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3 Top Editors Take Ebony, Jet Buyouts

richard

Updated January 13

Company Has Said It, Too, Feels Advertising Decline

Lynn A. Norment, Walter Leavy and Malcolm West, three of the four managing editors at Ebony and Jet magazines, are accepting buyout offers from Johnson Publishing Co., the affected journalists and others at the company told Journal-isms.

"I’m excited!" said Norment, 56, who has been with the privately owned publisher since 1977, arriving from the Memphis Commercial Appeal. She said she had been exploring other opportunities in and out of Chicago when the buyout offer came along.

Norment served on the board of directors of the National Association of Black Journalists for six years, and chaired both NABJ’s 25th anniversary celebration in 2000 and its 1997 convention in Chicago. She has also been president of the Chicago Association of Black Journalists.

Johnson Publishing did not respond to a request for comment about the buyouts, which staffers said were offered to those whose age and years of service added up at least to 80. But last February a spokeswoman said, "Like most other publishers, we are experiencing a downtrend in advertising revenue, while production, printing and fulfillment costs have all increased. We have made some changes for greater efficiency of operations which resulted in the elimination of a few selected positions and some layoffs."

The Washington office manager is said to have taken the buyout; freelancers have said the company is late in making payments, and calls to the formerly tradition-bound main office in Chicago, as with many other firms, are now answered with automated equipment.

Leavy, 55, came to the company in 1980 from the old Memphis Press-Scimitar. He and Norment split the managing editor duties, with Norment largely handling editorial content and Leavy production. "The magazine has never been late one day," he told Journal-isms, saying his job was to make sure everything in the publication was "where it was supposed to be, when it was supposed to be there."

Leavy formerly wrote the "For Brothers Only" column in Ebony. He emphasized there was "absolutely nothing negative" about his leaving and said the buyout offer provided "an opportunity to step back and appreciate the contributions I made."

West, who shares Jet managing editor duties with Mira Lowe, did not respond to telephone calls. But in a 2003 television interview with WLS-TV’s Harry Porterfield, he said of the pocket-sized newsweekly, "I sort of liken the publication of Jet every week to our inviting black America to dinner with Jet. There are several different places where our readers can go to eat. There are different magazines that deal with education, entertainment, sports, but Jet takes the best from each of those publications, periodicals, newspapers, puts them on a plate and serves that up to black America every week, and nobody cooks like Jet (laughter). We deal with the most important people, the most important events, the most important places every week."

Norment told Journal-isms, "I am grateful to Ebony for providing me with many years of wonderful experiences, and the opportunity to meet and interview some of the most renowned newsmakers of our day, including Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama. I’ve met and interviewed business leaders as well as community leaders, and of course, celebrities. I’ve had repeat interviews with Beyonce, Janet Jackson, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Wynton Marsalis, Al Green, Tom Joyner, to name a few."

In the interview with Porterfield, she said, "You know, 58 years after Ebony started, there is still a great need for a magazine that covers black life. People who are doing things, who have goals and dreams, who are passionate about whatever those goals and dreams are, who have something to contribute not only to the black community, but to the world. This is where they can get their stories out."

Byron Pitts Named "60 Minutes" Contributor

CBS-TV’s "60 Minutes," which has been without a regular African American presence since correspondent Ed Bradley died in 2006, on Tuesday named Byron Pitts a "contributing correspondent."

Lara Logan, CBS News’ chief foreign affairs correspondent, Anderson Cooper, a CNN anchor, and PBS host Charlie Rose are also "contributing correspondents" to the program.¬† Bob Simon, Scott Pelley, Lesley Stahl and Steve Kroft also started with the show at that position, spokesman Kevin Tedesco told Journal-isms.

"Pitts, who has appeared on 60 MINUTES periodically since 2006, will be featured regularly beginning in the 2009-’10 season and will report at least six stories. He will also continue to work for THE CBS EVENING NEWS WITH KATIE COURIC, but with the new title of chief national correspondent," a news release said.

‘It was time to share Byron Pitts’ extraordinary talents with millions of viewers in primetime in addition to our Evening News audience,’ Sean McManus, president of CBS News and Sports, said in the release. ‘Byron has certainly earned the opportunity.’

‘Byron is one of the finest reporters in the news business and it is gratifying that he has worked his way up right here at home at CBS News,’ said Jeff Fager, executive producer of the broadcast. ‘He is a first class human being and a terrific correspondent."

