Michael Days Gets ME Job He Waited For
“You know something unusual is happening when reporters start bringing in champagne for editors,” Scott Flander wrote in the Philadelphia Daily News, under a headline reading, “Philly native Michael Days named No. 2 editor.”
“The Philly homeboys are in charge.
“Daily News Editor Zack Stalberg (streets of West Philly) announced yesterday that Michael Days (streets of North Philly) will be the paper’s new managing editor,” Flander’s story began.
“Days, who’s been the Daily News’ deputy managing editor for the last six years, is an immensely popular figure in the newsroom. When Stalberg announced his appointment at a newsroom meeting yesterday, the staff broke out in cheers and toasted Days with champagne provided by a reporter.
“Days’ credentials for the paper’s No. 2 job are impeccable: He grew up in the neighborhood near Temple University and graduated from Roman Catholic High School.
“And, of course, he loves the Daily News.
“When Stalberg sent an e-mail to Days yesterday telling him his promotion would be announced at a 3 p.m. newsroom meeting, Days wrote back, “I’VE BEEN WAITING ALL MY LIFE FOR THIS JOB.”
“Days, 50, replaces Ellen Foley, who’s leaving the paper to become the top editor at the Wisconsin State Journal, a daily in Madison.
“The staff was officially kept in the dark about the changes until yesterday afternoon. But it’s hard to keep a secret in a room full of reporters, and by the time Stalberg made the announcement, the staff already had prepared a card of congratulations for Days.
“As managing editor, Days will be responsible for the day-to-day operation of the paper.
“But he’s expected to continue his informal role as a newsroom peacemaker, helping to resolve disputes between staff members, and between union and management.”
The National Association of Black Journalists alerted its members to Days’ appointment, saying, “This is fantastic news! Michael is a great journalist, an even better person and richly deserving of this new and influential newsroom post, which takes effect on April 8.
“It also means that he will be one of just 14 black managing editors at daily newspapers, according to an expansive and newly reformatted list of black newspaper editors compiled by NABJ’s Don Hudson,” who is a 1995 graduate of the Maynard Institute’s management program. A week ago, Hollis Towns, managing editor at Michigan’s Kalamazoo Gazette, was named managing editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer.
The Daily News publishes Monday through Saturday and reports a circulation of 150,429. Its sister paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, has a daily circulation of 380,200, with 758,320 on Sunday.
NABJ Members Dominate Early Unity Registration
Members of the National Association of Black Journalists dominate the early registration figures for the Aug. 4-8 Unity 2004 convention in Washington, according to Unity executive director Anna Lopez.
A total of 2,616 people took advantage of the early-bird registration, which ended in February. The breakdown is: NABJ, 1,078; Asian American Journalists Association, 637; National Association of Hispanic Journalists, 635; members of none of the groups, 155; Native American Journalists Association, 111.
The next registration deadline is June 15.
Sportswriter Mike Freeman Lands in Jacksonville
Mike Freeman, the former New York Times sportswriter who lost a columnist’s job at the Indianapolis Star when he falsely stated on his job application that he had graduated from college, is becoming a sports columnist at the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville.
Freeman, who had said in January that “I will be punished with the loss of my newspaper career,” was approached by the Jacksonville paper, which felt the Indianapolis blunder was “an isolated incident,” sports editor Chet Fussman told Journal-isms. “There was a lot of discussion between Mike and I and among our senior editors. He’s a talented journalist,” Fussman said.
Freeman starts April 12, writing three sports columns per week, with a fourth when football season begins in September, Fussman told his staff. “He will also contribute enterprise, much of it relating it to the Super Bowl,” Fussman wrote.
Freeman is married to Kelly Whiteside, who is on the sports staff of USA Today. She, too, will be moving to Jacksonville, Fussman said.
The Jacksonville paper is part of the Morris newspaper chain, and other members of the chain will have access to Freeman’s columns, Fussman said. He also said that other sports columnists have done radio and television.
Arabs Killing Blacks in “Vicious Ethnic Cleansing”
“The most vicious ethnic cleansing you’ve never heard of is unfolding here in the southeastern fringes of the Sahara Desert. It’s a campaign of murder, rape and pillage by Sudan’s Arab rulers that has forced 700,000 black African Sudanese to flee their villages,” Nicholas D. Kristof began in a series of op-ed columns in the New York Times from the Sudan-Chad border.
