2nd Hispanic Journalist Protests Award to Anti-Gay
An ABC network correspondent and a prominent Univision talk show host have pulled out as hosts of a ceremony honoring Hispanic journalists because it includes an anti-gay activist, leaving organizers scrambling to find a new host and temper the controversy, reports the Miami Herald.
John Quiñones, a correspondent for ABC’s “20/20,” was the second person to withdraw as host of the “Hispanic Media 100” after learning it was honoring Eladio Jose Armesto, one of the leaders of a failed effort to repeal Miami-Dade County’s gay-rights amendment.
Quiñones’ withdrawal came two weeks after Cristina Saralegui, host of Univisións’ “El Show de Cristina,” refused to be the show’s host because of Armesto’s award.
James Hattori: TV News Not Attractive to Asian Males
James Hattori, a West Coast correspondent for CNN and a former reporter for CBS News, has been wondering about the lack of Asian American males on air for nearly 20 years, writes J. Freedom du Lac in the Sacramento Bee.
His “gut feeling” – supported by University of Southern California findings – is that there aren’t more Asian American men in the industry in large part because it’s not considered an attractive career path.
“The truth is, for all the glamour and the widespread impression that we make a lot of money in this business – and you do succeed if you’re in a big city or at the network – when you’re starting out, you’re making next-to-minimum wage,” Hattori says. “And I don’t think that’s attractive to anybody, including Asian males.
“Why it’s more attractive to Asian women than men? That’s the $64,000 question.”
Sacramento, which is market No. 19, doesn’t have any Asian American male news anchors either, but has multiple Asian males on air, du Lac writes.
Cynthia Tucker: Conservative or Communist?
“It may be that I am now conservative,” said Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “but my Georgia white readers still think I’m a communist.” Tucker was responding to an Aug. 26 Journal-isms item questioning whether her zeal had gotten the better of her in recent writings.
In one column, applauding the victory of Denise Majette over Cynthia McKinney in a Democratic congressional primary, Tucker asserted flatly that few black Americans shared the views of Jesse Jackson.
She told Journal-isms at the National Conference of Editorial Writers convention in Nashville that she was speaking largely of black middle-class voters. “In America in 2002, after he’s admitted an affair with a woman in which he brought a child into the world out of wedlock, and after increasing evidence of financial shenanigans, I don’t think well-educated black folks listen to Jesse Jackson,” she said. Even working-class blacks think Jackson is “much too self-aggrandizing” and can’t find a single issue on which to focus, Tucker said, though she acknowledged she had not looked at public opinion surveys on the matter.
Of her seemingly rightward direction, Tucker said, “My interest is far less in being accepted by mainstream America as for me in getting African Americans to own up to the real issues facing black Americans today,” such as the effect of AIDS on communities, the alarming rate of African American male imprisonment and black boys failing in school, she said.
Cheryl Smith Receives Award for Youth Work
Cheryl Smith, who has coordinated the Urban Journalism Workshop for the Dallas Fort Worth Association of Black Communicators for the past decade, was presented Friday with the 2002 Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship sponsored by the National Conference of Editorial Writers and the NCEW Foundation, Inc. at the NCEW convention in Nashville.
Smith, who is also a talk-show host, columnist for the Dallas Weekly, teacher at the historically black Paul Quinn College in Dallas and regional director of the National Association of Black Journalists, thanked the group for recognizing the importance of working with young people interested in journalism.
Tony Brown, J.J. Gonzalez Honored by N.Y. Television
Tony Brown of the long-running newsmagazine “Tony Brown’s Journal” (and before that, “Black Journal,”) and J.J. Gonzalez, longtime “people’s reporter” at WCBS-TV, are among the 2002 “Silver Circle Inductees”‘ of the New York Chapter of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Broadcasting and Cable reports.
The Silver Circle honors media professionals who began their careers in broadcasting at least 25 years ago and have made significant contributions to arts and sciences of New York television.
In 2000, Media Week wrote that Gonzalez had returned to New York TV news as managing editor of “Noticias 41,” the news programs of Spanish-language Univision 41, WXTV. Gonzalez spent nearly three decades at WCBS, starting in 1967 as the first Latino reporter to work for English-language television in New York. He rose through the ranks at WCBS from reporter to assignment editor to correspondent, eventually becoming director of public service programming and earning five Emmys and myriad other awards.
Brown’s long resume includes a number of books and the deanship of the Howard University School of Communications.
Dwight Whylie, Pioneer in U.K. and Canada, Dies at 66
Dwight Whylie, 66, the first black radio announcer hired by the British Broadcasting Corp., died Monday, apparently after a heart attack, while visiting the Caribbean island of Barbados, the Los Angeles Times reports.
A native of Jamaica, Whylie was in Barbados to be the chief judge in the Caribbean Broadcasting Union’s Media Awards last weekend. He became the first black BBC announcer when he joined the corporation’s domestic services in London in 1961. He returned to Jamaica in the early 1970s and headed the Jamaica Broadcasting Corp.
He later became the first black announcer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., where he worked for 20 years. At the time of his death, Whylie was chairman of Jamaica’s Broadcasting Commission. He wrote a newspaper column for the Jamaica Observer and in March 2001 served as an observer at highly charged general elections in Guyana.