As reported Jan. 2, Pitts’ wife, Lyne Pitts, has resigned as one of two vice presidents of color at NBC News to write a book and move "to the next phase" of her career.

"In October Byron signed a deal with St. Martin’s Press to publish a book in the fall of this year. It’s his story about overcoming childhood reading difficulties and stuttering. We’re doing a lot of the writing together and that will be my primary focus for the next few months," she told Journal-isms.

"I wanted to be a part of ’60 Minutes’ since I was in high school," Pitts, 48,¬† told Richard Huff of the New York Daily News on Monday. "For me, ’60 Minutes’ is to broadcast journalism what the Yankees are to baseball: It’s the gold standard."¬† He told Journal-isms the first draft of the book should be finished by the end of the month. [Added Jan. 13.]¬†

Liz Spayd, Raju Narisetti Named at Washington Post

Elizabeth Spayd, editor of washingtonpost.com, and Raju Narisetti, a former deputy managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, were named Tuesday as co-managing editors of the Washington Post, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli announced. 

Spayd, 50, is the first woman to hold the post and Narisetti, 42, who is South Asian, is the first journalist of color.

Spayd will be responsible for the hard-news sections of the newspaper; Narisetti will oversee Style and other feature sections, "as well as the visual departments, photography, graphics and video. He will be
responsible for day-to-day online operations and will guide product innovation
and work with Liz and me on newsroom strategy questions," Brauchli wrote to the Post staff.

"Together, Liz and Raju have talents and knowledge that will strengthen our newsroom at a critical juncture. Journalistically they are a powerful duo, with backgrounds in national, international and business news. Our national staff won four Pulitzer Prizes under Liz, while the Journal’s European and Middle East staff under Raju won prizes from the Overseas Press Club, the German Marshall Fund and the World Leadership Forum," Brauchli said.

Spayd, a former assistant managing editor for national news, was a candidate for the managing editor’s job when Phil Bennett, who resigned last week, was named in 2004. Eugene Robinson, now a columnist, was also a candidate then. Robinson is a black journalist, and his failure to get the job prompted a long-running internal discussion of diversity efforts at the paper.

Both Spayd and Narisetti have online as well as print experience, a priority for the Post. In addition, Narisetti is an enthusiastic proponent of diversity and supporter of Brauchli. He told Journal-isms in July, when Brauchli was named to succeed Leonard Downie Jr.:

"As someone who has worked closely with Marcus for nearly a decade, I can pretty categorically say his role at the Washington Post will also see the newsroom there – both print and online – become a lot more diverse in its appearance but, more importantly, in its thinking and its ability to serve a diverse Washington-based readership (via Washington Post), a smaller but important non-Washington yet US readership (again via Washington Post and its online version) as well as a global readership that turns to the Washington Post (via washingtonpost.com) for an understanding of American policy and politics as well the American view of geopolitics around the world."

With Wall Street Journal backing, Narisetti launched the daily business journal Mint in February 2007, and stepped down last month as editor. 

According to a bio by the South Asian Journalists Association, Narisetti met his African American wife, Kim Narisetti, while at the Dayton Daily News in Ohio. She is a freelancer who has been an editor at Advertising Age, The Source, TheStreet.com and the Journal.

Milton R. Coleman, who is on the ladder to become president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, remains deputy managing editor. [Added Jan. 13]

  

Even Bush Notes Lack of Diversity in Press Corps

Even President Bush has noted that "there need to be more minorities in the press corps," according to April Ryan, White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks.

Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz Monday quoted Ryan to that effect in an article that noted the lack of African Americans assigned to cover the coming Barack Obama White House.

"Imagine you’re president, at the lectern, looking out at those faces ‚Äî is this a representation of America?" Ryan said in the piece.

"Eight days before Barack Obama is sworn in, the relative paucity of black journalists at the White House is striking," Kurtz went on. "A mostly white press corps at 1600 Pennsylvania would be cause for concern no matter what the color of the Oval Office occupant. But the advent of the Obama administration seems to underscore that racial progress has been uneven in a business that chronicles that very subject."

"It didn’t exactly take a lot of sleuthing" to come up with the story, Kurtz told Journal-isms. "It’s been the elephant in the room for years, and the advent of the Obama administration seemed like a good time to take stock of the reality."

Indeed, the journalist organizations of color have been complaining about the lack of diversity in the top political beats for some time. "By our accounts, in the midst of this monumental campaign for the Oval Office, black journalists had little to no opportunity to cover the candidates or the issues," Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, said in a statement after the November election.

