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Job Losses in the Thousands

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NBC Universal, Viacom, Gannett Give Out Pink Slips

Pink slips mounted on Thursday and Friday as Viacom Inc. and NBC Universal slashed about 1,350 positions and the Gannett Co., the nation’s largest newspaper enterprise, said it expected ultimately to eliminate about 2,000 jobs across all of the company’s 85 daily papers – and that’s not counting the Detroit Free Press and USA Today.

The New York Times reported that the McClatchy Co. is said to be seeking a buyer for the Miami Herald, and the Scripps Co. put the Rocky Mountain News up for sale.

Newsday announced plans Friday to cut 100 jobs Рor 5 percent of its work force Рand raise newsstand prices, as James Madore reported for that paper.

"Editor John Mancini said in a memo to staff that the job cuts would include three sports columnists, an undetermined number of photographers and a reporter/researcher in the Albany bureau. He also said some staffers would be required to take on different jobs."

"I can take a buyout or another position at the paper. Not sure yet what I’ll do," Shaun Powell, one of the sports columnists, told Journal-isms. "Newsday will go without general sports columnists, just a baseball columnist and football columnist."

Kevin Corke, who came to NBC News from ESPN in 2004 and was based in the Washington bureau, announced his layoff on his Facebook page. "Kevin Corke just got laid off! So why is he still smiling?" he wrote.

The National Association of Black Journalists called¬†on the Gannett Co. Friday "to keep diversity in the forefront of cost-cutting decisions," saying "Diversity is an essential component of success that companies and communities can’t afford to lose.

"Despite the seemingly unending layoffs and buyouts in American newsrooms, this week’s dismissals at Gannett Co. mark an especially crippling blow to journalism," it said.

"Plain and simple: diversity in the newsroom is good for business," said NABJ President Barbara Ciara.

At USA Today, the largest Gannett newspaper, "A total of 12 journalists were laid off, including four voluntary layoffs," Brent Jones, standards & recruitment editor, told Journal-isms via e-mail. "Two – or 16% of the cuts – were of minority journalists. That included one African American and one Asian American." He did not name them. But he said, "we’ve actually been able to step up our commitment to diversity. We’ve had great success in recruiting in 2008, particularly at UNITY. In fact, 48% of our hires this year were journalists of color."

At Viacom, "The deepest cuts came at Viacom’s largest division – MTV Networks, which includes cable channels MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1 and Comedy Central," Claudia Eller reported¬†Friday in the Los Angeles Times. "Viacom’s Hollywood movie studio, Paramount Pictures, let go 140 employees – 100 in the U.S. and the remainder in its international operations. Cable channel BET is cutting about 50 jobs."

One of those BET jobs belonged to Marcus Vanderberg, a senior producer managing sports and entertainment at BET.com in Washington. Vanderberg, 25, arrived at BET in January from AOL Black Voices, where he spent nearly 2¬? years. "I’m looking to move back home to Los Angeles and continue working in the online web space," he told Journal-isms via e-mail.

Jeanine Liburd, BET spokeswoman, referred questions to the parent company, Viacom, where spokeswoman Kelly McAndrew said the cuts were made throughout the conglomerate but would not say how much BET or any other division was affected.

However, Eller said in the L.A. Times, "MTV by far suffered the steepest cutbacks, losing hundreds of employees."

"Viacom has had a difficult 2008, with declining ratings at its flagship network MTV and the lack of a tentpole summer blockbuster on par with 2007’s ‘Transformers,’" Advertising Age reported.

"NBC, meanwhile, cut 500 workers, or 3% of its staff, according to an internal source, as part of its ongoing efforts to reduce its 2009 operating budget by 3%, or $500 million," Nat Worden wrote for Dow Jones Newswires.

"NBC slashed jobs throughout its portfolio, including positions at its business cable news network, CNBC."

Gannett corporate spokeswoman Tara Connell said her company left it up to individual papers to decide how many cuts to make and where, Joe Strupp reported in Editor & Publisher.

The cutbacks will affect about 10% of jobs in the company’s Community Publishing Division and follow a previous downsizing of some 1,000 jobs in the same division in August, he wrote.

Gannett newsroom employees continued to post comments anonymously on the Gannett Blog, a Web site created by former USA Today writer and editor Jim Hopkins of San Francisco, whose reader tally of Gannett job cuts reached 1,794 on Thursday.

One posting: "Greenville HR calls in wrong employee to be axed. During info session HR lady discovers she’s talking with an employee with the same last name (but wrong first name) as the employee that was to be let go. The intended target employee was eventually let go."

Another said, "I’m . . . rather envious of you veterans who remember what print journalism used to be. Many of us twentysomethings only know what its death rattle sounds like, and its heartbreaking when you sincerely love being a journalist."

David Gregory Named to Host "Meet the Press"

NBC News White House correspondent David Gregory was named the new moderator of "Meet the Press" on Sunday’s show, introduced by interim host Tom Brokaw, who filled in after the June death¬†of Tim Russert.

