Native Journalists Missing from the Trail

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Indian political activists say Native American vote could be crucial in several states.

Indians Feel Lack of Press-Pool Diversity

"Not a single known Native journalist sits on the traveling crew that covers the presidential candidates day in and day out," Rob Capriccioso wrote on Monday in the newspaper Indian Country Today.

"’There’s just not a lot of diversity in general in that particular landscape,’ said Mark Trahant, editorial page editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He is a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe. ‘It’s been a problem for ages.’" Trahant is also board chair of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.

The piece appeared on the same day that the Democratic National Committee, gearing up for the nominating convention that begins next week, held a conference call with some African American members of the press.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and Shirley Franklin, convention co-chair and Atlanta mayor, assured the media members that African Americans and their concerns will be well represented during the week. Twenty-five percent of the delegates are African American, up by 5 percent from 2004. Some 15,000 journalists are expected.

"Both campaigns have made attempts this year to designate staffers who are solely devoted to reaching out to and answering questions from members of minority media outlets and communities," the Indian Country Today piece said. "Still, even as the general election quickly approaches, media liaisons specific to the Native press are yet to be hired.

"Corey Ealons, a former communications director and deputy chief of staff for Alabama Rep. Artur Davis, was brought on by the Obama campaign in late July to serve as communications director for black media. He ends up talking to minority members beyond the black press.

"A specific Native media liaison has not yet been named as part of Obama’s team, but Ealons said that a plan is ‘in process’ to do so. He also said that there is already a counterpart to him in the organization devoted to Hispanics.

"According to some Native journalists, the efforts to reach out to new and swing voters who happen to be Native might be especially urgent for Obama, since he has made a commitment to turn states that traditionally vote Republican into Democratic footholds."

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The Commercial Appeal staff produced a video after the Isaac Hayes service.

IPhones, BlackBerrys Cover Isaac Hayes, Bernie Mac

Using iPhones and BlackBerrys, reporters from the Chicago Tribune and the Memphis Commercial Appeal filed stories on services for entertainers Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes, respectively, that were posted on the newspapers’ Web sites while the commemorations were still in progress.

"Thousands of fans of late comedian Bernie Mac streamed into a South Side memorial service Saturday to hear Hollywood and political celebrities remember a Chicagoan who made people laugh on both TV and the big screen," began a story on Saturday by Kelley Carter and Mary Owen on the Tribune’s Web site. It was time-stamped at 2:38 p.m., while the rival Chicago Sun-Times featured an Associated Press story from the memorial service.

"I sent in updates via my blackberry for the duration of the funeral on Saturday. I sent in updates to the editor on duty downtown every 15 or so minutes to give as much of a real time update as possible," Carter told Journal-isms via e-mail. "One of the guidelines of the funeral was that still and video photogs had to be out after the first 15 minutes, which meant they missed all of the people that readers and viewers would have liked to hear from. So the only way they really got a picture of how things went down was via print.

"then I wrote another story altogether for the print paper for the next day."

At the Memphis paper on Monday, "We had a reporter in the memorial service sending live updates during the service from his iPhone," Lannie Byrd, online content manager for commercialappeal.com, told Journal-isms, describing the Hayes coverage.

"We also posted a photo of flowers from the service that the reporter took with his iPhone on the way in. At the same time, we had another reporter covering a protest of the memorial service from Westboro Church in Kansas and local counter protesters. The updates called in from the reporter were added to the main memorial service story.

"We also had a video team covering the memorial service. As soon as the service was over we quickly posted a recap of the celebrities and politicians comments on Hayes as they went into the service and later this evening we’ll add video from the memorial service when we receive the video from the pool coverage.

"Later this evening the quick story on the memorial service on the web will be replaced with a story focusing on Hayes memorial from our music reporter, another story focusing on the celebrities and politicians at the service and a third story on the protest and counter protest.

"All the stories, videos and photos from the memorial service will end up living on our Isaac Hayes topic page at commercialappeal.com/isaachayes/."

• Gregory Clay, McClatchy-Tribune News Service: We like Ike, and Big Mac, too
• Editorial, Boston Globe: A legacy for ‘Black Moses’
• David McGrath, Duluth (Minn.) News Tribune: Bernie Mac: Class clown grew into a real class act
  

Tom and Oscar Joyner Plan New Black-Radio Model

"Five years ago, BE reported on the radio industry . . . and [reported] that government deregulation in the mid-1990s served to shrink the number of independent black radio stations," George Alexander writes in "The Future of Black Radio" in the August issue of Black Enterprise magazine.

"So today, to reach this coveted market" of black and urban listeners, "large broadcasters use nationally syndicated radio shows in an attempt to expand audience reach and market share and to increase revenues. As a result, local programming, once an indispensable staple of black radio, is quickly becoming a distant memory. And since syndicated radio provides a platform for national advertising, the stations with local programming can only compete for local advertising.

"Black radio, for the most part, has morphed into a new creature. The question yet to be answered: Will this generation of content producers provide a new wave of black entrepreneurship in broadcasting while ensuring that African Americans have a strong voice on the airwaves?"

Alexander goes on to discuss a new model. "While syndication has proven lucrative for a select few, its deleterious effects on local radio have contributed to the decline of black-owned stations and have reduced the number of black media entrepreneurs," he continues. Tom Joyner, the syndicated morning radio host, and Oscar Joyner, his business-partner brother, "are developing a new entrepreneurial model. Tom is not only compensated for airtime, but he holds a stake in his show through his 33% ownership in Reach Media, the company he founded in 2004. Reach became a subsidiary of Radio One after the radio chain acquired a 51% stake in 2005. Reach’s 2007 revenues: $50 million.

