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Journal-isms 5/11

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Bossip Website Stands by Decision to Show Dead Fetus

Ex-Prison Journalist Says Inmates Have Their Own Slavery

. . . Maryland Inmates Stage Closed-Circuit Newscasts

5 J-Schools Flunk Diversity Standard for Accreditation

“Entrepreneurial Journalism” Emerges as J-School Trend

Program Notes: Freedom Riders and Robotic Futures

Hollywood Not Getting the Multicultural Lesson of “Fast Five”

Short Takes

Bossip Website Stands by Decision to Show Dead Fetus

“The day after Bossip caused virtually the entire Internet to throw up at once, the black gossip website’s chief executive is standing by her decision to publish photographs of a miscarriage,” Maria Elena Fernandez, former television writer for the Los Angeles Times, wrote Wednesday for Newsweek/the Daily Beast.

“Model Esther Baxter gave Bossip an exclusive interview to discuss how, she says, rapper Joe Budden, her ex-boyfriend, beat her and caused her to miscarry their child. Bossip published the video of the interview Monday, along with copies of a police report, photographs of Baxter’s physical injuries — and three gruesome photographs of the fetus.

“Bossip eventually took down the miscarriage photos, but not before Baxter ranted on Twitter about the invasion of privacy, and many of the site’s readers left comments calling Bossip’s editorial decision ‘revolting’ and ‘unnecessary.’ ”

Bossip, part of Moguldom Media Group, whose other websites include the Atlanta Post and hiphopwired, is one of the top-ranked sites catering to African Americans, according to the comScore research company. It recorded 1,460,000 unique visitors in April, compared with 2,892,000 for MediaTakeOut.com, 1,625,000 for AOL’s Black Voices sites, 1,544,000 for BET.com sites, and 842,000 for blackplanet.com

“The controversy erupted just days after U.S. officials debated distributing the Osama bin Laden death photos,” Fernandez continued. “And a documentary, Unlawful Killing, being released at Cannes this week will — for the first time —show footage of Princess Diana as she was dying. Which raises the question: Have taste and restraint gone the way of the dinosaurs?

“On Bossip, which . . . boasts the tagline ‘Gossip for the Hardcore,’ the answer is yes, says Chief Executive Marve Frazier.

“ ‘It was what it was. If the images are graphic, the images are graphic.’ ”

“ ‘We weren’t thinking editorially or had any intention behind it,’ Frazier said. ‘We just decided to put everything up that was sent to us — that we had obtained for the particulars of the story. It wasn’t like we were asking for pictures of the fetus. There were only three on the site. We received quite a few and they were pretty disgusting. The ones you saw weren’t even the half of it, honestly.’ ”

” . . . In the end, Frazier took down the photographs out of concern that there would be an advertiser backlash—not because she regretted her initial decision.”

Freed prison journalist Wilbert Rideau, right, participates in a seminar in April after receiving the George Polk Award he won in 1979 but could not pick up. Kathy Y. Times, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, did not rule out inviting him to an NABJ convention. (Credit: Long Island University)

Ex-Prison Journalist Says Inmates Have Their Own Slavery

“The practice of rape and enslavement hasn’t ended,” according to freed prison journalist Wilbert Rideau. “It’s a very real problem in many prisons across America, and, in fact, it’s usually even worse in jails. Authorities cracked down on it at the Louisiana State Prison back in the 1970s and it now only an occasional occurrence in what is now perhaps the safest maximum security prison in the country.

“What is more likely to occur now at LSP would be one inmate exploiting another inmate’s weaknesses and insecurities in a nonviolent manner to persuade/intimidate him into becoming his ‘wife’ or ‘boy.’ My contention has always been that if the most violent prison in the nation (Angola circa 1976) could be cleaned up, any prison could be cleaned up if officialdom determined to do it,” he said through an email from his wife, Linda LaBranche.

Rideau appeared Monday on NPR’s “Tell Me More.” “You might recognize the name from NPR and ABC News, where he contributed reporting even while imprisoned in one of the most notorious prisons in the country,” host Michel Martin said. “He spent 44 years behind bars, with most of those years in the nation’s largest maximum-security prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

“During that time, Wilbert Rideau found his voice as a writer. He became editor of the Angolite, a prison news magazine that was nominated for many awards. And in 1979, he won the prestigious George Polk Award for his investigative reporting on sexual violence in prison. But he was only able to pick up the award in person last month, and he’s with us now from his home in Baton Rouge, where he’s a free man.”

Rideau received the death penalty for murder in 1961, but his sentence was later amended to life imprisonment. He was released in 2005.

