“People Were Clamoring” for Hampton U. Paper
Hampton University students republished their confiscated newspaper with both the statement that the administration wanted on the front page and a very large disclaimer by the students, getting the paper out in time for Saturday’s homecoming game where, editor Talia Buford said, “People were clamoring for the paper. I would reach to give one person one and there would be five or six hands reaching for a copy of the paper. I bet this is probably the largest readership we’ve had.”
The student journalists and the Hampton administration reached an agreement late Friday in which the students would redesign the front page. In return, the administration agreed to create a task force, to be headed by veteran journalist Earl Caldwell, who is Scripps Howard endowed professional at the historically black university this year. The administration agreed to abide by the task force recommendations on the future relationship between the paper and the administration.
That task force is scheduled to meet Tuesday.
The experience “is not totally a negative,” Caldwell told Journal-isms today. “It’s going to make us wrestle with it. It’s going to engage us. Already, I have noticed it has engaged the students. I didn’t ask to be put in the middle of this, but I welcome a challenge. The whole battle in this country is for information, and now it’s very real, right here.” Caldwell said he was considering holding a forum with students on the issue this Thursday.
Christopher Campbell, director of the journalism school, has said he favors separating the student newspaper from the administration; the only one of the three faculty advisers who is on the journalism faculty, Jennifer Wood, told Journal-isms that “It was quite awesome to watch the students stand up for their journalistic principles and not back down when the administration put the pressure on.”
“After we agreed to reprint the issue, we sent the paper to be printed,” Buford reported. “It was delivered around 1 p.m. on Saturday and members of my staff took stacks of the paper into the Homecoming game, which began at 2 p.m. My staff members called me and told me that they would go into the game with a full ream and come out of the stands empty handed within minutes.”
“On the front page, we placed the memo on the top 1/4, underneath the flag. On the opposite side was our disclaimer, denouncing the placement of the memo and explaining why we did what we did. The disclaimer read:
“‘The editorial staff of the Hampton Script does not approve of the placement of this memo. The placement goes against all principles of journalism. We agreed to print this memo on the front page in exchange for the establishment of a task force, whose purpose is to examine the relationship between the university and its newspaper. We have agreed to the placement of this memo in order to preserve the future of the university newspaper. We firmly reiterate that the editorial staff does not approve of the placement of this memo. We know we practiced sound journalism in deciding this and thank those who supported our efforts to maintain our First Amendment rights. Details of the agreement are in the story below.’ Beneath it, we placed the story about the ending of the dispute, and beneath that, the story of cafeteria violations.
“We don’t see the compromise as selling out, giving in to the administration, or as forsaking our journalistic integrity or morals. We see it as a move toward progress. We realized that being stubborn was not going to help anyone and we felt that this was a step in the right direction towards achieving editorial freedom while maintaining our integrity.”
The Daily Press in Hampton Roads, Va., reported that the acting president, Dr. JoAnn Haysbert, “issued a statement after the agreement with students was reached. Any future disputes regarding the Hampton Script will be mediated by a faculty adviser, the statement said.”
In the Richmond Times-Dispatch, columnist Michael Paul Williams reported that “Haysbert, reached Friday, was asked if it had been a mistake to pull the papers.
“‘I would say I learned a lot,’ was her reply. ‘And I hope that my students have as well,'” Williams wrote.
?We released an open letter to the university today,? Herbert Lowe, president of the National Association of Black Journalists and a crimes and courts reporter for Newsday, told the Student Press Law Center before an agreement was reached. ?I made a personal call to the editor [Buford] and let her know that I and every member of NABJ stands behind her.?
?We are not going to rest until we are convinced that black students at this prestigious university have a shot at getting trained for jobs in the year and years to come,? Lowe said.
The students’ own story on the settlement appears on the Black College Wire along with a column by Pearl Stewart, who chairs the Black College Communication Association, an organization of journalism departments at historically black colleges and universities. It is headlined, “No One Won in Hampton Newspaper Crisis.”
Hampton University news release
Newsday’s Les Payne Named New York Editor
Newsday Friday announced promotions for its two deputy managing editors, Richard Galant and Les Payne, the paper reports, adding that “Payne, 62, was named New York editor and will be responsible for the overall development of the paper’s city edition.”
Payne is perhaps best known as a columnist or as a former president of the National Association of Black Journalists.
However, Payne has also been a Newsday manager, most recently in charge of Newsday’s diverse Queens, N.Y., newsroom.
As he explained to Journal-isms: “Until last week, I was a deputy managing editor responsible for national/foreign and New York City. I was sent into Queens in January 1996 to reorganize what was left of New York Newsday, the paper that our previous owners decided to kill after 10 years (1985-95).
“We have rebuilt the New York City edition (separate from the Long Island edition) quite substantially. To the delight of our new owners, Tribune Co., I and the city staff have well-positioned the city paper in the New York market both as a quality paper and as a potential big money maker.
“That all said, my promotion is to managing editor-level, with full, news-gathering, editorial, on-site responsibility for the New York City edition. This signals a more aggressive push into New York City.”
Newsday said that “Galant, who joined the paper in 1970 and has held a number of managerial positions, will oversee all assigning desks in his new position except for the metro desk in the city.”
Managing Editor Charlotte Hall, who won the Freedom Forum’s Robert G. McGruder Award for Diversity Leadership this year, was named Sept. 24 to the new position of vice president for planning. Her new responsibilities include long-range planning, shorter-term projects and new business development at the daily newspaper, Newsday said.
FCC Says OK to Use “F” Word — If Done Properly
“After a group filed complaints against stations that aired this year’s Golden Globe Awards because a performer used the F-word, the Federal Communications Commission said it’s okay to use it on television, as long as it’s done properly,” as KOB-TV in Albuquerque, N.M., reports.
