Post Writers Produce Good Read, Good Comeback
Longtime Washington Post reporters Martha McNeil Hamilton and Warren Brown knew they had a great story to tell: Last year, Hamilton, a white woman who grew up in segregated Texas, gave one of her kidneys to Brown, an African American co-worker who was raised in segregated New Orleans. The gift restored his health.
Now the journalists’ book is out about the lives that led up to that moment, “Black & White & Red All Over: The Story of a Friendship” (Public Affairs, $25), and they’re promoting away on a book tour.
Hamilton says that one interviewer asked whether the two were offended to have been hired, through affirmative action, on the basis of their race and gender.
“I said, ‘certainly not, we had been offended when we were kept out of the workplace because of our race and gender,'” Hamilton recalls.
Good comeback. Hamilton goes on:
“We were happy to get in the door to be able to prove ourselves. And those doors weren’t going to open by themselves. I have a hard time viewing affirmative action as flawed, compared to the strange rules of segregation and sex discrimination which required whites and blacks to drink from different water fountains or required pregnant teachers to quit their jobs. Affirmative action helped make the Washington Post a better product that reflects a wider ranges of perspectives.”
The personal benefit of newsroom affirmative action is put more bluntly in the book: “Acts that once would have been impossibilities became facts of life — and in Warren’s case, a matter of life or death — as a result of our being thrown together in the workplace.”
Aside from the newsroom stories and personal histories told with the breezy, cynical irreverence of working journalists, “Black & White & Red All Over” makes important points about race and health.
Chronic hypertension, the leading medical killer of blacks in the United States, was the cause of Brown’s original kidney failure, and studies show that blacks are less likely than whites to be diagnosed with renal failure at an early stage.
Moreover, Brown’s first transplanted kidney, donated by his wife, failed after doctors gave him stronger immunosuppressant drugs than necessary, under the assumption that that was the strength blacks needed. But as Brown points out, not all blacks are the same — and most are mixtures of various “races.” “Ethnic self-identification, in many ways, is a matter of choosing labels. But relying on labels instead of something more substantial, such as genetic testing, to determine the appropriate drug therapies, could lead to bad medicine,” he writes — and did.
Brown, by the way, is perhaps better known as a syndicated automobile columnist. And full disclosure: Journal-isms works with both at the Washington Post.
What’s Happened to The Black World Today?
Many of us were hopeful when The Black World Today Web site launched a few years ago. It provided a place where writers could shop pieces that others might not run, and offered a black world view. But money has been tight, and editing — quality control — has been sacrificed.
Now, The Black World Today has posted a piece about Michael Jordan that seems to take a hoax seriously, titled, “Belafonte’s Statements Only Serve To Overshadow Alleged Words Of Jordan”.
It accepts as true a story moving around the Internet that says Michael Jordan is wearing a black armband to express solidarity with the anti-globalization struggle. It says, “in fact he indicates that he is a supporter of the Palestinian struggle and speaks pointedly against what he calls ‘US imperialist antics.’ He even rails against Nike, stating that he feels bad for dealing with them.”
The Anti-Defamation League has issued a statement saying the part of this Internet story about it is bogus.
Credibility is the most important asset of a news organization. No news services have reported on such a Jordan press conference or his wearing such an arm band, much less denouncing Nike.
Black World Today CEO Named GM of Pacifica’s N.Y. Station
Veteran journalist, activist and new-media innovator Don Rojas has been named as the new general manager of Pacifica Radio station WBAI-FM in New York City, Pacifica officials announced.
Rojas’ background covers stints as the editor of the New York Amsterdam News, director of communications of the NAACP, and founder/CEO of the Internet portal The Black World Today (http://www.tbwt.com), and its Internet radio network, BlackWorldRadio.com.
Natalie Morales Getting Noticed at MSNBC
The chance to hone her ability to anchor live national news was among the reasons Natalie Morales left her morning news co-anchor chair at Hartford’s NBC affiliate, WVIT-TV, reports the Hartford Courant. But she didn’t expect it to happen within her first minutes on the job.
