Did Clinkscales’ Hubris Undo Vanguarde?
Vanguarde Media CEO Keith Clinkscales, who announced last week that his company had decided to file for bankruptcy protection, liquidate the assets of the company and shut down three magazines, has been accused of hubris “for trying to start a media empire right off the bat,” writes John Lee, former editor-in-chief of the urbanexpose.com Web site, on africana.com.
Urbanexpose’s motto is, “It is easier to criticize.”
Clinkscales’ “rapid internet-age style expansion made it difficult to staff up properly, and his micro-management didn’t help,” Lee writes. “Vanguarde did everything to excess. They had ten websites when they only needed three. They published four titles when they could only afford two. They had two floors in a lush Park Avenue office when they only needed one. Ultimately Keith failed to take his own advice to aspiring entrepreneurs in a BET.com interview: ‘Start small and don’t try to hit a homerun on your first venture.'”
The piece goes on to describe lavish spending, opening with Vanguarde’s launch party, “complete with grand piano, wood paneling, and expensive imported tobacco phalluses for the young corporate raiders eager to celebrate their success with excess. Hired entertainers walked around performing magic tricks in between groups of people power networking and open bar bingeing.”
The 80 Vanguarde employees did not receive severance pay, according to Savoy’s managing editor, Carla Williams, due to the procedures triggered by filing for bankruptcy protection. And another casualty has come to light: a Savoy spin-off, Savoy Professional, which “serves career and related lifestyle content to African-American professionals,” as the Vanguarde Web site describes it. Veteran business journalist Frank McCoy told Journal-isms he was asked to be editor of the limited-circulation publication but the bankruptcy filing took place before he could start.
Lee, the africana.com piece author who is identified as “a film director and adventurer,” might not be the most credible source on all of his points, but he is not the first to link Clinkscales and hubris.
In the Washington Post, Peter Carlson, who covers the magazine industry, wrote Nov. 27 that “Samir Husni — a journalism professor at the University of Mississippi and an expert on the magazine industry — attributed Vanguarde’s downfall to hubris by Clinkscales, a man Husni once called ‘the smartest magazine publisher I’ve ever met.’
“‘Keith grew too big too fast too soon,’ Husni said yesterday. ‘Keith was focused on trying to build an empire instead of building the magazines. He should have started with one title and made that a success, but he wanted an instant empire,'” wrote Carlson.
Scripps Plans “Academy for Hispanic Journalists”
The E.W. Scripps Co. has announced creation of a Scripps Academy for Hispanic Journalists, a training and education program designed to help early-career Hispanic journalists develop the skills they need to succeed in daily newspaper careers. The academy is to be based at the Rocky Mountain News, a Scripps paper, and directed by Michael Madigan, assistant managing editor of the News.
“The Academy will identify, recruit, develop, place and establish career paths for top young Hispanic journalists at Scripps newspapers in support of Scripps’ commitment to the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) Parity Project,” said Alan Horton, senior vice president/newspapers for Scripps, in a news release.
“In April this year Scripps and the NAHJ announced that Scripps would be the first major media company to partner with NAHJ in its national Parity Project, the centerpiece of NAHJ’s five-year strategic plan to double the percentage of Latinos in the nation’s newsrooms by 2008,” the release continued.
“As part of the project, Scripps has launched an initiative to improve news coverage of Latinos and dramatically increase the number of qualified Latino journalists and other professionals employed on the staffs of Scripps newspapers.”
Florida’s Naples Daily News and California’s Ventura County Star are the other Scripps papers to participate so far in the project. And NAHJ announced in September that “in addition to the Scripps chain, Denver’s KCNC-TV, a Viacom-owned station, and the North County Times, a Lee newspaper in Southern California, have also agreed to partner with NAHJ later this year.”
Backlash Starts on Cincinnati Media Coverage
“Repeated airings on national television of a videotape showing white police officers in Cincinnati beating up a black suspect have raised anew questions about media conduct, along with police behavior,” James T. Madore writes in Newsday.