Those who attended a regional conference of the National Association of Black Journalists in Rochester, N.Y., in 1988, might remember Whylie as one of the panelists discussing blacks in Canada.
‘E&P’ Looks at Glass Ceiling for Women
While the appointments of women editors for the first time at papers such as the Detroit Free Press, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and others have raised hopes that women are finally gaining more newsroom power, other data suggest the rise may be illusory, reports Editor & Publisher.
Among the nation’s top 30 daily-circulation newspapers, only eight have women editors. Of those 30 papers, 19 have changed editors within the past three years, with only four choosing women to fill the vacant posts. Three of the papers — the New York Daily News, the New York Post, and The Arizona Republic in Phoenix — chose to replace departing women with men.
According to a study released in June by the Media Management Center, a training and research program at Northwestern University, the percentage of top editor positions held by women at major papers actually has declined over the past two years, to 20 percent this year from 25 percent in 2000. The study, which covered all 137 newspapers with daily circulation of more than 85,000, revealed that the number of women holding the highest editor posts at those papers dropped to 26 this year from 34 two years ago.
Mario Garcia to Redesign Miami Herald
Miami Herald management apparently hopes its magic potion will be snappy design, reports New Times – Broward Palm Beach. The guys who call themselves “South Florida’s Pulitzer Prize-winning paper” recently retained the services of Mario Garcia, a design guru who’s left his imprint on dozens of publications worldwide and teaches at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg. Perhaps the most notable product of Garcia’s recent work is the redesign, introduced this summer, of The Wall Street Journal.
Charlotte Observer to Run Same-Sex Pledges
The Charlotte Observer will begin accepting paid announcements of same-sex commitments, Publisher Peter Ridder said.
Ridder said his decision to allow the announcements is a matter of “simple justice and equal access.”
Barbara Johnson Named News Director at New York’s WNBC
The raiding continues in New York, reports Broadcasting and Cable. WNBC-TV — which has seen its corporate ranks diminished by the departure of general manager Dennis Swanson and a few top protéges — has hired veteran WABC-TV executive producer Barbara Johnson as news director.
She is the wife of Roy Johnson, editor of Savoy Magazine.
Jay Harris Position a Result of Annenberg Gift
Retired publishing magnate and philanthropist Walter Annenberg has pledged $100 million each to communication schools at the University of Southern California and the University of Pennsylvania, the Associated Press reports.
The Annenberg School for Communication at both schools received $120 million endowments in 1994.
Penn plans to use the new endowment to pay full tuition for its graduate school students, among other things. At USC, the endowment will fund the new Center for the Study of Journalism and Democracy and help subsidize scholarships and three new faculty positions. Former San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News Publisher Jay Harris has been appointed the center’s first director, it was disclosed earlier this week.
Detroit Journalists Assist J-Teachers
There’s more to being a journalist than just bylines, headlines and deadlines, writes Luther Keith, public editor of the Detroit News.
Just ask any of the 40 dedicated professional reporters, photographers, graphic artists, copy editors and others who took time off their regular jobs last month to give 50 public school teachers some real-world pointers on how to teach journalism and develop high school newspapers.
Their goal is to produce better journalism teachers who can pass on that knowledge to their students and, ultimately, better prepare them for the rigors of the Fourth Estate.
The project was the brainchild of the Detroit Chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, which partnered with the Detroit Pro chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, Wayne State University, The Detroit News, the Detroit Free Press and Focus:HOPE for the half-day training seminar. Greektown Casino paid for theteachers’ breakfast and lunch.
Miami TV, CNN Hit on Bomb-Scare Coverage
”It seems like everyone connected the dots here,” WSVN-Fox 7 anchor Christine Cruz said during the sixth hour of Miami’s marathon coverage of the Sept. 13 bomb scare. “It seems like everyone did what they were supposed to be doing.”
Like a lot of what was said during the coverage, that was about half right, says Glenn Garvin, Miami Herald television critic.
“Television reporters were certainly connecting dots — lots of dots, some of them seemingly from another planet — but if journalism is about facts and not hype, then they definitely weren’t doing what they were supposed to do. Friday’s coverage was the source of a staggering amount of misinformation.”
Ayman Gheith, 27, Kambiz Butt, 25, both from suburban Chicago, and Omar Choudhary, 23, of Independence, Mo., were on their way from Chicago to Larkin Community Hospital for a nine-week training program. They said they completed medical training at Ross University in the Caribbean island nation of Dominica and wanted to find an apartment in Miami, the Associated Press reported.
Florida authorities detained them for 17 hours on a Florida interstate Sept. 13, hours after a woman told authorities she overheard them making “alarming” comments while they were at a Calhoun, Ga., restaurant.
“The worst parody of journalism Friday was actually on CNN, where the high-paid-low-rated anchor Paula Zahn speculated, without a jot or tittle of evidence, that the three men were coming to Florida to blow up the Turkey Point nuclear reactor. Now you know why CNN promotes her sex appeal rather than her news judgment,” wrote Garvin.