Sharpton Appearance Boosts “SNL” Ratings
Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton gave NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” its highest “overnight” ratings in nine months despite the refusal of 32 of NBC’s 230 affiliated stations to carry it, NBC spokesman Mark Liepis told Journal-isms today.
The stations cited federal equal-time rules.
In the “overnight” local-market results, “Saturday Night Live” achieved a 6.4 rating, 14 share in households. ‘”This equals ‘SNL’s’ highest average in the local markets since a March 14 telecast hosted by Salma Hayek,” a news release today said.
Discussing the stations that pulled out, the Associated Press’ David Bauder noted that, “‘Saturday Night Live’ frequently has political content and occasional guest appearances by politicians, but this is the first time in memory stations bailed out for this reason.”
“‘SNL’ alluded to the missing stations in two separate skits on Saturday,” Bauer continued. “In the show’s opening, Jimmy Fallon portrayed NBC Entertainment president Jeff Zucker, announcing other opportunities for Democrats to allay equal time concerns.
“For instance, Gen. Wesley Clark will be made over on ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’ and Howard Dean will eat camel rectum on ‘Fear Factor,’ Fallon said.
“Later, he and Tina Fey held up a map showing NBC affiliates they said weren’t airing the show. They mocked many of the cities, calling Des Moines, Iowa, ‘Snoozeville, USA.”’
“Sharpton, meanwhile, kept busy changing costumes for a variety of roles. He portrayed lawyer Johnnie Cochran, Michael Jackson’s father and one of the three wise men searching for Jesus.”
Sharpton said this morning on CBS’ “The Early Show” that hosting the show “was really a great experience. It was a lot of fun working with the SNL staff and I figure it’s a good way to show Americans that many of us . . . have their passionate and firm political beliefs, but we still have the ability to laugh at ourselves,” according to The Bulletin’s Frontrunner tipsheet.
Al Sharpton: A Saturday Night Buffoon? (David Person, Black America Web)
TV Film on Jasper, Texas, Wins DuPont Baton
“Two Towns of Jasper,” an independently produced film focusing on the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr., in Jasper, Texas, won one of 13 prized silver batons for excellence in television and radio journalism announced yesterday in the 2004 duPont-Columbia University Awards competition.
The 90-minute documentary, produced by Whitney Dow and Marco Williams, aired as part of the “P.O.V.” series on PBS last Jan. 22.
The jurors called the program “a masterful portrait of race in America with the texture of a feature film. Its focus is the 1998 murder in Jasper, Texas, of James Byrd Jr., a black man who was chained to a pick-up truck and dragged to his death by three white men. Two film crews, one black and one white, documented the responses of the black and white communities of Jasper after the murder and during the trials of the three local white men charged with Byrd’s murder. The journalists use the Byrd murder as the organizing thread to examine racism in America, and the result is exceptionally even-handed, insightful and honest,” the jurors said.
Dow, who is white, took a white crew to film white residents; Williams, who is black, used African Americans to record black residents.
Vanguarde, Black Voices Said to Have Talked Merger
“The bankruptcy filing two weeks ago of Vanguarde Media Inc. that ended publication of Savoy, Honey and Heart & Soul magazines may have resulted from failed negotiations to form a merger with BlackVoices.com, one of the top-rated Web sites for African-Americans,” Ken Smikle reports for Target Market News. “Prior to the closing of Vanguarde on Nov. 25, a partnership was being negotiated with BlackVoices.com which would have merged both companies’ assets into a new multi-media firm.
“The discussions, which had been taking place for over nine months, involved Vanguarde’s majority shareholder, Provender Capital Group; stockholder Bob Johnson, chairman and CEO of Black Entertainment Television; the Tribune Co., which owns BlackVoices.com and senior executives from both firms. The new merged venture would have had projected annual revenues of over $50 million,” Smikle wrote.
Vanguarde employed 80 people, according to Keith Clinkscales, who had been CEO.
“People can be encouraged by the fact that the issue of diversity has been out to the magazine industry, which is woefully represented” when it comes to people of color, Savoy’s founding editor, Roy S. Johnson, told Journal-isms.
“Many editors at most of the magazines can look at this as an opportunity to perhaps hire some talented and experienced people.”
A spokeswoman for the Magazine Publishers of America told Journal-isms that people seeking jobs could go to its Web site, see what jobs are available and also post inquiries about jobs.
Similarly, members of MPA and the American Society of Magazine Editors can take advantage of a job bank developed specifically for the magazine industry. Features include national listings by discipline and level and resume searches, according to a previous MPA statement.
“It’s been a bad couple of years, period, for a lot of people,” said spokeswoman Ronnie Faust. “We try to help. We are very diversity-oriented and we’re very committed to it.”
