Publisher Says She’ll Focus on Online Edition
Native School Shooter Had “Foot in Each of Two Worlds”
Stevie Wonder Visits FCC to Aid Visually Impaired
Three Women of the Black Diaspora
On CNN’s Media Show, 11 Guests of 146 Were Black
Advice from BuzzFeed’s Ebola Reporter: Break the Rules
Asian Americans Energized Despite Lack of Attention
Justice Dept. Urged to Probe Abuses of Press in Ferguson
A Photographer With Fingers Crossed, Eyes Wide Open
Publisher Says She’ll Focus on Online Edition
Sister2Sister, a women’s magazine that focuses on black Hollywood, has filed for bankruptcy protection and put the print edition on hiatus so it can focus on its website, publisher Jamie Foster Brown told Journal-isms.
Brown, a onetime secretary to Black Entertainment Television co-founder Robert Johnson, is described on the magazine website describes her as “The Barbara Walters of Print,” said Monday that she was preparing an official statement on the publication’s status. She is publisher and sole owner of the magazine.
“The community does not want us to go away,” Brown said by telephone. She said she especially felt a responsibility to prisoners who “didn’t have a voice” and whom she published in the magazine. “We wanted to teach people through celebrities,” she said. “God comes through other people.” Working with Johnson, she said, “I saw how much power the celebrities have.”
Sister2Sister is not listed in the latest circulation or advertising figures for the Publishers Information Bureau or the Alliance for Audited Media, industry bibles. However, a June 2013 profile of the monthly by Mediabistro put its circulation at 135,000. The 64-page October print edition, which was scheduled to leave newsstands on Oct. 14, features seven full-page ads, a one-third page ad for a hair product and a public service spot from the Ad Council on the inside back cover.
Writer Manny Otiko expressed his anger at the publication on Twitter Monday:
Never do biz with Sister to Sister mag! I did 3 stories for them 3 months ago. Now they say they are bankrupt and can’t pay me!
— Manny Otiko (@Mannyotiko) October 27, 2014
Mediabistro described the publication this way in its June profile:
“Background: Initially launched as a newsletter for women in entertainment by industry veteran Jamie Foster Brown, Sister 2 Sister has been breaking stories in black Hollywood since 1988. And, unlike the gossip and innuendo rampant in the blogosphere, S2S routinely gets its information from the stars themselves.
“Whether Halle Berry‘s ex-husband Eric Benet was denying a reported sex addiction or Tamar Braxton and hubby Vince Herbert were dishing about their reality show, it was S2S that often got stars to open up when other publications couldn’t. The mag’s trademark Q&A’s — often including every ‘uh,’ ‘er,’ or ‘you know?’ an interviewee uttered — enable entertainers to tell their stories freely without fear of being misinterpreted. (Rapper DMX‘s ‘ease’ in disclosing that a lover had raped him while he was asleep even landed him in legal trouble in 2006.)
” ‘Our stories, they’re longer than what you’ll find in other publications, but they’re really more like conversations than interviews,’ explained senior editor Ericka Boston. ‘Our mission is to try to teach. So, we’ll talk to the entertainers about the lessons that they’ve learned from whatever experiences they’ve gone through, and it’s more so about achieving an understanding, as opposed to just fishing for a headline.’ . . .”
- Update: Sister2Sister “Restructuring,” but Hasn’t Filed Bankruptcy (Oct. 30)
Native School Shooter Had “Foot in Each of Two Worlds”
“You didn’t hear it from me,” a Native American journalist messaged Journal-isms on Friday night, “but this article identifies the shooter as being ‘of Native American descent.’ I’m trying to figure out why that’s relevant.”
The writer was referring to a freshman’s shooting rampage at Marysville-Pilchuck High School in Marysville, Wash., that left three students dead, including the shooter. In all, the gunman shot five students before killing himself.
The shooter, Jaylen Fryberg, described variously as 14 or15, was a member of the nearby Tulalip Tribe. So were his victims. But on Monday, members of the media were still trying to figure out the connection to his ethnic background.
