Wall St. Journal Lays Off Highest Ranking Journalist of Color
The list of layoffs at the Wall Street Journal includes Carolyn Phillips, who as assistant managing editor was the highest ranking person of color in the newsroom, Phillips confirmed today.
“Newspaper economics are pretty awful right now,” Phillips, a 20-year veteran of the paper, told Journal-isms. “It’s been brutal.”
Phillips remains on the payroll until Dec. 31. As AME, she was responsible for staffing and training, and was developing a staff development protocol. She said she plans to continue that work.
“What’s training like in newsrooms? Spotty,” she said. “The Journal and every other newspaper needs a God’s eye view of what each and every staffer is doing. I look forward to working on this project in the broader arena.”
The NABJ Journal reported in 1995 that when Managing Editor Paul Steiger chose Phillips, then Houston bureau chief, for the AME job, he said that, “The appointment speaks to the Journal’s commitment to quality. Carolyn is simply an outstanding journalist and an outstanding leader. She was my first choice.”
When she was named Houston bureau chief, one of seven jobs she has held at the newspaper, Phillips became, at age 38, the first and only domestic bureau chief of color for the paper in 101 years. She received her bachelor’s degree in mass communication from Purdue in 1978.
On the list of union members laid off are Curtis R. Williams, an African American, 18-year Journal veteran who was a member of the product technology team, and helped the paper upgrade to color press, and Khanh Thuy Le Tran, listed as a reporting/editorial assistant in the San Francisco Bureau. Phillips can be reached at carolyn.phillips@wsj.com.
Disabled More Often Examples Than Sources
“Print journalists are much more likely to use people with disabilities as examples in their news stories than as sources,” says a group called The Center for an Accessible Society
Its study, “News Coverage of Disability Issues,” examined news coverage of disability issues in major news outlets over two months in the fall of 1998. The project was funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.
“Almost 70 percent of the stories concerning disability ‘had no identifiable source with a disability in it,’ ” reported study author Beth Haller. While this could simply mean that journalists are “not identifying the disability status of sources,” said the report, this is unlikely, since reporters tend to identify the “status” of sources. What’s more likely, wrote Haller, is that journalists were not using people with disabilities as sources.
“The message that may be getting to the public” is that “people with disabilities can’t speak for themselves.” The News Watch Project examines this and other coverage issues involving people with disabilities in a special issue.
Another Example of McGowan Lifting Out of Context
In the preface to “Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism,” William McGowan says, “a spirit of political advocacy and ethnic activism rules. As Kara Briggs, president of the Native American Journalist Association, insisted in one Unity-related interview: ‘I was born into a tribe, not a newspaper.’ ”
Briggs, a reporter for the Oregonian in Portland, says her quote was taken out of context.
“The quote was in answer to a question that [National Public Radio’s] Phillip Martin posed: Why do you say the name of your tribe before the name of your newspaper?,” Briggs says. “My answer: ‘I was born to a tribe, not a newspaper.’ Far from ethnic activism, my quote was simply a statement of my origins, not unlike the fact that my name is Briggs. I might as well have said, I was born on a farm or I grew up in the suburbs. Instead, I followed a cultural practice of Native Americans and said, I was born to a family of the Yakama Nation, a tribal nation based in central Washington state.”
“McGowan first misused this quote in a 1999 column in The Wall Street Journal. Briggs said. “I responded with a letter to the editor, which was published, explaining that he was wrong. I was irritated, but not surprised, that he put the quote with full knowledge that it was wrong in his book.”
McGowan debates Juan Gonzalez, president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Monday at the National Press Club.
The Press Club honored McGowan with its press criticism award in the books category this year despite protests from journalist organizations of color that the book was shoddy journalism.
“Boondocks” Creator Lets His Opinions Fly
Betraying no shyness, “Boondocks” comic strip creator Aaron McGruder told a Yale audience that he has met prominent black Americans, including National security adviser Condoleezza Rice (“She’s a scary woman”); activists and sometime-presidential candidates Al Sharpton (“You are 56! Why do you have a perm?”) and Jesse Jackson, whom he lambasted for Jackson’s recent attack on the makers of the movie, “Barbershop,” reports the Hartford Courant. Jackson took umbrage at jokes about Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks.
“On the brink of conflict, Jesse Jackson wanted to talk about a movie,” McGruder said. “And this is why nobody likes Jesse Jackson.”
In the same breath, he lambasted the King family for selling the activist’s image to be used in advertisements.
In a two-hour talk, McGruder said he approaches his strip, now in 250 newspapers, as if he’ll lose it tomorrow.
He also pronounced hip-hop – his choice of music since ’83 – dead, and rap devoid of morals.
Jacqui Love-Marshall, With Lung Ailment, Asks for Prayers
Jacqui Love-Marshall, who stepped down for health reasons as vice president/diversity for Knight Ridder, has a chronic, debilitating lung disorder that diminishes her ability to breathe by as much as 30 percent, and expects to undergo tests next week to determine whether she will be a candidate for a lung transplant.
She sent this e-mail:
“Dear Family, Friends and Colleagues:
“I need your help.
“I believe everyone on this email list is aware of my health challenges. I have been on short-term disability since October 1. Not working in an 80-hours-plus-per-week job has afforded me time to rest more and focus more intently on my health. However, I continue to run out of steam from the slightest exertions of energy and I am increasingly tethered to oxygen tanks.
