Wanda Lloyd Named Editor in Montgomery, Ala.
“Wanda Lloyd, executive director of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute and former USA Today senior editor, was named executive editor of the Montgomery Advertiser on Tuesday,” as Jessica M. Walker reports in today’s editions of the Alabama newspaper.
The naming of an African American woman to lead the newsroom of the Gannett-owned paper is fraught with symbolism. Lloyd has been a tireless advocate for diversity, and Montgomery boasts of its dual history — as both a civil rights and Civil War landmark. Along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery is the site of the first Confederate White House and of the state Capitol, where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy and which served as war room for Gov. George Wallace, who vowed to stand in the schoolhouse door to block integration.
In neighboring Mississippi, Ronnie Agnew and Don Hudson, both African Americans, are the top two editors at the Gannett-owned Jackson Clarion-Ledger, published in another city with a noteworthy civil rights history.
Lloyd officially begins in Montgomery on June 1.
“I think attracting an editor of Wanda’s caliber is a real coup for the Montgomery Advertiser. Wanda is held in high regard throughout the newspaper industry. She brings us years of experience at highly respected papers and two years as Pulitzer Prize juror,” Advertiser Publisher Scott M. Brown said in the story. The Advertiser has a circulation of 50,763 Monday through Saturday, and 62,137 on Sunday.
Lloyd, a Savannah, Ga., native, has worked at the Washington Post, where she was deputy Washington editor of the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service; at USA Today, where she was a senior editor and where she worked for a decade, at South Carolina’s Greenville News, where she spent four years as managing editor; and at the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, where she is founding executive director.
She has also served on the boards of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, and was a founder and past president of the National Association of Minority Media Executives, among other activities listed on her bio.
The Diversity Institute, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, “trains non-traditional students to work at their local daily newspaper in the United States. Most students are making a career transition into journalism,” according to the Freedom Forum Web site. Lloyd has made the Institute available to numerous other groups interested in newsroom diversity, such as the National Conference of Editorial Writers, for its Minority Writers Seminar, the William Monroe Trotter Group of African American columnists, and the Black College Communication Association, an organization of journalism faculty at historically black colleges and universities.
Charles L. Overby, chairman and CEO of the Freedom Forum, told Journal-isms that the Diversity Institute’s summer class would be overseen by Mary Kay Blake, the Freedom Forum’s senior vice president/partnerships and initiatives, and that Robbie Morganfield would continue as the primary instructor. “I expect we will name a new director later this year. We are excited that Wanda is taking this important job, but we will sure miss her,” he said.
Morganfield is a 1984 graduate of the Maynard Institute’s Summer Program for Minority Journalists and a 2000 graduate of Maynard’s Management Training Center program. Lloyd is a 1987 graduate of the management program.
L.A.’s Clayton Becomes AME, Leaves Edit Page
Janet Clayton, editor of the Los Angeles Times editorial page since 1995, has been named assistant managing editor for state and local news, as Michael Kinsley, the founding editor of the online magazine Slate, becomes editorial and opinion editor, John Carroll, editor of the paper, announced today.
Clayton, one of the first black women to run a big-city daily’s editorial page, “will oversee news coverage of California, with a staff of reporters and editors that is the largest in The Times’ editorial operation,” the Times reported on its Web site.
“Janet has given the opinion pages impressive leadership since she took them over in 1995,” Carroll said in the story on the Times Web site. “Writers under her direction have won two Pulitzer Prizes in the last three years. In her new assignment, she’ll be well served by her strong background in reporting and her knowledge of Los Angeles and the rest of California.”
The appointments are effective June 14.
“Clayton, 48, began her career with The Times in 1977 in the Washington, D.C., bureau and was a reporter and deputy city-county bureau chief in Los Angeles before moving to the Op-Ed pages as an articles editor. She became an editorial writer and later was named assistant editorial page editor before her appointment as editor of the editorial pages in 1995,” the story said.
Kinsley, 53, most recently has been a columnist for Slate.com and the Washington Post, and a contributing writer for Time magazine. In 1995 he founded Slate, the online magazine published by Microsoft, and was its editor for six years, a news release said.
