It’s Why Sports “Lags Behind Rest of the Newsroom”
“The locker-room mentality in many sports departments is strong and resistant to change,” Bill Eichenberger, deputy sports editor of Newsday and 2003-04 president of the Associated Press Sports Editors, writes in a column on the APSE Web site.
“I am just stating what has become obvious to me whenever we gather for APSE functions and I look out at a sea of white and male faces. We need to become more diverse.
“At some newspapers, those in leadership positions in sports departments give lip service to the value of diversity but don’t allow it to become a major factor in the final decision-making process. At others, sports editors are frustrated by what they perceive to be a clear lack of qualified minority and female applicants,” he said.
“A job candidate’s race or gender may get them in the door for an interview, as almost every newspaper makes a good-faith effort to consider a diverse group of applicants for every opening. But when deciding who will get the job, too many white male sports editors still opt for the person who is most like them.
“Instead of being wary of hiring someone with a different background, race or gender, you should welcome it. That is easier said than done. The locker-room mentality in many sports departments is strong and resistant to change.”
Eichenberger uses the occasion to offer tips on hiring a diverse staff and what to do once those non-white-males arrive. He praises the Sports Journalism Institute, “an APSE training initiative designed to increase the number of women and minorities in newsrooms. In the past 10 years, SJI has sent 100 of its graduates to jobs in sports journalism-related fields across the country.”
Debate Heats Up Over Applause at Unity
The debate over the varying responses at the Unity convention to President Bush and Sen. John Kerry is heating up, with an editorial in the Dallas Morning News calling the snickering response to Bush “completely unacceptable”; leaders of two of the Unity organizations responding in online forums; and Condace Pressley, immediate past president of the National Association of Black Journalists, preparing to discuss the issue tonight on Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor.”
“No doubt, Mr. Bush should have been more prepared. But the people in that room should have also been more professional,” the Dallas editorial said Tuesday.
Morning News columnist Ruben Navarrette weighed in today with his own column, headlined, “Minority journalists embarrassed themselves at convention.”
But on New York University journalism chair Jay Rosen’s PressLink blog, Unity President Ernest Sotomayor disagreed.
“Letâ??s be clear: the downslide in the credibility of the media began long before this convention was held, and it began when nearly every publisher, nearly every executive editor and nearly every TV and radio news director and station manager in the business was a white male,” he wrote.
“What’s really being asserted by some is that these journalists of color can’t cut it,” Bryan Monroe, NABJ’s vice president/print, wrote in the Romenesko letters column on poynter.org. “‘See, they don’t act like us, subscribe to our values, play by our rules, so they must not be qualified for full admission into our club.’
“That assertion is flat wrong.
“I don’t remember reading similar criticism when the crowd of mostly white editors and publishers gave the same president a standing ovation and a toast at the ASNE/NAA convention a few months ago in D.C. And did I miss the stories about mainly white audiences of journalists laughing and carousing during any number of White House correspondentsâ?? dinners?”
Another letter-writer to Poynter, Matthew G. Saroff, wrote: “People are missing the forest for the trees here. An organization of journalists listened to two speeches from political opponents. One addressed the concerns of his audience, and the other gave what amounted to his standard stump speech.”
And in the TV tip sheet Shop Talk, Stacy Johnson wrote, “Was every attendee covering a story for his or her news organization or were they coincidently in a place deemed important enough to attract speeches from presidential hopefuls? If the former, there’s at least an argument they should have been objective. If the latter, however, there’s no reason for them to be any more objective than if they were watching a baseball game. And the fact that the audience skewed young and of color was probably more than sufficient warning to the President that he was the visiting team. It’s hard to imagine that he was nearly as shocked as those who commented in your article. But if he was, good.”
More Unity commentary:
- Editorial, Contra Costa (Calif.) Times: Bush against legacies
- Emil Guillermo, Sfgate.com: Bush’s Michael Moore Moment At Unity
- Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe: Will Bush truly renounce privilege in admissions?
