Pulitzer Honorees of Color Together at Last
The largest gathering of Pulitzer Prize winners of color in journalism — and the first joining African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans — took place Thursday night in Washington as the National Association of Minority Media Executives honored about 20 of them. It was counterpoint, NAMME Executive Director Toni F. Laws said, to the attention given disgraced New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, the African American who continues to generate news stories nearly a year after he was fired for his fabrications.
The idea took root “to demonstrate the long tradition of high ethics that’s been a standard that journalists of color” have upheld, Laws said at NAMME’s annual awards banquet, naming such journalistic ancestors as the anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells-Barnett.
“That was special,” New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who was present to receive a NAMME Catalyst Award for Print, told the gathering of about 350 after the winners each had a new medal draped around his or her neck.
“Thank you for being the best thing that’s come out of the Jayson Blair episode — and Bill Keller, of course,” Sulzberger quickly added, referring to the executive editor who took control of the Times newsroom after the resignations of Executive Editor Howell Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd.
NAMME’s founding chair, Al Fitzpatrick, said that by his count 41 journalists of color had been awarded the Pulitzer, and that they had “faced professional barriers in their careers” but “went the extra mile to get to where they are.”
“I wonder if anybody’s thinking of convening a panel of white journalists after the Jack Kelley episode,” Gwen Ifill, managing editor of public television’s “Washington Week in Review,” there to receive the NAMME Catalyst Award for Broadcast, said in her remarks. “I don’t think so.”
Lerone Bennett, executive editor of Ebony magazine, noted that the first black journalist to receive the Pulitzer was the late photographer Moneta Sleet Jr. in 1969 for feature photography, for his photograph of Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow and child, taken at King’s funeral.
The pool of photographers initially chosen included no African Americans, Bennett recalled, saying that Sleet was included only after Bennett and former Jet editor Robert Johnson complained to King aide Andrew Young. “Coretta King sent down word that if Moneta Sleet could not cover it, then there would be no photographers in that church,” said Bennett, who was present to accept a Distinguished Diversity Award for Lifetime Achievement on behalf of Johnson Publishing Co. founder John H. Johnson.
The episode teaches two lessons, Bennett said: that struggle is necessary, and that “struggle created the opportunity, but Moneta Sleet seized the opportunity by proving that he was the best photographer in the church that day.”
Other honorees included the late Frank del Olmo, associate editor of the Los Angeles Times, coincidentally on his autistic son Frankie’s 21st birthday; Steven Chin, president of MK Media and new-media specialist at the Maynard Institute, who discussed his efforts to battle through his media work “being viewed as ‘the other’ for all of my life”; and Sandy Close, executive director of Pacific News Service/New California Media and a 1995 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” who praised ethnic and youth media and urged that attendees look for ways to collaborate with them.
More on NAMME’s honorees.
(Added April 24:)
NAMME’s list of Pulitzer winners in journalism is at the end of today’s posting.
USA Today’s Foster-Simeon Running News Section
Ed Foster-Simeon, who as deputy managing editor for news is one of USA Today’s highest ranking black journalists, will run the news department “for now,” publisher Craig Moon said, in light of the newspaper’s latest resignation in the wake of the Jack Kelley scandal.
Hal Ritter, managing editor for news, resigned on Thursday, and the newspaper’s executive editor, Brian Gallagher, said he would leave his job as well.
“Ritter’s resignation came two days after USA Today Editor Karen Jurgensen said she would retire from the newspaper, the largest general circulation U.S. daily and flagship of the Gannett Co. chain,” as Reuters reported.
In the internal “Best of Gannett” competition for 1999, Foster-Simeon, then White House and Pentagon editor, won for “outstanding achievement by a USA Today news staffer,” recognized for his leadership of USA Today’s Page One task force. Supervising coverage of the war in Iraq from the Pentagon continued to be one of Foster-Simeon’s prime responsibilities as deputy managing editor for news.
Before he joined USA Today, Foster-Simeon was a reporter and Metro editor for the Washington Times.
