Editor Decries the Racism in Her City
“The racism here is sickening. It is both subtle and blatant,” writes executive editor Juli Metzger of the Gannett-owned Chronicle-Tribune in Marion, Ind., where the Ku Klux Klan rode high in the 1920s and 1930s.
Metzger was writing about the case of Sherita Searcy, a magna cum laude graduate of Wilberforce University who grew up in New York City, had survived newspaper internships in other cities, and is now assigned to the health beat. An African American, she started at the paper July 1.
In a June 29 column later picked up by the Chicago Tribune, Metzger described how Searcy answered a classified ad in her paper for a rental property, only to be told when she and her husband showed up that the rent had risen from $550 to $650 a month and that “this might not be the right neighborhood for you.” That evening, Searcy said, the landlord called her at home and said, “I cannot rent to you because you are black.” “He said our skin color was a liability to his property and that he was trying to protect his property and family from harm,” Metzger says Searcy told her.
Searcy filed a complaint with the Indiana Civil Rights Commission, and the paper banned the landlord, Virgil Lytle, from advertising in the paper.
Metzger also wrote that the circulation director, John Merriweather, had lived in Marion for three years with his wife and two sons and “has been pulled over so many times by police that his insurance company dropped his coverage.” In a second column , also picked up by the Chicago Tribune, the editor wrote the landlord and his wife visited her in the newsroom. Lytle said he was not “prejudiced” and that he simply didn’t want Searcy or her family in the neighborhood because he couldn’t be assured of their safety.
The incident brought home the need for more diversity in her newsroom, Metzger wrote in a third column that ran in her paper Saturday. The text of the column is at the end of today’s posting.
Kathleen McElroy Rises in N.Y. Times Staff Changes
Kathleen O. McElroy, 43, a deputy sports editor at the New York Times and member of the National Association of Black Journalists, has been named the Times’ associate managing editor for weekends, in charge of news coverage for the Sunday and Monday newspapers.
The Times announced appointments of four editors to senior positions yesterday. The others are Susan Chira, editor of the Week in Review, to editorial director of book development, overseeing the creation of books that arise from the newspaper’s journalism; Katherine J. Roberts, 50, currently national editor, to succeed Chira as editor of the Week in Review; and Jim Roberts, 46, deputy national editor, who will ecome national editor, overseeing The Times’ 25-member reporting staff throughout the country outside of Washington.
McGowan May Yet Have NABJ Presence
“Coloring the News” author William McGowan, who accepted an offer from the National Association of Black Journalists to appear at the NABJ convention last week and then backed out the next day, may yet have a presence at the event — via cyberspace.
NABJ President Condace Pressley told NABJ members that she and McGowan talked about perhaps organizing an online chat this Thursday at the Milwaukee convention, and that she was researching the logistics. She said that McGowan was annoyed that his message listing his reasons for backing out of the commitment he made during his CNN debate with Pressley was made public by his publicist. McGowan’s book is subtitled, “How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism.”
Study Finds Bias on the Job Still Common
Women and people of color appear to be benefiting from greater employment opportunities, but discrimination remains a significant problem, according to a study by two professors at the Rutgers School of Law in Newark.
The New York Times reports that the study, which extrapolated from federal data on about 200,000 large and midsize employers, concludes that about two million workers were affected by intentional discrimination in 1999. Roughly a third of the employers studied appeared to have discriminated against women or minorities in at least one job category, the authors said.
The husband-and-wife team of Alfred W. and Ruth G. Blumrosen then looked at how many women or workers of color a company employed in different job categories compared with how many were employed at other companies in the same industry in the same geographic area.
The professors expect to make their study available through a Web site, www.eeo1.com .
Child Abductions: The Urban-Suburban Factor
Chicago Tribune columnist Dawn Turner Trice weighs in on the disparity in coverage in child abduction cases, saying, “Perhaps in addition to a race/class bias, there’s another that we tend to overlook because it seems far less insidious and far more justifiable. It’s the urban/suburban factor.
“Even though urban is often a euphemism for black, suburban for white, it’s far more politically correct to think of crime in terms of geography.
“Unfortunately, that allows us all to fool ourselves. When something bad happens in an urban environ, we can say, ‘This isn’t about race or class. It’s just life in the big city.'”
White Female Anchor Files Bias Suit in Buffalo
A Buffalo television reporter is accusing her station of age, racial and gender discrimination, the Buffalo News reports.
Carol Kaplan, a reporter and anchor at WGRZ-TV for more than 11 years, has filed a lawsuit against the station’s owners, Multimedia Entertainment Corp.
Kaplan was the station’s 5 p.m. anchor until being replaced in April by anchorwoman Bazi Kanani.