Magazine industry diversity initiatives
Report by George E. Curry, former Emerge editor
“Niggardly” Dispute Resurfaces — in Comic Strip
Some readers of the Sacramento Bee were upset that cartoonist Morrie Turner’s comic strip “Wee Pals”– this one “a reprint of one first published several years ago — seemed to be sending the message that the word ‘niggardly’ was unacceptable because of its phonetic similarity to the racial slur,” writes ombudsman Tony Marcano.
“Some said the strip, which runs in the Comics for Kids section, was inappropriate for children. Others said it was an example of political correctness run amok, akin to the controversy in Washington, D.C., in 1999 when the city’s public advocate resigned after a subordinate took offense at his use of the word during a meeting, or the November 2001 incident when a Sacramento City Council member was angered when a lawyer said, ‘I think we should call a spade a spade.'”
Marcano let reader Gene Wollen explain the controversial panels: They showed “Connie punching Oliver for suggesting the word niggardly to Nipper as another word for miserly, and then Nipper says thanks to Connie for punching Oliver,” he wrote. (Connie and Oliver are white characters, and Nipper is African-American). “
Having started “Wee Pals” in 1961, Turner is the nation’s first African American syndicated cartoonist. He was asked by Marcano to clarify. “I’m implying that kids misinterpret the meaning (of niggardly),” Marcano quoted Turner as saying. “He seemed amused that a strip aimed at pointing out the kind of overreaction that can come from misinterpretation was itself misinterpreted.
“Still, Turner conceded that having one character deliver a roundhouse right to the jaw of another to represent an unwarranted reaction was not the most effective way to illustrate his message. ‘The violence was a mistake,’ he said.
Concluded Marcano, a 1985 graduate of the Maynard Institute’s Summer Program for Minority Journalists: “The n-word, which has been flung in my direction from some of our less evolved fellow citizens, cuts right to the bone. I still get a twinge in the pit of my stomach before I hear the ‘dly’ at the end of ‘niggardly,’ so I can understand the sensitivity to the word.
“But there’s a vast difference between sensitivity and hypersensitivity, just as there’s a vast difference between niggardly and the slur. That was Turner’s point, and there’s a lesson you can teach your kids.”
Akron Writers Revisit Dueling Columns on Race
It was the use of the word “niggardly” that in 1993 also prompted dueling columns in the Akron Beacon Journal by Bob Dyer, who is white, and Carl Chancellor, who is African American, leading first to a series on racial attitudes in the Ohio city, then the Pulitzer Prize, and in 2000, a 6,200-word installment in the New York Times’ series, “How Race Is Lived in America.”
In yesterday’s Beacon Journal, the two writers revisited the issue.
“A black female reporter told the Times that my column appealed only to `crybaby white boys,’ ” wrote Dyer.
“And a black female editor opined, `Bob is a racist without even knowing it.’
“Ah, yes. Racist.
“The ultimate, easy cheap shot. You’d think veteran journalists would be more careful with the terms they throw around. But when it comes to race, the usual rules are out the window. . . .
“But you know what? I’m glad I stuck my jaw out. I’d do it again.
“The series, the columns and their aftermath triggered numerous conversations I wouldn’t have had otherwise. They made people of both races think.”
“I’ll tell you how I feel — I’m tired of talking to white folks about race.
“I’m tired of talking to black folks about race.
“Talking about race makes me think about two guys fighting over a raincoat, each tugging furiously at a sleeve, while being drenched by rain pouring through a hole in the roof.
“They are so caught up arguing about who is most deserving of the raincoat that they totally miss the solution to their shared problem, fixing the roof. . . .
“Our obsession of constantly talking about race has sidetracked us from the real issue of inequality — inequality of housing, education, employment, health care, justice . . .”
New “Reliable Source” Reflects on “White Like Me”
As mentioned Friday, the Washington Post’s new “Reliable Source” columnist, Richard Leiby, took heat for a piece he wrote — also in 1993 — about being white at a convention of the National Association of Black Journalists.
At the instigation of readers, Journal-isms asked Leiby today whether, in hindsight, he would change anything about the piece. “It would be the structure,” he said. “I should have said higher up that the point was ‘X’ . . . We don’t understand enough about what it’s like to be a minority in America. There are things that black people do to arm themselves all the time that we’re not aware of.
“It was a real lesson for me in how difficult it is to write from a point of view and finding that the message you think you present isn’t what you’re presenting,” Leiby continued.
To this day, says Leiby, 46, a black colleague jokingly asks him whether she smells like copper, a reference to this passage in his 1993 piece:
“Copper, I think, studying the moist, shiny neck of the man blocking my view at another standing-room-only seminar. What does copper smell like?
