Journalists of Color Among 60 to 70 Laid Off
The Dallas Morning News laid off 60 to 70 people today in what some were calling a “massacre” that involved several long-serving employees, including Ira Hadnot, the president of the Dallas/Fort Worth Association of Black Communicators, and at least nine other journalists of color.
“I was the only African American laid off on the religion desk,” where she had begun to cover black megachurches, an overlooked area. “I think it was devastating. I worked for IJE [the Institute for Journalism Education]. I’ve worked in these newsrooms recruiting people of color. I’ve run high school journalism programs across the country. I’ve been on the front of this diversity business since 1977. If this is the climate of the times — that we don’t care about diversity, then there’s no point in my going back into the newsroom,” Hadnot said.
“I don’t want to face this again [elsewhere] in another five years.”
Linda Jones, a 10-year reporter who was also laid off, told Journal-isms, “The question is whether they want diversity in the real sense.”
The Belo Co., parent company of the News and WFAA/Channel 8, said Sept. 29 it would cut 250 jobs beginning Nov. 1 in response to essentially flat revenues in North Texas, as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported at the time.
“Most of the positions eliminated, which amount to 3 percent of Belo’s 7,900-member work force, will occur at The Morning News. Publisher Jim Moroney told staff members that the paper would lose 150 positions, a third of them in the newsroom. The newspaper has 2,200 employees.
“The cost-cutting moves come about two months after Belo disclosed that The Morning News had inflated its circulation figures. The admission prompted Belo to take a $26 million charge against earnings to cover compensation to advertisers and other expenses. The revelation also led it to fire a top Morning News executive.”
Layoffs at Channel 8 and the News’ Washington bureau were announced earlier.
Today, according to employees, staff members were called in one by one and told their layoffs were made as business decisions that had nothing to do with them personally.
They were given one week’s pay in severance for every year worked there, and a month’s worth of benefits, such as health insurance.
There was no official announcement and executives considered the names of those laid off to be confidential.
However, an informal list put together by employees based on word of mouth and observation showed at least five Latinos, four African Americans and one Asian American.
Some of the paper’s marquee names were on the overall list, but there were “very few bosses,” said religion writer Jeffrey Weiss. Most were reporters and copy editors, he said.
Weiss told Journal-isms that three years ago, after another set of layoffs, the late reporter Howard Swindle had an idea to pass the hat to help those leaving. Investigative reporter Steve McGonigle thought to revive the idea this year, and asked Weiss to be a co-signer, he said. Buckets in the newsroom — which he said would be up until next Friday — have now collected “in the thousands of dollars.”
It was like living “under the sword of Damocles” once the intention to lay people off was announced last month, Hadnot said.
Sportswriter Rick Alonzo, who spent 5 1/2 years at the paper, told Journal-isms that, “you have a month to think about what might happen and who might get laid off. It creates a nervous situation. You never think you’re going to be laid off, but at the same time, you know it’s a possibility.”
Alonzo, 29, covered Texas Christian and Baylor universities in a department where “there’s not a lot of Latinos.” “It’s odd not having to face deadline; I don’t have to file today,” he said from home, “when you’ve basically been on deadline for 5 1/2 years.”
Hadnot said she planned to give up her post as president of the Dallas chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, believing she was no longer eligible, but metro columnist James Ragland, the immediate past president, said that since Hadnot was selected when she was in good standing, “I hope we can keep her.”
Acel Moore Struggling With Muscle Disease
Acel Moore, a Pulitzer winner, a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists and an associate editor and columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer, has been stricken with a muscle disease that has kept him out of the office for three months.
However, Moore told Journal-isms today, “this may go into remission. I’m going to survive this,” though at one point, he said, “I thought I was going to die.”
Moore, who turned 64 on Oct. 5, said he had myasthenia gravis, defined as a disease of faulty nerve conduction.
He said he began to feel pain and weakness after the Aug. 4-8 Unity convention, which he attended partly in his role as director of recruiting and staff development, and where the Inquirer hired two people.
He alerted readers to his condition in an Oct. 18 column that began:
“You didn’t really think this election would pass without a comment from me, did you?
“Due to a medical condition that has left me acutely, but not permanently disabled, there has been no Urban Perspective column for three months. I’m getting stronger, and I’ll explain in my next offering why I have been missing in action. But right now it is more important for me to share my feelings about the most important presidential election of my lifetime.”
