Hampton U. Chief Unremorseful; Caldwell Angry
Hampton University Provost and Acting President JoAnn Haysbert has reacted to the cancellation of the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ high school journalism program on that campus with a statement that shows no indication that she considers her Oct. 22 confiscation of the student newspaper to be wrong. But Earl Caldwell, the veteran journalist who chairs the task force on the relationship of the newspaper to the administration and who does say the seizure was wrong, denounced ASNE’s move as “more than mean-spirited.”
“If you are sincere, you shouldn’t be running away from this campus,” Caldwell told Journal-isms, saying today that he was outraged by the ASNE action. “You should be running toward it. This is where the battleground is.” The action “hurt me to a level I can’t even express,” he said; it was “let’s put these Negroes in their place — we can’t be allowed to deal with this ourselves.”
By contrast, Caldwell said, members of the Hampton Roads Black Media Professionals asked to attend the task force meeting today and did so. President Kafi B. Rouse and Marvin Lake, public editor of the Norfolk Virginian Pilot, came to the campus in a driving rain, he said.
In pulling the ASNE program from the school, ASNE President Peter H. Bhatia, executive editor of The Oregonian in Portland, wrote:
“Nothing that has happened since gives us reason to believe that there is contrition or understanding on the part of the University?s leadership of why what was done was wrong.”
Asked whether Haysbert does believe the seizure to be wrong, Sarita L. Scott, director of university relations, said she could not speak for Haysbert.
“It doesn’t really appear that her view has changed,” Bhatia told Journal-isms today. “Our view is still the same. We’re always open to further conversation.” He said the reaction from editors in ASNE had been supportive.
Haysbert’s statement, issued late Wednesday, said:
“It is unfortunate that the American Society of Newspaper Editors has decided to pull the funding allocated to Hampton University for the 2004 High School Journalism Institute. I am pleased that 19 high school teachers from all over the country successfully completed the program at Hampton University in the summer of 2003.
“A past participant wrote in a recent letter, ‘I am certain that there are many universities in this country that can host the event. I doubt, however, that many can provide the awareness about cultural diversity as a journalism issue as Hampton did for me’ — let Hampton students, Hampton administrators, and high school journalism teachers debate the issues. Engagement, not punishment, will result in positive change.”
“The Hampton Script Task Force, chaired by nationally renowned journalist and Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications Endowed Chair Earl Caldwell, continues to meet regularly and I am confident that through their efforts the University will establish clarified guidelines for the operation of the Hampton Script. I am willing to trust its oversight and decisions.”
The pulled program is part of the ASNE High School Journalism Initiative, which began in 2000 with a a $500,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. In it, ASNE trains teachers to teach high school journalism. Hampton was the only historically black college or university participating. Some $55,000 would have been spent at Hampton next summer, Bhata has said. The teachers come to the participating campuses from 47 states and the District of Columbia.
Diana Mitsu Klos of ASNE, director of the program, told Journal-isms today that ASNE would not seek another school to replace Hampton next summer, since the grant mandate was for four universities and five are participating now, and because applications from teachers are due relatively soon, in mid-February.
The ASNE decision was additionally the subject of staff-written stories in Editor & Publisher and in the student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin, the Badger Herald.
An editorial in The Statesman-Journal, in Salem, Ore., said:
“This episode illustrates why some university administrators are so uncomfortable with journalism courses and student newspapers. They teach students to ask questions, to persistently search for truth ? and not just the administration?s version of truth.
“The Hampton administration forgot that while the First Amendment guarantees individual freedom of expression, it also guarantees freedom of the press, including the decisions of what to publish.
“Maybe this will help the administration and trustees remember: The American Society of Newspaper Editors has withdrawn its $55,000 grant for a summer training program at Hampton for high school journalism teachers.
“There is a lesson here: Whether in Virginia or Oregon, universities have an obligation to honor open discussion and inquiry and to uphold the Bill of Rights.”
“Sanctity of Marriage” Has Been Eroding for Years
In the reaction to yesterday’s historic 4-3 decision by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts that same-sex couples have the legal right to marry, some critics denounced the ruling as an attack on “the sanctity of marriage.”
“I will work with congressional leaders and others to do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage,”President Bush said in London.
Who in the news media will be the skunks at the garden party and say that in the black community, that sanctity has been eroding for years?
“According to to the National Center for Health Statistics, unmarried women accounted for 68 percent of black births in 2002 compared to 43.4 percent for Hispanics and 22.9 percent for whites. In 1965, the out-of-wedlock birth rate for blacks stood at 25 percent.”
