2 More Key Executives Leave Johnson Publishing Co.
Does “Progressives” D.C. March Have Too Big an Agenda?
2 More Key Executives Leave Johnson Publishing Co.
Less than a month after former White House social secretary Desiree Rogers became CEO of Johnson Publishing Co., the chief of the company’s new media operations and its director of corporations are gone.
Eric Easter, who joined the company in 2007 as chief of digital strategies, left on Wednesday, and Wendy E. Parks, who led corporate communications, left earlier, Easter said.
Parks could not be reached for comment, but Easter said she was working at the University of Chicago.
Rogers’ first appointment last month was in Parks’ bailiwick: Rodrigo A. Sierra was named senior vice president and chief marketing officer. Sierra, a former radio reporter, and Rogers worked together at Peoples Gas. Rogers was company president.
Easter came to Johnson Publishing from Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, where he managed the communications strategy, branding and promotion for websites that included washingtonpost.com, newsweek.com, slate.com and several other sites. “As Chief of Digital Strategy, he will be responsible for developing and supervising all aspects of online, new media and Internet strategy for Johnson Publishing Company,” Bryan Monroe, then vice president and editorial director of Ebony and Jet magazines, said in announcing Easter’s arrival. Monroe left the company last year.
Without naming names, journalist Wil LaVeist described in his self-published “Fired Up” how the comapany abruptly let him go after bringing him in to do the job that Easter was later assigned. “My new supervisor, who was brought in to replace me, did the deed,” LaVeist wrote.
In May, Johnson introduced a new website for Jet, MyJet247.com, but the main news and opinion site, ebonyjet.com, was continually understaffed and underresourced.
Easter told Journal-isms his departure was undertaken “Happily. Amicably.”
“I actually moved back to DC last summer so my family would be closer to relatives and close friends, and I’ve been doing a pretty brutal weekly commute back and forth to Chicago for a year now, and that was just unsustainable,” he said in a message. “But in that year I’ve also been laying the foundation for some really exciting ventures that get me closer to where I think the future of digital media is going. Luckily the timing coincides with JPC being in a stronger position – a good team, renewed focus on the brand, etc.. So it was time.
“We did some fun stuff on EbonyJet.com, exposed a lot of new voices, digitized the archives, showed that you could do really intelligent and edgy content under the Ebony brand.”
In 2008, Johnson Publishing Co. announced a partnership with Google in which, “through Google Book Search, anyone can search the covers and content of Ebony and Jet and the defunct Negro Digest and Ebony Jr. “and see the original pages, in their full context and in full color,” Eric Easter wrote Friday on ebonyjet.com.
“But on to newer things,” Easter said in his message. “More importantly I get to look at my kids in the morning and not flight attendants.”
Does “Progressives'” D.C. March Have Too Big an Agenda?
“Now that we are a week removed from the march on Washington organized by the self-named rodeo clown, Glenn Beck, it’s clear that the event was nothing more than an exercise in ego worship,” Roland S. Martin wrote Friday in his column for Creators Syndicate. “It’s still unclear if the event was about the troops, restoring the honor of America – whatever that is defined as – an effort to reclaim the civil rights movement, which I’m still laughing at, or a tent revival intended to move Americans closer to God.
“So many conflicting agendas and purposes left nothing more than a headache. Now that conservatives had their shot, Oct. 2 represents an opportunity for progressives to come to the nation’s capital and rally their faithful.
“Four months ago, one of the major participants called to alert me of the event and to give me the purpose. After listening to a litany of reasons for the march, as well as the various participants, I couldn’t help but be as blunt as possible: ‘What in the hell is the agenda? A 25-point plan?’
“It’s impossible to count the number of marches, rallies and calls to action that I’ve covered in my 18 years as a professional journalist. And with all certainty, I can tell you that the ones that failed miserably are those with so many reasons given that no one was able to take that mass action of civil disobedience and apply it to legislative action. . . .
“So, on Saturday, Oct. 2, a number of progressive organizations will rally in Washington, D.C. Frankly, I’m uninterested in hearing from 40 different speakers talking about 40 different things. The centerpiece of the rally – essentially funded by labor organizations – should be to pressure Congress to get moving on a massive jobs bill that supporters say is designed to help small businesses.”
- Stanley Crouch, New York Daily News: Drowning out the hate hustlers: Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck cannot steal America’s soul
- Lester Feder, Columbia Journalism Review: Glenn Beck Reimagines Whiteness
- Rick Horowitz, Huffington Post: Beckfest of Champions
- Darryl E. Owens, Orlando Sentinel: Glenn Beck: Right message, wrong messenger
- Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: Beck-a-palooza!
- Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life: Glenn Beck, Christians and Mormons
- Rochelle Riley, Detroit Free Press: Getting to the real truth about bigotry
- Elmer Smith, Philadelphia Daily News: Let’s go back … way Beck
- Joe Strupp, Media Matters for America: Beck’s Nothing Special To Smithsonian
- Wendi C. Thomas, Memphis Commercial Appeal: History will put Beck in his place
Short Takes
- Kansas City’s KPRS, the oldest African American continually owned radio station in the United States, is celebrating its 60th anniversary and remains family owned, Steve Penn wrote last week in the Kansas City Star.
- ‚ÄúOne Night in Vegas,‚Äù a story about friendship between “the once formidable Iron Mike Tyson and the firebrand rebelliousness of Tupac Shakur” premieres Tuesday at 8 p.m. EDT on ESPN, EURWeb reported. “*ESPN‚Äôs 30 for 30 has been releasing groundbreaking sports related documentaries since the program‚Äôs inception last year and that brief tradition of excellence continues.”
- CBS News correspondent Byron Pitts is on the CBS multi-platform team for coverage leading up to the November midterm elections, Chris Ariens reported Monday for TVNewser. ” Chief Political Consultant Marc Ambinder and Political Analyst and Contributor John Dickerson will join a veteran group led by CBS Evening News Anchor and Managing Editor Katie Couric that includes Chief Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer, Senior Political Correspondent Jeff Greenfield and Correspondents Wyatt Andrews, Sharyl Attkisson, Jan Crawford, Nancy Cordes, Byron Pitts, Chip Reid, Dean Reynolds and Political Analyst Dan Bartlett.”
- Mark Luckie has joined the Washington Post as national innovations
editor. “Mark comes to us from the Center for Investigative Reporting, where he has been a multimedia producer for the center‚Äôs California Watch team. He also pens the well-regarded 10,000 Words blog, which reports on the latest trends at the intersection of journalism and technology. Mark is author of The Digital Journalist‚Äôs Handbook, a valuable guide to the tools and techniques needed to practice journalism in today‚Äôs online universe,” National Editor Kevin Merida said in a staff memo. - Bill Dulaney, former professor of journalism at Penn State University, is suffering from cancer and has come back from the steps of death several times, Native columnist Tim Giago wrote Monday on Indianz.com.”This man meant more than anyone else in helping Native Americans form NAJA, an organization that just celebrated its 26th anniversary,” Giago wrote, referring to the Native American Journalists Association. “I am bothered, nay angry, that the officers of NAJA refuse to recognize the man who is mostly responsible for their very existence.”
- Angela Burt-Murray ,editor in chief of Essence magazine, was named to the board of Pingry School, a K-12 coeducational, independent country day school, the Courier News of Bridgewater, N.J. reported on Sunday. Burt-Murray lives in South Orange, N.J.
- “Four months later and police in Chicago are still looking for eight men in connection to the brutal gang rape of a mentally challenged teen,” James Causey, editorial writer and columnist at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, wrote Friday under the headline, “This Chicago rape should have been a national story.” ‘If you didn‚Äôt hear about this case you are not alone. But after you hear the details you will be outraged.”
- “The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has demanded the immediate release of two Yemeni journalists who have been held without charge since 16 August and accused the Yemeni government of broken promises for backtracking on pledges to allow journalists in the country to work freely,” IFJ said on Thursday.
- “Palestinians and Israelis are using the media as a new battleground in their war to win hearts and minds across the globe, even as the protracted conflict in the Mideast drags on with no apparent end in sight,” Mel Frykberg reported Sunday for Inter-Press Service. “Israel has led the way for decades with its slick and professional Hasbara, or propaganda machine. . . . But the Palestinians are catching on fast to the uses of the media as a weapon in their war, and are about to retaliate.”
- Liberia is poised to become the first country in west Africa to have a comprehensive right to information law, the Media Foundation for West Africa said on Monday. The Liberia Legislature passed the Freedom of Information (FOI) Bill into law. “President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf “has never hidden her intention” to sign the bill.
- In Liberia, “Danesious Marteh, a sports’ reporter with privately-owned Frontpage Africa newspaper was on September 2, 2010 assaulted by three foreign-based players of the national soccer team for photographing them,” the Media Foundation for West Africa reported on Friday. “The players, Dioh Williams, Francis Grand-pa Doe and Dulee Johnson manhandled Marteh and destroyed his digital camera.”
- “Police in Kenya said Monday they had arrested a radio journalist on suspicion of links to a bombing in neighbouring Uganda which killed 76 people in July,” Agence France-Presse reported on Monday. “The journalist, a presenter on Radio Salaam based in the coastal city of Mombasa, was arrested on Saturday and taken to Nairobi for questioning, regional police chief Leo Nyongesa said.. . . A total of 32 people have been charged in Uganda for carrying out the July 11 suicide attacks on two bar-restaurants in Kampala.