The lawsuit claims WGRZ management told Kaplan that market research and focus-group data were the reasons behind the change at the anchor desk. But the suit claims that Kaplan, 41, was demoted because of her age and the station wanted Kanani, 25, an African American, in the 5 p.m. weekday time slot.
“All I can say is we strongly deny the charges,” WGRZ General Manager Darryll J. Green said.
Lee Ivory’s “Baseball Weekly” to Add Football Coverage
With the threat of a strike looming in professional baseball, USA Today’s Baseball Weekly magazine is branching out into covering pro football when the new NFL season starts this fall, and the magazine will change its name to Sports Weekly.
Publisher and Executive Editor Lee Ivory told the Associated Press that the 11-year-old magazine, with a circulation of about 250,000, has no plans to go up against its much larger rivals Sports Illustrated and ESPN magazine as a general sports publication.
“We’re just trying to carve out our own little niche and have some fun,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll never have an off season again. When baseball season was over we were always sucking wind to keep things fresh and to keep people buying us.”
Ivory is the younger brother of Bennie Ivory, executive editor of the Courier Journal of Louisville, Ky., another Gannett paper, and both are originally from Hot Springs, Ark.
Explaining to Readers Why Diversity Numbers Count
“Has the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reached the promised land spotted by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. from the mountaintop?” asks Gregory Stanford, editorial writer and columnist for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, as the National Association of Black Journalists prepares to convene in the city.
“Civil rights crusaders make a mistake pooh-poohing their triumphs — a stance that belittles their work and makes action in behalf of a cause seem futile,” he writes.
“But the backers of parity must not confuse this milestone with the final destination. First, the Milwaukee paper should strive to reach racial parity with its home turf — the Milwaukee metro area, where its news coverage centers — as opposed to the entire circulation area. Residents of color make up 26% of the four-county metro area. By that gauge, the Journal Sentinel is three-fifths of the way to parity.
“Second, any assessment of parity must examine how each racial group is faring — an analysis that requires more data than what the editors published. Colleges once camouflaged a decline in African-American students amid a rise in total students of color.
“Third, any analysis must also consider how well the management ranks have achieved parity.
“Finally, numbers, while important, don’t tell the entire story. We must harken to a chief reason for increasing the numbers. . . . more rounded perspectives, deeper insights, better accuracy than they would otherwise in presenting the events of the day.”
Univision Anchor Creates Scholarship
Univision news anchor Maria Elena Salinas has created a scholarship for gifted journalism students called the Maria Elena Salinas Scholarship for Excellence in Spanish-Language News Media. The annual gift is to be matched by Univision News, provides a yearly scholarship of $10,000 and is available through the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Salinas has covered major news events around the world since 1987 as anchor of “Noticiero Univision.” She also co-hosts the prime-time television news magazine “Aqui y Ahora,” provides a Hispanic perspective on current events in a weekly column distributed by King Features, and writes a weekly column on Hispanic issues for http://www.univision.com .
The scholarship recipient will also have the opportunity to intern with the Univision Network news organization or one of the network’s owned and operated stations. For more information, contact NAHJ at 1-888-346-NAHJ.
Charles Barkley Re-Ups With TNT
Former NBA star and “Inside the NBA” analyst Charles Barkley signed a multi-year agreement with AOL Time Warner to remain with the show, which airs on TNT, reports MediaWeek. In addition, Barkley is to appear on CNN’s “TalkBack Live” once a week with host Arthel Neville, and contribute to other CNN programming.
Hispanic Network Files for Bankruptcy
Hispanic Television Network, the broadcast and cable network targeting Mexican American viewers, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in U.S. District Court in its headquarters city of Fort Worth, Texas, reports Electronic Media.
Despite the hot Spanish-language TV marketplace of recent years, HTVN found itself in financial trouble soon after it launched at the end of 1999.
Saudi Paper Rips Wall St. Journal Editor
The news editor of Saudi Arabia’s Arab News is blasting James Taranto, who collects links for a “Best of the Web” column for the Wall Street Journal’s opinionjournal.com , as a producer of “bigoted, right-wing drivel.”
“To get to the links themselves the reader must first navigate the minefield that is the spiteful ranting of its editor, James Taranto, a former ‘deputy editorial features editor’ (whatever that may be) of The Wall Street Journal whose earlier career was similarly defined by a complete lack of distinction and achievement,” writes John R. Bradley, news editor at Arab News.
“While Taranto’s bile may exist only in cyberspace, and have only the intellectual capacity of a fifth-rate George W. Bush, this does not mean he is not causing damage down here in the real world. Americans wanting to find out more about the Middle East are likely to take Taranto’s twaddle as somehow representative of more than just the author’s own perverted self-indulgence. Of course, the fact that OpinionJournal.com is from The Wall Street Journal superficially gives it credence. On a deeper level, however, that association is more an indication of how absurd the print edition of The Wall Street Journal itself has become in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks than of anything else. Its editorials on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are nothing short of hysterical,” writes Bradley.