The quote above comes from a column Oct. 30 by Luther Keith, senior editor of the Detroit News, who in turn was writing about a cover story by Leah Y. Latimer in The Crisis magazine of the NAACP called “”Not Married With Children. Can the black family thrive when nearly 70 percent of African-American children are born out of wedlock?”
And last week, Keith wrote a follow-up noting that “Readers of all colors responded to the article . . . Sometimes you strike a nerve with a column that makes the phone lines ring up, the e-mail back up and the mailbox fill up.” He started a dialogue with readers, publishing some of their responses.
He noted, “The black poverty rate for single mother families is 47 percent compared to 10 percent for married families.”
And that “There appears to be a growing recognition in the civil rights community that it’s time to be more aggressive and outspoken on the subject.”
But he also said, correctly, that “It’s a subject that often gets tip-toed around in the African-American community — if it’s broached at all. I’m talking about the large number of black youngsters who are born outside of marriage and the troublesome social impact that has on the African-American community and society as a whole.”
Syndicated Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page also addressed the subject recently, writing that, “It is too easy in my view to blame the rise in irresponsible sex and breakdown in parenthood entirely on rap music or other media. But, it also would be too easy to say that the media don’t have any impact at all. After all, if we believe the media can sell CDs and soft drinks, it’s not hard to believe they can sell moral attitudes, too.
“With pop culture pumping out the message that pimpin’ and other irresponsible sex is cool, it is increasingly important that parents and others offer young people healthier messages, too.”
Lousy Hours, No Promotion, Who Can’t Relate?
“He arrived at KXAS four years ago to pull weekend duty, only to find himself shifted to weekday morning wake-up call,” relates Ken Parish Perkins in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
“Figured at some point he’d move up and out, to the 4 p.m. newscast, perhaps, maybe the 5. Or, why not, the 10 p.m. broadcast, the news gig so cushy and lucrative, folks who get that spot never, ever leave it, except because of retirement, dismemberment or death. Michael Scott never moved up.
“So he’s moving on.
“Scott is headed to North Carolina, where he’ll anchor the 5 p.m. newscast for WBTV, a CBS affiliate in Charlotte.
“He simply grew tired of waiting. Actually, he tired of being tired.”
Joyce Davis Going to Prague for Radio Free Europe
Joyce M. Davis, foreign editor in the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau and before that a senior foreign editor for National Public Radio, is leaving for Prague in the Czech Republic at the end of the year, when she becomes associate director of broadcasting for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Davis, one of the few African Americans in mainstream journalism who is a specialist on Islamic countries, will be in charge of reports to the five former Soviet republics in Central Asia; to Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan in Southwest Asia, and to the Caucasus countries of Georgia and Azerbaijan, Radio Free Europe President Thomas Dine told Journal-isms today.
“She’s an expert on Muslims, having written a couple of books; she’s covered the subject extensively with Knight Ridder; she has a vast knowledge of journalism; she knows this part of the world; she’s smart, honest and self-confident, and I just liked her. When I met her I was thrilled,” Dine said.
Davis’ most recent book is “Martyrs: Innocence, Vengeance and Despair in the Middle East” (Palgrave/Macmillan), which “offers compelling and chilling interviews with terrorist trainers, with the families of suicide bombers, fighters and fanatics, and with Muslim scholars offering differing opinions on the legitimacy of violence in Islam,” in the publisher’s words. Before that, she wrote “Between Jihad and Salaam: Profiles in Islam” for the same publisher.
“She’ll add a lot to our diverse workforce,” Dine said, noting that in the Prague office are 700 people, and “only 82 hold American passports.” Broadcasts from Prague go to 26 countries in 34 languages, and 19 of the 34 go to Muslim populations, Dine said. Davis starts Dec. 1 in Washington and begins after Christmas in Prague. Davis’ last day at Knight Ridder was Oct. 10.
Chi. Paper Shows Failure of Immigration Crackdown
A Chicago Tribune series running this week, “Tossed Out of America,” follows 75 passengers deported from the U.S. to Pakistan.
“Some of the men had been jailed for months before they were tossed out of America. Some had been convicted of crimes. All had been in the U.S. illegally. But the chief reason many were singled out is they were from one of the Muslim countries targeted by American officials trying to foil another Sept. 11,” it reads.
“To assess the impact of the immigration crackdown, the Tribune tracked passengers on the July flight to the dusty villages and teeming cities of Pakistan.
“Their stories illustrate how the campaign has ruptured families, separating men from their U.S.-citizen wives and children. They show how the government effectively put a premium on catching scofflaws from mostly Muslim nations while allowing hundreds of thousands of violators from other countries, including convicted criminals, to wander free.