Brokaw made the announcement after a taped interview with President-elect Barack Obama. Brokaw and Gregory both paid tribute to Russert, and Gregory said he would take his cue from both men’s declarations that preparation and listening carefully were the keys to successful interviews.

"I wish David all the best," Gwen Ifill of PBS told Journal-isms.

Ifill had said that she had informal conversations about the job with NBC officials several weeks ago. Women started a Web site, "Demand NBC Reflect America’s Diversity." All five of the Sunday morning talk show hosts are Caucasian males," they said.

"Ifill’s presence would ‘help signal a new era at "Meet the Press,"’ Matea Gold wrote¬†Nov. 25 in the Los Angeles Times. "Currently the moderator of ‘Washington Week’ on PBS, the anchor would be the first African American moderator of the NBC program, a timely milestone that would coincide with the inauguration of the country’s first black president."

But naming Ifill could have meant alienating inside candidates. Chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell and political director Chuck Todd were also said to be seeking the job. At one point, there was discussion of returning to a panel format that would placate the competing personalities.

Last week, when word of Gregory’s appointment was reported in several news outlets, Bill Carter of the New York Times wrote, "Though Mr. Gregory was widely respected inside NBC News for his political coverage, he had another advantage over the other candidates: his role as a frequent substitute host for [Matt] Lauer on NBC’s most important news program, ‘Today.’

A "candidate who was speaking anonymously said, ‘My sense was they really just had to find a way to placate David down the road for Matt’s job.’ The ‘Today’ show is the most profitable show on television, and as such is vitally important to Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC’s parent, NBC Universal. It is also personally important to him because he led the show to its long period of ratings dominance as its executive producer in the 1990s."

On the show, Brokaw told Gregory that he was arriving at an opportune time because "everyone is paying attention now, in a way that I can’t remember since 1968. We are in very difficult times and people want to participate in their own destiny."

Gregory said, "I’m going to be counting on you" and said he would call upon Brokaw from time to time.

But Brokaw, 68, urged Gregory, 38, to "reach to your generation and get some fresh new voices that are out there." [Updated Dec. 7]

Washington Post’s Downie to Teach in Arizona

"Leonard Downie Jr., the longtime executive editor of The Washington Post who led his newspaper to more Pulitzer Prizes than any editor in American journalism history, is joining the faculty of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University," the university announced on Monday.

"Downie, the Post’s top editor from 1991 until earlier this year, will be the Weil Family Professor of Journalism at the Cronkite School and will hold the faculty rank of professor of practice," an announcement said. "He will start in August at the school’s new downtown Phoenix campus, teaching courses and working with advanced students at the Carnegie-Knight News21 Journalism Initiative, Cronkite News Service, the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship and other new school programs.

"Downie spent a week at ASU in October as the Barrett Honors College’s Flinn Foundation Centennial Lecturer.

"ASU President Michael Crow said, ‘Great journalism is essential to the preservation of our democracy, and that is why we are striving to make the Cronkite School the finest in the nation. Len Downie represents the very best of American journalism, and he will play a major part in creating the next generation of news media leaders.’

"Cronkite Dean Christopher Callahan called Downie ‘simply the finest newspaper editor of our era. Our Cronkite students will benefit enormously from Len’s vast knowledge, experiences, passion and belief in the news media’s critical watchdog role in holding those in power accountable.” [Added Dec. 8]

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Readers Debate "White, White House Press Corps"

Members of the public who logged online to washingtonpost.com on Wednesday debated "The White, White House Press Corps," a piece on theRoot.com in which journalist Sam Fulwood III wrote:

"Jesse Jackson‘s 1984 presidential campaign boosted – no, it actually created – the careers of a whole cadre of black political reporters . . . Nearly a quarter century later, Barack Obama made the same primary run, and it was not the symbolic stab at the White House that Jackson’s represented; instead, the junior senator from Illinois took the prize and will become the nation’s first black president. But black journalists by and large weren’t around to document the groundbreaking victory."

A sample of the exchanges with Fulwood:

Q.: "Being a black reporter in the White House carries no more weight than being a black news reporter on a TV news desk. In both instances, what the public hears or sees will be filtered through news directors and top news execs, who are mostly white. These are the gatekeepers who determine what is newsworthy, regardless of who is reporting the "news". If you want unvarnished non-commercial news, look to the Internet. The MSM is becoming irrelevant with each passing day.

Fulwood: "I totally disagree that the MSM is becoming less important. Rather, it’s invaluable to people who inhabit the blogosphere. Where else do they get their primary source of information? Lots of opinion can’t replace the informed reporting of the MSM, even if people claim they don’t like or respect it. They still read and watch quality news reports.

"And, that’s why it’s important that the reporting corps be as diverse as possible."

Detroit Paper Makes Front-Page Plea for Big Three

After Detroit’s Big Three automakers "made a dire request for $34 billion on Capitol Hill Thursday, with General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC warning they may not survive without quick help," in the words of the Detroit News, the Detroit Free Press devoted its entire front page to an editorial urging assistance.

