Star-Telegram Tells About Its Bad Old Days
As part of its series, “The Color of Hate: How the Jim Crow era shamed and shaped our city,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter Tim Madigan looked at the racial history of the newspaper itself:
“The Fort Worth Star-Telegram wasn’t the most blatantly racist newspaper in America during Jim Crow. But it played a shameful role all the same: demeaning blacks with its opinions, its language, its invisible coverage of their communities,” Madigan wrote.
“In truth, the Star-Telegram’s sins of Jim Crow were as much those of omission as commission. The black basketball team at I.M. Terrell High School might win 10 in a row, or a black soldier from Fort Worth might perform a heroic act in World War II, but not a word would make the pages of the city’s dominant white paper.”
Madigan, who is white, is the author of “The Burning,” one of the recent books on the Tulsa “Black Wall Street” massacre of 1921.
“It was my idea to include the Star-Telegram,” in the series, but to me that was a no brainer,” Madigan told Journal-isms. “The reaction, as you might guess, varies widely. My e-mail and telephone calls are about 80 percent favorable, with people deeply disturbed but very moved by what they read. The others, which tend to be older people, are deeply disturbed for other reasons, wondering why we are doing this now, saying that all we’re doing is stirring up race hatred, that we’re doing just fine now and we’re setting us back, and so forth. I’m guessing, at this point, [I’ve had] about 150 phone calls and half that many e-mail. They come in steadily every day. [This series] has had a profound impact on our community, from top to bottom.”
Hip-Hop Satire Author Was “Middle-Aged Jewish White Guy”
Some called hilarious a Washington Post parody last week of what CNN’s efforts to speak “hip-hop” might sound like. But because Post reporters were conducting a byline strike to protest the lack of a contract, the author was unnamed. Now it can be told: He is Paul Farhi, a self-described “middle-aged Jewish white guy” whose beat includes media topics. And Farhi, 44, had help from Natalie Hopkinson, the twentysomething African American he sits next to.
“I got the idea when I saw the wire-service story about the CNN producer suggesting Headline News get more ‘with it’ lingo,” Farhi told Journal-isms. “It seemed like an obvious target for parody. Natalie was helpful because I was on a very short deadline and needed to get examples of hip-hop-like lingo very quickly. She supplied a few for my list. The rest I knew about from listening to the radio, hearing occasionally on BET or other TV shows, what have you. Also, my son, who is 17, frequently drops such slang into everyday conversation. He will tell you: Every kid he knows says that the coolest kids are black! In that regard, nothing’s really changed since I was his age–I always thought the same thing.”
Farhi adds that he had an unfounded fear: “I expected people to be a) mystified by the story and/or b) upset about it. No one seemed upset, probably because of the big bold overline reading HUMOR that ran with the story!”
Carlos Castañeda, Who Led El Nuevo Herald, Dies at 70
Carlos Castañeda, the publisher emeritus of El Nuevo Herald whose passionate belief in a free press helped guide several newspapers across Latin America, died Thursday in Lisbon, Portugal. He was 70 and suffered from an aggressive form of leukemia, reports the Miami Herald.
A veteran journalist whose career spanned more than five decades, Castañeda bore witness to the vagaries of politics and people — and helped shape their coverage in more than two dozen papers throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Perhaps his crowning achievement occurred in May, when El Nuevo Herald was presented the 2001 Ortega y Gasset Journalism Award, given to the best Spanish-language daily newspaper in the world.
Bryan Monroe Named Knight Ridder Asst. VP/News
Bryan Monroe, deputy managing editor of the San Jose Mercury News, will be come Knight Ridder’s assistant vice president/news when he finishes his Nieman Fellowship at Harvard next spring, the company announced.
Monroe, 37, replaces Larry Olmstead, who on Aug. 8 was named Knight Ridder’s vice president for staff development and diversity. He is vice president/print of the National Association of Black Journalists and immediate past president of the Bay Area Black Journalists Association. Text of announcement by Jerry Ceppos, Knight Ridder vice president/news, at the end of today’s posting.
CBS Adding Dallas’ Rene Syler to ‘Early Show’
CBS News has tapped Rene Syler, a weekday anchor in Dallas but unknown on the national scene, to join Julie Chen, Harry Smith, and Hannah Storm on the revamped “Early Show,” according to executives with knowledge of the situation, Electronic Media reported. CBS had no comment. Syler currently works at Viacom-owned KTVT-TV in Dallas-Fort Worth. CBS decided to revamp the “Early Show”‘ after Bryant Gumbel left the program in May. Co-anchor Jane Clayson was reassigned to “The CBS Evening News” last month as a correspondent. And longtime weatherman and entertainment reporter Mark McEwen also is moving on. There has been speculation that “Early” will tuck weather into the news headlines. The Black America Web site was first to report the story Thursday.
Otis Sanford Becomes ME of Memphis Commercial Appeal
Otis L. Sanford rises from deputy managing editor to managing editor, the No. 2 newsroom post at the Memphis Commercial Appeal, effective Jan. 1. He succeeds Henry Stokes, who becomes assistant to the publisher.
The announcement was made as the paper named Chris Peck, former editor of the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., its new editor, also effective Jan. 1. Sanford, 49, began his career as a copy clerk at the Commercial Appeal.
Sanford served as a reporter and assistant metro editor at the newspaper before leaving Memphis in 1987 to become an assistant city editor at the Pittsburgh Press. After a stint as deputy city editor of the Detroit Free Press, Sanford returned to Memphis in 1994 to be deputy managing editor.