“Some journalism experts yesterday raised concerns about how much airtime the Cincinnati video had received so far, though they acknowledged it hasn’t yet reached the level of the 1991 King beating, which sparked riots in Los Angeles,” he continued in a reference to Rodney King.
In Cincinnati, meanwhile, under the headline “Sensational, biased news stories stink”, columnist Peter Bronson cited some examples of what he considered outrageous reporting and vented:
“Such ridiculous reporting is too warped to be excused by mere ignorance and mistakes. It looks deliberately distorted to fit a biased agenda: Those racist cops in Cincinnati are killing black men.
“Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.
“This story never would have made it past Dayton if the suspect had been white. It never would have traveled past Columbus if the cops had not turned on their own patrol-car camera to record the entire thing.”
Meanwhile, the Enquirer did a short story tracking the national news coverage heaped upon the city.
TV Documentary Set Jackson Case in Motion
“Living With Michael Jackson,” the TV special broadcast worldwide last February to an audience of millions, “set in motion a series of events that led to the pop star’s arrest last month,” Linda Deutsch reports today for the Associated Press.
The special “offered images of Jackson’s fairy-tale estate, Neverland, his lonely trips to Las Vegas and his lavish spending habits. It also showed him talking about sleepovers with children at Neverland and holding the hand of a cancer-stricken boy ? the boy who is now Jackson’s accuser.”
“Those close to Jackson’s defense team allege that around the time the TV special aired, the mother demanded a fee for her son’s appearance. When Jackson refused, they say, the relationship between the family and Jackson soured,” she continues.
“In an alternate version, those close to the mother’s side say she did not ask for payment. Instead, they say Jackson began acting strangely just before the special aired, telling the family they were in danger and would have to pack their belongings and leave their home.”
“According to this account, Jackson barred the family from Neverland, after which the mother hired an attorney ? the same lawyer who had represented a boy in a molestation claim against Jackson 10 years ago,” Deutsch writes.
Jackson frenzy raises questions about media (Editorial, San Antonio Express-News)
Something suspicious about treatment of Jackson (Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times)
Another Kidnapping, Another Debate Over Race
Another kidnapping, another attractive victim, another round of saturation media coverage. And, of course, questions about the role of the victim’s race in media play.
This time the story is the kidnapping last month of a University of North Dakota student, Dru Sjodin, 22, from a mall parking lot. Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., 50, has been charged.
“Is race an issue in abduction coverage?” asks a headline in the St. Paul Pioneer Press over a piece Thursday by media critic Brian Lambert.
“In terms of the all-hands-to-your-battle-stations media response, Sjodin’s disappearance is every bit the equal of that surrounding the abduction and murder of Katie Poirer in 1999 and perhaps even the disappearance and murder of Anne Dunlap in 1995. Maybe even larger, considering the national media interest in this story,” Lambert wrote.
“With each of these tragedies comes the complaint from some quarter asking why these particular victims ?- white, young and attractive -? merit such intense, highly competitive response from the media, while others, usually unidentified, garner much lighter coverage.
“But there are elements to the Sjodin story, like the Poirer and Dunlap stories, say reporters covering this latest case, that thwart such facile comparison.”
And another debate is on.
J-Prof Who Helped Free Inmates Wins $100,000
“David Protess and his dogged students at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism have helped establish the innocence of eight prisoners wrongfully convicted of murder that led to the moratorium on the death penalty imposed by former Gov. George Ryan in 2000,” John Biemer wrote yesterday in the Chicago Tribune.
“With the help of a $100,000 prize Protess will receive Thursday, he can focus more on helping such individuals make the difficult transition to life once they’re on the other side of the bars,” Biemer wrote.
Protess, four of his students, and longtime investigative reporter Rob Warden, who went on to become executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law, worked to free four young suburban African American men convicted in the 1978 slayings of Lawrence Lionberg and Carol Schmal.
Their story is told in a 1998 book, “A Promise of Justice.”
“Most of these men have been wrongly kept in a cage for many years where they’ve experienced pent-up rage for being unjustifiably confined, and they’ve often lost their youth,” the newspaper quoted Protess as saying.