- Charles E. Richardson, Macon (Ga.) Telegraph: Round goes to Kerry
- Mary Sanchez, Kansas City Star: Different message, delivery, vision
- Jack Shafer, Slate: If This Is Unity, Give Me Division
- Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times: Dump legacy admissions? No merit in that
- Ernest R. Sotomayor, Newsday: We need more diverse newsrooms
- Tonyaa Weathersbee, Florida Times Union: Cosby, Kerry are both right about responsibility issue
- DeWayne Wickham, USA Today: Media’s lack of diversity skews news judgment
Rocky Mountain News Hires Native Journalist
The Denver Rocky Mountain News has hired a Native American journalist as a copy editor and page designer — a significant act for a paper that remains the object of bitter feelings among many Native Americans. The paper cheered on the removal of Indians from the area in what led to what became known as the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864.
Zoe Friloux, formerly a Houston Chronicle copy editor and a graduate of the Maynard Institute’s editing program in 1998, started at the paper in the last week of July.
Juan Gonzalez, who just concluded a term as president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, mentioned the hiring during the Unity convention as an example of changes at the News since the inauguration of NAHJ’s Parity Project, which aims to increase the number of people of color at the paper. Gonzalez presented the News’ editor, publisher and president, John Temple, with the NAHJ President’s Award.
John Coward, who chairs the Department of Communication at the University of Tulsa, wrote in his book “The Newspaper Indian: Native American Identity in the Press, 1820-90″ that the pro-growth, pro-development Rocky Mountain News viewed Native people back then as “just in the way,” he told Journal-isms.
The paper’s exhortations helped lead to the Sand Creek Massacre in southeastern Colorado, in which an estimated 400 to 500 warriors, 105 Indian women and children, and 28 other Native men were killed.
Many Natives have never forgotten, Gonzalez said.
Friloux, a member of the Catawba tribe who started in the newspaper business in 1995, told Journal-isms, “at some point, people have to move on.”
Spike Lee Asks Detroit Paper to Send Someone Else
Spike Lee asked the Detroit Free Press not to ask the same writer who interviewed him to review his new film, “She Hate Me,” Todd Spangler, assistant features editor at the Detroit Free Press, confirmed today.
“My inclination was to tell him that Spike Lee does not get to assign who writes a movie review,” Spangler said in a Boston Globe piece called, “Who calls the shots, celebrities or the press?”
Spangler told Journal-isms that he would not name the writer, but said the person is a free-lancer. The interview has not yet run, awaiting the film’s premiere in Detroit next Friday, he said.
So far, it has received spotty reviews.
Lee was not available for comment. A spokesman for Lee’s 40 Acres and a Mule Productions said the operation was not set up for quick responses to journalists’ questions.
2 AAJA Members Sent to Review “White Castle”
“‘Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” is the story of two 20-something stoner roommates -â?? one an Indian-American medical school candidate, the other a Korean-American investment banker â??- who embark on an all-night journey in New Jersey in search of the ultimate cure for their marijuana high: White Castle burgers,” explained the San Diego Union-Tribune on Sunday.
“The film is groundbreaking in that it’s perhaps the first mainstream U.S. comedy starring two Asian-American actors, John Cho (‘American Pie’) and Kal Penn (‘National Lampoon’s Van Wilder’).
“Two Union-Tribune journalists, Nirmala Bhat and Don Chareunsy, attended a preview in downtown San Diego of “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” during the annual Comic-Con convention, alongside Comic-Con conventioneers.
“Both are of Asian origin â??- Bhat is Indian and Chareunsy is Thai and Laotian. Both are members of the Asian-American Journalists Association’s San Diego chapter.”
Concluded Bhat: “Despite the fact that Harold and Kumar are Asian-American, I also could see my white and other non-Asian-American friends in them in a way that, ultimately, all blends together in the melting pot of America.”
African Journalists in U.S. Form Group
Some 60 African journalists working in the United States took advantage of the Unity convention’s timing to inaugurate their own organization in Washington Saturday, the National Association of African Journalists.
The president, Eyobong Ita, a reporter for the Kansas City Star, told Journal-isms that many Africans in the States “find it difficult to make that transition from African journalism to American journalism.” Some drop out of journalism, and end up driving cabs or working as financial consultants, he said. The organization will offer guidance and give some “a second chance on pursuing journalism here.”
