Figures Contrast With Adverse Conditions at Newspapers
While the newspaper industry downsizes due to reductions in advertising and an adverse economic climate, the local broadcasting industry increased its newsroom workforce last year and showed an increase in newsroom employees of color, according to a survey for the Radio-Television News Directors Association.
The time frame is important. In broadcasting, "The whole phenomenon of letting people go is a 2008 phenomenon," Bob Papper, the Hofstra University journalism professor who conducts the RTNDA annual survey, told Journal-isms. Still, he said he did not expect that a later survey would show the losses that have plagued the newspaper business. "Employment numbers in the fourth quarter were at an all-time high" for local television, he said.
"The raw numbers are up."
A news release from RTNDA on Papper’s study Monday said, "The percentage of journalists of color and women working in local television and radio news rose in 2007, as did the percentage of both groups in newsroom leadership positions.
"The 2008 RTNDA/Hofstra University Annual Survey shows that minorities comprised 23.6 percent of local television news staffs, an increase over the 21.5 percent result in 2006, and the second highest percentage since the peak in 2001. The number of Asian Americans, Native Americans and Hispanic journalists all increased, while the number of African Americans remained steady at 10.1 percent of the workforce.
"At non-Hispanic stations, the minority workforce was 20.1 percent, an increase of the previous year’s 19.4 percent. Asian Americans and African-Americans gained ground while the number of Hispanic and Native American journalists remained the same.
"In local radio, the minority workforce was 11.8 percent, the first increase after a steady decline for more than a decade.
"The percentage of minority television news directors reached an all-time high of 15.5 percent, up from 10.9 percent in 2006. In radio, the percentage of minority news directors returned to 5.9 percent, down from the previous year’s spike, but more in line with earlier percentages. Measurement of minority news directors in radio fluctuates each year based on which stations complete the survey."
Papper said he had told RTNDA he would be willing to update his study for this year because of recent downsizings.
The American Society of Newspaper Editors reported in April that an estimated 2,400 journalists left newspaper newsrooms in 2007 through a combination of buyouts and layoffs, and nearly 300 of them were journalists of color.
But while newspapers have suffered losses in classified advertising, in local television it is automobile advertisers who are pulling out, and the two figures are not comparable, Papper said.
Diversity Left Out in Pew’s Big Survey of Newspapers
A survey assessing the state of the newspaper business, based on interviews conducted at 259 papers across the country and the results of a detailed survey of senior newsroom executives, did not ask a single question about diversity, a spokeswoman for the Pew Center for People and the Press told Journal-isms on Monday.
The study is billed as "the most systematic effort yet to examine the changing nature of the resources in American newspaper newsrooms at a critical time. It is an attempt to document and quantify cutbacks and innovations that have generally been known only anecdotally."
The effort was conducted by Tyler Marshall, a former foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, and the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
It was issued less than three weeks after the National Association of Black Journalists issued a statement, "Newspaper Industry Should Not Treat Diversity like a Passing Fad," calling attention to the threat to newsroom diversity at a time when people of color are becoming a greater percentage of the general population.
"The question of diversity was not directly addressed in this study," Dana Page, public relations associate at Pew, told Journal-isms. Asked whether there had been any participation by people of color in the study, she said the survey was conducted only by Marshall, who is not a person of color.
The Pew study said of today’s newspaper, "It has fewer pages than three years ago, the paper stock is thinner, and the stories are shorter. There is less foreign and national news, less space devoted to science, the arts, features and a range of specialized subjects. Business coverage is either packaged in an increasingly thin stand-alone section or collapsed into another part of the paper. The crossword puzzle has shrunk, the TV listings and stock tables may have disappeared, but coverage of some local issues has strengthened and investigative reporting remains highly valued.
"The newsroom staff producing the paper is also smaller, younger, more tech-savvy, and more oriented to serving the demands of both print and the web. The staff also is under greater pressure, has less institutional memory, less knowledge of the community, of how to gather news and the history of individual beats. There are fewer editors to catch mistakes.
"Despite an image of decline, more people today in more places read the content produced in the newsrooms of American daily newspapers than at any time in years. But revenues are tumbling. The editors expect the financial picture only to worsen, and they have little confidence that they know what their papers will look like in five years."
But, "Amid these concerns — and despite the enormous cutbacks and profound worries — editors still sense that their product is improving, not worsening. Fully 56% think their news product is better than it was three years earlier."
