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Dorothy Gilliam Honored After 35 Years at Post

richard

(Originally published 2003)

 

Dorothy Gilliam Honored After 35 Years at Post

 
 

Dorothy Gilliam ended 35 years at the Washington Post yesterday surrounded by more than 250 colleagues, family members and friends from the community and from the news business who came to Washington to celebrate Gilliam’s career as she left the newspaper she joined in 1961.

The current managing editor was 4 years old then, as Gilliam’s most recent boss, Post Deputy Managing Editor Milton Coleman, noted. She joined the paper when, as Gilliam told the crowd, “the only place downtown [where] us three black reporters could be assured of service was at the YWCA, then located at 17th and K streets. We endured the crochety editor who ignored black murders, which he called ‘cheap deaths,’ and sweated bullets as taxicabs refused to pick us up as the clock ticked ominously toward deadline.”

“Look at this crowd,” former executive editor Ben Bradlee told the assembly. “You wouldn’t have seen a crowd like this when I first came here.” Bradlee, who came to the Post for the first time in 1948, told Journal-isms, “there weren’t that many black journalists in the world, much less in Washington.”

Coleman announced that there were now “130 people of color in the Post newsroom, including 90 African Americans,” of a total 639 news professionals. “But in the beginning there was Dorothy.” Gilliam was among the first African Americans hired as a reporter by the Post, and believed to be its first black woman. She followed Simeon Booker (in 1952), Luther Jackson Jr. (1959), Wallace Terry (1960) and Roscoe C. Lewis (1961).

As reported May 2, Gilliam, board member and former chair of the Maynard Institute, and director of the Post’s program encouraging high school journalists, will be a fellow this fall at the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs, where she plans to help train high school journalism advisers nationally.

In the Post’s rooftop garden, colleagues gave brief tributes. Post publisher Bo Jones expressed the company’s support for the young journalists project. Style section reporter Jacqueline Trescott told how Gilliam, as a Style section editor, instructed reporters to “turn little-known people in the black community to real people. Talk about what their own goals were for the city.” Post assistant city editor Vanessa Williams, who was president of the National Association of Black Journalists from 1997 to 1999, said she learned from what she called Gilliam’s calm, strong leadership when Gilliam headed NABJ from 1993 to 1995. Nancy Maynard, a co-founder of the Maynard Institute, said Gilliam, as board chair, “ran the Institute [during] its greatest growth.” Angel Jennings, a student from DuVal High School in nearby Prince George’s County, Md., thanked Gilliam for her support.

Daughter Melissa said it wasn’t until she became grown that she understood what her mother went through as a journalist during segregation, while also being a wife and mother. And, “I don’t know anyone who is as nice as she is who has no mean things to say about anyone,” she marveled.

Coleman said, “She has shown us how to enter this business, what to do, and how to leave this place, exit stage center, in a great cloud of glory. We don’t have this in journalism, but if we did, Dorothy Butler Gilliam is the diva.” He presented her with a Waterford crystal vase. Gilliam, who said she had written 1,500 columns before assuming her Young Journalists project role, said her goal was always “to be a self-respecting African American woman” who helped others in the Christian and African traditions.

Text of Trescott’s and Gilliam’s prepared remarks at the end of today’s posting.

Lyne Pitts Becomes “CBS Evening News” Producer

CBS News executives quietly installed Lyne Pitts, an African American who had been executive producer of CBS-TV’s “The Early Show,” Monday as senior broadcast producer for the “CBS Evening News With Dan Rather” — just as the show’s ratings have hit a new low, the New York Daily News reports.

“The CBS Evening News averaged a paltry 6.5 million viewers last week, according to Nielsen Media Research — the smallest audience for the program in at least 10 years.” the News said.

“While CBS News executives are not unhappy with Rather’s executive producer Jim Murphy – who signed a new deal with the network in the past year – they are counting on Pitts to give the program a shot of new energy,” writes the News’ Stephen Battaglio.

Pitts is the wife of CBS reporter Byron Pitts, chosen as 2002 Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists. In his acceptance speech, Byron noted that he met his wife at the NABJ convention in Chicago.

In another development, ABC News named Jon Banner, executive producer of “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” as executive producer of “World News Tonight With Peter Jennings.”

