Survey Voices Women’s Claims of Newsroom Sexism
Almost half of top women editors questioned in a new survey said they expected to leave their current company or the news business altogether, while only 20 percent say they definitely wanted to move up in the industry. Only one in three expects to move up at her current paper. Among those who believe they are blocked from advancement, 64 percent cite sexism as the culprit, reports Editor & Publisher.
The survey was released by the American Press Institute and the Pew Center for Civic Journalism on Thursday and was made public at an American Press Institute seminar in Reston, Va., on women in newsroom leadership.
Writing in the Boston Globe, Mark Jurkowitz says the key finding is the breakdown of female managers into what the survey calls “career-conflicted” and “career-confident” groups. One report sponsor sees that as evidence of an industry that can still present a difficult environment for many women, he writes.
Voices of Color Scarce on Urban Public Radio
The dominant voices on the leading public radio stations in seven U.S. urban markets are overwhelmingly white and predominantly male, according to a survey by the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
The survey, which looked at the ethnicity and gender of the stations’ daytime hosts and news anchors, found that 73 of 83 were non-Latino whites (88 percent). Fifty-seven of the daytime hosts and anchors were male (69 percent).
Six of the hosts were African American, two were Asian American and two were Arab American. Just one Latino host appeared during any station’s daytime broadcasts, while no Native American hosts showed up in the survey.
The stations surveyed were KCRW in Los Angeles, KQED in San Francisco, WBEZ in Chicago, WNYC in New York City, WAMU in Washington, D.C., WABE in Atlanta and WLRN in Miami.
“I think we’re making progress; I don’t think that we’re good enough,” said WAMU program director Mark McDonald. “I think there are a lot of people who are satisfied with having an African American on the air or on the news staff and think that’s good enough.” McDonald readily acknowledged public radio’s past exclusivity: “It’s no secret that public radio in the past has concentrated on an upper-middle-class white target audience.” However, he said, “Things are starting to change as important people in public radio begin to realize the importance of attracting a wider segment of the population.”
$1.3 Million Grant Helps Maynard Celebrate 25 Years
A $1.3 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation helped the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education celebrate its 25th anniversary Wednesday, as about 400 people gathered to mark the occasion at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. With tickets set at $350 each, and a number of sponsors, the fund-raiser achieved its goal, said board chairman Mark N. Trahant.
“The real activity wasn’t on the stage, it was people getting to reconnect with people,” said Dori J. Maynard, MIJE president. Added Trahant: “We really set a new standard in terms of making it fun.”
Instead of a traditional sit-down dinner, the event featured a buffet line that encouraged mingling. One might have run into such folks as Ed Bradley of CBS, Bob Giles of the Nieman Foundation, Ellis Cose of Newsweek, Newsday’s Walter Middlebrook, Robin Wilson Glover of the Star-Ledger in Newark, Alice Bonner of the University of Maryland, retired New York Times reporter Tom Morgan, Athelia Knight of the Washington Post or veteran journalist Earl Caldwell. Barbara Rodgers, anchor at KPIX-TV San Francisco emceed; welcomes were delivered by USA Today founder Allen H. Neuharth and New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Also on the program were Steve Montiel, director of the University of Southern California Institute for Justice and Journalism; Nancy Hicks Maynard, co-founder of the Maynard institute; Akron Beacon Journal Publisher John Dotson Jr., and Dori Maynard.
“Tonight this is the calming place, the center of our world,” said Trahant. “Why can’t all the newspapers, TV stations and Internet newsrooms reflect the character and content of our Nation?
“This is Maynard; It’s what the world is supposed to be like. And when you think of the very best newsrooms? The ones that are most diverse? Imagine what those newsrooms would be like without Maynard. They’d be less diverse, and less talented.
“This may be a time when it seems like all is going crazy. So we’re here at the center for a calming effect. But let’s not leave this room tonight without a spiritual reconnection, too, and a renewed sense of purpose.”
The Knight grant is to help the institute launch an endowment drive, and includes funding for general support.
Columnist Donna Britt to Hampton U.: Yes to Muckraking
Washington Post columnist Donna Britt says she was barely aware of the controversy at Hampton University over the direction of its journalism program when she was inducted Tuesday into the new School of Journalism’s Hall of Fame. Brett Pulley of Forbes magazine and Dr. William Kearney, who founded the university’s Department of Media Arts, were the other inductees.
“I reminded those present of the ‘great muckraking tradition’ of journalists who’ve exposed such problems as redlining and toxic waste dumping in poor, black neighborhoods, and of how such reports from the front lines of the civil rights movement galvanized the world. I said that essentially, none of us really ‘knows’ anything — and that journalism constantly teaches us the extent of our ignorance by telling tough truths no matter how authority figures feel about it. And that these days, black folks are authority figures more often than they’ve ever been,” Britt told Journal-isms.