Juli Metzger Column of July 27:
Changing the Face of a Newsroom
You might think I’d be feeling pretty cocky right about now. The Chicago Tribune recently published my last two columns about racism in Marion.
National attention over a newsroom staff member – new to town and looking for housing but rejected last month because of the color of her skin -drew e-mails from around the country.
“Yellow journalism,” wrote one writer whose point was that I had made too many assumptions in my commentary.
Another e-mail came: “I relocated to Chicago … after graduating college. Ms. Searcy’s experience reminded me that there is very little that I miss about my Indiana home.”
Good Morning America called this week, asking Sherita Searcy to come to New York to tell her story.
“I can’t believe this still happens,” someone said who stopped in this week. “In 2002.” Jimmy Stewart, a Marion city councilman, and Grant County Sheriff Oatess Archey have called to check on Sherita. So, yeah, feeling pretty good. Not exactly.
I started thinking about how public opinion is often shaped and that it often has to do with the kind of press the public is exposed to. In this town, that would be the Chronicle-Tribune. I arrived in this newsroom in February 1998. Since that time, I’ve hired just four non-white staffers.
That’s what I’ve been thinking about this week. Two African-Americans were in the newsroom when I arrived. One left within my first six months; the other was here until just a few months ago when she accepted a promotion to a larger newspaper. I have a staff of 23, and in those four years have hired probably that many journalists. Just four have been persons of color. Then I hear reports from the staff that the minority community has no faith in the Chronicle-Tribune. That we are as much a part of the problem as the perceived problem itself.
How can that be, I ask myself? Do we not strive to cover the news? Do we not seek public opinion and varying viewpoints? Do we not represent the entire community – the diversity of our community – regularly on every page, every day?
I have methodically reviewed our coverage over the last six months, looking specifically at the kinds of stories we’ve published regarding minority topics or diversity issues. I found Cinco De Mayo. I found Black History Month. I found a demographic story on the increase in the number of Hispanics. I found stories about migrant workers.
I found occasional sources – people of color – sprinkled throughout the newspaper. Then I asked myself this question: If I were not white, would I read this newspaper?
I cannot say that I would.
That brings me back to my point about staffing. In the last four years, there have been no black reporters; no Hispanic reporters; no Asian reporters. Pretty much all white, Anglo-Saxon. And that’s the kind of newspaper we’ve published. Perhaps this is why non-whites don’t relate to what they read in the Chronicle-Tribune. I want that to change. And that means the face of the newsroom must change.
Today, 13 percent of the reporting staff and 17 percent of the entire newsroom is non-white. Sherita helps bring more balance to the newsroom.
Another new reporter – James Joyce III – also brings an African-American perspective. They say race is a difficult topic to cover.
I think I know why.
(c) 2002 Chronicle-Tribune
Send tips and comments to Richard Prince rprince@maynardije.org.
Letter to the Editor 06.23.2006 Vik, the next discovery or the next missed opportunity? Probably one of the biggest potentials of the world’s light classical music industry , lives in a one bedroom apartment in Haifa, Israel, still waiting for the real break-through, which she hopes will come some day. Vik (born Victoria Leizerovitch) is a singer in the level of Sarah Brightman and Emma Chaplin, and some even claim that she has better qualities. Each of her rare performances brings more curious people to inquire who is this stunning young lady, and how come a singer of her level is not worldwide known. Vik started her artistic way in her native town of Nikolayev, Ukraine, until one day decided to leave everything behind and immigrate to the promised land. However, with no financial support and no family, in the industrial town of Haifa, Vik soon found herself struggling to survive the day rather than promote her singing career. Israeli producer Avi Zemach took her under his custody , however he too cannot change the circumstances that make it so hard for Vik to pave her way up, though she already performed in some major events, including the millennium celebration and stage shows in Russia, Germany and Spain. “These were just sporadic moments that didn’t lead to anything except many compliments.” Explains Zemach, “We live in a small country, where most of the entertainment is based on popular music and locally-oriented artists. Vik is like a diamond on a remote island, it’s precious and beautiful, but what can you do with it here? If we lived in a central town in Europe it would have been much easier to reach a wide range of audiences, yet here I’m afraid that this amazing potential will eventually be wasted, unless some significant factor will enter the scene, willing to combine efforts with us” To see a video clip of Vik, click here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3218804520266510343&pr=goog-sl And you can also visit Vik’s website: http://www.vik.co.il