A headline Monday in the Indian Country Today Media Network read, “Community Mourns Second Shooting Victim; Won’t ‘Make This About Race.’ ”
Yet the story, by Richard Walker, notes, “Still fighting to recover at Providence Medical Center Everett is Shaylee Chuckulnaskit, 14; and at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Jaylen’s cousins, Andrew Fryberg, 14, and Nate Hatch, 15. According to the hospitals, Shaylee and Andrew are listed in critical condition, Nate is listed in serious condition with a bullet wound to the jaw.
“All six students are citizens of the Tulalip Tribes.”
The Seattle Times reported Monday on grieving at the school, with ethnicity part of the story.
“One of those counselors was Randy Vendiola, there with his wife, Monica,” Erik Lacitis and Jennifer Sullivan wrote. “They’re both Native Americans, and Monica is a member of the Tulalip Tribes, just like Jaylen Fryberg and several of the victims.”
“Randy Vendiola said he knew Fryberg’s family. ‘He was a hunter, he provided for his family: elk, deer,’ he said. ‘He was a fisherman. He led ceremonies.’ . . .”
Craig Welch and Paige Cornwell wrote Monday for the Times, “Jaylen Fryberg, like many Native American children, lived with a foot in each of two worlds“. . . . But a day after Jaylen walked into the Marysville-Pilchuck High School cafeteria and shot two of his cousins and three other students — most of them also Native American — before killing himself, those who knew him were struggling to understand where Jaylen got lost navigating these universes. . . .”
In the Bellingham (Wash.) Herald on Saturday, Andrew Gobin, a member of the Tulalip Tribes who grew up on the reservation and knew Fryberg, outlined the shooter’s extensive grounding in tribal culture in a story headlined, “School shooter raised in Tulalip traditions; his actions defy explanation.” Gobin wrote, “Culture and tradition can fall away. Not for Jaylen. He was viewed as living hope for the tribes’ future . . .”
The Seattle Times, in an editorial Friday, urged caution. “Answers about how and why a freshman student opened fire in the high-school cafeteria will come. Speculation in the absence of facts serves no one,” it said.
By Monday, the shooting was still news in Washington state, but less so in the rest of the country. The Seattle Times said in its Friday editorial, “What does it tell students about their future when on campus mass-shooting drills are routine? . . .”
- Chris Ariens, TVSpy: KIRO Anchor Chokes Up Covering Marysville-Pilchuck School Shooting
- Editorial, Daily Herald, Everett, Wash.: We are Marysville Pilchuck
- Aneya Fernando, TVSpy: KING Responds to Viewer Complaints About Marysville Shooting Coverage
- Johnnie Jae, nativemaxmagazine.com: Let Them Mourn in Peace
- Allen Johnson, News & Record, Greensboro, N.C.: Guns and poses: Senior portraits with guns approved
- Richard Walker, Indian Country Today Media Network: Tulalip, Marysville, Still Grasping at Answers for Shooting
- Craig Welch and Paige Cornwell, Seattle Times: For Tulalip Tribes, a time of soul-searching
- Chris Winters and Kari Bray, Daily Herald, Everett, Wash.: Social media awash in info, but much of it is utterly false
- Brandy Zadrozny, Daily Beast: The Homecoming Prince Who Tweeted His Killing Spree
Stevie Wonder Visits FCC to Aid Visually Impaired
“Yes, you heard it right!” commonlawblog.com reported Friday.
“Stevie Wonder, the legendary songwriter and recording artist, made the rounds, live and in person, at the FCC recently.
“He met with the Chairman and the other four Commissioners to advocate for greater availability of audio description services to provide better access for the blind to television programming.
“Mr. Wonder noted that he can go to his choice of movies in many theaters today and get a headset that delivers video description; but when the same movies are shown on television, the video description is absent. Captioned television for viewers with impaired hearing has made great strides over the years, and it’s time for video description to make similar progress. . . .”
