Newspaper Publishers’ Diversity Chief Considers Buyout
Toni Laws, senior vice president for diversity at the Newspaper Association of America, the newspaper publishers’ trade association, is considering taking a buyout, leaving open to question the future of the organization’s diversity programs.
After “significant revenue decreases” prompted by an advertising slump after 9/11, which caused newspapers to cut back on travel and training, the $30 million organization “will lose money for the first time since I’ve been CEO,” John Sturm told Journal-isms. Strum, who was named president and CEO in 1995, said the organization would rely on its reserves, its rainy-day fund.
NAA promotes diversity in both the editorial and business sides of newspapers with a regular publication on diversity called “People and Product,” and with mentoring programs, conferences and services that help newspapers become better equipped in serving “emerging, niche markets.”
Sturm said the organization began the year with 168 full-time equivalent employees, then offered buyouts accepted by 20 of 36 employees. By mid-summer, NAA was down to 138 employees, and offered buyouts to two members of the senior staff who qualified. Laws, who assumed her diversity post in 1992 and is also director of the NAA Foundation, confirmed to Journal-isms that she was one of them. Strum said that the two had until Thursday to make up their minds.
He declined to say what would happen to the diversity programs if Laws left or to confirm that Laws was eligible for the buyout. “I’m careful about not trying to influence people,” he said, contending that commenting on the future could do just that.
But, Sturm said, “I think in an area that we try to make a difference, our diversity effort, we’ve been pretty good,” saying he was judging by “feedback, by those who take advantage of what we have to offer.”
The organization cannot directly hire, promote or train anyone; that has to be done by its member newspapers.
Juan Williams: To Whites I’m Liberal, to Blacks, Conservative
“You know, in the white community, I think most times people say, oh, you’re a liberal, especially on Fox,” longtime journalist Juan Williams told Brit Hume on Fox’s “Special Report with Brit Hume” on Monday. “But in the black community, I’m seen as a black conservative. And a black conservative one who challenges black leadership, one who does not always abide by the terms of traditional positions.”
Williams, a former reporter for the Washington Post who is now a senior correspondent for National Public Radio and a commentator for Fox News, was interviewed by Hume in the wake of Harry Belafonte‘s Oct. 8 “house slave” remarks about Secretary of State Colin Powell to show that, in Hume’s words, “you do not have to be in government to experience the sting of the civil rights establishment’s outrage at successful African-Americans who do not always agree with its positions.”
In Williams’ view, he has been ostracized by blacks because, they said, “we can’t count on him to tell the story the way we want it told in the first place.”
In 1991, Williams, as a Post writer, defended then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, who was accused, of course, of sexual harassment.
He tells a sympathetic Hume: “And that, of course, then brought down all the heavens on me, in terms of the civil rights establishment — I think driven by people who said, you know what, we don’t like Clarence Thomas’ story, as being sort of this young black man from Georgia who made his way up.
“We don’t like the idea that Juan Williams at The Washington Post would lend his credibility to this story. And therefore, one way to get at Thomas was to attack the messengers. In that case, to attack me.”
Hume asks, “So what happened?”
Replies Williams: “Well, people then attacked me. Once he got into trouble with Anita Hill, and there were all sorts of questions about my behavior — have you told any flirtatious jokes, who have you flirted with at the paper? All sorts of accusations.
“I mean, it just felt like the world had crumbled in on my head.”
A different version was reported in the Post on Nov. 2, 1991:
“In an open letter to the newsroom, Williams said: ‘It pained me to learn during the investigation that I had offended some of you. I have said so repeatedly in the last few weeks, and repeat here: some of my verbal conduct was wrong, I now know that, and I extend my sincerest apology to those whom I offended. I have committed to Post management, and I commit to you — and to myself — to change my ways.’
“Williams’s letter came several hours after about 50 female employees met with Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. and said they objected to The Post’s refusal to say how the paper had resolved allegations of verbal sexual harassment against Williams. The newspaper’s management has maintained that such personnel inquiries must remain confidential.
“The disclosure [of the internal inquiry] came five days after a Williams column on The Post’s op-ed page in which he said that Anita Hill had ‘no credible evidence’ for her allegations of sexual harassment by Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, but that Hill was ‘prompted’ to make her charges by Democratic Senate staffers. The Post’s personnel inquiry had begun more than two weeks earlier, but the column angered many women in the newsroom, and several came forward to say that they had also had problems with Williams.”