Immediately before Thursday’s resignation, the newspaper announced that “a panel of outside journalists retained by USA Today to investigate the repeated fabrications of its former star foreign correspondent . . . concluded that sloppy editing, poor newsroom communication and a deeply embedded culture of fear contributed to those deceptions being published in the newspaper’s pages,” as Jacques Steinberg reports in the New York Times.
“The newspaper, which has the largest circulation of any American daily, also acknowledged that the deceptions by the former correspondent, Jack Kelley, were far more extensive -? and conducted over a longer period of time -? than was previously known.
“USA Today also said today that it had been unable to account for ‘thousands of dollars in cash’ that Mr. Kelley, a roving foreign correspondent for more than a decade, ‘purportedly paid to translators or drivers who said they never received the money.’ The newspaper said that Mr. Kelley’s expense records had been referred to one of its accountants for further examination,” Steinberg wrote.
Moon told Joe Strupp at Editor & Publisher that he had interviewed four candidates for editor, but had not made a final decision and planned to speak with several other candidates.
“The publisher would not identify the potential editors, saying each of the four is a current Gannett Co. Inc. employee, but added that none work at USA Today,” Strupp wrote.
USA Today panel’s report.
Battleground: Latinos Who Read Bilingually
“Adding data to the controversy over which language Hispanics use to consume their media, a new study finds that both English- and Spanish-language media play a significant role in their choices. The finding comes just as the dominant Hispanic network, Univision, is aggressively pitching Madison Avenue on the need to reach Latinos in Spanish,” as MediaPost reports.
“The study, released Monday by the Pew Hispanic Center, makes it clear that it isn’t as simple as English-dominant homes choosing English-language programs and Spanish-dominant households choosing Spanish-language shows.
“Many Hispanic Americans, regardless of language preference, receive news in both Spanish and English.
“The study found that English-dominant Hispanics still turn to Spanish-language media for news about their communities and from Latin America. And even among the Latinos who were born abroad, about half receive at least some of their news in English.”
The study also said that “Latinos have strongly favorable views about the role of the Spanish-language media in advancing Hispanic interests in the United States, and they also express considerable concern that the English-language media fosters a negative image of their communities among English-speaking Americans.” Forty-four percent of those polled by the center said the English-language media contributed to a negative image of Latinos.
“The contest is for the audience who are switchers,” Roberto Suro, director of the center, said at a session at the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention Thursday that focused on the report. “The future of this competition will be decided by the people who are going back and forth.”
Gilbert Bailon, executive editor of the Dallas Morning News who also heads its Spanish-language offshoot, Al Dia, said that “print is the final frontier. There’s a lot a broadcast, not a lot of print” who have caught on to the bilingual market. “That’s how people live their lives. People don’t stop being Latinos because they’ve been here for a second or third generation,” Bailon said.
He also cautioned that, “Language is the vehicle, but content is important. Understand your market,” he said. “A boxing match that gets agate in the Dallas Morning News will probably be on the cover of our sports section” in Al Dia. Don’t look like an English-language paper,” he added. “You can’t fake your way through this.”
As one example of the difference in perspective, Bailon noted that when terrorists bombed a train in Madrid on March 11, killing 202 people, one of his staffers was Basque, from the ethnic group initially blamed by the Spanish government. “It was very personal,” Bailon said.
Rossana Rosado, publisher of New York’s El Diario/La Prensa, seemed bemused by the attention from the English-language media. “Newsrooms in the mainstream aren’t ready to cover our community,” she said. “It seems to me that’s an easy one to fix — easier than starting a new paper. . . . It takes cojones to come into a market where you are doing a poor job covering this community in your mainstream paper.”
Pew Hispanic Center Report (PDF)
Project Focusing on Editors Called a Success
A 2 1/2-day Diversity Leadership Institute attended by 21 top newspaper editors that discussed sociological issues and how newsroom culture affects newspaper content was so successful that the project should be continued, David Yarnold, editor of California’s San Jose Mercury News, told members of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, which sponsored the program. Yarnold was chair of the ASNE Diversity Committee.
“All but three of the 21 participants said it exceeded expectations,” Yarnold said Thursday at a joint ASNE/Newspaper Association of America luncheon banquet. The others said it “met” the expectations. “Two white males separately told me they have already started to make different and better hiring decisions,” he said. The participants were all number one or number two in their newsrooms.
