Native Reporter Says Mainstream Attention Is Still a Struggle
“Nationwide Search” to Fill Kathy Times’ Old Anchor Seat
New Black Network Sets Sept. 26 Debut, Adds Houston
Native Reporter Says Mainstream Attention Is Still a Struggle
“The smoke from Arizona’s largest wildland fire, the Wallow Fire, gently drifted over the mountains northeast of the White Mountain Apache tribal headquarters here,” veteran reporter Marley Shebala wrote June 16 from Whiteriver, Ariz., in the Navajo Times.
“On June 5, the fire was raging out of control as it entered Apache land on the White Mountain and San Carlos reservations. As of Wednesday, it had consumed more than 12,909 acres of forest belonging to the White Mountain Apaches and was five miles from the tribe’s economic heartbeat, the Sunrise Ski Resort.
“More than 160 wildland firefighters have kept the fire at bay by creating a buffer of cleared land using bulldozers, handsaws and other hand tools. . . .”
What was perhaps most remarkable about Shebala’s report was that it was information she said she wasn’t getting in the mainstream media or from the National Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, which provided the public with updates on the disaster, Shebala said on Wednesday.
“It was the same in California,” she said at a seminar held in conjunction with the Native American Journalists Association convention, held this year in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “We never read about the impact on Indian communities there. Some opened their doors to evacuees.”
(A July 2 Associated Press story about the fires from Santa Clara Pueblo, N.M., did note that “A wildfire that forced federal employees to flee the desert birthplace of the atomic bomb neared the sacred sites of several American Indian tribes on Saturday, raising fears that tribal lands passed down for generations would be destroyed.”)
Fires are important news. The Arizona fire that held the previous record for devastation, the Rodeo-Chediski fire of 2002, cost the White Mountain Apaches their timber mill.
Shebala was speaking at a day-long session called “Covering Business on Tribal Lands” sponsored by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University.
In introducing herself, Shebala, a past vice president of NAJA, recalled her arrival in 1986 as news director of KTNN, a then-new Navajo language AM station in Window Rock, Ariz. Shebala said that when she offered her station’s stories to the Associated Press, she was told nobody would be interested except Navajos.
“I said, ‘that’s pretty racist. I could file a complaint,’ ” she recalled.
When AP relented and moved the stories on its wire, the news service received grateful feedback from around the state, Shebala said.
The Native American Journalists Association, with about 320 members the smallest of the major journalist of color associations, is meeting through Saturday in a beachfront hotel with an ocean view so enticing that the shades had to be drawn to keep eyes from wandering.
The pre-convention seminar, attended by about a dozen people, was designed to teach the ins and outs of business reporting in Indian Country. “If you write about private companies, you will find stories and write stories that nobody else is writing about,” Chris Roush, founding director of the Carolina Business News Initiative at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told the group.
Convention topics are to include “Equating Seminoles to Terrorists” and “The Digital Revolution of Native Media and Entertainment Reporting.” About 100 people are expected, said Jeff Harjo, NAJA executive director. Eighty-five have registered.
Four candidates are vying for three seats on the NAJA board. The winning candidates then choose their officers.
“Nationwide Search” to Fill Kathy Times’ Old Anchor Seat
The woman chosen in January to replace Kathy Y. Times, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, in the anchor chair at WDBD-TV Jackson, Miss., is leaving after six months on the job.
“My last day is the end of the book, July 27th,” Trei Johnson told Journal-isms Wednesday by email. “During my short tenure I helped increase the ratings at WDBD, something I am very proud of. I was blessed to work for a very experienced, knowledgeable and understanding News Director, as well as a family oriented General Manager who understand my situation and are allowing me to leave early. Unfortunately, my husband’s contract was extended in Florida and maintaining two separate households in two different states has proven to be too difficult. Not to mention the kids transition into Mississippi schools was more challenging than we had hoped.
“Since I’m a mother first and an Anchor second I have to move back to Orlando. I’m hoping to find a position in Florida allowing me to perform all the duties I am passionate about, family and news.”
Times was an investigative reporter and co-anchor of “Fox 40 News at 9” as well as NABJ’s vice president-broadcast from 2007 to 2009 before being elected NABJ president. She had been working without a contract when the Fox affiliate introduced a new high-definition local morning talk show and a new 9 p.m. news team, hiring Johnson from Central Florida News 13, a 24-hour local news channel covering the Orlando-Daytona Beach-Melbourne corridor.
“We are very pleased with the ratings growth we have experienced since we put together a new team here at Fox 40,” News Director Stan Sanders told Journal-isms. “Trei has been an vital part of our improved ratings. Unfortunately, Trei has pressing family matters and as such has made the extremely difficult decision to leave our Fox 40 family. She will be returning to Orlando. She will be greatly missed and we wish her only the best.
“. . . We are in the process of a nationwide search.”
New Black Network Sets Sept. 26 Debut, Adds Houston
“Martin Luther King III and Ambassador Andrew Young announced today that Bounce TV, the over-the-air television network for African-American audiences, will debut on Monday, Sept. 26, at noon ET,” TVNewsCheck reported on Tuesday.
“ ‘Sept. 26 will be an important milestone as we launch the first-ever independently owned and operated broadcast television network featuring African Americans,’ said King.
“. . . King and Young are part of Bounce TV’s founding group and board of directors. Bounce TV is majority owned and operated by African Americans.
:The nascent network also announced that it will be seen on Belo Corp.’s KHOU Houston, the eighth-largest African-American market in the country.
“. . . Bounce TV will target African Americans primarily between the ages of 25 and 54 with a programming mix of theatrical motion pictures, live sporting events, documentaries, specials, inspirational faith-based programs, off-net series, original programming and more. The network will be seen in Houston, Cleveland-Akron, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Hartford-New Haven, Norfolk, Dayton, West Palm Beach, Birmingham, Memphis, Louisville and Richmond, among other markets.”