He has not yet written the follow-up column. Moore is still working, however, saying he spent an hour on the phone yesterday with Jesse Jackson.
“I don’t take for granted the things that you instinctively do, like getting into the car and driving away,” Moore said. He said he felt humbled.
Moore’s Pulitzer came in 1977 for local investigative specialized reporting, when he and Wendell Rawls Jr. won for their reports on conditions in the Farview (Pa.) State Hospital for the mentally ill.
In April, Moore was honored as the Inquirer celebrated the 20th anniversary of its high school career development workshop, which he created.
Moore can be reached at amoore@phillynews.com.
Bush Rejects Interview with Black Press
“President George W. Bush has rejected invitations to be interviewed by reporters from the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service, which provides stories to more than 200 African-American newspapers,” reports Makebra M. Anderson for NNPA.
Bush had previously rejected an interview request from Black Entertainment Television (BET), which reaches 80 million households.
“. . . The NNPA News Service operates under the NNPA Foundation. Brian Townsend, president of the NNPA Foundation, says: ‘If President Bush values each potential voter, as he proclaims, he should be eager to address our readers. It?s unfortunate that he would pass up these opportunities in what is expected to be a close election,'” the story continued.
“Although Bush has refused to be interviewed by members of the Black Press, his Democratic opponent, John Kerry, has granted two exclusive interviews to the NNPA News Service and sat for a 30-minute interview with Ed Gordon that aired on BET.
“Bush, like Kerry, did accept an invitation from American Urban Radio network to speak to Black America without fielding any questions.”
Bush, Kerry Grant Interviews to Univision
“As Election Day closes in, the Bush and Kerry campaigns are giving nearly as much strategic thought to which TV networks the candidates will talk to as they are to where the candidates will campaign,” as Mark Memmott writes in USA Today.
And while President Bush isn’t doing black media, he has given an interview at the White House to Univision, which plans to air interviews with both Bush and Democrat John Kerry as part of an election package Saturday night.
The interviews will air on ?Sábado Gigante? (Gigantic Saturday), according to a Univision news release, hosted by Mario Kreutzberger, better known as ?Don Francisco.?
“One hour of the three-hour program is dedicated to the 2004 presidential election and includes intimate interviews with the candidates, highlights the importance of voting, and presents issues of particular interest to Hispanics. Don Francisco met with Senator Kerry in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and with President George W. Bush in Washington D.C., to talk candidly about their campaigns and their thoughts on immigration, amnesty, family values and religion.
“Don Francisco stresses the significance of the Hispanic vote to television viewers and the power of the Hispanic vote.”
NPR Plans Two-Hour Special on Black Vote
National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation” is planning a two-hour NPR News election special Thursday, Oct. 28, on “African American issues and perspectives on the upcoming Presidential election. Our special host will be award winning journalist Ed Gordon, former anchor and chief correspondent for Black Entertainment Television,” a news release says.
“NPR will examine the history of the Black vote in American politics, its significance this year, and African American perspectives on the issues driving this Presidential Election. Among the guests expected to participate are:
- Ron Walters, professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland-College Park
- George Stephanopolous, ABC News
- George Curry, editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service and BlackPressUSA.com
- Jehmu Greene, MTV Rock the Vote
- Juan Williams, NPR News and Fox News
- Russell Simmons, chairman, Hip-Hop Summit Action Network
“To find the station in your area go to www.npr.org/stations or www.npr.org/wheretohear “
Tom Joyner’s Praise of Kerry Not What It Seems
Those entreaties to vote on radio’s syndicated “Tom Joyner Morning Show,” followed by sound packages of misstatements by President Bush, followed in turn by sound bites showing the Bush statements to be lies, are not what they seem.
Nor is the effusive praise of Democrat John Kerry, who has appeared three times on the show.
“Tom has not/does not formally endorse any candidate,” Joyner spokesman Neil Foote told Journal-isms.
Foote sent along these other “talking points”:
- “Invitations to Bush and Kerry have been extended throughout the campaign to appear on the show.
- “Kerry has accepted. Monday’s interview was his third appearance on the show.
- “Bush/RNC has had surrogates on the show, including Md. Lt. Gov. Michael Steele; Ohio Lt. Gov. Jennette Bradley.
- “Tom’s website BlackAmericaWeb.com covered both the DNC & RNC as well as featured stories on all aspects of the campaign. NOTE: recent series of pieces on growing number of Blacks supporting Bush around the country — a story we had in progress before the poll announcing the same results.