Sanford replaces Stokes, 57, who has spent 14 years with the Commercial Appeal, the last 10 as managing editor.
Jose Rios to Run Another L.A. Newsroom
Jose Rios, vice president of news at KTTV-TV Los Angeles, will take charge of the news operation at KCOP-TV starting next week, the Los Angeles Times reports. Both stations are owned by News Corp.
In making the announcement, David Boylan, vice president and general manager for KTTV and KCOP, said, “Jose Rios has been instrumental in creating the strong newsroom we have today at Fox 11. He is the ideal person to oversee our two news operations.”
Rios has been running the newsroom at KTTV for 10 years. He previously worked at KCBS-TV for 13 years, the last two as news director.
Fareed Zakaria Joins ABC’s “This Week” Roundtable
Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International, has joined ABC News’ “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” ABC News President David Westin announced. Zakaria, who has appeared frequently on “This Week,” is to serve as an analyst for the program and a regular member of the roundtable. He will also appear as an analyst on other ABC News programs.
At the 2001 national convention of the South Asian Journalists Association, Zakaria was presented the group’s highest honor: the SAJA Journalism Leader Award, for his contributions to international journalism. The naming of Zakaria along with Michel Martin, who is African American, to the “This Week” roundtable comes after an effort to diversify the roundtable segment. In June, ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider told Journal-isms that the roundtable “had a group of people who always turned out to be these white middle-age guys; we are insisting that the pool be expanded.”
Zakaria is expected to appear on “This Week” at least twice a month.
RTNDF Adds One Diversity Program, Drops Another
The Radio and Television News Directors Foundation is dropping its traditional management and producer workshops in favor of a video project that will highlight case studies of people of color in senior management positions, executive director Roz Stark told Journal-isms.
“We’ll be taking that show on the road,” Stark said of the video project, funded by a $65,000 grant from the Institute for Inclusive Work Environments, a San Francisco-based nonprofit research organization whose mission is to enhance equal opportunity in the workplace.
Twenty to 30 people attended the management or producer workshops and one of each workshop was conducted each year. “We’re finding with all of our workshops it’s harder to get people to come,” Stark said. “Training is the first thing in the budget to get cut in newsrooms.”
Andy Rooney Comment Offends Women
There’s a lengthy list of groups that CBS’ Andy Rooney has offended over the years. Now, it’s women who are taking issue after the “60 Minutes” commentator said female sideline reporters have no business making comments about football games, reports the Journal-News in Westchester County, N.Y.
“The only thing that really bugs me about television’s coverage is those damn women they have down on the sidelines who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about,” Rooney said last Friday on MSG Network’s “The Boomer Esiason Show.” “I mean, I’m not a sexist person, but a woman has no business being down there trying to make some comment about a football game.”
Bill O’Reilly Calls Muslim Women Unattractive
Fox talkmeister Bill O’Reilly has brought a PR jihad on himself by declaring that “the most unattractive women in the world are probably in the Muslim countries,” reports the New York Daily News.
In a jokey interview in the November issue of the men’s magazine Stuff, O’Reilly is asked for his personal turn-ons among the world’s females.
The “O’Reilly Factor” pundit rules out devout Islamic women who favor traditional dress.
“You can’t see them,” O’Reilly playfully tells the magazine. “So you are assuming that, if [they’re] dressed head to toe in black and I can only see eyebrows, there’s something going on.”
Memo on Bryan Monroe from Jerry Ceppos
From: Ceppos, Jerry
I’m delighted to report that Bryan Monroe, deputy managing editor of the San Jose Mercury News, will become assistant vice president/news when he finishes his Nieman Fellowship at Harvard next spring.
Bryan, 37, replaces Larry Olmstead, who recently became Knight Ridder’s vice president for staff development and diversity. As Larry did, Bryan will help me in all sorts of ways, including being the corporate connection to a number of our newsrooms. Bryan jumped out at me because of his many areas of expertise in the newsroom, the varied size of newspapers for which he has worked, his teaching experience, his energy and his people skills.
Many of you know Bryan for his work on Knight Ridder projects. Most recently he co-chaired, with Steve Hannah, the committee that recommended the integrated front-end and pagination system that Knight Ridder papers will use in the future. But his involvement goes all the way back to 1989, when he was assistant project director for the 25/43 Project, which ended up being based at the Boca Raton News. And in April 1997 he led a Mercury News delegation that, along with folks from other papers, helped Grand Forks publish during its flood and fire.
In his most recent job, he supervised the local, state and regional news report of the Mercury News, as well as the news desk and the photography, graphics, art, on-line, imaging and systems departments. Among many other duties at the Mercury News, Bryan led redesigns of the paper in 1992 and again in 2000. This year, the paper was named one of the five best-designed papers in the world by the Society for News Design.
Bryan joined the Mercury News in 1991 from the 25/43 Project. Before that, he was graphics director and director of photography at the Myrtle Beach Sun-News. He worked earlier as a photographer at the Seattle Times, the Roanoke Times & World News and United Press International. He also has been a reporter and assigning editor at the Mercury News. He was the first African-American editor of the Daily at the University of Washington in Seattle, from which he was graduated.
Bryan is vice president/print of the National Association of Black Journalists and immediate past president of the Bay Area Black Journalists Association. He has taught frequently, for the Poynter Institute, the American Press Institute and many other organizations. Bryan is married to Tahirah Monroe, a fifth-grade teacher. They have two children, Seanna, 2, and Jackson, 1.