Embattled Student Outlet Lacks Editorial Adviser
The student newspaper at Hampton University, which won national attention last year when the administration confiscated an issue, failed to publish today as scheduled because it lacked the required adviser for its editorial content.
The previous adviser resigned after the university would no longer allow her to receive credit for the hours spent on the student newspaper, The Script, a concept known as “release time.”
“This semester I have a four-course load,” the former adviser, journalism Prof. Kim LeDuff, had told Journal-isms, and thus had no time left for the Script. Previously, the Script service could substitute for one of the courses.
The Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications installed a new dean over the summer, television host Tony Brown. Brown did not respond to telephone calls, but others at the school said his failure to grant release time was part of his effort to separate the school from the student paper as much as possible.
Today’s lack of a newspaper drew the concern of the Black College Communication Association, an organization of journalism faculty at historically black colleges and universities.
“As chair of BCCA, I’m troubled by the recent events at Hampton concerning the student newspaper,” said Dr. Valerie D. White of Florida A&M University.
“If student journalists are not able to practice their craft on their campuses, then it will become very difficult for them to get journalism jobs. From there, it’s a domino effect. We will be unable to increase the number of blacks in the newsrooms.”
After the Script was confiscated, a task force was created to make sure such a situation did not happen again. The task force recommendations accepted by Acting President JoAnn Haysbert last December declared that, “Oversight and guidance from a faculty advisor (or advisors) with adequate journalistic knowledge and an appreciation and commitment to the Hampton model are necessary.”
The students wanted an adviser who knew about journalism, but it is not clear that they viewed the lack of one as a reason to prevent them from publishing.
Yuri Rodgers Milligan of the school’s public relations office, who serves as the Script’s business adviser, said today that “the Hampton model” meant that students from any major could work on the newspaper.
She had predicted last week that the paper would find an adviser in order for the paper to publish as scheduled, and said today that she had nothing new to report.
But Earl Caldwell, who holds a chair at the journalism school and who headed the task force, told Journal-isms that the students themselves could be the cause of the predicament.
Being the adviser “is a very huge, demanding role, and it’s made tougher when the feeling is they feel the person is not going to be a positive asset,” he said of the Script staff. “People are not looking for headaches. When you put up the stop sign, people go on about their business.”
Editor-in-chief Talia Buford could not be reached for comment. Caldwell said the paper failed to cover some of the positive things on campus, such as his bringing in a number of prominent black journalists as part of his oral history project.
The task force recommendations also provided that, “An Advisory Board be established and empowered to resolve issues between the editors and advisers.”
Caldwell confirmed that he had resigned from that advisory board, saying he had shifted his focus. “I do not want to be on the sidelines when the action is in the classroom,” he said, speaking of such new initiatives as “a little writing school-within-a-school” being created in the journalism school. “I have a positive opportunity to be involved,” he said.
The Script’s performance after the confiscation incident drew accolades from First Amendment advocates.
Buford won a Special Recognition award from the Hampton Roads Black Media Professionals, the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award in print journalism from the Playboy Foundation, one of two scholarships from the Society of Professional Journalists-Virginia Pro Chapter, and the NABJ Student Journalist of the Year award.
In addition, she became one of 10 college journalism students to receive a $10,000 scholarship from the Scripps Howard Foundation.
Baltimore Sun Adds 2 Black Women to Editorial Page
Marjorie Valbrun, former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Philadelphia Inquirer, and Diane Camper, a former editorial writer for the New York Times who has been working with the Annie Casey Foundation, an advocacy group for “disadvantaged children and their families,” are joining the Baltimore Sun editorial board.
The Sun’s board has been without an African American since Jean Thompson left for New York last month.
“I don’t hire people on the basis of color,” editorial page editor Dianne Donovan told Journal-isms. “I interviewed many candidates and I don’t think you could find two more qualified people. The fact that one is African American and the other is Haitian American is a real plus.”
Camper, who left the Times in 1997 and became public affairs manager at the Casey foundation, is to become assistant editorial page editor, the number three position, Donovan said, joining Oct. 25.
“From both the work at the New York Times and what she has done for Casey, she’s steeped in issues specific to Baltimore,” where she lives, Donovan said, referring to urban problems.
Valbrun, a native of Haiti, joins the first week of October, Donovan said. She has been teaching journalism at Howard University since she left the Wall Street Journal in December. Valbrun told Journal-isms she was working on a book on Haitian immigration and would write at the Sun about immigration, housing, Latin America and the Caribbean.
“Baltimore is ripe for writing about many of the social and political issues that I care deeply about,” she said.
Valbrun was a Nieman fellow at Harvard University from 1996 to 1997 and won an Alicia Patterson Fellowship in 2001 for a year-long investigative project on Haitian-Americans? emergence in U.S. politics. She won a first place reporting award from NABJ in 1992 for international reporting on Haiti, and was selected “Journalist of the Year” in 1994 by the Garden State Association of Black Journalists.
