Monthly E&P Debuts With All-White Cover Story
The trade magazine Editor & Publisher often editorializes forcefully on behalf of diversity in the newspaper business, but when it debuted its new monthly edition this month it ran a cover story, “Keeping It In the Family,” spotlighting “nearly a dozen parent/child newspaper duos” — whose subjects all were white.
“The idea I don’t think was to reflect necessarily the wide diversity of people in newsrooms,” writer Joe Strupp, an E&P associate editor, told Journal-isms today. “It was to look at children of journalists who go into journalism. We could have spent six or 10 months looking for people of color. I believe we did a pretty extensive search. There was no effort to exclude them.”
But the NABJ Journal, in a winter 1999 story by Wayne Dawkins, did a similar story, “In Their Veins, Too: Sons and Daughters Follow in Parents’ Footsteps to Journalism,” which named Mervin Aubespin, associate editor of The Courier Journal in Louisville, Ky., and his daughter, Eleska Aubespin, reporter at the Dallas Morning News; and former New York Times reporter C. Gerald Fraser, then senior editor of Earth Times, his son, Jerry Fraser, then a writer for The National Fisherman, monthly magazine of the U.S. commercial fishing industry, and Gerald Fraser’s daughter, Jetta Fraser, a photographer who was then en route to the Toledo Blade, as its print subjects. Merv Aubespin has since retired and his daughter is now at Florida Today. Jerry Fraser, formerly a copy editor at the Boston Globe and Florida Today, has become editor of the fishing magazine.
There is also Colbert I. King, who won a Pulitzer Prize last year as an editorial writer at the Washington Post, and his son, Rob King, a deputy managing editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer; Joe Oglesby, editorial page editor at the Miami Herald, and his daughter, Joy Oglesby, a copy editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; and, of course, the late Robert C. Maynard and his daughter Dori J. Maynard, president of the Maynard Institute, who were the first father-and-daughter to win Nieman journalism fellowships. In the Bay Area, members of the Fang family have made news with their controversial stewardship of the San Francisco Examiner.
Last year, M. David Goodwin became editor of the Middletown Journal in Ohio. “He is a fourth-generation journalist and is the seventh member of his family to be named editor of a newspaper,” said the story on his appointment.
Readers are encouraged to message Journal-isms with more examples.
In the black press, Editor-in-Chief Elinor Tatum followed her father, Wilbert Tatum, at the helm of the New York Amsterdam News; and, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote last year of Alexis Scott, “Six years ago she quit as director of diversity and community relations at Cox Enterprises to take over and resuscitate the Scott family business on Auburn Avenue: the Atlanta Daily World.”
As Strupp noted, his E&P piece does note the low numbers of women parents in the story.
“In almost every case that follows, the parent is male,” it says. “We tried to find more top women in the newsroom with kids in the business, but found very few. This, of course, reflects the fact that until recent years women were terribly underrepresented among editors and elite reporters. The fact that many of the children in this story are female shows that times have surely changed.”
Reporter Deported, “Did Everything by the Book”
“Municipal reporter Freda Wan’s editor at the Northwest Herald in Crystal Lake, Ill., says she’s one of the hardest-working people he’s ever met,” editorial writer J.R. Labbe writes in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
But now, “Wan is back home, not by choice but by edict. The Justice Department gave notice of her deportation on Jan. 14, and she had two days to get out of the country.
“Wan broke no laws. She lived legally in the United States for four years on a student visa. After her graduation in May and her hiring as a reporter by the Shaw Suburban Media Group, her paper began the application process for Wan’s H-1B visa — the U.S. work permit for those not seeking citizenship,” Labbe’s column continues.
“When Wan showed up at the Asian American Journalists Association convention in San Diego last summer, she wasn’t looking for a job. Unlike the scores of other attendees who dogged every recruiter in the joint, Wan didn’t even have resumes printed. But she was making contacts for when she might need them.
“She needed them in December when the Immigration and Naturalization Service sent back her visa petition with a ‘request for evidence.’
“The newspaper had to demonstrate that Wan worked in a job that requires ‘attainment of a bachelor’s degree or higher degree in the specific speciality (or its equivalent) as a minimum for entry into the occupation in the United States.’
“‘The INS’ reason is to make sure that I am not taking away a job for which Americans without a degree can qualify,’ Wan said.
“Wan hired an immigrant lawyer in Chicago, paid about $1,300 in fees to the feds, even contracted with a professor at Northwestern University to conduct a $500 study of the industry to determine that college degrees are status quo for employment in journalism.” The Hong Kong native had graduated with honors from the University of Chicago.