"Now, Joyner is expanding his portfolio of programs. Reach has deals to produce shows for comedian Rickey Smiley, comedienne/actress Monique, and gospel singer Yolanda Adams. Each program will air in different day parts for different audiences to capture more slices of the urban market. Joyner’s endgame: develop a daily slate of Reach programs. Think Harpo of radio broadcasting," a reference to Oprah Winfrey‘s company.

• George Alexander, Black Enterprise: One on One With Steve Harvey
• U-Savior, workers.org: Money, Black Power and radio

"Growing Trend" of Media Interference in Latin America

"A study carried out in seven countries of Latin America found a ‘growing trend’ in the region of subtle, largely invisible government interference with the media and journalistic independence," Marcela Valente reported for Inter-Press Service.

"Examples of this ‘behind-the-scenes government interference with media freedom and editorial independence" are the arbitrary distribution of government advertising with the aim of influencing news coverage and punishing critics, direct advertising payments to individual reporters, or phone calls to editors from government officials upset over certain news coverage, according to the new report, which was released in Argentina on Thursday.

"’The Price of Silence: The Growing Threat of Soft Censorship in Latin America,’ which focuses on Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Peru and Uruguay, was produced by the Argentine Association for Civil Rights (ADC) and the New York-based Open Society Justice Initiative, with country-specific research by civil society groups and researchers in the various countries involved."

The Source Magazine Seeks to Restore Past Glory

"The Source, which was in bankruptcy last year, is relaunching with a 20th-anniversary issue and a new focus -‚Äî a direction that its co-publisher says will restore the magazine, once known as hip-hop’s bible, to prominence," Nekesa Mumbi Moody wrote Thursday for the Associated Press.

"’It’s a very seminal period, an opportunity to both celebrate 20 years of content and the fact that The Source was a leader in chronicling the culture of hip-hop,’ said L. Londell McMillan, a media and entertainment lawyer who, along with investment banker Jeffery Scott, purchased The Source earlier this year.

"’I’m on a mission to restore it to the community that gave birth to it and open the door to those that currently enjoy and influence that hip-hop culture,’ he added. ‘It’s exciting because we believe that we can do it.’

"The new issue, which hits newsstands next week, features four separate covers of hip-hop pioneers LL Cool J, Ice Cube, Queen Latifah and Nas, photographed by director Spike Lee."

Georgia Conflict Tops Politics in News Coverage

"The fighting between Russia and Georgia was the biggest story in the U.S. media last week, marking the first week in nine months when the presidential race did not generate the most coverage, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism," the center reported on Monday.

"The conflict in the Caucasus, which raised the specter of a re-ignited Cold War, accounted for 26% of all the overall coverage last week, according to PEJ’s weekly News Coverage Index for the week of Aug. 11-17. The campaign, at 21%, generated its lowest level of weekly coverage since last December‚Äîbefore the first caucus or primary vote was cast.

"The crisis in Georgia also quickly became a major campaign issue. Stories about the conflict primarily involving the candidates’ views were the No. 1 election storyline, accounting for 14% of the campaign coverage studied by PEJ."

Reporters Without Borders reported on Aug. 12 that the conflict took a heavy toll for journalists — four killed and four arrested since fighting broke out.

• George E. Curry, syndicated: aad McCain Seeks to Ban Affirmative Action in Arizona
• Editorial, Duluth (Minn.) News Tribune: Cost of Georgia’s military option tragic, steep
• Deborah Howell, Washington Post: Obama’s Edge in the Coverage Race
• Les Payne, Newsday: It’s all about the oil, in this game
• Zachary Roth, Columbia Journalism Review: Appearances Are Everything: The NYT notes McCain’s "aura of commander in chief"
• David Swerdlick, ebonyjet.com: On My Mind: The U.S. foreign policy bag of tricks

NBC Olympics Coverage Said to Ignore Controversy

"For NBC, Beijing is just a backdrop," according to Robert Bianco of USA Today.

"Granted, there was never any chance that NBC, which paid more for its broadcast rights than the rest of the world combined, was going to jeopardize that investment by making Michael Phelps take a back seat to some investigative reporter. Still, rather than expand our understanding of China beyond the Water Cube, NBC seems determined to shrink it, turning a blind eye to most any hint of a problem, like a parent who pretends not to notice when his kid is misbehaving in public."

• Bryan Clay, ebonyjet.com: Postcard From Beijing
• Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe: Guts and glory
• Norman (Otis) Richmond, the Black World Today: Tommie Smith, John Carlos Olympic Icons

Short Takes

• "The connection between media coverage and economic events has often been uneven," the Project for Excellence in Journalism reported on Monday. "Sometimes, coverage has lagged months behind economic activity, when the storyline was dependent on government data. Other times, coverage has tracked events erratically, as with housing and inflation. But when the story is easier to tell, as in the case of gas prices, coverage has been closely tied to what is actually occurring in the marketplace."
• The San Francisco Bay View has ended its print edition and "pouring all our energy into improving our website." Mary Ratcliff wrote last month on the paper’s Web site, "Publishing the Bay View in print has been a labor of love and the love of our lives for over 16 years, but although major advertising agencies recognize the Bay View as one of the top 10 Black papers in the country, we were never able to make it profitable or even sustainable."
• "As of September 1, Red Zebra’s Sports WXTR/Washington will be an affiliate of ESPN Deportes Radio and Spanish-language home to the Washington Redskins. The Redskins are owned by Daniel Snyder, who is a lead investor in Red Zebra," RadioInk reported on Monday.
• In New Orleans, former WDSU-TV anchor Helena Moreno is running for the Second Congressional District seat, as a Democrat, a post now held by William Jefferson. She is the only non-black candidate,¬†according to the Louisiana Weekly. Jefferson was indicted last year on federal charges of racketeering, soliciting bribes and money laundering in a long-running bribery investigation into business deals he tried to broker in Africa.