“The desert is strewn with the carcasses of cattle and goats, as well as fresh refugee graves that are covered with brush so wild animals will not dig them up. Refugees crowd around overused wells, which now run dry, and they mourn loved ones whose bodies they cannot recover.
“Western and African countries need to intervene urgently. Sudan’s leaders should not be able to get away with mass murder just because they are shrewd enough to choose victims who inhabit a poor region without airports, electricity or paved roads,” he wrote.
However, the genocide against blacks in the Sudan, coming just as some are commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, seems to be getting more attention outside the United States than in it.
Today, Human Rights Watch issued another plea:
“In a scorched-earth campaign, government forces and Arab militias are killing, raping and looting African civilians that share the same ethnicities as rebel forces in this western region of Sudan.
“The Khartoum government has tried to repress this rebellion with lightning speed in hope that the international community wouldn?t have time to mobilize and press the government to halt its devastation of Darfur. But the Sudanese government will still have to answer for crimes against humanity that cannot be ignored.”
Ex-Publisher Gets 46 Months for Spying for Iraq
“A former suburban Arabic-language newspaper publisher convicted of serving as an Iraqi agent was sentenced Wednesday to 46 months in prison,” John Bebow reports in the Chicago Tribune.
“Khaled Abdel-Latif Dumeisi, 61, of Oak Lawn will almost certainly face deportation to his native Jordan after completing his sentence, which prosecutors and defense attorneys debated for two hours.
“Dumeisi, who published the now-defunct Al-Mahjar newspaper in southwest suburban Burbank [Ill.], was arrested in July, some four years after beginning his assistance to Iraq, the government alleges.”
AAJA Protests CNN Report on Japanese “Invasion”
The Asian American Journalists Association is protesting the use of language “with negative racial overtones” in an introduction to a recent Jeanne Moos segment distributed to CNN partners in local markets.
In a letter to CNN News Group President Jim Walton, AAJA President Mae Cheng said:
“A television journalist and member of AAJA brought the following script to the attention of AAJA’s Media Watch Committee for review:
“‘AS IF CARS WEREN’T ENOUGH, NOW THE JAPANESE ARE INVADING AMERICA WITH A PASTRY . . . A PASTRY SO OLD-FASHIONED THAT SOME IN THE YOUNGER GENERATION MAY NEVER HAD TASTED ONE. BUT CNN’S JEANNE MOOS TASTED PLENTY FOR THIS REPORT ON WHAT COULD TURN OUT TO BE THE CULT OF THE CREAM PUFF.”
Colleagues Vouch for Reporter Caught on Open Mike
A general assignment reporter for Chicago’s WLS-TV “was overheard on an open microphone. . . complaining about the difficulty of firing incompetent employees who also happen to be minorities,” Robert Feder reports in the Chicago Sun-Times.
“Emily Barr, president and general manager of the ABC-owned station, declined to say what action might be taken” against the reporter, Sarah Schulte, “but confirmed that the incident is being investigated.
“Since the investigation began, insiders said, a number of Channel 7 employees — mostly minorities — have come forward voluntar[il]y to vouch for Schulte’s character and express their support for her to management.
“The episode comes on the heels of news reports about racial and ethnic insults being transmitted over Chicago Fire Department radios on at least six occasions in recent weeks,” Feder continued.
Chicago Fire Commissioner James Joyce announced his retirement Thursday, paving the way for Mayor Richard Daley to name 911 director Cortez Trotter, the city’s first African American in the post.
Boyd Breaks With Raines Over Atlantic Piece
Former New York Times Managing Editor Gerald Boyd has parted company with his former partner, Howell Raines, over Raines’ piece in the upcoming Atlantic Monthly in which the former Times executive editor accused the Times staff of lethargic reporting.
?I do not agree with many of his characterizations, including his unfair attacks on his staff at the Times,? Boyd said. ?Their professionalism has been attacked and maligned, and this needs to stop,? he said, Jeff Stensland reported in The State in Columbia, S.C.
“Some media observers have said [Jayson] Blair, who is black, was aided in his fraud by the newspaper?s affirmative action policies,” Stensland reported, covering Boyd’s visit to the University of South Carolina’s College of Mass Communications and Information Science.
“Boyd dismissed that theory, instead blaming management?s failure to grasp the problem in time.