“During my stint as the Star-Telegram’s newsroom recruiter, the paper hasn’t hired a reporter without a four-year degree. I said as much in my ‘evidence’ for Wan’s application.
“Not good enough. Visa denied.
“Amazing. If she had the identical credentials but spoke Spanish instead of Cantonese Chinese, she’d be working at a Texas paper today.
” . . . So during the same wrinkle in time when the president of the United States is proposing plans that will allow people who enter this country illegally to get work visas, a woman who did everything by the book is forced to leave because some bureaucrat can’t see how a four-year poli-sci degree would be relevant for a municipal reporter.”
Press Club to Swear In First Black President
The National Press Club plans to inaugurate its first black president, Sheila Cherry, a writer for the Washington Times’ Insight magazine, at a $75-a-ticket black tie affair on Saturday.
Cherry, who had already been on the board, was elected Dec. 12 with 55 votes in an election the press club describes as eliciting “scant” turnout. Cherry was a member of the board when it voted in 2002 to award its prize for press criticism to William McGowan’s “Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism.”
After the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists protested that the book was shoddy journalism, Cherry told Journal-isms, “I voted to maintain our position.
“We didn’t realize it was going to be as controversial as it turned out to be,” she said of the book that later received NABJ’s “Thumbs Down” award. Part of the reason for the award was “to broaden the dialogue” and “it achieved that,” she said.
Cherry said that she planned to “start a full-fledged subcommittee” on diversity issues to be headed by Charlie Ericksen of Hispanic Link News Service and Dr. Sharon Freedman, director of the Washington, D.C., government’s International Business Development Office at the D.C. Chamber of Commerce. Freedman is also author of the newly published “Conversations With Powerful African Women Leaders Inspiration, Motivation, and Strategy.” The subcommittee would succeed a task force on the issue, Cherry said.
Cherry has been covering federal budget policy and trade for Insight magazine since 1999.
Before that, she was a legal reporter at Commerce Clearing House, specializing in cross-border transactions of multinational corporations.
Other people of color on the new Press Club board are Alison Bethel, Washington bureau chief of the Detroit News, and Larry Bivens of Gannett News Service.
Seven Join Latest Diversity Institute Class
Seven would-be journalists — people of color seeking a mid-career change or recent college graduates who did not major in journalism — joined the fifth class of journalism fellows yesterday at the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute in Nashville.
Carole Simpson, senior correspondent at ABC News, spoke to the class at the opening dinner.
Among those in the 12-week program are: Joe Rodriguez, a radiology clerk; Margaret Davis, a surgical nurse who published a column called “Nursing Notes” while attending nursing school; and Marcela Creps, a loan officer. “Creps entered Indiana’s Ball State University in 1985 with hopes of becoming a journalist, but after the deaths of both parents Creps left college. After a 15-year journey that has included secretarial positions, marriage and motherhood and becoming a mortgage loan officer, Creps is returning to her quest for a career in journalism,” a news release says.
Columnist Says Princell Hair Needs to Get Out More
CNN/U.S. Executive Vice President and General Manager Princell Hair, who, as reported Friday, just initiated a shakeup in CNN’s news operations, “needs to get in the newsroom more often at CNN headquarters in Atlanta if he prefers not to be shooed out of a seat by a CNN veteran who has not previously come face to face with him,” writes Michele Greppi in her “Insider” column for Television Week.
“Here is the recent scene, as sketched by a good and dishy source.
“A veteran newsroom fixture goes to the circular desk at which daily editorial meetings are held, puts her things down at her usual meeting position and takes a few steps away to answer a phone. Mr. Hair comes in and sits in the chair staked out by the woman. She turns and says: ‘Uh-uh-uh-uh-uhhhhh!’ The gentlemanlike Mr. Hair gets up and moves to another chair for the duration of the meeting.
“Someone whose job it is to offer alternative interpretations suggested that’s simply Mr. Hair’s egalitarian style and noted that he has moved his family from California to Atlanta, which frees him, finally, from a cross-country commute. They noted that he regularly takes part in senior management meetings.
“But The Insider’s source insisted this anecdote accurately reflects how little contact there has been between Mr. Hair and those who actually keep the 24-hour news machinery at CNN gassed up while their on-the-go leader ‘just goes wherever he goes and does whatever he does.'”
Paper Praised, Examined Immigrants in Meat Plants
The Columbia Journalism Review is recounting, with praise, a ten-month investigation by Nebraska’s Omaha World-Herald “that involved three reporters, thirty Freedom of Information Act requests, eighty sources, and more than six hundred phone calls.