In remarks to the institute, held March 28-31 in San Jose, Gregory Favre, a past ASNE president, said:
“There are at least 150 ethnic and racial groups in this country today. And a countless number of beliefs and practices and backgrounds that guide us in our daily lives. Your challenge, and the challenge of your co-workers, is to reflect and accurately report on this wonderful diversity that is our future. Your challenge is to create an environment where no one is invisible, inside your newsroom or outside in the streets of your cities. Your challenge is to make sure that people from different cultural backgrounds have an opportunity to express their talents, to share their experiences, to contribute to the value and excellence of your journalism.
“The late Bob Maynard, a man who lived his beliefs, once wrote these words: ‘This country?s greatest achievements came about because somebody believed in something, whether it was a steam engine, an airplane, or a space shuttle. Only when we lose hope in great possibilities are we really doomed. Reversals and tough times inspire some people to work harder for what they believe in,'” continued Favre, former executive editor of California’s Sacramento Bee and now distinguished fellow of journalism values at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla.
“If you don?t try harder to make your staffs more reflective of the changing population, if you aren?t more eloquent and forceful about your aims and your objectives on diversity, if you don?t create a true climate of inclusion in your newsrooms, you will fail and your newspapers will no longer be relevant in people?s lives.”
Gay Journalist Poses First Question to Rumsfeld
The first question put to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at the joint convention of the Newspaper Association of America and American Society of Newspaper Editors was one about gays in the military from a member of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.
J. Ford Huffman, deputy managing editor at USA Today, noted that the Associated Press had cited an advocacy group’s report that the number of gays dismissed from the military under the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy had dropped to its lowest level in nine years as U.S. forces fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. He asked whether Rumsfeld was now looking again at “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
“I don’t know that I’ve seen that” report, the defense secretary replied, but “at the present time,” he wasn’t rethinking the policy.
Coleman’s “Look, Pal” Lesson from Ben Bradlee
Milton Coleman, deputy managing editor of the Washington Post, won the highest number of votes in the election of board members of the American Society of Newspaper Editors Thursday. Coleman, re-elected with 144 votes, is also incoming chair of the ASNE Diversity Committee.
On Tuesday, he presented one of the “Journalism Values Moments” during the convention. Coleman talked in part about a lesson from legendary Post executive editor Ben Bradlee.
“At the Milwaukee Courier, a publisher named Jerrel Jones, and two editors — Walter Jones and Carol Malone — took a chance on me, and taught me journalism on the job. Bob Maynard, John Dotson and others — some in this room — took similar chances. So did Ben Bradlee,” Coleman said.
“On one day when as his city editor, after already delivering him Janet Cooke and ‘Jimmy’s World,’ [the false story that led to the Post returning its Pulitzer Prize in 1981] I indicted on the front page of The Washington Post an innocent person and left Ben to first learn of the error from outside his own newsroom, he offered advice to a young man in a hurry.
“This is how I recall that conversation:
“‘Look, pal,’ Ben said, ‘When you get in trouble, come see me right away. I’ve been in more trouble than you have. I can tell you how to get out.’ That was the first lesson.
“Secondly, he said, ‘You’re out there running in the fast lane and you just fell flat on your face. You know what that means you need to do? Get the hell up and run again, same lane.’ Lesson learned.
“So, I value a free press. I value opportunity. Together, they make some darn good journalism.”
Also elected to the ASNE board were David Yarnold, San Jose Mercury News, 116 votes; Don Wycliff, Chicago Tribune, 110; Stan Tiner, Biloxi Sun Herald, 99, and Bob Rivard, San Antonio Express-News, 91 votes.
Rice Tells N.Y. Times About Her “Husb–“
An item in New York magazine says that, “A pressing issue of dinner-party etiquette is vexing Washington, according to a story now making the D.C. rounds: How should you react when your guest, in this case national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, makes a poignant faux pas?
“At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller, Rice was reportedly overheard saying, ‘As I was telling my husb–‘ and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, ‘As I was telling President Bush.’ Jaws dropped, but a guest says the slip by the unmarried politician, who spends weekends with the president and his wife, seemed more psychologically telling than incriminating. Nobody thinks Bush and Rice are actually an item. A National Security Council spokesman laughed and said, ‘No comment.'”