- Julian Hattem, the Hill: Stevie Wonder visits FCC (Oct. 14)
Three Women of the Black Diaspora
Ann Simmons, reporter for the Los Angeles Times, left, Maryum Ali, daughter of Muhammad Ali, and Yelena Khanga, a Russian talk-show host, reunited in August by happenstance in Los Angeles after first meeting in Russia nearly 30 years ago. Ali is a social worker specializing in gang prevention. Simmons, a British native, made this video of their reunion in the Los Angeles Times newsroom. (story and video)
On CNN’s Media Show, 11 Guests of 146 Were Black
“CNN has been wrestling with outside criticism from minority groups,” Betsy Rothstein wrote Monday for the Daily Caller. “Engage? Cut them off? Ignore? A closer look at the weekend media show, ‘Reliable Sources,’ hosted by Brian Stelter, isn’t going to make the situation any better.
“The Daily Caller’s Mirror blog studied the last six months worth of guests. The results are as follows: 11 black guests in 6 months. In other words, 11 guests out of 146 guests were black. That means that approximately 7.5 percent of all guests who appeared on the program hosted by Brian Stelter were black. Not all the black guests were even journalists. One was a member of Congress, another an actor, and still another, a Ferguson, Mo. activist (granted, it would’ve been hard to make him white). . . .”
Advice From BuzzFeed’s Ebola Reporter: Break the Rules
“Back in August, I was one of the first foreign journalists to land in Liberia to cover the Ebola outbreak,” Jina Moore wrote Friday for BuzzFeed. “There weren’t very many of us willing to go to the world’s hottest hot zone, and there was a general global malaise about the disease, so there wasn’t very much information around about how to prepare. As the story took off, colleagues called me and asked what they should do. . . .”
Moore continued, “But the most right-on thing I told them was to break the rules . . .
“Bring gloves to give nurses you meet at clinics, even if you’re there for a story. Get small change to give to the kids who have been out of school for months and are selling ground nuts for pitiful sums on the side of road. Hell, give them candy. Violate all the principles of ostensibly good aid stewardship, because the good stewardship of the developed world didn’t get help here in time, and now everyone is dying around you.
“Do not mistake all your giving for generosity. This is selfish. In the midst of Ebola, the kindest thing you can do for yourself is a tiny, ordinary kindness for someone else. Because you can’t touch anyone here, and when you are deprived of human touch, you can go a special kind of mad. . . .”
- Eugene Kane, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ebola news doesn’t have to scare us to death
- Dan Mangan, cnbc.com: Texas college rejects Nigerian applicants, cites Ebola cases
- Media Matters for America: CNN’s Stelter Highlights Megyn Kelly’s Reckless Ebola Coverage: “One Of Those Excellent Examples About Why We Should All Avoid Rushing To Judgment”
- Steve Russell, Indian Country Today Media Network: On Ebola & ISIS: A Flaming Chariot Called Fear
- Ben Satterthwaite, mdigitallife.com: Physicians Turn to Social Media to Calm Ebola Frenzy
- Tamar Wilner, Columbia Journalism Review: The Ebola nurse quarantined in New Jersey wrote her big first-person account on her phone
Justice Dept. Urged to Probe Abuses of Press in Ferguson
“This report compiles 52 alleged violations of freedom of the press during the Ferguson protests,” the PEN American Center reported on Sunday. “These infringements contravene a right that is protected under both the U.S. Constitution and international human rights law.”
“On the basis of these findings, PEN American Center calls upon the U.S. Department of Justice to carry out investigations into violations of press freedom that took place in the context of the Ferguson protests.
“Such investigations would shed essential light on the factors that drove law enforcement officers in Ferguson to infringe on media freedoms, and on the necessary steps to ensure that in an era of instantaneous transmission, cell phone cameras and citizen journalists, the rights of members of the press and of the public at large are upheld in the context of protests and public assemblies. . . .”
- Charles F. Coleman Jr., Ebony: The Case Against Mike Brown Continues
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| New York Times photographer Ozier Muhammad weighed how to produce the right image during an event as large as last month’s People’s Climate March. (video) |
A Photographer With Fingers Crossed, Eyes Wide Open
“There are days when everything works out for a newspaper photographer and he or she comes up with perfect photos that waltz onto Page 1,” the editors of the New York Times “Lens” blog wrote on Thursday. “But more often than not, the photographer is just doing his or her best to make a good image in less than ideal circumstances.
“For Ozier Muhammad, a staff photographer for The Times, the People’s Climate March last month in New York was a big example of one such challenging situation. And the Times video journalist Deborah Acosta followed him to document his day for Lens.