- “Tom’s ‘Early Voter Celebration’ Day last Friday was a sign that Tom’s message to Black folks is that they need to get out to vote — period. He held events in several cities that have been deemed ‘red’ states: Las Vegas, NV; Durham NC, Little Rock, AK; Nashville, TN; Houston TX. . . . possible ‘blue’ state was Orlando, Fla.”
Greg Moore Not a Part of Paper’s Bush Endorsement
President Bush has won over only six papers that backed Al Gore, including the Denver Post, which received 700 letters — all of them protesting the move, Howard Kurtz reports in the Washington Post.
And this is the first presidential election year in which Greg Moore has been editor of the paper.
“I have nothing to do with the editorial board and did not participate in any way with the endorsement, thankfully,” Moore told Journal-isms.
Jackson: Media Downplay Black Election Issues
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, campaigning hard for John Kerry, told black newspaper columnists today that the white media had not sufficiently explained the stakes in the election for African Americans.
“What’s important to the media culturally, that becomes the headline,” he said.
As an example, he cited Vice President Dick Cheney‘s admission in the vice presidential debate that he was not aware of the fast spread of AIDS among African American women. There was no “affinity” for that issue among media leaders, he said.
Jackson said in a conference call with members of the Trotter Group of African American columnists that President Bush had appointed a scant number of black federal judges and that four Supreme Court justices could be appointed by the next president — “this could be the determinant of 50 years of law.”
He said that 40 blacks were running for Congress, and thus, voters should be focusing on more than the head of the ticket. In response to an Oct. 19 poll from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies that showed that 18 percent of African Americans say they would vote for Bush, doubling the 9 percent that had said they would support him in the Center’s 2000 poll, Jackson said Bush was getting unwarranted credit from black pastors for his faith-based programs.
Those started under President Lyndon B. Johnson‘s Great Society, and “most of the money went to white churches,” he said.
Jackson also said that many young potential voters were being undercounted in polls because many use cell phones, and he said that 100 cartons of nonperishable foods were sitting in Haitian ports, unable to get to the starving because of the lack of security. “Bush has not supported the strength to get the goods delivered,” he said. “Haiti is off the radar screen.”
Coverage Might Show Journos Are Losing Touch
Just about the only book timed for the 2004 elections by a black journalist is “Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters and Other Selected Essays,” by multimedia journalist Farai Chideya (Soft Skull Press, $13.95, paper). Chideya says journalists might be thinking of the election in the wrong way.
She told Journal-isms that, “What ‘Trust’ lays on the table is not a battle between two parties, between Red and Blue, but between two ways of thinking of American democracy:
“1) a perfectly conceived system, where the fraud in 2000 was a quirk
“2) an evolving system, where race and class warfare have been integrated into the system; a system that has gotten better but needs to be overhauled; and one in which journalists, by focusing only on the red and blue, are losing touch with the dissatisfaction of the American population with this system — and losing market share to people like Jon Stewart.”
Russell Simmons Gives Editors “Wake-Up Call”
“Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons did not mince words today as he took the magazine industry to task for its lack of cultural diversity,” Matthew Flamm reports for Crain’s New York Business.
“Speaking on the third day of the American Magazine Conference in Boca Raton, Fla., Mr. Simmons told an audience of more than 500 of the nation?s top magazine executives that they had failed to acknowledge the overwhelming influence that hip-hop has had on youth culture.
“‘You are in the business of spotting trends, and you?ve been largely absent,’ said Mr. Simmons, who is chief executive of Rush Communications and the founder of Def Jam Recordings and the Phat Farm apparel brand. Describing hip-hop as a great brand-building culture, he said that the inattention of marketers and magazines had been good for him. ‘You?re not thinking about it, so I can build another business,’ he said.
“. . . Mr. Simmons drew some negative criticism himself. Diane Weathers, editor in chief of Essence magazine, asked the entrepreneur about what could be done to combat negative stereotyping in some rap lyrics and videos. Mr. Simmons agreed there was a problem, but insisted that current artists were less sexist than those in the previous generation.
“. . . ‘It was a wake-up call,’ says Tom Ryder, CEO of Readers? Digest Association Inc. and chairman of the board of the Magazine Publishers Association, the trade group sponsoring the conference. ‘He talked about things we need to know.'”