Hispanics Driving Growth of TV Audience
Hispanics are driving the overall growth of the country’s television audience, and account for 18 percent of viewers who are 18 to 34, and 15 percent of those 18 to 49, the most desirable groups for advertisers, the New York Times reports, citing Nielsen research.
With about half of Hispanic households thought to prefer watching programs in Spanish, English-language broadcast networks are trying different tactics and are making programming more friendly in an effort to reach a group that has been elusive but has become too important to ignore.
Using secondary audio programs is one way that new shows like the WB Network’s “Greetings From Tucson” and old staples like “The Bold and the Beautiful” on CBS are trying to capture new viewers.
In the meantime, the proliferation of cable channels in the last two years has allowed both broadcast and cable companies to start their own all-Spanish cable networks to carve out a market niche in areas such as sports. The Fox Entertainment Group and the News Corporation, for instance, have Fox Sports en Español, while ESPN plans to start a Spanish-language sports network, ESPN Deportes, next fall, the Times reports.
Kwanzaa’s Founder Remains Controversial
Even as Kwanzaa has become a mainstream American holiday, Ron Howell of Newsday remembers its origins and reports that some view its founder — Maulana Ron Karenga — with suspicion.
They remember his controversial role in the black power movement of the 1960s, when he was leader of a Los Angeles-based militant cultural organization called US, and his conviction for ordering the beating of a female US member.
“If somebody sends me a Kwanzaa card, I just tear it up,” said Elaine Brown, a former Black Panther whose 1994 book “A Taste of Power” describes the Jan. 17, 1969, shooting deaths of two Panthers by US members at UCLA. “I am so unforgiving but I don’t make any apologies for it.”
Sportswriters Diversity Program Struggling (pdf)
Unless member newspapers step up, the 10-year-old Associated Press Sports Journalism Institute, created to help diversify newspaper sports departments, will be strapped financially, writes Gregory Lee in the Associated Press Sports Editors newsletter.
“For the past 10 summers, the 10 students who participate in the annual APSE convention [serve] as a reminder to the predominantly white attendees that diversifying sports departments will take more than a pat on the back or selecting a few kids to get internships,” writes Lee, deputy high school sports editor at the Washington Post.
The program, which held its first session for 15 student-journalists in Norfolk, Va., in 1993, has produced more than 100 graduates, with most gaining full-time positions after graduation.
However, failure of some in the fraternity of sports editors to unflinchingly commit to the program means the program struggles each year to place students in newsrooms during the summer, Lee writes.
To some alums, even after participating in such programs, barriers remain with regards to opportunities in the industry because of the “good-old-boy” system.
Bernard Shaw: Beware Government Use of News Media
“Nobody saw the whole picture in ’91, and nobody will see the whole picture if there is a Gulf war again,” says retired CNN anchor Bernard Shaw, who covered the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
“People forget that everybody censors in a war. The U.S., the Iraqis, the British, the Israelis . . .” he tells the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Shaw said that for his own needs he will be scouring different sources for information and “it won’t all come from television. . . . It really bothers me that 75 percent of Americans get their news from television. It’s an imperfect medium.”
“You should listen and read and watch cautiously,” Shaw said. Beware of “confusion, haste, propaganda, the outright use of the media.” During the Gulf War in 1991, the U.S. military tried to throw off the Iraqis by creating a false impression of where U.S. soldiers would first land, Shaw said.
“If I were president of the United States, you’d better damn well believe I’d use the media,” he said. “There’s no such thing as a fairly fought war. Anyone who thinks so is naive to the point of being dangerous.”
Norma Adams-Wade Retiring from Dallas Morning News
Norma Adams-Wade, the first full-time black reporter at The Dallas Morning News and for many years its chief window into the city’s African-American neighborhoods, is retiring Tuesday after nearly three decades at the paper, the Morning News reports.
She will continue to write a column for the Metropolitan section on Wednesdays. When Adams-Wade started at the paper on Feb. 25, 1974, she recalled, white editors would openly doubt whether a black reporter could write impartially on racial issues. Her contacts in the black community, after years of journalistic neglect, were skeptical that the newspaper would honestly present their stories.
Meanwhile, when Adams-Wade interviewed the city’s white residents, she was often met with a look of befuddlement. In 1975, she became a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists, which now has about 3,000 members. Adams-Wade also founded NABJ’s five-state regional chapter and served as its director for more than two years.
“To whatever degree The Dallas Morning News has earned credibility in the black community, Norma has been an important part of that process,” Stuart Wilk, vice president and managing editor of the News, said in a message to the staff.
Karen Howze, Ex-Gannetteer, a Magistrate Judge in D.C.
Karen Howze, who left journalism in 1992 after working at Gannett’s USA Today and old Rochester (N.Y.) Times-Union, as well as at Newsday and the San Francisco Chronicle, has started a four-year appointment as one of five new magistrate judges in the District of Columbia Superior Court’s Family Court, a division created to address the needs of abused and neglected children.