- Armando Acu?±a, Sacramento Bee: Newspapers dying? Not if you take a global view
Even Network, Non-Crime News Said to Stereotype
"In a pair of recently published studies, communication professor Travis Dixon found that the more people watched either local or network news, the more likely they were to draw on negative stereotypes about blacks," the University of Illinois announced on Thursday.
While that is not startling news, "What did surprise Dixon, however, was seeing that network news broadcasts, not heavy on crime coverage, had a similar effect on viewers and their tendency to ‘access’ stereotypes. The findings, which he found ‘disconcerting,’ contradicted his assumption that those who stayed well-informed through network news would be less prejudiced and hold fewer stereotypes of blacks," a news release said.
"The studies were published in successive March and June issues of the Journal of Communication. Each was based on data collected in a telephone survey of 506 Los Angeles County residents conducted from November 2002 through January 2003.
"The study on local news, published in the March issue, built on prior research in several cities ‚Äì Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles among them ‚Äì showing local TV news, particularly crime news, as almost always ‘racialized’ in its portrayal of blacks and often other groups, Dixon said.
"In related research, Dixon also is working on studies about stereotyping in the news coverage of Hurricane Katrina and of terrorism."
Judges Scrap Fine Against CBS Over Jackson Breast
"A federal appeals court on Monday threw out a $550,000 indecency fine against CBS Corp. (CBS) for the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show that ended with Janet Jackson’s breast-baring ‘wardrobe malfunction,’" Joann Loviglio reported for the Associated Press.
"The three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Federal Communications Commission ‘acted arbitrarily and capriciously’ in issuing the fine for the fleeting image of nudity.
"The 90 million people watching the Super Bowl, many of them children, heard Justin Timberlake sing, ‘Gonna have you naked by the end of this song,’ as he reached for Jackson’s bustier.
"The court found that the FCC deviated from its nearly 30-year practice of fining indecent broadcast programming only when it was so ‘pervasive as to amount to "shock treatment" for the audience.’"
Rice Doesn’t Declare for McCain — Missed Story?
Condoleezza Rice passed up a chance Sunday to publicly support the presumptive nominee of her party, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., but noted the historic nature of Sen. Barack Obama’s candidacy.
It was a story that got by most of the news media, which have otherwise been reporting the conflict faced by black Republicans who acknowledge that the election of an African American, though a Democrat, would fulfill the dreams of their forebears.
The occasion was Wolf Blitzer’s "Late Edition" on CNN. As reported by Mark Memmott and Jill Lawrence on their USA Today blog, Blitzer said to the secretary of state: "Now, you grew up in the segregated south. You know what racism is in our country. The fact that Barack Obama is now the Democratic presidential nominee, what does that say to you?"
Rice said: "I think it’s great. And I think it’s great for our country. And I do think it says that we’ve come a long way. But it’s interesting that it’s from Colin Powell," referring to a video clip Blitzer had just played. "He knocked down a few barriers of his own. He knocked down the barrier of chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. He knocked down the barrier to the first black secretary of state. Yes, I’ve knocked down a few too. It just shows that our country has been doing this for a while and it’s great that this last barrier perhaps, has also come down."
Blitzer: "Have you decided who to vote for?"
Rice: "Wolf, yes."
Blitzer: "Do you want to tell us?’
Rice: "No."
It would be unimaginable for a previous secretary of state — Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Warren Christopher, James Baker, Madeleine Albright — to support the candidate from the opposing party for president, though none faced the historic choice Rice does. Albright, Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, was out on the campaign trail this season for Hillary Clinton.
Marcus Mabry, an editor overseeing international business coverage at the New York Times, and author of last year’s "Twice As Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power," offered Journal-isms this view: "Rice has made clear her admiration for Obama," but whether that means she "would actually vote for him — moreover admit it publicly — is another question.
"I still think that if McCain picked her for vice president, he would throw a monkey wrench in the Democrats’ plans," Mabry continued, saying there were still a lot of Democratic women angry over Clinton’s primary defeat. In voting for Rice, they could choose both an African American and a woman, and spite Obama as well, he said.
- Nikki Schwab, U.S. News & World Report: Some Black Republicans Torn About Voting for Obama or McCain (June 27)
"Meet the Press" Won’t Interfere With Obama at Unity
The publicized appearance by Sen. Barack Obama on NBC’s "Meet the Press" by satellite from London next Sunday — the same morning he is scheduled to be at the Unity: Journalists of Color convention in Chicago — does not present a conflict, an NBC spokeswoman told Journal-isms on Monday.
