Black Journalists Focus on Gerald Boyd’s Fate
A day after Executive Editor Howell Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd resigned from the New York Times, black journalists were focusing on the fate of Boyd, the paper’s first African American managing editor. While these journalists were sympathetic, others described a management style that they called as autocratic as Raines’.
In a sidebar today by Ernie Suggs in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Times Miami Bureau Chief Dana Canedy talks about Boyd’s winning the Journalist of the Year honor in 2001 from the National Association of Black Journalists:
“I was so proud of Gerald. . . . He lives and breathes journalism and worked so long and hard to be one of the most prominent journalists in the world.”
“Less than two years later, Boyd is out — another casualty of the damage wrought by Jayson Blair, the Times reporter who was fired for fabricating news stories,” Suggs writes.
In a story headlined, “Blacks need to be ‘better than good’; Corporate America’s unspoken rule,” Paul H. Johnson of the North Jersey Media Group wrote in the Record of Hackensack, N.J.:
“For many African-American journalists, the resignation of Gerald Boyd as managing editor of The New York Times came as a sharp blow for people who thought Boyd had overcome that racial [better-than-good] handicap.”
The Times’ own story reported that Boyd, a former White House correspondent and metropolitan editor, told the staff that he resigned “willingly and with no bitterness whatsoever, and in the firm belief that The New York Times will be in great hands no matter who leads.”
Boyd had no public comment, though he had his defenders. In the Washington Post, Times reporter Dinitia Smith said she felt “especially sorry about Gerald, because in the end I feel he had little to do with the promotion of Jayson Blair and he has been unfairly tarred by the rest of the media.”
On the Black Press USA Web site, Editor-in-Chief George E. Curry wrote:
“It’s been hard for me to watch from the sidelines as Gerald’s hard-earned reputation has been sullied. And it must have been doubly so for Gerald and his wife, Robin Stone, who once worked at the ‘Times.’ What has been particularly galling has been the insinuation that because Gerald is Black, he was Jayson’s journalistic godfather. Or rabbi. Or mentor. Or anything else you want to call it. That’s not the Gerald Boyd I know.”
Referring to the urban journalism workshop they both helped run in St. Louis, Curry said: “I dare any commentator who suggests that Gerald is soft on someone because [he or she is] Black to interview our former students and ask them if he’s soft on African-Americans.”
But the Wall Street Journal, in a story by Matthew Rose and Laurie P. Cohen, told this anecdote about Boyd’s management style:
“In mid-February, National Editor Jim Roberts pitched a story about the shuttle disaster for the front page but Mr. Boyd said he had read a similar story that morning in USA Today, according to editors at the meeting. Mr. Roberts and Douglas Frantz, then investigations editor, left the room to get a copy of USA Today but couldn’t find the story. Mr. Frantz returned to the meeting and handed Mr. Boyd the paper as proof.
“After the meeting, Mr. Boyd approached Mr. Frantz. ‘You shouldn’t humiliate the managing editor,’ Mr. Boyd told him, according to Mr. Frantz. Mr. Boyd then reached into his pocket, pulled out a quarter and said, ‘Call your friend Dean,’ referring to Mr. Baquet, the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times. A month later, an increasingly discontented Mr. Frantz left for the Los Angeles Times.
“Mr. Raines’s management style and that of Mr. Boyd have created an environment where it is often seen as more important to get the story when and how you want it rather than to get it right,” deputy investigations editor Julia Preston told Times staffers at last month’s mass meeting,” the Journal said.
And on the Web site of alumni of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Times sportswriter Ira Berkow said this:
“Some people very much liked Boyd and Raines, but they were very much in the great minority. Because the management style was irritable to many people, and autocratic. For example, at a noon meeting, Boyd said to someone — the noon meetings are when the department heads get together and they [offer] what their best stories are and so forth — and Boyd said to one of the department heads ‘if you can’t do your job I’ll do it for you.’ Now that’s no way to — it’s a business. There’s a lot to be said for their aggressiveness, and seven Pulitzer prizes out of 14 is unbelievable and deserved. But when you hit a snag, and if you’re not popular, you can fall.”
