Clinkscales, Others Drop Out of Bidding
Black Enterprise magazine publisher Earl G. Graves appears to be the leading candidate to win the bidding for the assets of Vanguarde Media Inc., as former Vanguarde CEO Keith Clinkscales, former Vanguarde financial backer Provender Capital and late entry Lake Capital, a Chicago private equity firm, dropped out.
The resolution was to have taken place Thursday in bankruptcy court in Manhattan, but Joseph E. Sarachek, managing partner of Triax Capital Advisors, told Journal-isms that it had been postponed again until April 26. Sarachek’s firm is overseeing Vanguarde’s restructuring.
Also in the mix is Jungle Media Group, based in New York, which publishes Savoy Professional, an offshoot of Savoy magazine.
Although Vanguarde filed for protection from bankruptcy last year, shutting Savoy, Honey and Heart and Soul magazines, at least temporarily, Jungle Media plans to publish at least two more issues of Savoy Professional, Jon Housman, CEO of Jungle Media Group, told Journal-isms. However, he said Jungle Media is talking to potential bidders primarily about Savoy Professional, not all of Vanguarde. He said it was more likely now that Vanguarde could be sold in pieces.
Clinkscales confirmed to Journal-isms today that “I’m not in it,” and said he didn’t want to think about the events any longer. He is ready to move on, he said.
Housman described his firm as “significantly minority-owned and operated,” though the figure is not 50 percent, and having a strong interest in diversity. Its products include Jungle magazine, described as “a young person’s Fortune- meets-Esquire”; Jungle Law, a sister publication for the legal profession; Hispanico, a Latino business magazine; Break, a travel and lifestyle magazine targeted at those 18 to 25; and Your Career, a forthcoming publication in partnership with the Wall Street Journal.
Graves did not return a telephone call seeking comment.
SPJ Honors Series on Wrongful Murder Conviction
An eight-part series in North Carolina’s Winston-Salem Journal, ?Murder, Race, Justice: The State vs. Darryl Hunt,? which showed the flawed prosecution of a man who served 18 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, has won two awards in the annual Sigma Delta Chi competition.
Hunt was twice convicted of the 1984 murder of Deborah Sykes, who was raped and killed as she walked to her job as a copy editor at the now-defunct Winston-Salem Sentinel.
On Thursday, Gov. Mike Easley pardoned Hunt, who was cleared in February on the strength of DNA evidence that implicated someone else, as the Raleigh News & Observer reported. Another man, Willard E. Brown, confessed to the killing.
Phoebe Zerwick of the Winston-Salem Journal won for investigative reporting in the under-100,000-circulation category, and Katherine Elkins, Jennifer Falor and Adam Howell of JournalNow.com, the newspaper’s Web site, won for “non-deadline reporting (affiliated).”
Other winners included:
- Public Service (circulation of less than 100,000): ?Deadly Force,? Lee Williams of The Virgin Islands Daily News. Investigates the use of deadly force by Virgin Islands Police Department.
- Public Service in Magazine Journalism: ?Is Your Job Next?? and ?The Rise of India,? Pete Engardio, Manjeet Kripalani & Aaron Bernstein of BusinessWeek in New York, N.Y. Migration of white collar jobs overseas.
- Photography Features: ?Culture of Violence,? Rodrigo Abd of the Associated Press in New York. “This series of striking images displays the prominent violence in Guatemala.”
- Research About Journalism: ?Racism, Sexism, and the Media,? Clint C. Wilson II, Felix Gutierrez and Lena M. Chao of Sage Publications in Thousand Oaks, Calif. This textbook discusses the history of coverage of marginalized groups by race in society.
TV Leaves Black Women More OK With Body Image
While white women are affected by unrealistic media images of women as tall, extremely thin and blonde, contributing to a number of disorders, black women reject those media images as a source for comparison, a study by four University of Michigan researchers suggests.
Writing in the Psychology of Women Quarterly, Deborah Schooler, L. Monique Ward, Ann Merriwether and Allison Caruthers said they studied 548 white women and 87 black women aged 17 to 22 who completed an anonymous survey for extra credit in an introductory psychology class.
“Interview data find that White girls recognize thin-ideal media images as unrealistic, but are still affected by these images because they believe the ideals are important to people around them,” their article states.
“Black girls interviewed report rejecting the images as both unattainable for themselves and as unimportant to others in the Black community. In defining the ideal, they instead rely on the opinions of family, friends, and boyfriends, and compare themselves not to White women on television, but to Black role models and women they know. In addition, Black women report defining beauty less in terms of weight and appearance and more as style, movement and character. Consequently, we argue that Black women’s perceptions of their own bodies are likely to be most affected by their use of media featuring other Black women.”