Paul Mason, the executive producer of the “World News Tonight,” who is African American, was one of three candidates for the job. Banner succeeds Paul Slavin, who was named a senior vice president in the news division. The New York Times quotes Slavin as saying executives wrestled with the decision “to the very last day. It boiled down to a very last-minute decision. [Banner] was selected as the best of those candidates.”

Fox Movie Channel Drops “Charlie Chan” plans

“Citing concerns about racial insensitivity, the Fox Movie Channel has discontinued a summer festival of ‘Charlie Chan‘ mysteries, saying the network has been ‘made aware’ that the films ‘may contain situations or depictions that are sensitive to some viewers,'” the Los Angeles Times reports.

“The cable channel posted the announcement on its Internet site Friday, prompting negative responses from some fans who had requested the vintage movies but applause from Asian American activists who have long decried the films for perpetuating racial stereotypes and featuring white actors playing the lead role of the brilliant Chinese detective.”

Gerald Boyd Gone, But His “Principles” Continue

Former New York Times Managing Editor Gerald Boyd might be gone from the newspaper, a casualty of the tumult that followed the Jayson Blair debacle, but Publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. says the principles Boyd articulated continue.

He listed them as “merit, not favoritism,” “quality — doing the best job you can,” “inclusion,” and “diversity — that’s what makes our society strong,” Sulzberger said at a panel of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention Friday, quoting Boyd’s comments on June 5, the day Boyd and Executive Editor Howell Raines resigned. “We now call them ‘the Boyd principles,” the publisher said. Boyd was the paper’s first African American managing editor.

Sulzberger also said on that panel that the management’s failure over Blair “was not a middle-management issue,” but one involving “the culture of the newsroom.” “We’re beginning to understand that great management leads to great journalism.” In meetings with newsroom staffers, “over and over I heard, we need training, career development. The next executive has to be the greatest manager, not just the greatest journalist,” Sulzberger said.

Also on the panel, Arlene Morgan of Columbia University slammed the CNN “Reliable Sources” show, hosted by Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, which was one of the first to link the Blair case to diversity issues. “If people like Howard Kurtz can go on ‘Reliable Sources’ and just bring in these people who are totally clueless about diversity,” she said. “I was just appalled . . . none of these people have any idea of what the hell they are talking about,” she said.

Meanwhile, the New York Observer writes that if diversity is a criterion for the selection of the next Times executive editor, former managing editor Bill Keller “certainly seems primed. Indeed, in his most recent op-ed, entitled ‘Mr. Diversity,’ about the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action at the University of Michigan, he wrote like someone ready to take the helm and make clear his stand on what had become a central issue in the aftermath of the Jayson Blair episode: race and The Times,” the Observer wrote.

“While not an earth-rattling defense of affirmative action, Mr. Keller’s words struck a chord with many at The Times because it was less aligned with the Howellian view of affirmative action — as a method of righting the past wrongs of Birmingham and Jackson and Atlanta — than with that of Mr. Sulzberger, who’s held up diversity as an effective management policy,” the Observer wrote.

“‘We just want to make sure there are blacks in key editorial positions at The New York Times,’ said Lena Williams, a Times sportswriter and the paper’s representative to the Newspaper Guild. ‘There are two open positions on the masthead. Will one of them go to a black? I don’t know. But I don’t think we would be disappointed if, as an organization, we put black people in place to get back on the masthead. That’s what they did with Gerald,'” the Observer piece continued.

Newsweek Writer Contracts for Book on N.Y. Times

Newsweek writer Seth Mnookin, who wrote the magazine’s cover story on Jayson Blair, has signed with Random House to write a book about the last two years of the New York Times, reports Publishers Weekly.

“The publisher notes that ‘the path that leads from [former executive editor Howell] Raines’s impressive ascent to his vertiginous downfall has yet to be fully explored. It embraces the media, power, race, favoritism, management style, and office politics gone awry. The book will also address the vast changes occurring in the media landscape today — the rise of star journalists as media personalities, the evolving role of the Times in shaping the country’s news agenda, and the wobbly notion of objective reporting in a world where millions of points of view are available instantly online.’ ” It will be out in the fall of 2004, reports PW Daily.