Dean Baquet Mentioned as Possible Successor
Hours after Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd left their offices, speculation intensified about who would succeed Raines, the Los Angeles Times reports, naming these potential candidates: Martin Baron, editor of the Boston Globe and a former New York Times associate managing editor; Bill Keller, a New York Times columnist and former managing editor who was Raines’ chief rival for the Times’ top post in 2001; and Dean Baquet, former national editor of the New York Times and currently managing editor of the Los Angeles Times.
“‘All three of those people are great journalists,” [publisher Arthur] Sulzberger said. “I know them and respect them. But I won’t start speculating. We’ll look inside the Times and outside the Times. We’re beginning the search, not narrowing our options.”
“Baron said, ‘I haven’t talked to anybody at the Times about this,’ and declined to comment further. Baquet confirmed that he had breakfast last week in New York with [returning executive editor Joseph] Lelyveld, before the newsroom changes were announced, but he noted: ‘We’re close friends so that breakfast was just about friendship. I haven’t had any conversations with anybody at the New York Times other than conversations with good friends, and nothing about this [the executive editor’s job]. I really love being the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times,'” the newspaper reported.
Baquet is African American, but is rarely seen at gatherings of black journalists and was omitted in the L.A. Times’ listing of its journalists of color in a recent NABJ convention program.
McGowan Shows Up Outside Times Building
William McGowan, author of “Coloring the News,” newly subtitled, “How Political Correctness Corrupts the News” and recipient of last year’s Thumbs Down award from the National Association of Black Journalists, sees dollar signs in the Times tragedy.
Outside the New York Times, reports the Record of Hackensack, N.J., “he showed up at the barricade, copy of his book, just out in paperback, in hand, and gave lengthy interviews to every waiting camera team and sound bites to all the radio reporters. The book was originally subtitled, “How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism.”
“McGowan said he was in a cab when a New York television station called him for comment and asked whether he could stop by the Times building and make his comments on camera,” the Record continued.
“‘It wasn’t a stunt,’ he said. ‘WPIX [Channel 11] asked me to come.’
“But he was wearing makeup.”
Jayson Blair said he owes ousted Times editors Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd “a million apologies in light of what I have done,” Newsday reports.
“In an hours-long interview in SoHo, the former Times reporter whose deceptions set off the turmoil was at once reflective, confused, sad and contradictory, saying at one point that he was glad to hear Raines and Boyd had resigned.
“Still, his overall mood was in stark contrast to previous published interviews in which he seemed to revel in his role in tarnishing the reputation of the world’s most powerful newspaper and bragging about the ease with which he did it.
“‘I know I’ve said a lot of things since this began that have been hurtful, and I wish I could take some of that back,’ he told a Newsday reporter who is a former colleague. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken until I had time to reflect on what has happened.'”
Sunni Khalid Settles ’97 Suit Against NPR
Sunni Khalid, a former foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, has settled a lawsuit he filed in 1997 against NPR that sought more than $2 million in damages, accusing NPR and its foreign desk editor, Loren Jenkins, of racial and religious discrimination.
NPR spokeswoman Kathy Scott acknowledged in 1997 that during staff meetings, Jenkins, who is still at NPR, referred to Muslims as “ragheads.” She said he had been disciplined. Khalid, a Muslim, alleged that he was denied the same assignments, compensation, promotions and support given white staffers, as Journal-isms reported then in the NABJ Journal.
Khalid, now news editor at WYPR-FM, an independent public radio station in Baltimore, said today, “I’m just glad it’s over,” but that the terms of the June 2 settlement prevented him from discussing specifics.
His lawyer, W. Gary Kohlman, told Journal-isms, “we’re very pleased that it’s resolved. It certainly worked out well.”