Telemundo Staffers Still Out After Fatal Crash
“The reporter and two cameramen from WSNS-Channel 44 who were involved in a fatal collision in their news van still weren’t back at work Monday — one week after the accident,” Robert Feder reports in the Chicago Sun-Times.
“Officials of the Telemundo Spanish-language outlet said reporter Enrique Garcia Fuentes was expected back this week. Cameraman Jorge Lara, who was treated for minor injuries, is expected back next week. Cameraman Carmen Capriola, who was driving the van and was more seriously injured, will be out longer.
“All three were heading south on Interstate 55 to Springfield to cover the shooting of a guard in the Capitol Sept. 20 when a tire on their van blew near Dwight, Ill. Capriola lost control of the 2002 Ford van, which crossed the median and struck another vehicle, killing an Oak Lawn minister, the Rev. Terry Allie, and his wife, Wendy Allie. The van then struck another car, injuring the driver, Mohammad Ali of Villa Park,” Feder continued.
“Investigations are under way to determine the cause of the blowout. No citations have been issued.”
Is It “Women” or “White Women”? (Con’t)
Last week, we noted that there had been much coverage about the reasons Democrat John Kerry’s appeal to “women” voters appears to be shrinking, and asked whether the stories should actually say “white women.”
A CBS News/New York Times poll on the subject, for example, turned out not to have included enough women of color “to analyze them separately,” according to Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis.
On “The Diane Rehm Show” on National Public Radio, hosted today by Susan Page of USA Today, Anna Greenberg, Democratic pollster and vice president of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, was even more definitive.
“When we look at analysis, we tend to look at white women,” she said. “African Americans are about as solidly Democratic as you can get.”
J-Chair Asks, What If Dan Rather Were Black?
If it were Bernard Shaw or Ed Bradley who were in Dan Rather’s shoes today, would the discussion about the anchor’s journalistic blunder instead be about race and affirmative action?
So suggests Frank Harris III, chairman of the journalism department at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, in a piece yesterday in the Hartford Courant.
“If Dan Rather were black and at the center of the flap about President George W. Bush’s National Guard record, there’d be some crazy tunes humming in the ear of the American public about affirmative action and unqualified blacks and the sacrifice of competence to fulfill some politically correct social agenda,” his op-ed piece begins.
“And there’d be questions whistling around about how this embarrassing episode could ever happen, and blacks throughout the newsroom would feel the chill in the air and the heat of the glare magnified upon them.
Harris goes on to quote Lew Brown, a retired black TV journalist who spent more than 20 years at Hartford’s NBC affiliate, writing:
“‘Still, the racial aspect I can’t help but mention,’ Brown added, referring to the difference in how Jayson Blair brought race into the spotlight — vs. nothing of the such with Rather. . . .
“This shows the advantage of being in the majority: He doesn’t have to worry about making it hard on the rest of the race.”
Bennie Ivory, Susan Ihne Win Diversity Awards
“Bennie Ivory, executive editor and vice president for news at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., and Susan Ihne, executive editor of the St. Cloud (Minn.) Times, have been named winners of the third annual Robert G. McGruder Awards for Diversity Leadership,” the Associated Press reports.
“The two will be honored at the Associated Press Managing Editors association conference Oct. 13-16 in Louisville.
“The awards recognize support for diversity in newspaper newsrooms and are given by APME and the American Society of Newspaper Editors in partnership with the Freedom Forum, which provides funding. Each honoree receives $2,500 and a sculpture representing leadership.”
Getler Leaving as Washington Post Ombudsman
” Michael Getler will formally end his tenure as Ombudsman of The Washington Post at the end of December, after a diligent, insightful and forthright tour of duty punctuating a distinguished career of nearly 35 years with The Washington Post Company,” Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. announced to the Post staff today.
“The search for Mike?s successor will be broad and deliberate. The job is wide open,” Downie wrote.
“The ombudsman is first and foremost the internal critic for and of The Post. Every week, Mike receives more than 1,000 communications from readers and staff members via telephone, e-mail, snail mail and word of mouth regarding the news and editorial content of The Post. In addition to responding to scores of them, he writes the weekly column for the Sunday Editorial Page, and regular?in his case, weekly?internal memos for the staff.
“The Post ombudsman is independent?chosen by a small group of top editors, but not answering to any of them.” Interested parties were urged to contact Milton Coleman, deputy managing editor, at (202) 334-6224 no later than Nov. 15.
Robert C. Maynard was one of the first Post ombudsmen, named to the job in the fall of 1972 and serving through February 1974. A second African American, New York Daily News columnist E.R. Shipp, held the job from 1998 to 2000.
2 Native Columnists Praise New D.C. Museum
Two Native columnists writing in North Dakota’s Grand Forks Herald spoke favorably of the new National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall in Washington.