“The signing comes on the heels of Encounter Book’s signing of Gray Lady Down: Jayson Blair and How the New York Times Broke Faith With America by Coloring the News author Bill McGowan, who cautions that his book “is not a Jayson Blair book. It’s a book for the average American who wants to know how the Times became the symbol of tattered liberalism,” the newsletter continues.

“And in the current issue of the Observer, Sridhar Pappu reports that Times writer Barry Bearak ‘has been floating a three-page book proposal about his current 43rd Street employer and the tumult that led to, and followed, the ouster of its leader, former executive editor Howell Raines.’ He goes on to say that ‘According to publishing sources, a representative for Mr. Bearak had asked for a figure in the range of $1 million, before dropping the asking price to $750,000.'”

No black journalists have sealed contracts to write about the racially charged Blair case or about the Times, but an agent for George E. Curry, editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association news service, has been gauging interest for an anthology by black journalists.

Columnists Continue Comments on Mich. Decisions

 

“Maybe [Justice Sandra Day] O’Connor really believes in this diversity notion. But here’s what I suspect she and other affirmative-action proponents really think: nearly 27% of the population is black or Hispanic, but few of these minorities are in the upper ranks of most fields, in part because of past discrimination or current inequalities.

And they think that the leadership class of our society should look like the rest of it. It’s a laudable goal, and it’s why I remain at least a tepid supporter of affirmative action.

“But let’s stop using this notion of diversity to sidestep the real issue. Colleges don’t want more minority students so we can all hold hands and sing It’s a Small World. Why can’t we just say what the real goal is: the creation of a multiethnic elite.”

 

“Of all of the salient things Frederick Douglass had to say in that speech, Clarence Thomas lifted one passage and tried to use that section of the speech to depict Douglass as less than the freedom fighter that he was. Of course, Clarence Thomas wouldn’t know anything about being a freedom fighter. He?s too busy fighting to suppress African-Americans.”

 

“Justice Thomas, the only dusky American sitting on the high court, may well have further diminished his stock among those blacks who take heart in denouncing him for his belief that the Negro is the equal of any man.

“But the Wall Street Journal said of him: ‘In his notable dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas cuts to shreds this insulting notion of a constitutional justification for universities using otherwise unqualified racial minorities to enrich the learning experience of whites.’

“If that isn’t food for thought, I’m no longer sure what is.”

 

“I’m talking about the 2000 presidential elections.

“My ‘side’ took it on the chin big-time back then, as five members of the same court that rendered decisions in the University of Michigan case decided to end the vote-counting and declare George W. Bush the president.

“The most common response from Bush supporters to those of us enraged about that decision?

“Get used to it.

“As yet another controversial Supreme Court decision resonates throughout the land, those same words will have to do.”

 

“If [Clarence] Thomas, who had the nerve to quote Frederick Douglass about “negroes” standing on their own legs, feels people who receive affirmative action ought to make it on their own, then he should resign from the court, give up his degrees, and try making it on his own merit.”

 

“In writing in support of affirmative action, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor speculated upon a day, 25 years from now, when it might necessarily end. That ought not be seen as an obstacle, but a challenge, a spur to finally confront all the hindrances to minority achievement.

“Affirmative action is not an end unto itself, only an imperfect means. Its goal should be its own obsolescence. Meaning not a nation where affirmative action no longer exists, but one where it no longer needs to.”

 

“Certainly the U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled that the nation has a compelling interest in making sure that kids from Northern Michigan or kids who can jump higher or run faster than most are represented on campus. They never will.

“But ask yourself, when was the last time you heard someone whine that his son or daughter didn’t get the school of his or her choice because of a legacy or that some kid with a 22-inch neck was in his or her seat?

“Still, those are widely accepted preferences that nobody has a problem with. Because the problem is not preferences, it is who gets them.

“Or, as we used to say in the days when people gathered to throw rocks at buses that took black children to white schools, it’s not the bus, it’s us.”

 

“In the opening of his dissent in the Grutter vs. Bollinger case, Thomas quoted Douglass: ‘Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! . . . And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! . . . (Y)our interference is doing him positive injury.’