“During the course of the assignment, Mr. Muhammad, 64, told Ms. Acosta that ‘it’s hard to find a picture’ when an event is so large. . . .”
Short Takes
- “For three years, I sat next to Sally Quinn and fought with Ben Bradlee,” Joel Dreyfuss, former managing editor of The Root, wrote Friday for the Huffington Post. “That’s a quick summary of my brief and fiery career at the Washington Post.” Dreyfuss wrote that he “learned that confronting Bradlee had a cost,” but that years later, Bradlee told him, “We learned a lot from you.” Services for Bradlee, the former executive editor of the Post who died last week at 93, will be televised live at 11 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday on C-SPAN, and repeated on C-SPAN2 at 8 p.m. Livestream will be available at c-span.org.
- “Say whatever you’d like, cable newsers, President Obama is not watching,” Mark Joyella reported Sunday for TVNewser. “In an interview with CNN’s Brian Stelter on ‘Reliable Sources’ Sunday, former Obama press secretary and current CNN political analyst Jay Carney described the president as ‘a voracious consumer of the printed word, even the electronic printed word, and but he doesn’t — he doesn’t watch cable news’ . . .”
- “Reddit has a hate speech problem, but more than that, Reddit has a Reddit problem,” Jason Abbruzzese wrote Sunday for mashable.com. “A persistent, organized and particularly hateful strain of racism has emerged on the site. Enabled by Reddit’s system and permitted thanks to its fervent stance against any censorship, it has proven capable of overwhelming the site’s volunteer moderators and rendering entire subreddits unusable. . . .”
“The Toronto Sun is facing intense scrutiny over an editorial cartoon of mayoral candidate Olivia Chow published Sunday, just one day before the city’s election,” Catherine Taibi reported Monday for Huffington Post. “The cartoon, created by the Sun’s Andy Donato, draws [Chow] with slanted eyes, glasses, delivering laundry and literally stepping on the coattails of a jacket belonging to her late husband Jack Layton. Chow expressed her outrage in an interview with CP24 Sunday night, calling the cartoon ‘outrageous,’ ‘racist’ and ‘sexist.’ . . .” Chow placed third in the election.
- “Glenda Umaña has been laid off from CNN en Español after 17 years with the network,” Veronica Villafañe reported for her Media Moves site. “Glenda is one of the original anchors from the network’s 24-hour launch in 1997. ‘Mi position has been eliminated as part of restructuring,’ she told fans via Facebook. Although she was given a pink slip, she will continue to be on the air for the time being. Her last day at the network is November 7. . . .”
- “The station bio for WESH-Channel 2 sports anchor Larry Ridley reveals that he ‘loves politics and, most of all, breakfast foods — you’ll find him all over Central Florida hanging out at the most popular local eateries,” Hal Boedeker wrote Friday for the Orlando Sentinel. “But now he’s all over the airways in a TV commercial for Bud Light. It’s quite a change of pace. Do you remember any local news person appearing in a national commercial? . . .”
-
“Connie Harper, editor of the Call & Post, has died,” Ron Rutti reported Saturday for the Plain Dealer in Cleveland. “Harper was hardly just a newspaper person. She taught for a while, worked on a number of causes and even helped get Carl Stokes re-elected mayor of Cleveland. Then she went to work for Don King. When King acquired the bankrupt Call & Post in 1998, he hired Harper as its editor and associate publisher. Harper took ill early this week while in southwestern Ohio. She was in a hospital in the Dayton area. Her death was announced today on the Call & Post website. Funeral arrangements have not been made. . . .”
- Jeff Smith, former reporter for the Flint (Mich.) Journal, died at a hospice in Grand Rapids on Oct. 23 after a struggle with stage IV lymphoma cancer, Jiquanda Johnson reported Monday for the Journal. He was 54. Johnson recalled that no one except the victim’s mother believed that Christopher Alan Brown was murdered in 1985. “At the time the evidence only showed his death as an accident. Smith followed Simpson’s story year after year until in 2008 when two people were sent to trial for his death. . . .”