“Back in the seventh grade, at the all-white school I attended, an English teacher announced to our class one day, for no reason I can recall, ‘Negroes smell like copper. If you ever get close to one, you will know it.’ I tried. I licked and sniffed a penny. Was that it?
“I never got close to a black person until my first year in college, when a black professor hired me as his work-study student and patiently mentored me in journalism. He smelled of rich cologne. But I could never get that insidious notion out of my mind.
“Because I am white, do I smell like a dime?
“Are black kids ever taught such poisonous things in school?”
Although Leiby said two or three black editors read the piece before it ran, other blacks in the newsroom took him aside to tell him that his essay contained “flash points that you don’t even realize or understand, and you couldn’t realize or understand, because you’re not black.” The use of the word “shiny” in “shiny neck” was one such flash point, Leiby said he was told. He was also rebuked in the Post by columnist Donna Britt and by colleague Retha Hill, then president of the Washington Association of Black Journalists.
“It was a bit of a toe into treacherous waters that I didn’t really understand,” he said, adding that he also wasn’t fully cognizant of the racial climate in the newsroom. Still, he said, “I think it was a dialogue that needed to be opened.” The reactions came from other journalists, not the public. “I remember taking people out to lunch, and saying, ‘let’s talk about this.’ That was the opportunity to say who I was.”
Lieby says he’d consider attending the Unity convention in Washington in August.
Gannett Honors Editors Cristostomo, Gonzales, Hart
David Crisostomo, local news editor of the Pacific Daily News in Guam; Jamie Gonzales, assistant managing editor/presentation of California’s Visalia Times-Delta and Tulare Advance-Register; and Jimmy Hart, city editor of Tennessee’s Jackson Sun, are among 16 editors honored for excellence among mid-level news managers.
Each gets a certificate of recognition and a check for $1,000.
Crisostomo helped lead news coverage of one of the island’s worst typhoons six days after he became local news editor.
Gonzales “led efforts to give the Visalia newspaper a visual overhaul and to convert the entertainment section to a tabloid format with a new look. She also developed the design for the newspaper’s Spanish-language weekly. She served as a member-at-large on the board of the Society of Professional Journalists and led the newspaper’s participation in the SPJ Rainbow Sourcebook.”
Hart “led the city staff in its coverage of tornadoes that hit the Jackson area and knocked out power for several days at the newspaper. He set up a newsroom in the lobby of an area university building. He developed both immediate and long-range coverage plans, including special sections on what Jackson could learn from other cities that rebuilt from storms,” among other actions.
SI Chief Would Rethink Barkley-in-Chains Cover
Sports Illustrated’s top editor, Terry McDonell, says he is happy with his diversity record since becoming managing editor of the magazine last year, but that he would rethink the March 2002 cover of former NBA star Charles Barkley in chains that raised the hackles of many African Americans.
McDonell told Journal-isms that “I wanted Hercules unchained,” as the image for Barkley, but that the photographer, 43-year SI veteran Walter Ioss Jr., brought back the slavery photo. “I don’t think I’d do it again, but Charles was into it. I sort of got rolled,” McDonell said.
McDonell said that since he came to SI from Us Weekly on Feb. 1, 2002, the figures for SI staff of color have risen from 18 percent to 21.5 percent, and the percentage of women from 30.2 percent to 32.7 percent. SI has 223 employees, he said.
One woman, Assistant Managing Editor Sandy Bailey, is among the dozen senior editors, he said, as are two African Americans, Roy S. Johnson and Bobby Clay, and an Asian American, Chris Stone, who is editor of Sports Illustrated on Campus.
Journal-isms was prompted to contact McDonell after watching “Sports Illustrated’s 2003 Sportsman of the Year Show” on Fox on Sunday, the first effort by Johnson at the helm of SI Productions. A scene showing editors consulting over what seemed to be the choice for the honor showed only white men. But McDonell assures that no committee picks the winner; he does.
His choice was to name two athletes: Tim Duncan and David Robinson, who led the San Antonio Spurs to their second NBA championship last season.
On Diversity, Sports Pundit Urges Look in the Mirror
Sylvester Croom’s appointment last week as the first African-American head football coach in the 71-year history of the Southeastern Conference, at Mississippi State, prompts Houston Chronicle columnist John P. Lopez to comment that, “The more America’s sports media talk about diversity at the top-level positions in sports, the more apparent it becomes we aren’t following our own advice.”
“Croom’s hiring was hailed as groundbreaking, which it was. It also was only the latest in many race- and gender-related issues filling column holes and television opinion segments.
“But whom are we trying to kid? Today we must ask ourselves, which organization is more lily-white at the top?
“Alabama football? Or ESPN? . . .
“Talk radio hasn’t done much to follow its own advice, either. . . .
“And for all the talent on local all-sports radio, particularly afternoon drive time, its program directors should be ashamed that in a city as diverse as Houston, not one regular full-time on-air personality is a minority.