AP Says Reporter It Fired Invented His Sources
The Associated Press said that it could not verify the existence of more than 45 people and a dozen organizations cited in news articles written by Christopher Newton, an African American reporter in its Washington bureau who was fired last month.
Newton was dismissed on Sept. 16, eight days after the publication of an article on criminal justice statistics that quoted two people – “Ralph Myers” of Stanford University and “Bruce Fenmore of the Institute for Crime and Punishment in Chicago” – who could not be found. AP editors found no trace of the institute either.
The news agency cited 40 articles with the dubious references. The articles by Newton, who was covering the Justice Department at the time of his dismissal, covered subjects including education, civil liberties and stem cells, Newton, reached by the New York Times by telephone, said in a statement: “The AP’s inquiry began after an incident in which there was substantial evidence that two individuals perpetrated a hoax. The company chose to publicly reveal only information that supported its accusations.”
“I was not given an opportunity to account for the names of those people The AP did not find,” he said. “Setting the record straight is an important matter. I am no longer pursuing the situation with The AP, but rather with an attorney. We have already located some of those people The AP says do not exist.”
Newton declined to give names or numbers for the individuals whom he said he had found. In an interview, he denied having fabricated people or organizations. He was hired by the news agency soon after he graduated from Texas Christian University in 1996. He had been the editor of the student newspaper, The Daily Skiff, in 1995.
Toronto Star Finds Justice System Harsher on Blacks
An investigation by the Toronto Star shows that blacks charged with simple drug possession received harsher treatment than whites facing the same charge, and that a disproportionate number of blacks were ticketed for offenses that would usually come to light only after a traffic stop was made – a pattern consistent with racial profiling.
Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino says police do not engage in racial profiling.
But the Star reports that Ernie Eves, premier of the province of Ontario, which includes Toronto, says he supports a summit meeting to discuss the newspaper’s investigation, which ran Oct. 19 to 22.
Garcia’s Design Book to Hit Shelves In December
Design consultant Mario Garcia, who has worked with numerous newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal and the Philadelphia Inquirer, will have his “Pure Design” published by Miller Media in December. He calls it “a living text of how we should present information,” reports Editor & Publisher.
Examples in the book provide instruction on cover design, page layout, photo selection, content usage, and other design and layout elements for newspapers, magazines, and books, as well as Web sites. Pure Design abandons chapter format in favor of shorter segments that revolve around one particular case study.
Barry Bonds and “the Boorish White Male” Sportswriter
The figure of San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds – in metaphor and in reality – is an excellent illustration of how far behind the racial curve most sportswriters are at mainstream news organizations, writes columnist Amy Alexander on africana.com.
“The coverage of Bonds, in San Francisco and at other news outlets in big sports towns, has been overwhelmingly negative, which is not at all surprising when one considers the culture (and cult) of sportswriters in America. When I worked in mainstream newspapers, I learned that sports departments at most big city papers are the last refuge of the unreconstructed Boorish White Male,” she says.
“Boondocks” Characters Called the Black Everyman
“Boondocks” creator Aaron McGruder, 28, “is a ‘race man’ at a time when many up-and-coming African-Americans are being pressured to join the mainstream — a euphemism for thinking and acting like white folks,” writes USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham. “The characters in his comic strip are a throwback to ‘Jesse B. Semple,’ a voice of black consciousness that Langston Hughes unleashed in the Chicago Defender in 1942.”
Semple represented the black everyman, says Wickham, and “McGruder’s comic strip is an unwavering voice of black consciousness. He is as much the nemesis of the black leaders he believes have gone astray as he is of whites he thinks have undermined the interests of African-Americans.
“That makes him a very dangerous black man,” the columnist says.
Gay Journalists Honor Salon Founder, Chronicle Reporter
The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association honored David Talbot, Salon.com, founder and editor-in-chief, and Carol Ness, San Francisco Chronicle reporter, at a cocktail gathering Monday at a San Francisco nightclub.
Salon.com “has consistently published outstanding work about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues and writers, often beating gay publications to the heart of stories with gay relevance,” the group said.
Ness “spent years covering the gay community for Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner. Her work on the gay beat, and her contributions to the groundbreaking ‘Gay in America’ series, helped to make those special sections insightful and exciting long before most other metropolitan newspapers recognized the significance of reflecting their gay readers in their pages.”