In April 2002, in NPR’s most recent out-of-court race discrimination settlement, the network brought closure to a suit by Sandra Rattley-Lewis, its one-time vice president for cultural programming, that had also been filed in 1997.
Networks Were Silent on FCC Story
A Nexis news database search showed that as of May 20, less than two weeks prior to the Federal Communications Commission vote to relax the rules on media consolidation, “neither Viacom-owned CBS or GE-owned NBC had said anything in their respective evening newscasts about the rules changes, changes for which both companies had been vigorously and expensively lobbying Congress and the FCC. Disney-owned ABC did two pieces in mid-May,” writes Brian Lambert in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
– With the vote nearing, “Nightline” did a full edition on the possible impact of the vote, although it is interesting to note that FCC chairman Michael Powell bailed on Ted Koppel at the last moment.
– The paucity of coverage of this issue, something that will directly effect every American virtually every minute of their lives, illuminates what may be critics’ primary concern, namely lack of diversity of information. The changes passed, 3-2, on Monday.
Senators Say They’ll Overturn FCC’s Relaxation
“A bipartisan majority of an important Senate committee indicated Wednesday that it would vote to overturn some of the media ownership rules adopted two days ago, reversing one of the most significant deregulatory steps undertaken during the Bush administration,” the New York Times reports.
“The battle over the new rules, which were narrowly adopted by the Federal Communications Commission along partisan lines, spilled into Congress where the Republican commissioners who voted for them faced hostile questions from both Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Commerce Committee.
“Its chairman, Senator John McCain of Arizona, said the committee would begin a markup of new legislation this month even though he did not directly take issue with the changes adopted by the commission.”
S. Asian Journalists Honor Reporting on Region
The South Asian Journalists Association has announced the winners of the 2003 SAJA Journalism Awards contest, honoring its choices for best reporting on South Asia, as well as outstanding reporting by South Asian journalists and students in the U.S. and Canada. The winners are to be recognized at SAJA’s annual dinner on June 20, at Columbia University in New York.
Among the winners:
- SAJA Journalism Leader Awards, SAJA’s highest honor:
Peter Bhatia, executive editor of The Oregonian and president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and Rena Golden, executive vice president and general manager of CNN International.
- Outstanding story on South Asia, broadcast:
Chris Hanson and Tim Sandler, “Dateline NBC,” NBC News, for “Slaves to Fashion,” a hidden-camera investigation of child labor in India’s silk industry.
- Outstanding story on South Asia, new media:
“Frontline/World” staff, KQED and WGBH/PBS for “Bhutan: The Last Place” and “Sri Lanka: Living with Terror,” two interactive reports about countries that SAJA says are seldom covered accurately in the U.S. media.
- Outstanding story on South Asians in North America, all media:
Jeet Thayil and Onkar Singh of India Abroad, for “Sodhi Brothers.” A look at the lives of Balbir and Sukhpal Singh Sodhi, two Sikh brothers killed 10 months apart; the first, in a hate crime after Sept. 11, 2001, and the other by an unidentified assailant in his San Francisco taxi.
Telemundo-NBC News Merger Under Way in Chicago
More than three decades of Chicago television history were to come to an end tonight when employees at Spanish-language WSNS-Channel 44 signed off their 10 p.m. newscast, Robert Feder reported in the Chicago Sun-Times.
“After broadcasting from their Lincoln Park studios at 430 W. Grant Place for the last time, the Telemundo staffers will pack up and move downtown to NBC Tower in shared facilities with WMAQ-Channel 5,” he wrote.
The Lincoln Park studios’ “checkered past included years as the home of baseball’s Harry Caray, pro wrestling’s Moose Cholock and Bobby “The Brain” Heenan and the market’s first subscription-television service, ON-TV. Since 1985, it has been an all-Spanish outlet.
“History also will be made Monday, when the merger of Channel 5’s and Channel 44’s news and broadcast operations is complete,” wrote Feder.