“So what’s missing? The words that were replaced by the second ellipsis that put what Douglass said into proper context. What Douglass said in the closing lines is: ‘Let him alone. If you see him on his way to school, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going to the dinner table at a hotel, let him go! If you see him going to the ballot box, let him along, don’t disturb him! If you see him going into a work-shop, just let him alone — your interference is doing him positive injury.’

“In arguing against the legality of the University of Michigan Law School’s use of affirmative action in admissions, Thomas used the truncated excerpt from the address to bridge the yawning gap between Douglass’ position and his own.

“More than just disingenuous, what Thomas did was intellectually dishonest.”

Retired General to Keynote at AAJA Convention

Retired Gen. Eric Shinseki, the 34th Army chief of staff and the first Asian American to wear four stars, is scheduled to be keynote speaker at the Asian American Journalists Association convention in San Diego Aug. 13-16.

Shinseki has not always seen eye to eye with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

As noted in the Honolulu Advertiser, “The two were at odds over Shinseki’s support for the expensive Crusader artillery system and for his backing of Army Secretary Thomas White. Both the Crusader program and White were terminated by Rumsfeld.

“Rumsfeld was also unhappy with Shinseki for telling Congress that hundreds of thousands of troops would be required for the occupation of Iraq, a prediction that looks increasingly astute these days,” the Advertiser said.

Weekly Talk Show to Target Young Latinos

“Telemundo’s cable network, mun2, is partnering with Miami-Dade College to produce a weekly talk show targeting young U.S. Latinos,” reports Media Week.

“Miami-Dade will provide its campus production facility for the taping of 26 episodes of the new show, to be titled Chat, and mun2 will provide the school with a producer, director, post-production and editing personnel. The rest of the production crew will be made up of students.

“In addition, mun2 will provide a $2,000 scholarship for a second-year TV student, a 16-week student internship at the network, and broadcast public service announcements for the college’s School of Entertainment and Design Technology.”

Azteca TV Adds Phoenix, Tucson Affiliates

Mexico City-based TV Azteca, owner of Azteca America Network, said it had added two new station affiliates in Arizona, increasing its distribution to 26 markets covering 63 percent of the U.S. Hispanic households, Media Week reports. The two new affiliates are KPSW Channel 43 in Phoenix, the ninth largest Hispanic market, and KQBN Channel 14 in Tucson, the 24th largest Hispanic market, the report said.

“Azteca America, which competes with Univision Communications’ Univision and Telefutura networks and NBC’s Telemundo network, has 24 affiliates, 12 of which are in the top 15 Hispanic markets,” said Media Week.

Jacqueline Trescott: Gilliam Preached to Teach

Dorothy came back to the Post in the 1970s to take on an exciting task. The black cultural movements of the 1960s were still flourishing and in many ways becoming institutionalized as a centerpiece of American life. Dorothy took on the task of giving some order to that coverage as an editor under editors Tom Kendrick and Shelby Coffey, from analysis of the black exploitation films of the day to the rising political stars, such as Shirley Chisholm. She had a team of Hollie West, Angela Terrell, Joel Dreyfuss, for a time Karen DeWitt, and me. What Dorothy brought was not only a knowledge of the artists, the writers and the actors, but a point of view.

She came out of the black newspaper experience, so there was a radar when something was going on, a new face, before the rest of the media and country discovered it. She also brought a finely tuned view of the educated middle class to the reporting. Entertainers, sports figures and politicians were okay to be highlighted, but they had to be held to the standard of doing something — not embarrassing the black community by any antics, and giving back in some way.

She demanded these celebrities be shown in all their complexity. And she practiced what she preached. In one of her own interviews, she pushed Sammy Davis Jr. so hard on these questions that he cried. She wasn’t happy until I told her that Ntozake Shange had sputtered and cried over the criticism of her play “For Colored Girls.”

Dorothy wanted all her reporters to specialize in turning the secrets of the black community, or the legends, inside out and upside down for examination. This was, in retrospect, good journalism and provocative writing, but at the time it was exhausting and maddening.

When the world was glued to television watching “Roots,” by the second night Dorothy had had enough.

This line appeared in the Post under her byline — “de word from dat Kunta is not all good.” The church sisters might not have agreed with her diction, but they knew she was in there fighting for positive images.