“It’s not a criminal justice system,” he told Martin. “It started off about criminal justice. Now, it’s about power, politics and prejudice. It’s a business. You know, you don’t need this because you can’t afford it. It’s a monster, and you can’t afford to feed it because you’re not blessed with inexhaustible resources. And it’s just going to destroy you from within. You know, people used to talk about reforms. I’ve reached a point where I don’t think you’re ever going to be able to reform because you’ve created a monster that keeps growing.”

Asked “What’s next for you? What are you dreaming about now?” Rideau told Martin, “Number one, making a living. But the other thing is I do a lot of lecturing around the United States. Usually, I find myself talking to lawyers. I also consult on capital defense teams around the country when they’re having difficulty with their client. And I’m moving toward the next book, which my wife and I are going to write.” His wife told Journal-isms, “The new book will be a corrective to longstanding and popular perceptions of the criminal and criminality.”

Mark Saltz wrote for the Associated Press in 2006, “While in prison, Rideau went from an illiterate teenager to a well-read, self-educated man. He edited The Angolite, a prison magazine that won a George Polk Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for exposing prison abuses. He was in demand as a speaker, appeared on television and helped produce and direct an award-winning documentary about Angola called, The Farm.

“In 1993, Life magazine called him ‘the most rehabilitated prisoner in America.’ “

Still, Rideau has never spoken before journalism groups, including the National Association of Black Journalists.

His wife said, “Wilbert speaks where he is invited to go. So far, he has spoken to journalism students at a few universities, but not to any journalism groups, including NABJ.”

“Our program is incomplete,” NABJ President Kathy Y. Times said of the upcoming NABJ convention in Philadelphia. “The program committee is still working on invitations,” she said.

 

. . . Maryland Inmates Stage Closed-Circuit Newscasts

“Calvert Porter sits down behind the anchor desk and straightens his collar. His co-anchor, Keith Williams, studies his script,” Michael S. Rosenwald wrote Monday in the Washington Post.

“ ‘Do you want a sound check?’ Porter asks.

“ ‘No, you’re all right,’ the cameraman says.

“ ‘Do you want to start off with some light banter?’ Porter asks.

“The anchors chat about football for a few minutes, then tell the cameraman to roll. ‘Hello, everyone,’ Williams says, ‘and thanks for tuning in.’

“Porter is a convicted rapist. Williams is an armed robber. Their audience, not measured by Nielsen, is 2,000 or so murderers, rapists, robbers, forgers, car thieves and muggers at a Hagerstown prison. Their goals are not unlike Diane Sawyer’s: Tell viewers things they don’t know. Given the setting, most of their news is local.

“ ‘We have some very, very interesting facts coming up,’ Williams says, his voice echoing off the cinderblock walls in a storage space doubling as a newsroom.

“The newscast at the Maryland Correctional Training Center, or MCTC, is one of several such programs in the state’s prisons, and experts say they know of few other efforts like it in the United States. The newscasts put a modern spin on a jailhouse journalism tradition that dates to the 19th century, when Jesse James’s gang was known, among other things, as a group of influential and incarcerated newspapermen.

“These days, prisoner newspapers are dwindling or gone, unable to survive as more violent inmates began entering the system in the 1980s, forcing more lockdowns and creating tougher environments. Costs skyrocketed, draining funding for inmate perks.

“Experts say TV broadcasts could provide a cheap solution for cash-strapped states shouldering massive corrections budgets.”

5 J-Schools Flunk Diversity Standard for Accreditation

The mass communications programs at Jackson State University and the undergraduate mass communications program at Grambling State University, historically black colleges, won full reaccreditation from the Accrediting Council On Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, the group announced on Monday.

Five other schools were found in noncompliance with the council’s standard on diversity. By itself, flunking the standard is not enough to deny accreditation, however.

The council said it made 24 school accreditation decisions at its meeting April 29-30 in Portland, Ore. It denied accreditation to the graduate program in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa. That school failed Standards 2 and 9, which deal with curriculum, instruction and assessment of learning outcomes.

The schools that failed Standard 3, which certifies that “The unit has a diverse and inclusive program that serves and reflects society,” were Shippensburg University, St. Cloud State University, University of Colorado, Colorado State University and Middle Tennessee State University.

The Department of Mass Communications and Journalism at Norfolk State University, another historically black school, received provisional reaccreditation for its undergraduate program, as did the graduate programs of the Department of Mass Communication at Grambling State.

Some 24.2 percent of the black students who earn bachelor’s degrees in journalism and communications are said to receive them from historically black colleges and universities.

In other business, the Council reelected four members to three-year terms on its Accrediting Committee: John Cochran, retired ABC News senior correspondent; Phil Dixon, who is leaving as chair of department of journalism at Howard University; Charlotte Hall, retired senior vice president and editor at the Orlando Sentinel; and Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.