The article cites a 2000 report that black women make up 5.6 percent of prime time television characters and one from 1997 showing that they appear in only 2 to 3 percent of mainstream magazine ads.
The article is available in PDF format by contacting Blackwell Publishing at journalnews@bos.blackwellpublishing.
Air America Back in Chicago, Still Off in L.A.
“In a rapid reversal of fortunes, Air America Radio, the fledgling, liberal talk-radio network that was thrown off the air in Chicago and Los Angeles Wednesday, won a temporary restraining order late Thursday ordering the owner of WNTD-950 AM in Chicago to restore the network’s broadcast,” John Cook reports in the Chicago Tribune.
Evan Cohen, Air America’s chairman, “said the network expects to resume broadcasting Friday on WNTD-950 AM in Chicago. [Arthur] Liu, whose Multicultural Radio Broadcasting Inc. owns Air America’s Chicago and Los Angeles stations, pulled the network off the air in both markets Wednesday and changed the locks on the doors. He told the Chicago Tribune that Air America had bounced a payment check and owed Multicultural more than $1 million.
“But New York state Supreme Court Judge Marylin G. Diamond found Thursday that Air America had fully paid for airtime in Chicago and ordered Multicultural to begin broadcasting Air America’s programming again.
“Air America remains off the air in Los Angeles, where it had been broadcast on Multicultural’s KBLA 1580 AM,” Cook reported.
The Web site FMQB (Friday Morning Quarterback) reported last week that, “the freshly launched Air America Radio is setting records for on-line streaming. RealNetworks announced that over two million streams were delivered for Air America Radio through the fledgling radio network’s website, airamericaradio.com, during the network’s first week.”
NABJ, Urban League Announce Partnership
The National Association of Black Journalists and the National Urban League “have cemented a partnership to create training and scholarship programs aimed at helping usher more black students, particularly at high schools and historically black colleges and universities, into journalism,” NABJ announces.
“NABJ President Herbert Lowe and Urban League President and Chief Executive Officer Marc H. Morial announced the partnership on March 9, during an evening reception at the Urban League?s Wall Street headquarters in New York, where the Urban League honored NABJ and black journalists for their service to society. Some 150 leaders, members, supporters and staff of both NABJ and the Urban League joined Lowe and Morial at the reception,” a news release on the NABJ Web site says.
The Urban League is making available its “State of Black America 2004 report: The Complexities of Black Progress,” free to NABJ members.
Clarence Page, Others Weigh In on Kerry
Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, one of five African American columnists who met last week with Sen. John Kerry, weighed in with his reaction to the session Wednesday, saying that, “Kerry can connect with voters with rhetoric and passion, but he also needs to give them some ideas to take home with them as an alternative to the Bush vision, such as it is.
“Anger among Democrats against Bush helped bring Kerry his party’s nomination, but he also needs to offer a sense of hope for a better future. Clinton, like President Ronald Reagan, understood the power of an optimistic vision. It crosses all lines of class and color,” Page said.
Meanwhile, on the CNN Web site, “Inside Edge” columnist Carlos Watson asserts today that Kerry’s innermost circle lacks people of color.
“That’s an odd position for a campaign that will probably rely on African-Americans and Hispanics for one in four of their general election votes and the crucial margin of difference in battleground states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio,” Watson says. Chad Clanton, the Kerry campaign’s senior adviser for communications, maintained to Journal-isms that Marcus Jadotte, deputy campaign manager who is African American, is a “very important” member of the inner circle.
And on National Public Radio’s “The Diane Rehm Show,” commentator Arianna Huffington complained that the news media ignored moving testimony by a young African American at a Kerry dinner in New York Thursday. The man, Michael Parker, spoke about how Youth Build, a program that Kerry saw in New York and made national, had changed his life, she said.
No Nominees of Color for Radio Hall of Fame
“A competitive and controversial field of nominees to the National Radio Hall of Fame was announced today by Radio Hall of Fame President, Bruce DuMont,” begins a news release for the Hall, a not-for-profit venture of The Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago.
“Radio speaks with many voices and reaches many audiences because of its diverse talent spectrum.” DuMont said. “Our 2004 nominees represent that diverse talent spectrum,” he added in the statement.
But a glance at the list of nominees — among them Bob Edwards of National Public Radio, shock jock Howard Stern, advice-giver Dr. Laura Schlessinger and the late gossip Walter Winchell— shows not a single person of color. The group’s Web site says the general public was encouraged to make recommendations to the Hall of Fame Steering Committee, whose members “include radio executives, academicians, trade journalists and others interested in preserving radio’s rich history and creating a shrine to recognize radio?s role in society.”