"Now in the midst of this defining moment, as the White House press corps is being formed to cover this country’s 44th President, NABJ urges the news media to gather their own transition team for change."

Coincidentally, Bush held his farewell news conference Monday, speaking to an overwhelmingly white press corps. He called on two black journalists, Ryan and Suzanne Malveaux of CNN.

With Malveaux, Bush joked that this was the first time he had pronounced her first name correctly: Su-ZAHN, rather than Su-ZANNE. He told her he could be called "Zhorjh," simulating the French pronunciation of "George."

He also bantered with Ryan, seated in the rear of the room, before she asked him to reflect on the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina. He defended it.¬†

Roland Burris to Be Seated; Media Blitz Worked

"Roland Burris will be seated this week as a U.S. senator, taking over the position vacated by President-elect Barack Obama and capping a bizarre, weeks-long saga surrounding the legality of his appointment," as Z. Byron Wolf, Jonathan Karl and Kate Barrett reported Monday for ABC News.

"Senate leaders first rejected Burris and turned him away from the Senate before finally accepting his appointment by Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was arrested in December for allegedly trying to sell the very same Senate seat.

"The move reverses an unlikely standoff between Burris, a former Illinois attorney general who has not held elective office in more than a decade, and the powerful Democratic lawmakers who control Congress. The Democratic leaders had wanted to avoid accepting an appointment made by Blagojevich, because of the charges against him."

Burris had undertaken an extensive media campaign in his quest for the seat, and some commentators said that played a role in the Senate Democrats’ reversal.

Here is how some commentators of color weighed in:

Amador Bernal works in the mushroom farms of Kennett Square, Pa. He makes $9.03 an hour and works seven days a week. Recent Mexican immigrants have better health than the average American, but their health advantage erodes the longer they live here, according to "Unnatural Causes." The series won an Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award.

Pieces on Health Disparities, Indian Abuse Honored

A seven-part, four-hour series¬†that found that health disparities in the United States are related to income and race; public radio’s coverage of a devastating earthquake that hit central China and a two-part series that exposed "gross injustice" to women on American Indian reservations "and the callous inability of bureaucracies to address the problem" were among 13 winners of the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards announced¬†Monday.

"When a devastating earthquake hit central China in May 12, 2008, NPR’s Melissa Block, Robert Siegel and their team were the only foreign reporters on the scene. They gave the world its first impressions of the catastrophe, and their ensuing reports contained vivid stories of grief, hope and survival," the Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism announced.

Of "Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?" the school said, "In this extraordinary series, California Newsreel and Vital Pictures tackle one of the most challenging questions in public health today: Why are the rich so much healthier than the poor? Despite spending more on healthcare than all other countries combined, why does the United States rank so low on the lists of health indicators? . . . the series reveals that beyond habits and genetics, where we live and work directly affects our lifespan. The producers committed significant time and resources to this superb production and made a critical and complex issue accessible to all."

The series was produced with public broadcasting’s National Minority Consortia.

The award to National Public Radio and Laura Sullivan said, "This series¬†about the rampant sexual abuse of Native American women and the faulty policing and prosecution of these crimes explore a shocking statistic from the Justice Department: One out of three Native American women will be raped in her lifetime. Sullivan’s three-month investigation involved dozens of interviews with law enforcement officials, victims and tribal leaders on reservations in South Dakota and Oklahoma. A devastating case of sexual assault that led to a woman’s death was reopened in North Dakota in response to the series’ findings. The series¬†also resulted in Congressional hearings, and the Justice Department deputized Indian police officers to arrest non-Indians for the first time."

WFAA-TV in Dallas is to receive a Gold Baton, the awards’ highest honor, "for its continuing commitment to outstanding investigative reporting," the first time a local station has won that baton in the award’s 20-year history.

Reform-Friendly Obama Classmate Picked to Head FCC

"President-elect Barack Obama intends to nominate his technology adviser, Julius Genachowski, to head the Federal Communications Commission, a Democratic source close to the Obama transition team said," Amy Schatz and Laura Meckler reported¬†for Tuesday’s editions of the Wall Street Journal.

"Mr. Genachowski, 46 years old, is a former Harvard Law School classmate of Mr. Obama. He previously worked at the FCC during the Clinton administration. More recently, he co-founded LaunchBox Digital, a Washington, D.C.-based venture capital firm. He worked at Barry Diller‘s IAC/InterActive Corp. in various executive positions for eight years after leaving the FCC.