The "Meet the Press" appearance will be taped on Saturday, she said.
Meanwhile, some politicians and media watchers complained that Obama’s trip to the Middle East and Europe was continuing an unfair media tilt toward the Illinois senator, a Democrat, over his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
"The Democrat has proven an attractive commodity; TV debates involving Democrats this campaign consistently drew more viewers than the Republicans," David Bauder wrote Monday for the Associated Press. "A Time magazine cover with Obama in 2006 was the second best-selling of the year and a Men’s Vogue cover outsold every issue but the debut, according to circulation figures reported by Portfolio.com. Newsweek has done six covers with Obama over the past year, two with McCain. A Rolling Stone cover with Obama stopped just short of adding a halo.
"If the attention gap continues, the campaign will essentially become a referendum on Obama," according to Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. "While that may serve McCain’s purpose ‚Äî it beats a referendum on President Bush ‚Äî it could leave the nation electing a president while the media is paying attention to someone else. Past press infatuations, like Howard Dean in 2004 and McCain in 2000, didn’t turn into long-term affairs."
Separately, Richard Stengel, managing editor of Time magazine, announced in the magazine that Obama and McCain would contribute continuing dueling essays.
But an attempt by McCain to respond to a piece by Obama in the New York Times was rejected by Times Opinion Page Editor David Shipley, CNN.com reported. "Shipley said he could not accept the piece as written, but would be ‘pleased, though, to look at another draft.’"
On Politico.com, Mike Allen reported about Obama on Saturday:
"Forty journalists, including such leading correspondents as Dan Balz of The Washington Post, will be aboard his plane for next week’s swing through Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and England.
"The campaign received 200 requests for press seats on the plane.
"Among those for whom there was no room was Ryan Lizza, Washington correspondent of The New Yorker. The campaign, which was furious about the magazine’s satirical cover this week, cited space constraints in turning him away."
- Eric Deggans blog, St. Petersburg Times: SNL creator Lorne Michaels states plainly: He doesn’t have a problem making fun of Obama
- John Diaz, San Francisco Chronicle: All politicians are fair game for satirists
- Jamison Foser, Media Matters for America: Media’s assessment of likability doesn’t match voters’
- Deborah Howell, Washington Post: A Vote for Coverage of Substance
- Deborah Mathis, BlackAmericaWeb.com: Obama’s Presidency Won’t Be the End-All-Be-All for Black America, But It Will Begin the U-Turn
- Morton Mintz, Niemanwatchdog.org: Ask McCain and Obama if they’ll work to create a world free of nuclear weapons
- Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee, New York Times: Poll Finds Obama Isn’t Closing Divide on Race
- Emily Sherman, CNN.com: Obama blames ‘conservative press’ for attacks on Michelle
"Do Not Underestimate" Need to Check Reader Comments
The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville¬†ran a letter this month that said falsely of Barack Obama, "In his book Audacity of Hope, he stated ‘I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.’"
"How did the letter get into the paper without effective checking?" public editor Wayne Ezell asked readers, in a piece appearing just before the New Yorker cover portraying such smears against the Democratic candidate.
"Simple. The person who handles several dozen letters each week, editing them to clean up the language, verifying their authenticity and checking the validity of their content, as well as performing other tasks, just didn’t check to see if the quote was accurate.
"Do not underestimate the challenge of screening for errors, especially amid a political campaign in which intended falsehoods proliferate.
"Editorial Page Editor Mike Clark said, ‘In response to the original letter, we ran a lead editorial with more background on the real story; also a letter to the editor that took us to task. All in all, we corrected the record aggressively.
"’We fact-check items that we think are suspicious. The Obama quote slipped past a number of us who read the page proofs."
"Jocko" Maxwell, First Black Sportscaster, Dies at 100
"Newark native Sherman ‘Jocko’ Maxwell, the nation’s first African-American sportscaster and a chronicler of the Negro Leagues, died this morning in West Chester, Pa. He was 100. The cause of death was complications from pneumonia, his sister, Berenice Maxwell Cross of West Caldwell, said," Christine V. Baird reported Wednesday in the Newark Star-Ledger.
