Herb Lowe Wins 3-Way Race for NABJ President
Herbert Lowe, a reporter for Newsday who lost a contest two years ago for president of the National Association of Black Journalists, won a three-way race for the position today and pledged an activist presidency, saying he was “concerned about the survival of black journalists” and about “keeping you in the business.”
Unofficial totals had Lowe with 220 votes to 166 for Cheryl Smith, editor of the Dallas Weekly and board member representing the area that includes Texas; and 141 for Mike Woolfolk, the association’s vice president for broadcast who is anchor and managing editor of WACH-TV’s “Fox News at Ten” in Columbia, S.C.
In other contests, Barbara Ciara, managing editor/evening anchor, WTKR-TV in Norfolk, Va., defeated Kathy Times, reporter at WVTM-TV in Birmingham, Ala., for vice president/broadcast, 276 to 237 in unofficial returns; and John Yearwood, national/international editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, won as treasurer over Gregory Lee Jr., deputy high school sports editor at the Washington Post, by four votes in unofficial returns, 262 to 258.
For parliamentarian, Melanie Burney, education reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer, defeated Chanta Jackson, copy editor at the Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.; and Melissa Monroe, business writer at the San Antonio Express-News, 232 to 159 to 120 in unofficial returns. Caleb Wilkerson won for student representative and Angela McClendon as associate representative. Proposed amendments to change the structure of the board of directors were defeated.
Outgoing president Condace Pressley gave her “President’s Award” to this columnist for service as chair of the Media Monitoring Committee, and serving as the “in-house investigative reporter” for NABJ, citing this column and other activities.
Former New York Times Managing Editor Gerald M. Boyd introduced the Journalist of the Year, George E. Curry, editor of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service.
By popular demand, Curry did a Jesse Jackson impersonation after a hard-hitting speech in which he said, “we must re-energize NABJ, and get some guts even if we have to borrow them, and keep the pressure on until these newsrooms look like America.”
Lowe, whose slogan was, “It’s time for NABJ to matter again,” told Curry that he had been taking notes. He referenced the New York battle cry, “No justice, no peace,” in saying that too many local chapters had become “program committees” and “fund-raising committees” rather than places to turn to for redress of grievances about the news media. “We got into this business to make it better for our community, not to get paid,” said the one-time NABJ secretary and vice president-print.
Lowe referred to his upbringing in Camden, N.J., by calling himself a “child of welfare, a child of the fifth-poorest city in the nation. And now,” he said, “I’m the president of the National Association of Black Journalists.”
RTNDA Accepts Call for “Diversity Summit”
Leaders of the National Association of Black Journalists responded today to figures showing that the overall numbers for people of color in broadcast management are down for the second year in a row by holding a news conference with the group that produced the study, the Radio-Television News Directors Association.
At the NABJ convention in Dallas, NABJ President Condace Pressley said the groups would work together to provide news directors with information about interns available through NABJ’s interns program, and make more information available to experienced journalists about broadcast opportunities.
In addition, Barbara Cochran, president of the RTNDA, accepted a challenge from Unity: Journalists of Color, the umbrella for the associations of black, Hispanic, Asian American and Native American journalists, to hold a “diversity summit,” probably this fall.
Pressley had been criticized by some NABJ members for not speaking out immediately when the RTNDA figures were released July 30, as the Hispanic and Asian American associations and Unity did. But Pressley, who also sits on the RTNDA board, said that while today provided “an opportunity to express our disappointment that the needle isn’t moving,” her view was that “instead of just shaking a finger, why not extend an olive branch” and work toward “greater cross-pollination of the two membership bodies.”
“In places where there is no staff support (at a station) to bring in an intern of color, we can provide those students,” Pressley said.
To provide access for broadcasters of color, “you’d be surprised at how much is already out there. What’s needed is greater utilization” of the programs that already exist, Pressley said. Cochran was joined at the news conference by several members of the RTNDA board as well as the president and executive director of the Native American Journalists Association, and she listed several diversity efforts RTNDA has already.
The “diversity summit” is to be patterned after one held with the American Society of Newspaper Editors convened in January at the Freedom Forum in Nashville. At that meeting, ASNE endorsed the “Parity Project” of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, in which NAHJ seeks to boost Latino employment at newspapers in small Southern and Plains cities that have experienced large increases in Latino populations.
Cochran said it was too early to say which broadcast organizations would attend the new summit.
Ernest Sotomayor, president of Unity, said at the news conference that the summit would be a vehicle to get at the other concerns Unity expressed in its reaction to the RTNDA figures. “We know it’s going to be a long road,” Sotomayor said. The summit would be a way to “elevate [diversity] to a greater state of awareness” among broadcasters.
In other news from the NABJ convention, from the student-produced NABJConvention.org:
Current, former NABJ leaders rap comments by outgoing president