“Entrepreneurial Journalism” Emerges as J-School Trend

“Teru Kuwayama was flying into Afghanistan when very few were able to, when one or two planes a day landed on a dicey tarmac that was periodically swept for mines and other explosives,” Gena Chung wrote for the March and April issue of the American Journalism Review. “In 2002, the award-winning photojournalist began capturing images to chronicle the conflict and humanitarian crisis of the beleaguered nation¯a nation he believed had been abandoned and ‘neglected’ by the traditional news media. Seven years later, President Barack Obama announced his new strategy for Afghanistan, and journalists began flooding into the country. But instead of tarrying with his colleagues, Kuwayama turned his frustrations with the traditional media into a not-so-traditional media enterprise idea. He decided to trade bullets in the desert for a rude awakening in a classroom at the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

“Kuwayama is just one among many mid-career and nascent journalists who are choosing to take advantage of a class in a subject that has recently emerged in journalism school curricula across the country and around the world: entrepreneurial journalism.”

“On January 8, 2010, three dozen journalism educators, separated by state and international borders and time zones, connected on a conference call to discuss current courses, future courses or desired courses on the topic. The field marshal of this convergence was Jeff Jarvis, the digital journalism enthusiast who has been a reporter, editor, publisher, best-selling author and entrepreneur, and is currently director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism.

“. . . Jarvis says that the interesting thing about the conference call was that there was a general consensus that such classes could not have been created eight or 10 years ago.”

 

In CNN’s “Don’t Fail Me,” rich, poor, good and failing schools compete at building fully functional, agile robots. (Video)

Program Notes: Freedom Riders and Robotic Futures

Two specials airing Sunday and Monday take viewers back to the nation’s civil rights past and examine what interviewees say is poor preparation for the nation’s future as PBS presents “Freedom Riders” and Soledad O’Brien reports CNN’s “Don’t Fail Me: Education in America.”

“Fifty years after 436 black and white Americans risked their lives — and many endured savage beatings and imprisonment – for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed through the Deep South from May through November of 1961, PBS and AMERICAN EXPERIENCE celebrate their courage and enduring legacy,” according to an announcement from PBS.

“Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws, the Freedom Riders’ belief in non-violent activism was sorely tested as mob violence and bitter racism greeted them along the way. ‘Freedom Riders’ features testimony from a fascinating cast of central characters: the Riders themselves, state and federal government officials, and journalists who witnessed the rides firsthand.

“Monday, May 16, marks the debut of award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson’s powerful documentary portraying these brave citizens, who stood up for what they believed in and changed our country.”

On CNN’s “Don’t Fail Me,” O’Brien takes viewers on a national robotics competition, focusing on South Asian and Hispanic students, in which 2,000 teams of about 30 kids each have six weeks to build fully functional, agile robots that zoom across playing fields to score points.

The competition takes place as Education Secretary Arne Duncan says minorities will be half of students by 2050, but that Latinos have the highest dropout rate. Former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen admits that Tennessee was “absolutely” lying to parents about how well their students were scoring on state tests. Ursula Burns, the CEO of Xerox Corp., says Xerox can’t find enough skilled engineers in the United States and says, “I’m panic stricken about it.”

The show premieres Sunday at 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific time and reairs on Saturday.

Hollywood Not Getting the Multicultural Lesson of “Fast Five”

“The lessons of ‘Fast Five’ are apparently lost on a Hollywood that’s about to embark on its biggest season, the summer,” Brent Lang wrote May 3 for the Wrap.

“The Universal sequel exploded onto theater screens last weekend, raking in $86.2 million with an ethnically diverse cast that attracted an equally diverse audience.

‘Latinos represented almost as many moviegoers as whites (33% versus 35%), while African-Americans also turned out in force, according to studio figures.

“The multi-racial cast starred Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson, featured a Rio de Janeiro backdrop and was directed by Justin Lin, who scored the biggest-ever domestic debut for an Asian director.

“‘ “Fast Five” is a great example of Hollywood getting it right,’ Craig Detweiler, professor of film history at Pepperdine University, told TheWrap. ‘Its multi-racial cast matches the multi-racial audience. The Rock and Vin Diesel reflect the browning of America, that there is more blurring across races and cultures than ever before. The box office take reflects that.’

“But after that auspicious start, the summer derails quicker than one of Diesel’s sports cars. A quick scan of the major films hitting theaters over the next few months shows that Hollywood is about to flood the marketplace — again! — with four-quadrant fare almost exclusively by and starring the ever-shrinking white plurality.”

 

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