“The front-page story, which ran last October 12, detailed what was known to many people working in the [meat] plants: that while meatpacking is recognized as one of the nation?s most injury-prone occupations, the men who clean up at night after the meatpackers have gone home are at even greater risk, pushed to work so hard and so fast that safety goes by the wayside,” reads the story by Laurie Kelliher, “A Meat Story, Well Done: How the Omaha World-Herald Inspected a Tough Local Industry.” The immigrants’ ethnicity has changed over the years; now it is largely Hispanic.
It continues: “But because these cleaners are lumped into an industry category with office janitors and hotel maids, the true danger of their work has escaped the scrutiny of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. And because the majority of the cleaners . . . are working with false documents, they don?t complain about conditions that routinely lead to acid burns, crushed bones, amputated limbs. Sometimes to death.”
Show Looks at Native Media’s Role in ’04 Election
“As the November elections quickly approach, and the Presidential primaries and caucuses go full swing, Native Americans are organizing Get-Out-The-Vote campaigns throughout Indian Country,” begins a description of today’s “Native America Calling” radio show.
“Tribes and states with large Indian populations are mobilizing their voting-age citizens and are planning to create an impact at the polls. But where does the Native media fit in to the plan? Can Native-owned and tribal media help to get out the vote? Are political parties and their candidates utilizing the Native media? And how can Native media influence local, state and national elections? Guests include Frank King of the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, publisher/owner of Native Voice newspaper.”
The show is available on more than 50 stations around the country and can be listened to via its Web site, says a recording at the station’s offices in Albuquerque, N.M.
David Gonzalez to Write N.Y. Times Column
“David Gonzalez, a native of the Bronx who, until recently, was Caribbean and Central American bureau chief for The New York Times, has returned to New York and will begin writing a column for the paper,” Editor & Publisher reports.
“Gonzalez’s column, called ‘Citywide,’ begins Jan. 27 and will run every Tuesday on the front page of the Metro section, the paper announced Monday. Gonzalez will write other news and features for Metro as well,” the brief piece said.
Utah’s Black Anchor “Discovered” Working as Waiter
Marius Payton is “the only African-American sports anchor, the only black news anchor of any sort, on television in the Salt Lake City market,” reports Gordon Monson in the Salt Lake Tribune.
He was hired after Wesley Ruff, longtime sports anchor at KTVX, spotted him in a restaurant, working as a waiter.
“I sat there and thought, ‘This guy radiates personality,’ ” Ruff is quoted as saying. “I thought he would be great on TV.”
“In ’98, he got his first real chance at live shots, reporting about the Utes in the NCAA Tournament from Boise on the newscasts at 5, 6, and 10,” Monson’s story continues. “‘I killed everything,’ Payton says. ‘It seemed easy . . . until the 10 o’clock show. The red light went on and I went blank. Wesley tossed to me from the studio and I just stood there, looking at the camera, with nothing to say. I started laughing.’
“The news director didn’t think it was funny.
“Everybody knew Payton had plenty of charisma and a boatload of personality, that both cameras and viewers, just like patrons at the restaurant, would find some connection to him, but none of that mattered if he didn’t study the news, the material, important to the story he was covering.
“‘I learned a valuable lesson,’ he says. ‘If I was going to be in front of the camera, if I was going to be credible, I needed to be prepared. When you’re not prepared, it’s lonely out there, man, really lonely.’
“The news director told him he had to report 100 stories before he would let him do another live shot.”
23 J-Students of Color Named Chips Quinn Scholars
Twenty-three students of color have been named Chips Quinn Scholars for spring 2004 by the Freedom Forum, the organization announces. “Scholars will work in internships at 17 daily newspapers across the country beginning in late January. The class brings to 828 the total number of young journalists trained as reporters, copy editors, photographers and graphics artists since the program began with six Scholars in 1991.”
“Three universities and one newspaper are first-time participants in this year?s spring program: Eastern New Mexico University; University of California-Irvine; Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash.; and the San Angelo (Texas) Standard-Times.”
Those named are:
Clifton Adcock, University of Oklahoma, who is going to the Jackson (Tenn.) Sun; Diogenes Agcaoili, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton (N.Y.) Press & Sun-Bulletin; Tonya Alanez, University of Oregon, Vero Beach (Fla.) Press Journal; Olvia Angulo, San Francisco State University; Oakland Tribune; Annette Arreola, California State University-Fullerton, The Californian in Salinas; Dana Attocknie, University of Oklahoma, Ocala (Fla.) Star-Banner.