Howze, who had been managing editor/systems and managing editor of the international edition of USA Today, said she left to devote more time to three special-needs children she had adopted. The children are now 20, 19 and 17. Holder of a law degree, Howze also represented foster children and their caretakers.
In her new role, to which she was sworn in Dec. 12, she said she would hear 300 cases of abuse and neglect.
Does Howze miss the news business? “It’s been almost 12 years,” she told Journal-isms. “It was just time to do something different. I’m not the kind of person who misses stuff.”
Street Named for Late Oakland Post Publisher
It was a history-making event, even for Oakland, Calif., reports the National Newspaper Publishers Association. Only one other street had ever been named after an African-American in this city’s history – and that was the naming of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
Friends of Tom Berkley, the publisher of the Oakland Post who died Dec. 27, 2001, at age 86, came to celebrate 20th Street being named in his honor.
The ceremony was held near the corner of 20th and San Pablo in Oakland. The street was blocked off while bands played and singers entertained.
Most people in the audience remembered Berkley as a pioneering lawyer, civil rights leader and black-press publisher. He has been credited as the father of modern-day Port of Oakland.
His law office also served as the incubator for lawyers and judges, such as former Mayor Lionel Wilson, the late Judge Clinton White, Donald Hopkins and many others.
BET Critics Misdirecting Anger, Writer Says
“What we, as black people and Americans, should really be upset about is the lack of alternative voices and oppositional perspectives in the mainstream media as a whole,” writes author and free-lance writer Kristal Brent Zook in Newsday, discussing Black Entertainment Television’s cancellations of “Lead Story,” “BET Tonight With Ed Gordon” and “Teen Summit.”
“I’m not the least bit worried about recent shakeups at BET. Why? Because I never believed its programming offered anything close to sophisticated analysis of racial issues or global affairs to begin with. Should the network have been more responsible to the black community? Certainly. But after [23] years of . . . business as usual, it sure seems late in the game to start making that demand.”
Zook is the author of “Color By Fox: The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television.”
AP Members Name Top 10 Stories of 2002
Ultimatums to Iraq from the U.S. government and the U.N. Security Council were voted the top story of year in The Associated Press’ annual survey of its American members.
The story also was voted No. 1 in a separate survey of AP subscribers outside the United States. The showdown with Iraq received first-place votes from 132 of the 262 AP newspaper and broadcast members who cast ballots. [The survey results were released Dec. 20, the same day Trent Lott resigned as Senate Republican leader, making that event too late to be included.]
Here are the top 10 stories of 2002, as ranked by AP members:
- ULTIMATUMS TO IRAQ: In January, President Bush denounced Iraq as part of an “axis of evil,” and pressure on Saddam mounted steadily thereafter. U.S. forces expanded their presence around Iraq; Congress authorized the use of force, if necessary, to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction; and the Security Council demanded that Saddam comply fully with arms inspections or face dire consequences.
- SNIPER KILLINGS: Residents of the nation’s capital and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs were terrorized for three weeks in October by sniper attacks that struck victims randomly at malls, gas stations, even a schoolyard. After an exhaustive manhunt, two suspects were arrested and accused of killing 13 people.
- CATHOLIC SEX ABUSE SCANDAL: The scandal surfaced early in the year in Boston, with revelations that Roman Catholic leaders had sheltered priests who were known to have abused children. By year’s end, Cardinal Bernard Law had resigned as Boston’s archbishop, and at least 325 priests nationwide either quit or were dismissed from their duties because of the scandal.
- CORPORATE SCANDALS: Numerous companies were battered by financial scandals during the year, including WorldCom, Tyco, ImClone and Adelphia. Martha Stewart, homemaker-in-chief for many Americans, became entangled in the ImClone insider-trading case.
- U.S. ECONOMY: Markets seesawed wildly, the jobless rate climbed to its highest level since 1994, and state governments across the country confronted huge deficits that prompted talk of cutbacks and tax hikes.
- U.S. ELECTION: Defying predictions, Republicans rode Bush’s popularity to a strong election performance, recapturing the Senate and gaining seats in the House
- WAR ON TERROR: With arrests in several U.S. cities and military strikes abroad, America and its allies pursued a vast, often frustrating campaign against global terrorism.
- MIDEAST CONFLICT: Palestinian militants escalated their campaign of suicide bombings of Israeli targets, with often devastating results, while Israel responded with tough crackdowns on Palestinian areas. Prospects for peace seemed remote.
- MINE RESCUE: After a 77-hour ordeal that transfixed the nation, nine Pennsylvania coal miners were rescued from an underground shaft.
- SEPT. 11 ANNIVERSARY: With bell-ringings, recitations of names, and moments of silence, America commemorated the first anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
