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NPR, ESPN, Gwen Ifill Win Peabodys

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Sick Economy Kills “Illest Men’s Magazine Ever”

 

The 1967 Winston-Salem State University men’s basketball team was part of ESPN’s "Black Magic" documentary, which won a Peabody award for excellence in the electronic media.

Chauncey Bailey Project Honored 2nd Time by IRE

Reports questioning the guilt of black men who were kept in solitary confinement for more than three decades, an ESPN documentary that examined the civil rights movement through¬†basketball players, coaches and programs at historically black colleges and universities, and public television’s "Washington Week with Gwen Ifill" were among the winners of the celebrated George Foster Peabody Awards announced on Wednesday.

CNN was honored for its election-season coverage, and the director of the awards told Journal-isms that CNN’s diversity played a part in its recognition.

The Peabody awards follow by a day the announcement by Investigative Reporters and Editors that the Chauncey Bailey Project, formed by a collaboration of news organizations to continue the work of Bailey, the black journalist assassinated in 2007, earned one of IRE’s awards for a second year.

"Under the most difficult of circumstances, the reporters exposed deep flaws in the police investigation of the murder of journalist Chauncey Bailey," IRE said of the project, which began with a suggestion posted on the Journal-isms message board. "Through tenacious reporting and deep source development, Chauncey Bailey Project reporters Thomas Peele, Mary Fricker, Bob Butler, Josh Richman and A.C. Thompson reported on a stunning videotape linking someone to the murder, yet the individual has not been charged in the case and the evidence has been seemingly overlooked or dismissed by police.

The Peabody announcement said of "Washington Week": "Thoughtful, informed and timely, the political talk show that sets the standard for the genre supplemented its contribution to the national discourse in 2008 with a series of live events far outside the Beltway."

Both IRE and the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, which awards the Peabodys, honored Lee Zurik of WWL-TV in New Orleans for a rolling investigation of 50 television segments that uncovered corruption in a city agency charged with helping rebuild homes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

"Following a source’s tip, reporter Lee Zurik and his team examined New Orleans Affordable Housing records and found that money was paid to contractors to repair homes that never received any improvements – or didn’t exist at all. WWL’s investigation found close ties between agency managers, Mayor Ray Nagin, and the contractors doing the alleged improvements. The journalist stuck to the story in the face of public intimidation and strong initial denials by Nagin. In court, WWL forced the city to disclose agency records. The results were impressive: The program was suspended, the employees were fired and a federal grand jury launched an investigation."

The NPR report on the Louisiana prisoners also won both IRE and Peabody awards. As NPR reported in a follow-up last month, inmates Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace "were convicted of the 1972 murder while they were inmates at Angola prison after a racially charged investigation. Woodfox and Wallace are black; the victim," Brent Miller, "was white.

"The two men were sent to solitary confinement, where they have remained for the better part of four decades. But recently, new witnesses and evidence have raised questions about the men’s guilt."

At 36 years, "It’s the longest any inmate has spent in isolation in modern U.S. history," Laura Sullivan reported on "All Things Considered" in October.

IRE gave the Detroit Free Press still another honor for uncovering the text-messaging scandal that resulted in the downfall of Kwame Kilpatrick as mayor of Detroit. "Detroit Free Press reporters Jim Schaefer and M. L. Elrick spent four years trying to get text messages that Detroit’s mayor exchanged with his top aide, eventually breaking stories of their affair, exposing perjury, and the expenditure of $9 million of taxpayer money spent to cover up wrongdoing and vast corruption in the Kwame Kilpatrick administration," it said.

The commercial-free, two-part, four-hour ESPN film, "Black Magic," was directed by filmmaker Dan Klores and co-produced by Klores and Earl ‘The Pearl’ Monroe, the basketball legend and Winston-Salem State University graduate¬† It was supervised at ESPN by Keith Clinkscales, ESPN senior vice president, content development and enterprises.

"From more than 200 hours of interviews and footage, the film reveals the plight of HBCU players and coaches as a stark but proud one, filled with obstacles at every turn. From separate leagues and facilities, to championship games and titles that never qualified for the history books, all the way to secret games played between blacks and whites in defiance of the law, players and programs at HBCUs not only thrived, but laid the groundwork for the proliferation of the modern athlete," ESPN said at the time.

CNN  won a Peabody for its coverage of the 2008 presidential primary  campaigns and debates. The previous year, CNN won a "best practices" award from the National Association of Black Journalists. The CNN panels analyzing the campaign developments nearly always included African American and Hispanic representation.

In a statement, Dr. Horace Newcomb, the Peabody director, cited CNN’s use of¬†"new technologies and informed analysts to explain and inform."