In “Doonesbury” comic strip, Bush called Rice “Brown Sugar”.
B. Smith Negotiating Rebirth of Magazine
Barbra Smith and her husband and business partner, Dan Gasby, own three restaurants, have recently signed a deal with the Discovery Channel for a new daytime program and are negotiating the resurrection of Ms. Smith’s magazine, B. Smith Style, which appeared briefly in 1999, William L. Hamilton reports in the New York Times.
Harvard Plans Race and Justice Institute
Harvard Law School plans to establish an institute to study race and the law, to be headed by Law Professor Charles Ogletree, the university announced this week.
“The new Institute will focus on a variety of issues relating to race and justice. It will sponsor research, hold conferences, and provide policy analysis. Ogletree envisions the Institute focusing on civil and criminal law areas, with a special emphasis on issues of voting rights, the future of affirmative action, and the criminal justice system,” a news release says.
The Harvard Crimson reported that, “Ogletree said the Institute will initially focus on several issues: assessing Justice Sandra Day O?Connor?s claim that affirmative action will no longer be needed in 25 years, evaluating the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which is up for reauthorization in 2007, combating wrongful criminal convictions and facilitating the assimilation of prison inmates back into society.”
The institute is expected to open in the fall of 2005.
NAMME’s List of Pulitzer Winners in Journalism
This list from the National Association of Minority Media Executives gives the name of the Pulitzer winner, followed by affiliation and year. Those whose names are in boldface were at the banquet and presented with medals Thursday night.
It was noted from the dais that one omission is the 1984 prize for public service, which went to the Los Angeles Times for an examination of southern California’s growing Latino community by a team of 17 Latino editors and reporters. That gave Latinos their first Pulitzers in journalism.
Michael D. Sallah, Toledo Blade, 2004; Anthony Shadid, Washington Post, 2004; Leonard Pitts, Jr., The Miami Herald, 2004; Cheryl Diaz Meyer, The Dallas Morning News, 2004; Colbert I. King, Washington Post, 2003.
Sonia Nazario, Los Angeles Times, 2003, (represented by Janet Clayton); Alan Diaz, Associated Press, 2001; Sang-Hun Choe, Associated Press, 2000; Martha Mendoza, Associated Press, 2000; Angelo B. Henderson, Wall Street Journal, 1999.
Michiko Kakutani, New York Times, 1998; Clarence Williams III, Los Angeles Times, 1998; Byron Acohido, Seattle Times, 1997; Ron Cortez, Philadelphia Inquirer, 1997; Alex Tizon, Seattle Times, 1997.
E.R. Shipp, New York Daily News, 1996; Leon Dash, Washington Post, 1995; Margo Jefferson, New York Times, 1995; Michael P. Ramirez, Memphis Commercial Appeal, 1994; William Raspberry, Washington Post, 1994.
Isabel Wilkerson, New York Times, 1994; Liz Balmaseda, Miami Herald, 1993; Harold Jackson, Birmingham News, 1991; Sheryl WuDunn, New York Times, 1990; Manny Crisostomo, Detroit Free Press, 1989.
Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune, 1989; Dean Baquet, Chicago Tribune, 1988; Michel duCille, Miami Herald, 1988; Michel duCille, Miami Herald, 1986; Dennis Bell*, Newsday, 1985.
Ozier Muhammad, Newsday, 1985; Kenneth J. Cooper, Boston Globe, 1984; Norman A. Lockman, Boston Globe, 1984; John H. White, Chicago Sun-Times, 1982; Taro M. Yamasaki, Detroit Free Press, 1981.
Acel Moore, Philadelphia Inquirer, 1977; Ovie Carter, Chicago Tribune, 1975; Matthew Lewis, Washington Post, 1975; Huynh Cong Ut, Associated Press, 1973; Moneta Sleet Jr. *, Ebony, 1969.
Kyoichi Sawada, United Press International, 1966; Yasushi Nagao, Mainichi Shimbun, 1961.
* Deceased