Ita, 40, a native of Nigeria, is also secretary of the Kansas City Association of Black Journalists and a member of the National Association of Black Journalists. He said he had been asked why the organization did not simply work within NABJ, and that he had pointed out that not all African journalists are black and that they would identify more with this kind of organization.
According to a report by the Panafrican News Agency, Jerome Mendouga, Cameroonian ambassador to the U.S., told the group Saturday that African journalists had a leading role to play in giving the continent a new image and political direction.
“Presently, the only news you hear about Africa is crisis, diseases, poverty, corruption and other ugly events,” he said, adding: “This is what you should strive to reverse,” according to the story.
“The head of Voice of America’s English-to-Africa Service, Shaka Ssali, enjoined African journalists to help enlighten the international community so as to end the negative stereotyping of Africa,” the story continued.
Others on the interim executive committee elected Saturday are Adam Ouologuem of Mali, who covers the U.N. for radio and television stations there, vice president, print; Segun Aderiye of Nigeria, of African Independent Television, vice president, broadcast; Tai Balofin of Nigeria, owner of an African publication, secretary; Laolu Akande of Nigeria, North American bureau chief of the Guardian in Nigeria, treasurer; Paul Ndiho of Uganda, and Femi Odere, publisher of Esteem magazine in Chicago, media owners’ representatives.
An African Correspondents Association was formed in Washington in 1995, but that organization is primarily for those reporting for the African media, Ita explained. Some are members of both groups.
Newhouse Giving $400,000 in Scholarships
The S.I. Newhouse Foundation is renewing its minority scholarship program for another four years with a $400,000 contribution to the four journalist of color organizations, Editor & Publisher reports.
Deborah Howell, Newhouse News Service editor and Washington bureau chief, said in a statement Tuesday that the $400,000 will be disbursed in equal $100,000 parts to the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association, and the Native American Journalists Association.
The scholarship program is jointly administered by the groups and by Howell, “who works with a group of advisers from Advance Publications, owners of 26 daily papers, including The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., and The Plain Dealer of Cleveland,” said the story by Joe Strupp.
“We are proud to offer help to worthy students studying reporting, copy editing, photography, design and graphic arts,” said Howell. “These students enrich the diversity of newspapers throughout America.”
Claiborne to Be News Anchor of Weekend “GMA”
Ron Claiborne is to become news anchor of ABC’s weekend “Good Morning America,” the New York newspapers report.
According to his bio, Claiborne, a one-time print journalist, is a general assignment correspondent based in Boston who reports for “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings,” “Nightline,” “World News Tonight Saturday/Sunday”, and “Good Morning America”. He is also a frequent contributor to ABC News Radio.
Simone-Miller to Anchor Wall St. Journal Show
Cheryl Simone-Miller has been named news anchor of “The Wall Street Journal This Morning,” an early-morning business radio program aired on 73 stations in the U.S.
“She will provide live business and money reports for the program, which is hosted by Michael Wallace,” a news release says.
Simone-Miller, an anchor/reporter for WINS-AM, New York, has been news anchor at WINZ-AM Miami and WQAM-AM Hollywood, Fla. While at WINS, Simone-Miller, a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, developed and produced the award-winning “Puerto Rican Heritage Month” and “Hispanic Heritage Month” series, the release continued.
Stations carrying the program include WLS, Chicago; WPHT, Philadelphia; KNEW, San Francisco; KSL, Salt Lake City; WPGB, Pittsburgh; KSKY, Dallas; and WOAI, San Antonio.
Shawn Yancy Named Anchor for Fox D.C. Station
“Shawn Yancy is Channel 5’s new co-anchor on the 5 and 10 p.m. newscasts,” reports John Maynard today in the Washington Post.
“Yesterday’s announcement ends a nationwide search by the Fox-owned station to replace Tracey Neale, who bolted the station in March to join Channel 9.
“Yancy has been co-anchoring WTTG’s early morning newscast since September 2001, but since Neale’s departure she has teamed frequently with Brian Bolter on the early evening and late night news.” WTTG is a Fox station.