“Next week, November 19-22, I will be going through a series of tests/evaluations at Stanford University Hospital’s Transplant Center. That evaluation will determine if I am a viable candidate for a lung transplant. If I am, I will be put on the waiting list for a transplant.
“The wait is about 2 years. I am hopeful that the outcomes will be positive.
“Many of you have sent cards, emails, letters and other wishes for my improved health. Thanks to all for your kind wishes; they mean a lot.
“Now, more than ever, I am asking you to keep me in the light and send me your most positive, affirming energy. Please think of me next week — with your prayers, good thoughts, healings, inspirations, incantations, anything that appeals to the higher power you believe in — to keep me in the most divine care of the Universe.
“With all that love coming my way from good people like you, how could the results be anything but great? Thanks, in advance, for your support.”
“Sending all that good energy back to you,
jlovemarshall@yahoo.com”
Latino Broadcasters Challenge Ratings Services
Radio-ratings company Arbitron Inc. has agreed to weight its Hispanic audience samples by language preference, bowing to demands of Spanish-language radio broadcasters who have complained that their market clout is being underestimated, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Arbitron, whose ratings are used by advertisers, already weights its audience samples by age, sex and geography — that is, it makes sure such samples contain the same makeup of such attributes as the population at large.
Arbitron also “weights” audience samples in some markets by race and ethnicity. But Spanish-language broadcasters have long complained that since it hasn’t weighted for language, Hispanic samples frequently include too many English speakers. This, they argue, depresses Spanish-language ratings, thereby hurting ad revenue of Hispanic stations.
The meetings Tuesday and Wednesday between Latino broadcasters and Arbitron was “contentious,” Bill Tanner, executive vice president for programming of the Spanish Broadcasting System, told Journal-isms. “The ratings companies should be obliged to determine which percentage of the audience is English-dominant and which is Spanish-dominant. It causes a huge crisis of confidence in advertisers” if the numbers switch back and forth, he said.
Nielsen Media Research, which rates television programs, said that beginning Dec. 30, it will weight its TV audience sample by language preference in six metered markets with large Spanish-speaking populations: Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Houston, San Antonio and San Diego, reports Media Week.
But Nielsen does not say what its benchmarks are, said Tanner, or what it is determining to be the Hispanic population in each market.
Spanish-language broadcasters such as Hispanic Broadcasting and Spanish Broadcasting System took a big ratings hit during the summer survey, blaming the drop in Hispanic audience share on the number of diaries returned by Spanish-primary Hispanics.
Police Sketches Rarely Look Like Suspects
The news media love sketches, writes Allan Wolper in Editor & Publisher. Especially computer-generated composites handed out at press briefings. Never mind that those sketches barely resemble the perps the police are looking for. Ignore the fact that DNA testing has proved the sketches wrong again and again. Forget the walking proof as one man after another is released from prison after being mistakenly arrested and convicted based on distorted descriptions from victims and eyewitnesses.
“Composite sketches have very limited value,” said retired Chicago Police Detective Sgt. Paul Carroll from his home in Big Pine Key, Fla. “We use them a lot to put it on the street that we’re trying to do something. It’s good public relations. The sketches are often someone’s imagination.”
Philly’s KYW-TV Realigning Anchors
The anchor lineup at KYW-TV is beginning to look like a Chinese take-out order, writes television writer Gail Shuster in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Among the changes under speculation: Noon and 5 p.m. anchor Ukee Washington returning to sports.
Dec. 15 Set for Closing of ‘Chicago Defender’ Sale
A $10.9-million deal to buy Sengstacke Enterprises Inc., parent of the daily Chicago Defender and three black weeklies, was approved Nov. 4, reports Editor & Publisher, by the Cook County, Ill., probate court that has overseen the company since the death of John Sengstacke in 1997 left it with a $3-million estate-tax bill and a family divided over its future.
Real Times Inc., a group led by Tom Picou, a former Defender editor and John Sengstacke’s nephew, would pay $8.5 million for 91 percent of the publishing company and assume $2.4 million in debt. A Dec. 15 closing is anticipated for the sale.
Coverage of Natives Called Superficial
Mainstream media give superficial coverage to American Indians, avoiding complicated sovereignty and health issues in favor of stereotypical casino stories, Indian journalists said at a University of Oklahoma journalism school conference on Native Americans and the Mass Media.
They said that mainstream journalists should dig deeper and tackle the real Indian stories — ones that aren’t concentrated on tribal bickering over casinos or Indians building a totem pole, the Associated Press reported.
“A lot of people are missing the Indian story just because they don’t know what they don’t know,” said Suzan Harjo, a columnist for Indian Country Today. “That’s happening all across America because America is so used to looking at us as non-human beings, noncomplex human beings.”
U. Ill. Paper Under Fire for “Animal Instinct” Photo
The Daily Illini, an independent newspaper at the University of Illinois, has been under fire since it ran a front-page photo Oct. 28 of two African American students wearing leopard-print bathing suits as part of African-American Homecoming. The photo, captioned “Animal Instinct,” was criticized as a misrepresentation of the event and African Americans on campus.
Editor in chief Angie Leventis said she regrets the decision the newsroom made in printing the photo. A story about the show had been planned, but when the story fell through, editors decided to run the picture with a longer caption, the Illini reported.
“A photo like that out of context doesn’t tell the complete story,” she said.
“It was a poor representation of the African-American Homecoming events. I think . . . it was a lapse in judgment.”