?’In the end it came to this?we were managing the wrong problem,’ he said. ‘We learned too late we were managing a reporter who did not share our values.’?
Jack White to Be “Visiting Professional” at Hampton
Former Time magazine columnist Jack E. White has been named the Scripps Howard Visiting Professional in the Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications at Hampton University for the fall semester, a news release announces.
“White spent 29 years at Time magazine, where he served as a correspondent or bureau chief in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, New York, Nairobi and Washington and as editor of the Nation Section, which covers national affairs. In 1992, he briefly left Time to become senior producer for domestic news for ABC?s ‘World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.’ He returned to Time in April 1993 as a senior correspondent and columnist. He is the first African-American journalist to hold such high-ranking positions at Time or ABC News and is also the first black journalist to be a columnist for a national newsweekly,” the release said.
Chris Campbell, director of the school in Hampton, Va., said White will teach reporting classes and work with print journalism majors on other projects. White joins Scripps Howard Endowed Professor of Journalism Earl Caldwell on the Hampton faculty. The two worked on many stories together when they were reporters during the civil rights movement.
Previous visiting professionals in the Scripps Howard School include Athelia Knight of the Washington Post, a 2003 graduate of the Maynard Institute’s management program; Carolyn Phillips, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and Doug Smith, formerly a sportswriter for USA Today and Newsday. The spring 2004 Scripps Howard Visiting Professional is syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. of the Miami Herald.
Frank McCoy Joins AOL News Division
Veteran business journalist Frank McCoy starts Monday as programming director for America Online’s News division, based in Loudoun County, Va., outside Washington.
“AOL News has four news channels,” McCoy tells Journal-isms.
“The daily editorial teams of the Top News channel and the Business news channel will report to me and I may serve as a liaison to the Entertainment news channel. The latter is in NYC and its news is compiled there.
“The AOL News teams do not report, write, or editorialize. They compile news from hundreds of partners and provide it to dial up and broadband members.
“Monday – Friday, from mid-morning into the early evening, I will oversee and work with the editors of Top News and Business news as they select stories and create ‘enhanced’ stories. That is done by picking audio and video feeds and editing and writing hedes and decks for the stories and the channels.
“The teams also create instant polls, upload newsmaker features, post instant quotes from AOL members, and build out other types of features for the AOL community.
“Separate teams handle Top News on the ‘Welcome’ screen and Top News special reports. They do not report to me.
“My job is to make sure that what AOL News compiles for the Top News and Business channels remains compelling to its members. AOL has about 28 million members and 70 percent of them dip into the news channels on a regular basis.”
McCoy, a freelancer now based in Baltimore, is a former editor at Black Enterprise magazine and at U.S. News and World Report. He was asked to be editor of the limited-circulation publication Savoy Professional, an offshoot of Savoy magazine, but the parent company, Vanguarde Media, filed for bankruptcy protection before he could start.
Betty Nguyen Leaving Dallas to Anchor for CNN
Betty Nguyen, most recently with KTVT-TV in Dallas/Fort Worth, will join CNN as an Atlanta-based anchorwoman, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.
“Nguyen has worked as a news anchorwoman for the CBS affiliate since 1998. In 2003, she won a regional Emmy award for Outstanding Noon Newscast. She’ll begin working for CNN on April 26.”
According to her bio, Nguyen was born in Saigon. “She and her family left Vietnam when it fell to communism at the end of the war.
“They soon settled in North Texas and Betty went on to graduate Magna Cum Laude from the University of Texas at Austin, with a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism. . . .
“She has made several trips to Vietnam to distribute relief supplies to families struggling to survive deadly flooding during the annual monsoon season.”
Anna Perez Goes from White House to NBC
“Anna Perez, who recently directed communications at the National Security Council, will become chief communications executive for NBC, the network announced yesterday,” the New York Times reports.
“Ms. Perez will take up the post of executive vice president for communications, but her duties will expand when NBC becomes NBC-Universal after the expected completion of the network’s merger with entertainment units of Vivendi Universal.
“The deal is expected to be approved by June. Ms. Perez will start at NBC on May 1.
“She left the White House in December, where her titles included counselor for communications to President’s Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. Ms. Perez also worked in the White House for the first President Bush, as Barbara Bush’s press secretary.”