"During the campaign, Mr. Genachowski served as the top technology adviser to Mr. Obama, putting together a detailed technology and innovation plan that expressed support for open Internet or ‘net neutrality’ protections; media-ownership rules that encourage more diversity; and expansion of affordable broadband access across the country."

The media-reform group Free Press welcomed the news.

Obama Inauguration Called Bonanza for Media

"No major media company will miss out on President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration as they swarm Washington, D.C., in hopes of cashing in on an otherwise bleak first quarter," Andrew Hampp wrote¬†on Monday for Advertising Age.

"The week of Jan. 20 will see a media blitz not seen since, well, the week of Nov. 4, when Mr. Obama’s victory prompted record ratings for cable news networks such as CNN, MSNBC and Fox News and sent newspapers such as the New York Times, USA Today and the Chicago Tribune clamoring to reprint their Nov. 5 issues. Now everyone from MTV to QVC to Time Inc. is hoping to augment their revenues with commemorative coverage. Even Marvel Comics is in on the action, producing a Spider-Man-meets-Obama special-edition comic book that hits stands Jan. 14."

David Bauder added Monday for the Associated Press:

"In all their planning to cover Barack Obama’s inauguration as the nation’s 44th president, television networks have paid particular attention to people who must spend their day in front of a computer.

"CBS News has built a special inauguration Web site to show its coverage on Jan. 20. CNN.com will have four live streams and will allow Facebook users to connect through its site. ABC is offering online archived speeches of past presidents. Fox News and MSNBC Web sites will both stream the inauguration live online."

Radio’s syndicated "Tom Joyner Morning Show" announced on Monday it would broadcast live from Washington from Monday, Jan. 19, through Wednesday, Jan. 21. On Monday, Martin Luther King Day, Joyner and co-hosts Sybil Wilkes and J. Anthony Brown will go live from one of Washington’s most celebrated soul-food restaurants, Ben‚Äôs Chili Bowl. Obama ate there over the weekend.

Should Columnists Appear on the News Pages?

"Grimm, Oppenheimer, Marquez, Reinhard ‚Äî these are The Miami Herald’s famous ”news columnists.” They write their opinions in such a distinctive voice that we know them like neighbors. But that’s the problem, too. What are they doing in the news pages, many readers ask? Why are they also reporting? And why doesn’t The Herald just fess up and admit that it mixes news and opinion? Edward Schumacher-Matos, ombudsman for the Miami Herald, asked¬†on Sunday.

He quoted Metro columnist Myriam Marquez:

”I rarely write off the top of my head. I report my columns, either by interviewing officials and others, or reading authoritative reports, or both. Sometimes I try to be light, offer humor,” she said. Other times, "I write with an edge and an attitude, but also with a heart.

"I’m not one to be pigeon-holed by readers, because I tend to stick up for fairness ‚Äî I don’t align myself with one political party or another. I praise when I believe they do good, and condemn when I believe they’ve misbehaved and squandered the public trust. I don’t skew way to the left or the right, but that doesn’t mean that I deliver namby-pamby columns that don’t come down on one side or another, with arguments that are researched.”

Separately, members of the Trotter Group of African American columnists discussed the piece among themselves.

"I had thought for years that this argument was silly, that readers are smart enough to know that if a column has a person’s big head on it and features the use of first-person analysis that it was obviously commentary," said Rochelle Riley of the Detroit Free Press.

"But lately, I have been re-thinking this because, in the past year, I have broken news during the mayoral scandal in columns that still featured my face at the top.

"Having said that, I do NOT think that columnists should all be shoved into editorial pages, which at some papers, get the least readership of any section. . . .

"We have found a solution, at least for me, at my paper: Now when I break news, I take a byline. When I analyze a story, I take a column sig. This doesn’t apply to all columnists, but I quite frankly, have a pretty big opinion, when I offer one."

Eugene Kane, Metro columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, wrote, "I’ve always believed that most newspaper editors don’t really understand columnists, so they assume readers don’t, either. Frankly, I write on the Metro front cuz that’s where they told me the column would appear. I would still write it the same way if it appeared anywhere else in the newspaper.

"I do think a metro-oriented column should focus on local issues more than national stuff unless you can make the case the issue has local interest. As for style, I consider columnists to be a species of ‘soloist’ in the orchestra who play their instruments differently than the rest of the band.

"Most readers appreciate this, but every few years you get the editor wondering if all these opinionated columnists are the thing that’s really wrong with journalism, and not all of their mis-guided decisions on coverage, diversity, the Internet, revenue stream, etc."

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