean, there are people, mostly friends, who you go out with on assignments and are cool with. It’s business as usual.
For most, you’re the guy below the radar: unseen, unheard. They might read your stories; they might not. Still, you know what you’re about as a black man in America, or in the South. It’s definitely two different experiences. Think of being a black in Manhattan and a black dude in a store next to Billy Bob!
All that changes if there’s some major news being reported about folks of African descent. I’m not talking Oprah or Danny Glover, Whoopi or Chris Rock, or folks who are mainstreamed.
Probably every newsroom in America has been abuzz during this primary season. Things were sky high during the South Carolina primary — and after. People who never speak to me, never even think of speaking, were coming up to me in the newsroom on Saturday, as Barack was wiping Hillary’s clock.
And I mean they came up to me with all this combination of excitement, wonderment mixed with dread: The subtext was, “What is going to happen if y’all take over?”
Most newsroom types didn’t know how to deal with this. Obama is someone they don’t know how to read. They’re know what they think when it’s a report on Jesse Jackson or Sharpton, but Barack? Hmm! They’re just learning about this new-type black leader. So, the tendency is to go to the black person they are most familiar with: the black man in the newsroom that they never speak to.
I wonder how many extra books Barack is selling these days. Folks are trying to get a handle on what might be coming.
E. Richard Walton Reporter, Greenville (S.C.) News?Jan. 29, 2008??MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to send an e-mail about this column.
Feedback: Each Time, Obama Remembers Me Less
I’m probably the first person to put Barack Obama on TV. It was on “Coming Together,” the black public affairs show on WBZ-TV in Boston, in 1990 when he became the first black president of Harvard Law Review. I remember he cut a class to continue taping an interview that went long. We connected because of our dual biracial heritage, and I remember him giving me props as a sort of big brother a few years older, though he possessed a strong sense of self and didn’t need me to teach him anything. Nonetheless, we had shared experiences that we communicated with just a nod.
It’s driving me crazy that I can’t find a tape or script of the interview. I think I have it on an old disc for a defunct Smith-Corona word processor.
I’m pretty certain we were the first to put him on air (the Boston Globe probably had it before we did) because I called him back a few days later to do the same piece for BET News, for which I was the New England correspondent. By then, the networks had picked up the story and I remember him declining, saying, “I have bigger fish than you now.” I took it in the humor it was offered.
At that time, I did a fair amount of coverage of Harvard Law. In particular were protests calling for a tenured woman professor of color, which much later led to Lani Guinier’s appointment. Two very involved students were Keith Boykin and Jon Bonifaz, who went on to activist careers. Law professor Derrick Bell gave up his position and left for New York University over the issue, but I recall Obama shying away from leading the protests. I don’t know if that’s significant or not.
I’ve met him three times since he’s become famous, and each time he seems to remember me less. The first was at the Democratic convention in Boston in 2004. He, his former law professor, Charles Ogletree, who is a friend of mine and who was in the WBZ piece, and Al Sharpton were standing together. Obama remembered me and I said to him and Ogletree that Obama had cut class to tape our show. Ogletree joked, “Well, we’ll have to re-examine that grade!” Sharpton, for the first time in his life, was actually left out of the conversation but shared the laugh with everyone.
The next time I saw him was a few months later at the National Conference of Editorial Writers convention in Chicago. I started the same joke again but he kind of looked through me. Then I met him last August at the Trotter Group meeting during the National Association of Black Journalists convention. I had another connection there through one of his senior aides, Ertharin Cousin, who was a high school classmate of mine who I had just recently caught up with. Again, in the greeting, I drew a generic response from Obama.
None of this matters for my ego, but it’s just odd when you think of the classic Hubert Humphrey-type politicians who astound everyday people by saying “Hey, how’s Sally? How are the twins? Did you get that new fishing tackle yet?” and so on. Plus, in journalism it’s usually the other way around; the people we put on TV and in the newspaper always remember us, usually more than we remember them. I know he’s met a million people since then, but, yeah. Remote is a good description.
Robin Washington Editorial page editor?Duluth (Minn.) News Tribune?Jan. 29, 2008