African Americans Hal Jackson and Tom Joyner are among previous inductees, but of course broadcasters of color have a far richer history. At least two books, “Legendary Pioneers of Black Radio” by Gilbert A. Williams (Praeger, 1998), and “Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War and the Politics of Race, 1938-1948″ by Barbara Dianne Savage (University of North Carolina Press, 1999), can supply plenty of names.
Three Promoted at Newark Star-Ledger
Three African Americans have been promoted in the newsroom of the Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.: Chanta Jackson, a 1998 graduate of the Maynard Institute’s editing program, from the copy desk to editor of the weekly Newark This Week section and deputy city editor; Paula Paige, a features copy editor, to deputy business editor; and Pamela Whitehurst, administrative assistant, to listings bureau supervisor.
“All Things Considered” to Air Series on Apartheid
“A rare recording of the 1964 trial that resulted in [Nelson] Mandela’s life sentence. A visit between Mandela and his wife, Winnie, secretly recorded by a prison guard. Marching songs of guer[r]illa soldiers. Government propaganda films. Pirate radio broadcasts from the African National Conference,” begins a news release from National Public Radio.
“More than a year in the making, ‘Mandela: An Audio History’ is a groundbreaking project that weaves together an unprecedented collection of archival sound materials documenting and preserving the story of Nelson Mandela and the struggle against apartheid.
“This five-part radio series will be presented on NPR’s All Things Considered every day during the week of April 26, 2004 to mark the 10th anniversary of South Africa’s first democratic election.
“Produced with no scripted narration, the story is instead told through the first-person accounts of former ANC activists, National Party politicians, South African Defense Force generals, Robben Island prisoners and guards, and ordinary witnesses to history. A range of voices from Bishop Desmond Tutu to former President F.W. de Klerk to Nelson Mandela himself, brings to life this remarkable chapter of modern history,” the release states.
“Much more than a biography of Nelson Mandela, this may be the most comprehensive radio history of apartheid ever broadcast. Many of these recordings have never been broadcast.”
Students to Help Produce “Presstime” Issue
Three African Americans and an Asian American are among seven college students chosen to serve as reporters, editors, photographers and designers at the Newspaper Association of America?s Annual Convention April 20-23 in Washington, announces NAA, the trade organization for newspaper publishers.
“The students will cover sessions on major issues facing the industry, from readership to journalism ethics and freedom of information. Their work will be published in the magazine?s annual Convention Report,” a news release says.
“With guidance from the Presstime staff, the students will report, write and edit stories; participate in the design and layout of the issue; and write daily updates for NAA?s Web site, www.naa.org.”
The students include writer Bao Ong, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, who is Asian American; and photographer/designer Maya Gilliam of Howard University; writer Rakeah Glass, Towson University, Towson, Md.; and student editor Stephania Davis, University of Maryland, College Park, who are African American.
Discovery Going After Chinese Audiences
“The Discovery Channel is holding talks with Shanghai Media Group (SMG) to develop television documentaries for Chinese audiences,” reports Sidney Luk in the South China Morning Post.
“The partnership, which is awaiting approval from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, follows a production joint venture announced last month by Viacom and SMG.
“Discovery Channel and SMG, China’s second-largest media group, will form a company to co-produce shows for mainland cable networks.
“SMG has eight million viewers on the mainland.
“China is gradually opening up its media market in line with its commitments to the World Trade Organisation,” Luk writes.
More Media Outlets Targeting Gay Market
“Congress and the courts may still be making up their minds about gay marriage, but entrepreneurs are already seizing an opportunity: Rainbow Weddings, a magazine for same sex couples planning to tie the knot, will launch in December, its founder and CEO, Michael Weiskopf, has announced,” reports Crain’s New York Business.
“Rainbow Weddings, which will be independently published in New York, will distribute 100,000 copies of its first issue nationally. Mr. Weiskopf says an editor will be named in the next two weeks,” Crain’s reported. The venture follows announcements of a 24-hour satellite channel geared toward gays and lesbians and a gay version of “Naked News”.
BET Unveils New Original Programming
Black Entertainment Television made its first new-season pitch to advertisers this week, a session known as an “upfront” presentation, announcing new original programming that includes “Speak Now, a 30-minute weekly talk show that explores political, cultural and social issues; and Style, which looks at celebrities, music, fashion and entertainment,” according to Media Week.
“BET is also bringing back College Hill, the reality series that focuses on eight college students at a historically black college, with new students and a new scene. The first 13-episode run premiered in January to record ratings,” Megan Larson wrote.
“With a not-so-subtle jab at the competition for its core audience–Fox, UPN and the fledgling cable net TV One — BET’s ad sales chief, Louis Carr, said: ‘Since we came into existence, we have been trying to prove the value of the black audience. There are startup wannabes and others flirting with the black audience because they have failed elsewhere, but they are not a viable option for reaching this audience,'” Larson reported.