“As for the newspaper industry, strides have been made, but for the most part those who criticize sports’ hiring practices are overwhelmingly cut from the same cloth,” Lopez wrote.
Mumia Abu-Jamal Logs 8,000 Days in Jail
Tuesday marks the 22nd anniversary of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s 1981 arrest for the fatal shooting of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, Linn Washington Jr. reminds us on The Black World Today Web site.
That means the one-time president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists has spent more than 8,000 days in Pennsylvania prison cells — “more time than the national average for persons serving murder sentences (15-20-years),” Washington writes.
Washington, a contemporary of Abu-Jamal’s who is a columnist for the black weekly Philadelphia Tribune, quotes Abu-Jamal’s new lawyer, Robert R. Bryan of San Francisco, as saying that, “‘Our goal is to reverse the [murder] conviction, not just get Mumia off death row.
“I’ve never seen a case with so many problems in thirty-years of death penalty litigation. . . . Racism is a thread in this case from the point of arrest,” Bryan says.
Oprah Says She Runs Mag, Unlike Rosie O’Donnell
Oprah Winfrey tells Time magazine this week that she runs “Oprah” magazine, and can’t understand why Rosie O’Donnell didn’t have the same control over her defunct “Rosie.”
Former talk-show rival O’Donnell is in court over her magazine, alleging that her publishing company used improper accounting to keep losses from hitting a threshold that would allow her to bow out. Publisher Gruner + Jahr USA sued O’Donnell, seeking $100 million for breach of contract after O’Donnell departed the magazine in September 2002 and it was forced to shut down soon after. O’Donnell countersued for $125 million, the magazine CFO reports.
Winfrey tells Time, “I didn’t follow the case, if you really want to know the truth. (But) I couldn’t believe that she didn’t have ultimate editorial control. There are many times in my magazine when I have not agreed with the editor, and we just talk it out. Sometimes I let it go. And there are other times where I feel strongly enough about it, and I say that absolutely cannot happen. Because it’s an O on the magazine.”
Winfrey was also told that “David Letterman says you won’t come on his show,” then asked, “Are you snubbing him?”
She replies: “No, I’m not. I’ve done the show twice. Both times I was sort of like the butt of his jokes. I felt completely uncomfortable sitting in that chair, and I vowed I would not ever put myself in that position again. But I have a great deal of respect for his talent, and I sent him what I think is the best baby gift I ever gave. It was a tub of children’s books.”
Play Based on Janet Cooke Opens This Week
“With all due respect, the newspaper world probably dodged a major bullet when Tracey Scott Wilson dropped out of her journalism class,” writes Jesse McKinley in the New York Times. “‘I always wanted to make things up,’ Ms. Wilson, now 36, said. ‘I always wanted the facts to fit my idea.'”
Wilson’s new play, “The Story,” opens in New York Wednesday. It “tells a tale that may sound eerily familiar to anyone who remembers the 1981 Janet Cooke scandal at The Washington Post, when a young black journalist published a story about an 8-year-old heroin addict” who didn’t exist. It earned a Pulitzer Prize, which the newspaper had to return.
He says that Wilson “first thought about the dramatic potential of the Janet Cooke scandal after reading a 1996 article in GQ by Mike Sager. A friend and former lover of Ms. Cooke’s, he had landed an interview with the disgraced journalist, who was at that point working as a department store clerk in Kalamazoo, Mich., and hoping for a comeback.”
A collection of Sager’s essays that includes the Janet Cooke piece is scheduled to be published early next year as “Scary Monsters and Super Freaks.”
A Canard in Michael Jackson Coverage
Does a California law adopted after an abortive 1993 investigation into allegations that Michael Jackson had molested a young boy allow prosecutors to compel an alleged child victim to testify? asks media critic Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times.
No. “The error originated with one of the story’s principals, Santa Barbara County Dist. Atty. Tom Sneddon.
“In a nationally televised news conference Nov. 19, he recalled the 1993 situation in which the alleged victim declined to cooperate with prosecutors after Jackson paid him a settlement that amounted to tens of millions of dollars.
“‘The law in California at that time provided that a child victim could not be forced to testify in a child molest proceeding without their permission and consent and cooperation,’ Sneddon said. ‘As result of [that] Michael Jackson case, the Legislature changed that law, and that is no longer the law in California.'”
What’s distressing, says Rutten, is that efforts to correct Sneddon’s misstatement are so frustrating.
He quotes Santa Clara University law professor Gerald F. Uelmen:
“This law I keep hearing about in the media doesn’t exist. . . What’s a lot more interesting is how the media picks up these things and then feeds off each other’s misinformation so that it becomes impossible to put one of these pseudo-facts to rest.”
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