- “The Washington Redskins won a stunning overtime game over the Cowboys on Monday night, but the end of the game was marred when Redskins Senior VP of Communications Tony Wyllie forcibly stopped ESPN Deportes reporter John Sutcliffe from interviewing Washington QB Colt McCoy,” Nate Scott reported for USA Today.
- Mumia Abu-Jamal, the prison journalist convicted of the 1981 killing of a policeman, said a new Pennsylvania law targeting him is unconstitutional. The measure “authorizes the censoring of public addresses of prisoners or former offenders if judges agree that allowing them to speak would cause ‘mental anguish’ to the victim,” Amy Goodman said Monday on Pacifica Radio’s “Democracy Now!” Abu-Jamal told Goodman, “the Third Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals said I have a constitutional right to write. If I have a constitutional right to write under the First Amendment, then don’t I have a constitutional right to read writings? . . .”
- “An anchor at Santa Barbara-San Luis Obispo CBS affiliate KCOY didn’t realize how closely one story would hit home,” Mark Joyella reported Monday for TVSpy. “Paula Lopez read a story on the emergence of Enterovirus D68 in California, without realizing the first confirmed case in Santa Barbara County would be Lopez’s own daughter, 16-year-old Alana Ochoa . . .”
- “Melissa Harris-Perry used to love Twitter, she told viewers on Saturday,” Catherine Taibi reported on Monday for HuffPost BlackVoices. “But now she finds it hard to even retweet things without the fear of online harassment. ‘I am at a point where I don’t retweet anything that I really like because I fear that I would send all of my haters, all of the harassment that comes to me, over to some person who doesn’t deserve it,’ the MSNBC host said. . . .”
“It appears the community-newspaper reality show that NBC Peacock Productions was teasing nearly two years ago isn’t going to happen,” Jim Romenesko wrote Monday on his media blog. “But a similar show — this one featuring small-market TV newsrooms in Mississippi — is in the can and debuts in December on TruTV.” Romenesko also wrote, ‘WABG (Greenville, Miss.) news director Pam Chatman . . . tells me she was chosen for the show after a Hollywood casting company saw a 2008 profile that referred to her ‘The Oprah of the South.’ . . .”
- Writing Saturday from the isolated village of José María Morelos, Mexico, Randal C. Archibold wrote for the New York Times that the village “lies in the rugged hills of southwestern Mexico, among a smattering of towns and hamlets that have long embraced a heritage from African slaves who were brought here to work in mines and on sugar plantations in the 16th century. Just how many people are willing to share that pride may soon be put to the test as Mexico moves to do something it has not attempted in decades and never on its modern census: ask people if they consider themselves black . . . .”
- The University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication hosted the inaugural Chuck Stone Symposium on Democracy in a Multicultural Society Thursday and Friday. The symposium was intended “to bring together scholars and journalists to discuss the issues of race, inequality, justice and democracy in America, which were central to Chuck Stone’s work over a 60-year career.” Stone, UNC professor, a former columnist and editor and founding president of the National Association of Black Journalists, died in April at 89. Barry Saunders, columnist for the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., was the luncheon speaker, said Paul Delaney, a former New York Times senior editor who sat on a panel, “Civil Rights Then and Now.”
- “A group of Egyptian newspaper editors pledged Sunday to limit their criticism of state institutions, a day after Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, warned of a ‘conspiracy’ behind a militant attack last week that killed at least 31 soldiers ,” David D. Kirkpatrick and Merna Thomas reported Sunday for the New York Times.
- “Three journalists were roughed up on Saturday evening in Hong Kong after being confronted by pro-government protesters holding a rally to oppose a four-week long ‘Occupy’ movement of the financial hub’s streets by pro-democracy demonstrators,” Clare Jim reported Saturday for Reuters.
- “A Somali police official says two men convicted of killing a journalist have been executed by firing squad,” the Associated Press reported on Sunday. “Col. Mohamed Hassan, a spokesman for the judiciary in Mogadishu, says Ali Bashir Osman and Abdullahi Shariff were executed Sunday. The two were convicted of the killing of Mohammed Mohamud Tima Adde, a reporter for the U.K.-based Universal TV, who was shot in his car by gunmen a year ago. . . .”
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