A White House spokeswoman told Journal-isms that Perez’s contract with Rice was for only two years, and she had stayed beyond that.
Richard Parsons Gets 50 Percent Pay Increase
“Time Warner chairman and CEO Richard Parsons in 2003 saw his first cash bonus in three years and a 50% jump in his base salary, the company said in its proxy statement filed Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission,” Georg Szalai reports in the Hollywood Reporter.
“The filing also showed increased cash bonuses for other top TW executives — a result of management’s progress in stabilizing the firm’s financial position — and disclosed that Franklin Raines, CEO of mortgage reseller Fannie Mae, will step down from his seat on the company’s board.
“Parsons received a base salary of $1.5 million for 2003, up from $1 million in 2002. In addition, he got an $8 million cash bonus.”
FCC Probing Oprah After Howard Stern Complains
“The FCC has taken the first step toward investigating Oprah Winfrey after receiving ‘more than a few complaints’ about her show, a spokeswoman said yesterday,” Jennifer Fermino reports in the New York Post.
“The agency is reviewing the complaints, the spokeswoman said. She would not describe their nature — although the Federal Communication Commission’s Web site says a review generally results in an initial determination of whether a show’s programming can be considered obscene or indecent. If it decides it can, a formal investigation is launched.
“The feds took action nearly two weeks after shock-jock Howard Stern launched a radio and Internet assault on Winfrey.
“He complained that the FCC is guilty of hypocrisy for hitting the stations that broadcast his show with multiple obscenity fines while letting sexually explicit slang slide during Oprah’s gab fests.”
Chorus Grows Opposing Nielsen Changes in N.Y.
“The N.A.A.C.P. and leading members of Congress from both parties, including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, have added their voices to the growing number complaining that the proposed changes in how Nielsen gathers local television ratings will drastically undercount the number of black and Hispanic viewers,” Raymond Hernandez and Stuart Elliott report in the New York Times.
“But Nielsen Media Research, whose ratings have been used for decades to help set TV advertising rates, takes issue with the critics, asserting that the number of households sampled with African-American and Hispanic viewers will actually increase under the proposed changes. Senator Clinton, Democrat of New York, in a letter yesterday to Susan D. Whiting, president and chief executive of Nielsen, urged a delay in plans to adopt, effective April 8, the new methodology in New York. The change involves adopting locally the so-called people meters Nielsen has used since 1986 to gather national ratings data.”
Activists Not Taking WLIB Switch Silently
Media coverage of the debut of the new liberal Air America radio network largely ignored the protests of community members upset by the loss of Caribbean programming at the network’s home base, New York’s WLIB-AM.
Some 60 to 70 people attended a community protest rally last night at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, a church spokeswoman told Journal-isms.
The news spread to the Caribbean as well.
“Shocked and angry . . . a group of influential Caribbean-Americans, among them The Mighty Sparrow, say they are determined to purchase a radio station dedicated to broadcasting Caribbeana. ‘I have access to people like Colonial Life Insurance Company and they would glad to, perhaps, put up all the money that’s needed,’ Sparrow said yesterday from his Brooklyn home in an interview with the BBC’s Franka Phillip,” the Trinidad Express reported on Monday.
“Air America is in no way offering a satisfactory substitute for local community programming,” Bob Law, a veteran radio personality and longtime activist, said Wednesday in the New York Daily News.
Law, part of a Coalition of Artists and Activists that is seeking a boycott of Air America, said the coalition had two major concerns, David Hinckley reported: “‘the scapegoating of the black community’ for the financial problems that led WLIB to make a lease deal with Air America, and the way he says Air America has taken advantage of a situation created by racism.
“‘We have no doubt WLIB isn’t making money,’ says Law. ‘But that’s not because the community isn’t listening. It’s because Arbitron does not record that listening and because advertisers won’t pay what they should to reach those listeners.
“The least Air America should do, says Law, ‘is hire a prominent, respected, forceful host from our community.’
“He also says that if WLIB ends up being sold, “It should be offered first to buyers from our community.”
Chairman Pierre Sutton of Inner City Broadcasting, owner of WLIB, said in an on-air statement that the station decided to make the change because of a lack of advertising dollars. He urged listeners to welcome the new format, the purpose of which he described as “to challenge the right-wing voices that dominate the airwaves,” Desiree Grand reported in the Journal-News of Westchester County, N.Y.