Jim Hawkins Wins Deanship at FAMU
James E. Hawkins, acting dean of Florida A&M University’s School of Journalism and Graphic Communication since the retirement in September of founding dean Robert Ruggles, has won the job.
Hawkins has accepted the position effective May 3, Chanta M. Haywood, dean of the FAMU graduate school and search committee chair, told the school Tuesday. Hawkins had been one of four finalists for the job of leading one of the more highly regarded journalism schools at a historically black university.
Hawkins had been director of the division of journalism and associate dean. His bio says he “worked professionally as a TV reporter/photographer/film editor and associate producer/researcher in public affairs at Columbus, Ohio stations. Spent summer, 1984, working as an Associated Press staff member and summer 1992 as an Oakland Tribune staff member. Teaches in the broadcast journalism sequence.”
Davis, Jeter, Robles Becoming Knight Fellows
Phillip Davis, Miami correspondent for National Public Radio; Jon Jeter, South America bureau chief at the Washington Post and Frances Robles, bureau chief in Bogota, Colombia, for the Miami Herald, are among the 12 U.S. journalists awarded John S. Knight Fellowships at Stanford University for the 2004-05 academic year.
Davis plans to study the impact of globalization on knowledge workers; Jeter, international development and narrative writing, and Robles, the role of amnesty in conflict resolution. Davis and Jeter are African American; Robles is Puerto Rican.
Middleton, Tanaka Chosen as Michigan Fellows
Otesa Middleton, a reporter for Dow Jones Newswire, and Christine Tanaka, managing editor at XETV, a Fox affiliate in San Diego, Calif., are on the list of 12 American journalists chosen for the University of Michigan Knight-Wallace Fellows program for 2004-2005.
Middleton, 31, who is black, plans to study mental illness. Tanaka, 37, who is Asian American, plans to look at Indian gaming.
“Each Knight-Wallace Fellow receives a stipend of $55,000, supported by gifts from foundations, news organizations and individuals committed to improving the quality of information reaching the public,” a news release says.
CNN’s Van Marsh Leaving Iraq for Turkey
Alphonso Van Marsh, the CNN reporter who in December became the first to show photos of the capture of Saddam Hussein, is moving from Iraq to Istanbul, Turkey.
He will be there at least six months, CNN says.
CNN notes in a news release that Van Marsh’s Hussein story was made possible by its new laptop-based “Digital Newsgathering” (DNG) system, which “has enabled correspondents to remain on the scene, while also editing packages and filing reports without bulky edit equipment or traveling to satellite feed points. . . . In effect, fifty pounds of gear is packaged into a single light-weight laptop and camera.” Van Marsh, a graduate of the Maynard Institute’s Cross Media Journalism Program at the University of Southern California in 2001, will also be using the equipment in Turkey, CNN said.
Michael Okwu Moves from CNN to NBC
Michael Okwu has moved from CNN, where he was a general assignment reporter in the New York bureau, to NBC, where he is a correspondent based in Burbank, Calif., contributing to “Today,” “NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw” and MSNBC programs, NBC announces.
Okwu covered the search and rescue efforts from ground zero, New York political races, the D.C.-area sniper case, the disappearance of Elizabeth Smart, and the crash of TWA flight 800. He also served as an anchor and correspondent at the United Nations covering diplomatic efforts by the Security Council before the Iraq War, a news release says.
From 1997 to 2000, Okwu co-anchored “Showbiz Today Reports” and served as a CNN Entertainment News correspondent while contributing reports as a full-time general assignment correspondent. He was also a regular contributor to the news magazine program “CNN NewsStand.” Among his awards was one from the National Association of Black Journalists for a feature report on racism in Hollywood, the release says.
Rym Brahimi Spurns CNN for Jordanian Prince
CNN reporter Rym Brahimi resigned Friday, the same day her engagement to King Abdullah II’s half brother, Prince Ali, was announced by Jordan’s royal family, a CNN spokeswoman said, the Associated Press reports from Jordan.
“The wedding will take place Sept. 7, the official Petra news agency reported.
“Ali, 29, heads a special force that protects the monarch. He is the son of the late King Hussein from his marriage to Queen Alia, who died in a helicopter crash in 1977.
“Brahimi is the daughter of the U.N. envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi.
“The engagement ceremony took place in Paris in the presence of Abdullah, Petra said.”