Also, Melissa Brown, Florida A&M University, The News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla.; Leslie Combs, New Mexico State University, The Santa Fe New Mexican; Erica Cordova, Eastern New Mexico University; San Angelo (Texas) Standard-Times; Ivy Dai, University of California-Los Angeles, The News-Star in Monroe, La.; Odeen-Jon Domingo, California State University-Fullerton, The Arizona Republic in Phoenix.
Also, Tiffany Jones, North Carolina A&T University, Jackson (Tenn.) Sun; Saadia Malik, San Jose State University, the News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla.; Tamera Manzanares-Dike, University of Colorado-Boulder; Fort Collins Coloradoan; Yoko Minoura, Whitman College, The Bulletin in Bend, Ore., Victor Obaseki, University of North Texas in Denton, Ocala (Fla.) Star-Banner.
Also, Jenny Phan, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, The Bulletin in Bend, Ore.; Peter Rasmussen, University of Southern California, The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, Calif.; Kadesha Thomas, Florida A&M University, The Ledger in Lakeland, Fla.; Raul Vasquez, Santa Monica College, The Santa Fe New Mexican; Chris Wallace, North Carolina A&T University, The Dispatch in Lexington, N.C.; Michelle Woo, University of California-Irvine, The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, Calif.; and Craig Young, San Francisco State University, Aberdeen (S.D.) American News.
Ad Agencies Being Scrutinized on Race
The New York City Commission on Human Rights is gathering data from some of Manhattan?s largest advertising agencies on their employment of people of color after a former adman and current radio talk-show host complained, a commission spokeswoman confirmed today.
Sanford Moore, who uses the name Charles W. Etheridge on New York’s WRKS-FM, told the trade publication Advertising Age that he had contacted the agency’s chair, Patricia Gatling, last summer.
“I brought up statistics from prior years,” he was quoted as saying. “In managerial and professional categories, you are looking at a minute proportion . . . you do not have representation of blacks on the boards of directors and in higher managerial echelons at the major agencies, whereas blacks represent some 30 percent of the population in New York City.”
Betsy Herzog, director of public information for the commission, told Journal-isms that “at this point, we’re just gathering information. It’s not an investigation as yet. We’re looking at their staffing, and especially managerial positions.”
Four of a dozen of New York’s largest agencies confirmed they had received a request from the commission for information and responded, Advertising Age said in its Jan. 19 edition.
Two More Opinion Pieces on Marcus Dixon Case
- “The nation is watching Georgia to judge how far it has come,” writes Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We must right the wrong we have perpetrated against Marcus Dixon and modify mandatory minimum sentences that rob Americans of the very civil rights we as a nation struggled so hard to attain.”
- “In the not so distant past, when Georgia was second only to Mississippi in lynching, such allegations would be cause for a mob,” writes Courtland Milloy in the Washington Post. “And the jail cell holding the accused would just happen to be left unlocked that night.
“Generational echoes of those horrible times still reverberate throughout America’s halls of justice. But times have changed.”
Palm Beach Post Offers Spanish-Language Jobs Site
“PowerOne Media of Troy, N.Y., is offering a Spanish-language platform for its Center for American Jobs (CAJ) module. The Palm Beach Post of West Palm Beach, Fla. is the first to launch the new Spanish version,” Editor & Publisher reports.
“CAJ is one of several employment services offered to newspapers by PowerOne Media, a provider of online services and hosting. The service is designed to recruit job seekers of all types through the Web and telephone response systems. Job seekers create skills-based candidate profiles, which are matched to employers’ job openings.
“‘CAJ’s Spanish-language service is an important part of our recruitment strategy for 2004,’ said Dan Shorter, Palm Beach Post general manager for Internet operations, in a statement. ‘Hispanics make up 12% of the local population and have increased 111% since 1990, which is three and a half times the country’s overall growth rate. We must improve our services to this local Spanish-speaking community.’
“The Post will promote the new service in English and Spanish publications, plus advertising on radio, billboards, buses and bus shelters.”
Ex-Knoxville Reporter Jacquelyn Brown, 52, Dies
“Jacquelyn Brown, whose childhood living in racial prejudice in Montgomery and Birmingham, Ala., influenced her writings for the News Sentinel and her dedication to racial justice, died Thursday of pancreatic cancer,” Georgianna Vines reported in the Knoxville newspaper.
The former reporter and columnist, who was 52, “was diagnosed with the disease in 2002, underwent aggressive treatment and was determined to be cancer-free early in 2003. She became ill several months ago, and doctors told her the cancer had returned,” Vines wrote.
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