“And I said that I expected the school would reflect all of that.”
Charlotte Grimes, who heads the University’s Department of Media Arts, is not heading the new School of Journalism. Grimes said in a recent memo that she declined the conditions that University President William Harvey set for the job. “As I wrote to him, I’m concerned about his proposal to appoint a committee to craft a mission statement for the new school. This mission statement, he advised me, should reflect his view that journalism is ‘to do good, not muckraking.'”
Ole Miss Repeals ’62 Censure Of Editor
The University of Mississippi has repealed the 40-year-old censure of a former campus newspaper editor who spoke out against violence surrounding the admission of a black student, the Associated Press reports.
The current Associated Student Body senate unanimously repealed the old resolution Tuesday, leading up to the university’s year-long focus on its integration in the 1960s.
Sidna Brower was censured by the student senate in a Dec. 4, 1962, document that said the editor “failed in time of grave crisis to represent and uphold the rights of her fellow students.”
Spanish-Language Newscast Most-Watched in Bay Area
One of the Bay Area’s smallest television stations, which broadcasts in Spanish, is drawing some of the region’s biggest ratings, the San Jose Mercury News reports.
This summer’s Nielsen Station Index crowned KDTV’s “Noticias 14” at 6 p.m. as the most-watched newscast among Bay Area adults ages 18 to 49. It was the San Francisco station’s best showing ever — and the first time a Spanish-language newscast has topped all 6 p.m. local news programs for a major sweeps period in that age group.
Media Roasted McKinney, Let Rohrabacher Walk
Despite nearly identical moves by Reps. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., and Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., on Capitol Hill, McKinney received controversial national media coverage, encountered vicious ridicule by right-wing radio hosts, and found herself pegged publicly as a “nut” and “traitor,” writes the Orange County Weekly.
The media circus that featured McKinney as a clown somehow never considered Rohrabacher. Despite having closer personal ties to Arab interests than McKinney, the congressman was either ignored (by the national press corps), hilariously showcased as a foreign-policy expert (by the notoriously partisan Orange County Register) or hailed as a “hero” (on conservative Web sites), the weekly says.
Puerto Rican or Journalist? She Chooses Both
“As an editor and columnist, who happens to be Puerto Rican, I am in a spot,” writes María T. Padilla in the Orlando Sentinel.
“The community sees in me an ally because we share similar background and experiences. This puts me in a unique position to articulate a point of view that often goes untapped. .
“Now, there are people in the Puerto Rican community who say I must choose: Either you’re Puerto Rican or you’re a reporter.
“I say, por favor or puhlease.”
K.C. Star Columnist Becomes a Bobblehead
What’s seven and a half inches of smooth, hard plastic with a jiggling head? The new Jason Whitlock bobblehead doll, of course, writes The Pitch, a Kansas City weekly published by New Times.
In honor of the Kansas City Star sports columnist’s quest to run/not run the Humana River Crown Plaza Marathon on Nov. 2, Whitlock’s employer is selling a bobblehead in his likeness to benefit the Community Blood Center.
Fox News Channel Called Biased Against Muslims
Fox News Channel is the most biased major media outlet toward Muslims, Ibrahim Hooper, communications director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told O’Dwyer’s PR Daily Web site. Hooper cited the recent Florida “terror scare” as part of what he called Fox’s inflammatory reporting. While CNN’s Larry King was pretty even-handed in interviewing the suspected terrorists, a Fox interviewee demanded they take a Fox-paid lie detector test, according to Hooper.
Charles Barkley Gets His Own Show
Former National Basketball Association great and Turner Network Television studio analyst Charles Barkley is getting his own half-hour show, “Listen Up! Charles Barkley with Ernie Johnson,” reports Broadcasting & Cable.
Barkley and the veteran in-studio host are to hold court Thursday nights from 7 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. for a live discussion of sports, news and entertainment. The show debuts Oct. 31.
The talkative Sir Charles will also be a weekly guest on “Talkback Live.”
Sharpton Leads Protests in D.C.
The Rev. Al Sharpton‘s National Action Network held a three-pronged protest in Washington, D.C., Wednesday, reports Broadcasting & Cable.
Two protests — one at the Federal Communications Commission and the other in front of the Department of Justice — were in opposition to the merger of EchoStar Communication Corp. and DirecTV Inc., which Sharpton’s group said would create a monopoly and cost jobs.
The other was a smaller protest of XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. for not carrying religious gospel channel The Word Network, while at the same time carrying programming that Sharpton’s group said glorifies violence, drugs and the degradation of women. Among the offending channels it identified were reggae channel The Joint and Playboy Radio.
In a statement last week, XM said: “We have informed NAN that we currently have a programming partnership with D.C.-area-based Radio One, the nation’s largest African-American-owned radio company, which programs five channels including Spirit, the first national 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week gospel channel, and The Power, the first national African-American talk channel.”