Anchor Emerald Yeh Ousted in S.F. Cost-Cutting
In an end-of-year effort to cut costs, KRON television in San Francisco is severing its contract with reporter and anchor Emerald Yeh, a 19-year veteran at the station, and is eliminating 11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. news broadcasts, reports George Raine in the San Francisco Chronicle.
“Yeh, whose duties for the past 10 years have included consumer reporting for the Contact 4 segments, said that on Monday she was told she would be leaving in two weeks and that Contact 4 ‘will be considerably scaled back,’ ” Raine wrote.
“Yeh has won eight Emmy awards in her career, which included work as reporter and anchor in Honolulu, Portland, Ore., and Atlanta with CNN before she arrived at Channel 4 in 1984, first working as a weekend anchor and reporter.
“KRON will carry a program that Yeh produced over a 17-year period, called “Lost Childhood: Growing up in an Alcoholic Family.” The work began in 1986 with interviews of 7-year-old children, who were reinterviewed years later as adults.”
Iowa Stations Won’t Show Sharpton on “SNL”
“All four NBC television affiliates in Iowa announced this week that they will not carry this weekend’s broadcast of ‘Saturday Night Live,’ slated to be hosted by Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton,” reports Jeff Eckhoff in the Des Moines Register.
“Tim Gardner, director of creative services at WHO-TV in Des Moines, said station lawyers determined that airing the 90-minute show would trigger federal ‘equal time’ provisions — meaning the stations would have to offer an equal amount of time to the other candidates,” wrote Eckhoff.
“‘Their lawyers must not have finished law school because NBC went through all sorts of research to make sure that it was appropriate,’ Sharpton campaign manager Charles Halloran said of the Iowa TV stations.
“The Rev. Sharpton is one of nine candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination whose selection process begins with the Iowa caucuses Jan. 19.”
Publishers Say Olivia Reyes Garcia Is One to Watch
Olivia Reyes Garcia, editor of El Californiano, a weekly 30,000-circulation bilingual newspaper launched in April by The Bakersfield Californian, has been chosen one of the annual ?20 under 40? honorees picked by the Newspaper Association of America’s Presstime magazine.
Garcia appears to be the only news-side person of color chosen for the honor. The 20 deemed worth watching were chosen from nearly 100 newspaper executives, reporters, marketers, tech specialists, sales professionals and others nominated by their supervisors and colleagues, said NAA, the trade organization for newspaper publishers.
“We’re inclusive,” Garcia says in the Presstime article. “Anybody can pick up the paper and read it, whether they speak Spanish or English. It’s a good way to bridge the gap. If my grandparents were alive, they’d be really proud.”
“In addition to teaching a journalism class at Bakersfield College two days a week, she’s vice president of the Central Valley chapter of the California Chicano News Media Association, and sits on the board of the Kern County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Foundation. Garcia regularly promotes El Californiano at community events, and on television and radio,” Presstime reports.
New Gossip Columnist Caused Stir at First Unity
The Washington Post announced today that longtime Post editor and writer Richard Leiby would become its new gossip columnist, the Washingtonian magazine reports, just as preparations are under way for next summer’s Unity convention.
Unity comes to mind because it was Leiby who caused a small stir at the first Unity, in Atlanta in 1994. He had written “White Like Me” the year before about being a white man at the National Association of Black Journalists convention.
In reporting on Unity ’94, the Post’s Howard Kurtz discussed a study timed for the convention authored by the San Francisco State University Center for the Integration and Improvement of Journalism:
“A Washington Post article by Richard Leiby on what it felt like to be white at a black journalists’ convention — ‘dropping the g’s on ‘ing’ verbs in a phony jive . . . and even trying out “dis” and maybe even “yo” ‘ — also drew mixed reviews. One reviewer called it ‘patronizing’ and another ‘condescending,’ but a third said he wanted ‘to encourage media managers to open up with us on race.’
“‘The goal of the essay was to examine stereotypes that a white man can’t understand,’ Leiby told the authors. Leiby also noted that the black journalists’ group is giving him a writing award this week,” Kurtz wrote. The Post itself, however, ran disapproving responses from columnist Donna Britt and from Retha Hill, then the president of the Washington Association of Black Journalists.