"’He was unique,’ said Monte Irvin, 89, a Hall of Fame baseball player who once played for the Negro League’s Newark Eagles. Irvin recalled how Mr. Maxwell did live play-by-play of Eagles games at Ruppert Stadium for a local radio station.
"’We all thought that was just a great thing,’ Irvin said from his home in Houston, Texas.
"Mr. Maxwell’s broadcast career began in 1929, when he read game scores for five minutes every Saturday on the WNJR radio station in Newark. He worked for various stations, all while working full-time as a postal clerk. He retired from radio in 1967.
"Mr. Maxwell was also a prolific writer, who would cover Negro League games and submit write-ups to the newspapers, including The Ledger, predecessor of The Star-Ledger, which didn’t cover the games at that time.
"’The first thing about Jocko to know is that there would be very few records of the Negro Leagues that are accurate, and there would be almost none, without him," said Jerry Izenberg, columnist emeritus for The Star-Ledger. ‘He could sense the meaning of what he was doing. He knew that one day this stuff would be important.’"
Media Anxious Over Press Freedom at Olympics
With the Olympic Games only 19 days away, many at NBC are concerned about how they will be permitted to cover any unscheduled events, like political protests or government crackdowns — or whether the Chinese government will allow them to cover such things at all, Brian Stelter reported Monday in the New York Times.
The Committee to Protect Journalists reported on Tuesday that a delegation from the committee met that day with the head of the International Olympic Committee "and expressed its concern about a variety of press freedom issues surrounding this year’s Beijing Olympics, from the ongoing harassment of international reporters to the jailing of 26 Chinese journalists," the committee reported.
"CPJ Chairman Paul Steiger and Executive Director Joel Simon told IOC President Jacques Rogge that China must make significant progress to meet the commitment it made to allow journalists to freely cover the Games. Despite recent advances on issues such as satellite feeds and live broadcasts from Tiananmen Square, international journalists in Beijing continue to report incidents of harassment and say their sources are often intimidated. Chinese journalists operate under a broad array of restrictions.
"The delegation also told Rogge that CPJ would be launching a 24-hour hotline to assist journalists who encounter problems reporting in China during the Games."
Short Takes
- Cox Communications has added five multicultural channels in Orange County, Calif., to answer a growing demand for international programming among the area’s increasingly diverse population, Nguoi-viet.com, a Web site featuring Vietnamese community news, reported. Among the added channels are Saigon Broadcasting Television Network and stations that air programming in Russian, Filipino and Mandarin Chinese.
- Richard Mgamba, editor of the Citizen newspaper in Tanzania, won this year’s CNN Multichoice Africa Journalist of the Year award in the print news category, his newspaper reported. An awards ceremony took place in Accra, Ghana, on Saturday. Mgamba was honored for his coverage of the fate of small-scale miners at Tanzania’s Buzwagi Gold mines, who were evicted last year to pave way for a project by a foreign investor. "I dedicate this award to the small-scale miners who suffered at the expense of multinational companies," he said.
- The July issue of Italian Vogue, featuring black models, is apparently a hit in the United States. "Even in New York City, the few newsstands that carried the issue sold out within hours (one newsstand went through 400 copies)," Carol Watson reported Monday on AdAge.com. "There were waiting lists and prepaid orders. Many of the customers, according to newsstand staffers I talked to, bought all four versions with different covers as keepsakes. At $16 a copy (one newsstand wanted to charge me $20 to prepay for one from his next batch), it was a circulation director’s fantasy come true."
- On the eve of its conference in Washington on access to capital, the Minority Media & Telecommunications Council issued a laundry list of proposals to further desegregate the broadcast industry. "The road map includes pushing for more minority commissioners and staff; asking Congress to give the Federal Trade Commission the power to prohibit racial discrimination in advertising; opposing cable a la carte; and calling for an investigation into radio ratings (specifically the Portable People Meter)," John Eggerton reported Monday in Broadcasting & Cable.
- Craig Melvin is leaving WIS-TV in Columbia, S.C., at the end of this week for a new job in Washington. "He’ll be a reporter, weekend news anchor and fill-in weeknight anchor at NBC-owned WRC-TV. Melvin is the latest in a string of high-profile departures at the Midlands’ top-rated TV station," Otis R. Taylor Jr. wrote Sunday in the State. "But Melvin might be the face of the station, the one whose departure might augur the end of WIS’ dominance."