“During the Golden Globes, the performer Bono uttered either the phrase “this is really, really, f***ing brilliant” or “this is f***ing great,” according to the FCC’s Memorandum Opinion and Order. Because of that, 234 complaints were filed against television stations across the country,” KOB-TV continued.
But the complaints were dismissed. Explains the FCC order:
“. . . The word `fucking’ may be crude and offensive, but, in the context presented here, did not describe sexual or excretory organs or activities. Rather, the performer used the word `fucking’ as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation. Indeed, in similar circumstances, we have found that offensive language used as an insult rather than as a description of sexual or excretory activity or organs is not within the scope of the Commission’s prohibition of indecent program content.”
Journal-isms did not make this up.
African Americans “Actually Quite Fragile”
“People often ask why there’s still the need for black colleges, for civil rights groups and even for professional groups such as the Trotters,” writes Betty Baye of the Louisville Courier-Journal, reporting on last week’s annual meeting in Nashville of the William Monroe Trotter Group of African American columnists.
“My answer, as surprising as it may be to some, is that African Americans are actually quite fragile. Some of us need safe places in which we’re able to learn, interact and to be influenced by people who may or may not themselves be black, but who have demonstrated no higher interests than to ensure that we have the tools to succeed in whatever our fields so that when we are seen on CNN or in the newspaper, it will be in a positive light.”
Columns from the Trotter Group meeting were posted today on the Trotter Group Web site.
New York Times Names First Public Editor
“Daniel Okrent, a longtime magazine editor and author who has served as managing editor of Life and editor of Time Inc.’s new media operations, has been appointed the first public editor of The New York Times,” writes Times reporter Jacques Steinberg. .
“As public editor, or ombudsman, Mr. Okrent, 55, will operate outside the management structure of the newspaper’s newsroom and its editorial page, [Executive Editor Bill] Keller said. He will be given an unfettered opportunity to address readers’ comments about The Times’s coverage, to raise questions of his own and to write about such matters, in commentaries that will be published in the newspaper as often as he sees fit.
“Mr. Okrent’s columns will appear primarily in the Week in Review section on Sundays, beginning in early December, though not necessarily every week. Mr. Keller said he and the newspaper’s other senior editors had waived any right to review Mr. Okrent’s commentaries before they are published, though the newspaper will make available a copy editor to review his work for technical issues like grammar and style.
“He spent a decade at Time Inc., serving as an assistant managing editor at Life in 1991 and 1992, managing editor of Life from 1992 to 1996, editor of the company’s new media operations from 1996 to 1999, and an editor at large from 1999 to 2001. After leaving Time Inc. in 2001, Mr. Okrent spent most of his time completing ‘Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center,’ which was published by Viking last month.”
Native Journalists Urged to Get Out More
“The birth of the nation?s largest Native American newspaper began as an idea at a kitchen table. In less than three weeks, The Native Voice was funded and on its way to changing journalism in Indian Country,” writes Jennifer McMahan on the Reznet Web site.
“Frank J. King III publishes The Native Voice in Rapid City, S.D. At 36, he is the youngest Native American publisher in the country. He began his journalism career at Indian Country Today in 1995.
“With a circulation of about 20,000, The Native Voice is read as far east as New York City.
“King said Native journalists are doing a disservice to their community if they write only stories about the reservation. He said it?s important for people to know what?s going on around them. Covering only reservation stories isolates the Native community, he said.
“King said people on reservations have been beaten down for so long that they have lost their confidence. To achieve economic development, he said, the people must possess and exercise confidence.
“That?s what The Native Voice tries to do, he said. ‘We want to rebuild their confidence,’ he said,” wrote McMahant, a student at East Central University in Ada, Okla.
Sobering Side of the Jamestown Legacy
“A replica of the ship Godspeed, which landed in 1607 at Jamestown, will sail to 10 East Coast cities as a floating museum to mark the 400th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement in America,” David Leiva of the Associated Press reports today.
“Four years before the official anniversary, about 60 state and federal organizers met earlier this fall to plan for the 2007 event. The two-year celebration is expected to generate $150 million in tourism for Virginia.”
“A forum on democracy is planned for the fall of 2007, to include democratic leaders from around the world. Other events will focus on re-enactments and the experiences of American Indians and black Americans.”
“Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas and the Heart of a New Nation,” (Knopf, $25.95) a new book by David A. Price, a former reporter for Investor’s Business Daily, zeroes in more precisely on those experiences.
“More was planted during the summer of 1619 than the seeds of American democracy,” he writes. “By a strange coincidence, no sooner did the first session of the General Assembly close than another American institution had its beginning — one that would prove powerfully malignant. . . . American democracy and American slavery put down their roots within weeks of each other. At the end of August, a 160-ton ship named the White Lion arrived at Point Comfort bearing a cargo of ’20 and odd Negroes.'” Its commander and a like-minded colleague had raided a Portuguese slave ship, seizing its cargo.
With a description that takes a strong stomach to digest, Price quotes “an Englishman who traveled on numerous slave chips in the eighteenth century” on the conditions on that ship:
“Some wet and blowing weather having occasioned the port-holes to be shut and the grating to be covered, fluxes [dysentery] and fevers among the negroes ensued. While they were in this situation, I went down among them till at length their rooms became so extremely hot as to be only bearable for a very short time. . . . The floor of their rooms, was so covered with the blood and mucus which had proceeded from them in consequence of the flux, that it resembled a slaughter-house. . . “
Price goes on to say that “Some African arrivals of the early years eventually won their freedom — or won it back, to be more precise.”
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