On March 11, just before she was about to go on-air for the first time as MSNBC weekend afternoon and evening anchor, the news story that was rumbling all week broke: Israel was trying to broker a cease-fire with the Palestinian Authority after more than a year of violence.
Morales soon found herself asking Ehud Olmert, Jerusalem’s mayor, and Abdul Rahman, a spokesman for the PLO, about the likelihood of Middle East peace.
Her know-how is what may separate Morales from those big-haired, glossy-lipped counterparts on cable news networks who seem more style than substance. Though a weekend and fill-in anchor slot on MSNBC – the station with the lowest ratings of the three cable news networks – isn’t the most prominent position, her work is getting noticed, reports the Courant.
Fatwa’d Nigerian Journalist Writing Piece for Ms.
The never-say-die Ms. magazine has landed fatwa-defying fashion writer Isioma Daniel for its “Women of the Year” revival issue, reports the New York Post.
Fundamentalist Muslims in Nigeria had urged believers to kill Daniel because they felt that a commentary she wrote about the Miss World protests in the country insulted the prophet Muhammed.
Daniel wrote in the Nigerian newspaper ThisDay: “The Muslims thought it was immoral to bring ninety-two women to Nigeria and ask them to revel in vanity. What would Muhammed think? In all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from one of them. The irony is that Algeria, an Islamic country, is one of the countries participating in the contest.”
Daniel’s article in Ms. was actually commissioned back in October and is not about her death-defying ordeal.
Said Anne Mollegan Smith, Ms. acting editor, “Her piece for Ms. reports on the protests by hundreds of women in several Niger Delta communities who shut down ChevronTexaco ports and refineries until they were promised such urgent but basic needs as clean water and schools for their children. Now we can appreciate even more what courage those women showed.”
Meanwhile, a Canadian columnist challenges Daniel’s speculation on whom Mohammed might have married.
“There is little doubt, from Muslim history and tradition, that Mohammed, a reputedly handsome and charming man, liked women and enjoyed their company. But he was drawn to women who were more than merely physically beautiful. He valued women who were highly accomplished in the rugged ways of the world,” writes Douglas Todd in the Vancouver Sun, part of the CanWest chain.
“In seventh-century Arabia, where tribalism and polygamy were the order of the day, Mohammed chose wives who were leaders. Many of them would be more than a match for the modern professional women who juggle their families with high-powered, combative, boardroom responsibilities.”
Read the commentary that prompted the fatwa.
Isabel Wilkerson a Pro at “The Journalism of Empathy”
Sponsored by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, which runs a mid-career journalism fellowship program, the Narrative Journalism Conference gives writers a chance to learn tips and lessons designed to improve the story-telling skills necessary for good journalism.
This year, reports Amy Alexander on africana.com, the star of the crash course boot camp for reporters, editors and writers of nonfiction — which includes The Washington Post’s Katherine Boo; freelance writer Melissa Fay Greene; St. Petersburg Times feature writer Lane DeGregory, and sociologist-author Elijah Anderson – was Isabel Wilkerson, a New York Times reporter.
Wilkerson has reported from Chicago for The Times, and received a Pulitzer Prize during the mid-1990s for a series of stories examining the experiences of a black single mother struggling to raise her five children in the Windy City.
Wilkerson’s session was packed with students, working journalists and aspiring authors. The theme of her talk was “The Journalism of Empathy: How to Be Caring and Factual at the Same Time.”
“Judging from the reactions of many who attended Wilkerson’s talk in Cambridge, it seems that today’s young journalists are learning the trade in environments that don’t allow them to be unafraid of showing empathy toward their subjects,” writes Alexander.
“As Wilkerson put it when one of the attendees asked her if becoming ‘involved with’ or ‘helping’ her story subjects represented an ethical breach, ‘I treat my sources like I would any other acquaintance’ or stranger who obviously requires help. Should a stranger slip and fall in Wilkerson’s presence, she patiently explained, she would attempt to help them. Or if a personal or professional acquaintance should confide their problems or concerns, it is perfectly reasonable and legitimate to provide a sympathetic ear, Wilkerson said, which is not the same as providing economic help or making other connections for them.”