Kucinich to Be Only Candidate at Hispanics’ Debate
The National Puerto Rican Coalition, the National Association of Hispanic Publications and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists are hosting a presidential candidates forum in Washington at noon Monday, during the coalition’s annual policy conference. But Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, will be the only actual candidate to appear, according to Kery Wilkie Nunez, spokeswoman for the coalition.
Others are sending surrogates, she told Journal-isms: Moses Mercado for the Rep. Richard Gephardt , D-Mo., campaign; Patricia Ireland for Carol Moseley Braun; Craig Smith for Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.; and Luis Navarro for Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.
“Although the Hispanic community has become the largest minority group in the nation there are still many issues affecting Americans of Hispanic descent and Puerto Rico that have not been addressed,” says a news release. “The National Puerto Rican Coalition will provide an opportunity for presidential candidates to share their views on how to improve Puerto Rico’s economy and reduced federal funding disparities in Puerto Rico’s federally funded programs, as well issues affecting the Hispanic elderly, children, health care, education, employment, housing and economic development.”
Amazon Taking Orders for Jayson Blair Book
“Now you can order Jayson Blair’s forthcoming book, “Burning Down My Masters’ House: My Life at The New York Times,” at amazon.com,” writes Greg Mitchell for Editor & Publisher.
“The cover of the tightly guarded book, which will not be published until March, is also available at the online bookseller. It features a mock front page of the Times, with the paper’s logo partly cut off at the top, the book title as a huge headline, and a fairly small picture of Blair in a light colored T-shirt (but looking very serious) in the lower right corner.
“You can order it for $17.47 — well off the list price of $24.95 . . . The book is 288 pages long.”
“Apparently there have been few shoppers so far, as its amazon sales rank at last check was 1,289,847.”
Infinity Kills Charlotte’s WGIV Radio, 1947-2003
“One of the South’s most admired voices fell silent this week at age 56, snuffed out by the flick of a switch,” writes TV-radio writer Mark Washburn in a front-page piece Wednesday in North Carolina’s Charlotte Observer.
“In life, Charlotte’s WGIV radio became one of the nation’s powerhouse black radio stations, captivated teens of both races and hatched the careers of radio greats like ‘Chatty Hattie’ and ‘Rockin’ Ray’ Gooding. Once it even captured a killer.
“Sunday, the station went silent at 11:59 p.m., the victim of low listenership and changing demographic tastes, says its owner, New York-based Infinity Broadcasting.
“WGIV was a product of the postwar baby boom and came of age in the turbulent era of Southern integration. In midlife, it struggled against powerful competitive currents in the ever-changing radio industry and spent its last days in the harness of religion, radiating the power of Southern gospel music.
“. . . WGIV rippled the segregationist fabric of the 1950s and ’60s when white teenagers started tuning in to hear Hank Ballard & the Midnighters, Ray Charles, James Brown and other influences of the emerging — some grown-ups called it corrupting — rhythm and blues movement.
“WGIV eventually adopted a gospel format and became indispensable to Charlotte’s black religious matrix.
“. . . It was sad to just see it go so fast,” said James Barnett, who came to Charlotte in the 1960s and knew the station at the apex of its influence. Barnett wondered why Infinity couldn’t sell it to someone who would keep it on the air,” Washburn wrote.
“I think those in the black community should be asking some questions,” he told Washburn.
Survey Finds “Queer Eye” Show Affects Shopping
A survey of more than 2,600 shoppers at malls in seven major cities found that men were five times more likely than women to go shopping the day after Bravo’s “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” airs, the Web site zap2it.com reports.
“Nearly half of the men surveyed said they shop with another guy on post-‘Queer Eye’ Wednesdays, as opposed to just 12 percent who do so on other days.
“What’s more, shoppers said ‘Queer Eye’ fashion maven Carson Kressley was more likely than any other celebrity endorser to have a positive influence on their shopping decisions.”
The survey was taken by Jericho Communications, a New York-based public relations firm, in Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington and suburban Philadelphia.
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