“The entire exercise–carried out by executive fiat and largely outside the realm of public debate–has not led to a single public charge of terrorism.
“At the same time, the policies have sowed resentment in the communities in America and abroad that are needed to thwart potential terrorists, deepening suspicions held by Muslims that the U.S. government is anti-Islam.”
Rush Limbaugh Back, “Even More Annoying”
Five weeks after Rush Limbaugh entered an Arizona treatment program to break his addiction to painkillers, “he returned to the airwaves Monday morning with a new arsenal of self-help and recovery platitudes that he quickly began firing at his political foes,” columnist Eric Zorn writes in the Chicago Tribune.
Concluding that drug rehab “made him even more annoying,” Zorn notes that “about halfway through the first hour, he began focusing his new talent for popular psychology on his old enemies.
“‘There’s nobody who can change Sen. [Edward] Kennedy’s behavior but Sen. Kennedy,’ he said. ‘The attempt to manipulate liberals into changing who they are and becoming nice guys, and liking us is always going to fail because it’s not our job to make them like us. It’s their job to like themselves. And the problem with liberals is, they don’t like themselves.’
“Oh good lord,” Zorn wrote with a sigh. “Now we on the left are not just wrong on the issues, per Limbaugh, we have low self-esteem and we’re in denial. It’s no longer enough for him to try to put us on the canvas, now he has to lay us on the couch as well.”
Meanwhile, ABC News reports that “Limbaugh may have violated state money-laundering laws in the way he handled the money he used to buy the prescription drugs to which he was addicted, law enforcement officials in Florida and New York” told the network.
Native Journalist Finds Commonalities in Japan
“It took Marc Denny a while to find his niche in the world, and he found it a world away from his Native American roots,” writes Jennifer McMahan, a student at East Central University in Ada, Okla., on the Web site of the Native American Journalists Association.
“Denny, a member of Oneida Tribe in Wisconsin and of the Native American Journalists Association, lives in Tokyo. He’s a senior editor at the International Herald Tribune/The Asahi Shimbun.
“Denny graduated from the University of Montana School of Journalism in 1996 and got his first newspaper job. He became a copy editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. Three years later, he leaped at an opportunity to go to Japan.
“Prior to that, he played trumpet for the Washington, D.C.-based bands Schadenfreude and InsideOut.”
“Japanese and Native American cultures have many similarities. The Japanese, Denny explained, have a reverence for their ancestors and a genuine respect for their elders. ‘They also have a lot of traditions and a closeness to nature,’ he said,” the piece continued.
Sheila Smoot Back on the Air in Birmingham
“For eight years Sheila Smoot was a fixture on central Alabama television. From reporting on community events in nearby Anniston, to tracking down con artists circulating in the Magic City, Smoot worked her way up from bureau reporter for NBC-13 to noon anchor and reporter for FOX6 WBRC,” writes Anderson Williams in the Birmingham Times.
But “when WBRC chose not to renew her contract in 2001, Smoot cancelled her television news plans and ran for public office. She became the first African-American female and the youngest member of the Jefferson County Commission in 2002.” She also had to leave the board of the National Association of Black Journalists.
“But it’s hard to put aside a 12-year career on-the-air and on-the-tube,” Williams continues. “After a two-year absence from the airwaves, Smoot returned to Birmingham television this past weekend with her own show, Alabama Business with Shelia Smoot.”
A ruling from the Alabama Ethics Commission “gave her the go ahead to return to her old job as a television host with the provision she stay out of the sales arm of the show.”
Film Critic Changes Name: the Back Story
Film critic Desson Howe of the Washington Post’s Weekend magazine suddenly became Desson Thomson this week.
And in an online chat on Washingtonpost.com, he gave readers the back story:
“I started life as Desson Patrick Thomson. But my parents divorced when I was a wee lad of five. I lost touch with my father. And my mother remarried to a Howe.
“To cut a long story short, I was Desson Howe for 40 or so years. And after some personal events which I’ll glide over, I felt a need to go in search of my birth father (I have learned not to say ‘real’ father to respect those who are fully connected with their adoptive parents). I eventually traced him to Aberdeen, Scotland. We met and had a wonderful reunion. I also discovered two siblings I didn’t know I had.
“So suddenly, the family name of Thomson made a lot more sense to me than Howe. So I changed my name, and so did my three sons. Hope that explains it, said the Critic Formerly Known as Howe.”
The words in blue (on most computers) are links leading to more information.