Addressed to members of Congress and headlined, "Invest in America," the editorial began:

"You don’t want an economic disaster on your hands. Not when you could have prevented it. And not in times that are already the worst in a generation."

Meanwhile, the Economic Policy Institute issued a fact sheet Friday on African Americans in the auto industry.

"African Americans earn much higher wages in auto industry jobs than in other parts of the economy, and the loss of these solid, middle-class jobs would be a devastating blow," it said. "Hourly wages for African Americans in the motor vehicle industry averaged $17.08 (excluding fringe benefits) in 2007, versus economy-wide average wages for African Americans of $15.44 per hour."

However, it said, "The motor vehicle and parts industry, a sector of the economy that has been particularly welcoming to African Americans, is becoming a shrinking island of prosperity. The share of black workers (14.2%) in automotive industries is much higher than their overall share of the labor force (11.2%) . . . Approximately 118,000 African Americans worked in the auto industry in November 2008, down from 137,000 in December 2007 when the recession began."

The Free Press reported¬†Friday night, "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Bush administration cleared a major hurdle late today to granting aid for Detroit’s struggling auto industry as soon as next week, but many details for a short-term rescue remained in flux."

Returning Correspondent Finds a More Colorful U.S.

"After suffering through an economic collapse in Argentina, and the chaos of overcrowded Mexico City, I came to think of the United States as an orderly place where people obeyed the traffic laws and the banks never lost your money," Los Angeles Times reporter H?©ctor Tobar wrote¬†Friday in his newspaper, returning to the United States after leaving to cover Latin America in 2001.

"When I visited California on family vacations, everything looked bigger than I remembered. The size of a ‘large’ soft drink kept booming, along with the price of real estate. All my old friends seemed to be flush with cash.

"Then I moved back home, permanently, this summer. I discovered a country different from the one I had left behind.

"For one thing, a sizable chunk of Latin America had followed me home, bringing more of their customs and their language with them.

". . . In the new United States, we are more comfortable with the Latin American, Asian and African roots of our multitudes. Thus, the president-elect with the funny name, and the proliferation of languages around us.

"The United States I returned to is a more colorful place than the one I left. And we Americans seem mellowed and slightly more humble."

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

"Dennis the Menace" Creator Never Went There Again

Ever wonder why "Dennis the Menace" lives in an all-white world? It could be because creator Hank Ketcham tried integrating the comic strip once and — justifiably — got burned.

Blogger Steve Bunche rediscovered the 1970 "Dennis" panel in "Backstage at the Strips," a 1976 book by "Beetle Bailey" creator Mort Walker.  David Mills ran the cartoon Thursday on his "Undercover Black Man" blog.

Ketcham died in 2001 at age 81, but in 1993 Sandi Dolee wrote this in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

"Dennis’ world is white. The cartoonist says that exclusion stems from an incident several years ago when he introduced an African-American child as a new character.

"The black community objected to the likeness and protested to newspapers that carried the cartoon. ‘I was just shocked,’ Ketcham recalls.

"’And I was mad.

"’All of a sudden I was surrounded by a bunch of art directors.

"’The content was certainly innocuous but the way I drew him irked part of the community.

"’I just said "The heck with it, I’m not going to fight it." So I suggest now and again certain ethnic diversities but I have not made a star out of them.’"

"Dennis," which was adapted for television and the movies, runs in about 1,000 newspapers and is now drawn by Marcus Hamilton during the week and Ron Ferdinand on Sunday, according to King Features Syndicate. Both were Ketcham associates.

Ex-Journalist Plays Key Role in Canadian Crisis

A journalist who became Canada’s first black governor general, representing Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II as head of state, stepped in Thursday to resolve a governmental crisis, a departure from the position’s usually ceremonial role.

Michaelle Jean granted an unusual request to suspend parliament. Had she refused, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper would have had two choices: step down or face a no-confidence vote Monday that he was sure to lose.

Harper sought to close down Parliament until January, hoping to buy enough time to develop a stimulus package that could prop up the Canadian economy, according to the Associated Press.

Before becoming governor-general in 2005, Jean was a well-known journalist and broadcaster in Quebec. She immigrated from Haiti with her family at an early age and is fluent in five languages — French, English, Italian, Spanish and Haitian Creole, according to a biography.

Her background as a journalist was not necessarily reassuring. In a discussion¬†Thursday on National Public Radio’s "Tell Me More," Keith Boag, chief political correspondent with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation said:

"If she decides to take the extraordinary step of saying no, she would probably have to explain why that is. And in explaining why it is, she would create a debate in the country about the legitimacy of her decision, whether she has really the authority, whether she has the intellectual capability to do this. I mean, she is a journalist who was appointed to this position. She’s not a constitutional lawyer. She was not a judge. She really has nothing in her background to help her in dealing with these circumstances. We don’t want to have that kind of debate in the country, I don’t think."

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