He told Journal-isms, "Diversity of many sorts did come into our discussions throughout this year’s deliberations. We did note that CNN’s diversity of race, gender, ethnicity, political perspective all played a role in leading to excellent coverage of the primaries. We even noted a diverse range of technologies that added to the coverage. We hope our awards will continue to encourage steps in these directions."

Among the other Peabody winners were KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, for "Crossfire: Water, Power and Politics," a "brave, meticulous examination of a plan to pipe massive amounts of water from rural Nevada to booming Sin City and the potential consequences for ranchers, farmers, Native Americans and the environment"; PBS’ "POV," for "Campaign," co-produced with the Center for Asian American Media, a "revealing, sometimes painfully funny documentary" about a Japanese political campaign; and HBO for "Nanking," a "remembrance of a small group of Westerners who saved thousands of Chinese during the 1937 ‘rape of Nanking’ by Japanese invaders." [Updated April 2.]¬†

N. Korea Says It Will Put U.S. Journalists on Trial

"Two American journalists detained in North Korea will be indicted and tried on charges of perpetrating ‘hostile acts’ against the Communist state, a crime punishable by years in a labor camp, the North‚Äôs state-run news agency reported on Tuesday," Choe Sang-Hun reported from Seoul, South Korea, for the New York Times.¬†

Joohee Cho added Tuesday from Seoul for ABC News: "’We can clearly see that North Korea has begun to use those reporters as a bargaining chip,’ said Moo-Jin Yang, professor at the Graduate School of North Korean Studies . . . ‘

"Euna Lee and Laura Ling, reporters for the San Francisco-based Current TV founded by former Vice President Al Gore, were detained by North Korean guards at the northern border with China March 17."

"It is by no means clear that Ling and Lee were arrested on North Korean territory," Reporters Without Borders said.

"Several sources on the Chinese side of the frontier told Reporters Without Borders that the North Korean border guards probably crossed the Tumen (the river that forms the border) while Ling and Lee were filming on the Chinese bank. In a documentary made by South Korean journalists called ‘On the border,’ North Korean border guards can be seen crossing the river and landing on the Chinese side without running into any problems."

"North Korea is a black hole for independent local and foreign media,"
the general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, Aidan White, said Wednesday in Washington.

ABC’s report quoted Hak-Soon Paik, a senior fellow at Sejong Institute, who said North Korea’s leaders "are well aware of the fact that the Obama administration will have no choice but to put priority on negotiating the release of those two women, because they are American citizens. Those talks could only be dealt with in a bilateral situation and that’s exactly what Pyongyang has been striving for when negotiating missiles and nuclear programs."

Sun-Sentinel, Last U.S. Newspaper in Cuba, Pulls Out

"In yet another symbol of the fall of American newspapers, the man billed as the ‘only U.S. reporter based in Havana’ is leaving Cuba," Bob Norman reported¬†Monday for Florida’s Broward-Palm Beach Post.

"Sun-Sentinel Executive Editor Earl Maucker told staff during a meeting on Friday that the newspaper is shutting down its bureau in Havana and bringing reporter Ray Sanchez . . . to work in Fort Lauderdale, a newspaper source confirmed.

"Since the Dallas Morning News bureau in Cuba was shut down in 2004, the Sun-Sentinel’s Havana bureau, jointly run with the Chicago Tribune, has been the only U.S. newspaper operation on the island. The only American news organizations left with a presence on the island are AP, NBC, and CNN."

When Sanchez left Newsday in 2007, he told Journal-isms, "I left Newsday after nearly 15 years of work there because I was fortunate enough to land a job in Havana. It’s an incredible time to be in Cuba."

Boston Globe Writer Volunteers to Be Laid Off

Nicole Wong, a business reporter at the Boston Globe, volunteered to be laid off so that another journalist could remain at the paper. She’s now looking for work, Chris Rausch wrote Tuesday on his Talking Biz News Web site.

"In an e-mail to Talking Biz News, Wong states, ‘One co-worker yesterday jokingly marveled that it hadn‚Äôt made Romenesko yet. I told him: I‚Äôm not prominent enough!

‚Äú’Today‚Äôs my last day at the Globe. I will be in the office this afternoon to pack up and call sources.’

"Wong joined the Globe in 2007. Before that she was in Silicon Valley at the San Jose Mercury News for 5.5 years, most recently as a business and technology reporter covering the computer industry (Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems), tech culture and workplace issues.

"Ironically, she was also laid off from the Mercury News."

Oprah to Inaugurate Michael Eric Dyson Radio Show

Oprah Winfrey is confirmed as Michael Eric Dyson’s first guest on his new public radio show, the African American Public Radio Consortium announced on Tuesday. Other confirmed guests to appear in the show’s first two weeks include Sean ‚ÄúP. Diddy‚Äù Combs, Spike Lee, Hill Harper, Donna Brazile, Samuel L. Jackson and Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, the consortium said.