“When a group from South America saw their exhibit, they were so touched that they dropped to their knees and cried, a friend told me. She cried, too,” related Dorreen Yellow Bird, a regular Herald columnist.
Mary Annette Pember, a former president of the Native American Journalists Association, wrote in a guest column:
“As I read about the opening events, procession and celebrations, I realized that for the first time in my 40-plus years I’ve seen Indian people being featured prominently in the news not in relation to substance abuse, poverty or crime, but rather as vital members of this country.
“As an Indian woman, this fact alone makes this a day for me to celebrate.”
Race Angle in Sudan Called Oversimplified
“For news outlets covering the conflict in Sudan, the killings, rapes, and razing of villages boils down to one factor?race.” writes Ta-Nehisi Coates in his “Press Clips” column in New York’s Village Voice.
“The Washington Post and The New York Times have repeatedly characterized attacks by the Arab riders of the government-backed Janjaweed as a war against ‘black Africans.’ The Associated Press has referred to the turmoil in the Darfur region as fighting between Arabs and ‘ethnic Africans.’
“Clinging to race as an explain-all theory might make for more readable stories, but it has a central flaw. Many of the Sudanese ‘Arabs’ are as dark as the ‘ethnic Africans’ they are at war with.
“It is as if the media can’t conceive of the possibility that there might be black Arabs.”
Bill Fletcher, president of TransAfrica Forum, the lobby for Africa and the Caribbean, was one of those quoted by Coates. He told Journal-isms today that “a complicated situation has been made simple” in the news media.
For a better understanding, he recommended that journalists turn to the Human Rights Watch reports on the Sudan, to the Web site AfricaAction.org, or to items on TransAfrica’s own Web site.
Pioneer Macon Black Journalist to Be Honored
“For many of her nearly 40 years at The Telegraph, Mildred Henderson was the matriarch of the newsroom,” begins a story by Ella Haynes-Hooks in Georgia’s Macon Telegraph.
“This weekend, a midstate journalists group will pay tribute to her ground-breaking efforts by awarding its first scholarships in her honor.
“Henderson became editor of The Telegraph’s segregated news pages on Dec. 26, 1951, and in the process she became The Telegraph’s first black journalist. She gathered and wrote four columns of news on weekdays and two pages on Sundays for Macon’s black residents.
“The newspaper’s offices were on Cherry Street in those days, but Henderson’s one-woman operation was set up on Cotton Avenue in the midst of Macon’s black businesses. . . .”
“In 1961, The Telegraph moved to a new building on Broadway, taking its entire white staff. Henderson, however, was not asked to come along.
“‘I asked where I was going to be, and that office got so quiet. It hurt, but I worked on at Cotton Avenue. They tried to tell me that I wanted to be in the area with colored businesses, that Negroes would be more comfortable in that environment.'”
Henderson died Aug. 6, 1997, six days shy of her 75th birthday.
The Telegraph today has African Americans as its top two news executives.
But The Telegraph also saw two African American reporters leave the paper in recent months over plagiarism charges.
The story about Henderson thus ends with, “This article includes references from previous Telegraph articles as well as information from Henderson’s obituary program.”
GOP Puts Joseph Phillips on Black Journalists
The Republican National Committee has used Michael L. Williams, the commissioner of the Railroad Commission of Texas, and Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele in its efforts to explain the party’s positions to black journalists.
Today, a third black Republican was to have a conference call with black reporters: former “Cosby Show” actor and commentator Joseph C. Phillips.
“These last 34 days you?ll see the Democrats? ramp up their divide and divert tactics because their worst fear is for African-Americans to learn the truth about Republicans,” says Phillips in a message to the reporters.
Michael Lee Moves From Hawks to Wizards
“Michael Lee, who for the past couple years has covered the Atlanta Hawks for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, has been hired as our new Washington Wizards beat writer,” Washington Post sports editors Emilio Garcia-Ruiz and Matt Vita write to the Post staff.
“Michael has spent his entire professional career in Atlanta, beginning with a 1997 internship. He was named a staff writer in May of 1988 and spent four years as a general assignment reporter covering everything from high school sports to contributing coverage on the Atlanta Braves playing in the World Series.
“He is an accomplished beat writer whose skills will fit in very well here.
“Michael attended Florida A&M but vows to try to get along with Howard alumni in the building. His first day is Oct. 4, which happens to coincide with the opening of training camp.”
Court TV Show: Rappers vs. the Law
“Russell Simmons has joined with Court TV to create a new series of specials called Russell Simmons Presents: Hip-Hop Justice,” Ta-Nehisi Coates continues in his “Press Clips” column.
“According to Simmons, the documentary program will highlight clashes between rappers and the law, from the perspective of the rappers themselves. Simmons argues that this will, in turn, shine a light on problems that afflict the hip-hop generation, like racial profiling and police brutality,” Coates writes in the Village Voice.