Dorothy did stray from examining the happenings of black culture from time to time. She went to some town in France and found the source of Perrier water; she interviewed the Ayatollah Khomeni in his Paris hideaway. And she came back. We were relieved. And she came back to do what she became known for: capturing the mood of her Mount Pleasant neighborhood after a tragic fire, and letting the famous like Cicely Tyson and Harry Belafonte speak of their dreams and disappointments.

What she made her reporters understand was that her standards didn’t only apply to the work. You don’t stop adding to daily journalism when you leave the door. During this period, when she was in Style, the Institute for Journalism Education was started and I found myself on the other side of a table being interviewed about my thoughts, my goals for the entire world of journalism.

She preached that you had to teach and organize so other people would understand that the portraits of minorities, whether in the real numbers in the newsroom, or in the photos in the paper were important and necessary.

She was working out her standards when in Style, as a editor, writer and example, and left plenty behind [for us to continue].

Gilliam: “Too Long a Story to Write an Ending“

I love being around friends like you. You know, those friends who exaggerate your accomplishments, excuse your failures and attribute the stupid things you say or do to eccentricity. Those who know me know my strongest gift is not humor, but since I’ve been hanging around high school and college young people the past six years, I thought, maybe I’ll try a Last Will and Testament.

Let’s see, I could will to all of the women in the newsroom a restroom paper towel dispenser that actually worked. But I thought, “that’s gauche, Dorothy.” Then I thought I could will just one really Bad-Dress Day to Milton Coleman. Then I thought, that’s impossible. So clearly, I quickly ran out of steam. So I decided to leave the humor to [Bill] Raspberry and [Bob] Levey and use the five minutes they gave me being my old serious self.

I was a naïve, 17-year-old college freshman when I became hooked on journalism. It was a love affair that lasted four decades — a journalist’s job, at its best, is one of the world’s finest. We get paid to investigate the right and wrong of people and events, divide truth from lie, occupy a vaunted front-row seat on history, and even write its first rough draft. I regarded it as a sacred trust, a calling, really, and the reader was the object of my most intense professional relationship.

Mine was an African American woman’s progress against the odds. It was undergirded in the early years in the racially segregated South by my family, church, teachers and community, and I came of age during three radical changes in American society — the civil rights, women’s liberation and the technological revolutions.

Washington was little more than a sleepy Southern town when I came here to join the Post. The only place downtown [where] us three black reporters could be assured of service was at the YWCA, then located at 17th and K streets. We endured the crochety editor who ignored black murders, which he called “cheap deaths,” and sweated bullets as taxicabs refused to pick us up as the clock ticked ominously toward deadline.

I’ve seen this city go through many transformations — political — D.C. commissioners, [Mayor Walter] Washington, [Mayor Marion] Barry, [Mayor] Sharon Pratt Kelly, Barry, [Mayor Anthony] Williams. Through it all, it’s been important to hold on to the sense of who I am, to respect my community, to be a voice for the voiceless and to be a self-respecting African American woman.

It’s too long a story to write an ending tonight; no time tonight to look back before moving on to George Washington University in the fall. That story must come later. But writing more than 1,500 columns in 18 years is like growing up in public. I thank all of you for your support in that tough and vulnerable position.

There is a common thread that all of us have — we want to know that we have made a contribution. I appreciate what I’ve learned from others. Everybody in this garden court tonight has contributed in some way to my development — from taking the time to read my efforts over the years, to being a part of the Young Journalists Development Project, Maynard Institute, National Association of Black Journalists, or being a friend, a fellow resident of our beloved District, or a confidante.

According to my own personal beliefs, I know a greater force — God — enabled me to contribute.

Through the Post, I’ve been able to fulfill a major tenet of my life. As a Christian, and in the African tradition, as an elder, I’m called to turn around and teach the young. So I thank the Post for the resources to begin and help develop the Young Journalists Development Project. (I think God gave me this experience at the Post so that my journey with Him would get deeper.)

I look forward to the next stage of the journey — my dream is a national program to attract and prepare minority high school students to journalism. I love you all and wish you a happy Fourth of July. Have a blessed summer, and I’ll see you on the hustings.

 

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