"Michael has a broad range of relationships," Loretta Rucker, executive director of the consortium, told Journal-isms. The show "will be a platform" for Dyson, the academic, author, talk-show pundit and minister, to use those contacts.

As reported on Monday, the consortium, which sparked "The Tavis Smiley Show," its successor "News & Notes" and "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, all on National Public Radio, is launching the Dyson show on Monday in partnership with Baltimore’s WEAA-FM, the Morgan State University station. It is to air initially in 18 markets, mainly on the radio stations at historically black colleges and universities.

Unlike the previous shows, however, Dyson’s show will not be produced by NPR, which will have a role only in distributing the show. There will be no reporters or other journalists.¬† But distribution will not be limited to NPR stations, Rucker said. "This is the exact outcome we were hoping for," she said. "We are creating a whole new model." The hour-long show will be produced by WEAA in Baltimore and recorded at XM Studios in Washington.

Dyson’s show will have a smaller budget than the NPR efforts, Rucker said. The daily feed will go out at 1 p.m., and a Web site, www.dysonshow.org, will be created for online listeners, Rucker said.

The initial markets are Baltimore; Montgomery, Ala.; Huntsville, Ala.; Atlanta; Waterloo, Iowa; Jackson, Miss.; Alcorn, Miss.; Holly Springs, Miss.; Las Vegas; Durham, N.C.; Raleigh, N.C.; Elizabeth City, N.C.; Fayetteville, N.C.; Winston-Salem N.C.; Wilberforce, Ohio; Houston; Prairie View, Texas and Norfolk, Va.

A spokeswoman for the consortium said she did not know what Winfrey planned to talk about. 

Sick Economy Kills "Illest Men’s Magazine Ever"

After six years and 50 issues, King¬†magazine, which dubs itself "the illest men’s magazine ever," is folding, publisher Dennis S. Page confirmed Wednesday.

King’s full-time staff of about seven is being let go, he said, and its next issue, now in production, will be its last.

"It’s brutal out there," Page told Journal-isms. "It’s the worst economic conditions in 30 years."

Page is also publisher of SLAM (on basketball), XXL (hip-hop music), Rides (automobiles) and Antenna ("what drops next" in consumer products). All are published by New York-based Harris Publications.

King reported an average circulation of 173,530 for the six months ending Dec. 31, down 11.3 percent from the year before.¬† Advertising, not circulation, was the problem, Page said. The publication’s revenue staples were automobile and alcohol ads.

Page said XXL, as a music magazine, did not have the same problem and that there were "no concerns" about it folding.

Rumors of King’s demise hit rap-music Web sites on Wednesday.

On rapradar.com, "Respectedwoman" wrote, "This is a good thing for Black America. Degrading woman and glorifying the rap lifestyle is outdated and tired. Maybe now, we can look up to our real black role models instead of woman and men who have no morals or anything valuable to add to society. Take your business expertise, founders and employees of King, and make the world see that you are all intelligent, capable people who are truly a force. I believe you all can make a difference in changing the landscape of black entainment."

That was followed by a post from "Deamonghod": "no wonder i wasnt geting my shit on time i havent recieved teh mag in almost 6 months serves you right dammit*with tears in my eyes* dammit Damiit dammit!! i feel as if my cat died…imma miss King regardless:)" [Renderings of both messages (sic).]

 

Student journalist Shannon McDonald tells WTXF, the Fox station in Philadelphia, that she quoted a police officer’s racist language accurately. Watch video.

Student Quotes White Cop Likening Blacks to Animals

"A college class assignment may have gotten a Philadelphia police officer into some hot water," Dafney Tales reported Tuesday in the Philadelphia Daily News.

"William Thrasher, a white cop in the 22nd District, at 17th and Montgomery, has been put on desk duty after an article¬†written by a Temple University student quoted him describing his disgust for black people in the district where he works, likening them to animals and calling their problems ‘typical n—- s—,’ or ‘TNS,’ during a ride-along with the student Jan. 30.

"The article enraged The Guardian Civic League, an organization of black Philadelphia police officers, which is calling for his dismissal."

Andrew Mendelson, who chairs the Temple University Department of Journalism, told Journal-isms the story was written at the beginning of February by Shannon McDonald, a white student who is managing editor of the Temple News, for a multimedia urban journalism workshop. Her account of her ride-along with Thrasher was picked up by Domelight, a police officer’s blog, and slowly reached the mainstream media.

Now the student herself is in the news, and "She’s handling it really well," Mendelson said. "It’s a great teachable moment" in issues such as whether the officer should have been named, and how to handle the news media.

Police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore cautioned not to immediately judge the officer, the Daily News reported, saying, "We don’t know the validity of this article." But Chris Harper, an associate journalism professor who edited McDonald’s story, stood by it.

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