E.J. Mitchell Gets Top News Job at Tennessean
Everett J. Mitchell II was named vice president/news and editor of The Tennessean in Nashville today, the first black journalist to hold the job.
Mitchell, 42, has been managing editor of the Detroit News. He takes over from Frank Sutherland, who retired Sept. 30, and he reportedly hit the ground running.
“In Nashville, Mitchell will lead a newsroom staff of about 170 journalists,” Deborah W. Fisher reported on the Tennessean’s Web site.
“After making a short speech Monday morning to the newsroom staff, Mitchell said he would concentrate on public service journalism, watchdog journalism, First Amendment journalism and ‘news that makes a difference in people’s lives,'” Fisher wrote.
Later in the day, Dwight Lewis, a columnist, regional editor and member of the editorial board told Journal-isms, Mitchell advised the staff that he wanted to make the paper known for its investigative work and that he had high expectations.
He asked those in the newsroom to submit — on hard copy so he could file them — a three-paragraph biography of themselves, including “what you need to make your job better.” He said he intended to meet individually with everyone.
Of the three finalists for the job — the others were Henry Freeman, editor of the Journal News in Westchester County, N.Y., and Carolyn Washburn, editor of The Idaho Statesman in Boise — Mitchell was the only one who met with other than the higher-ups, said Lewis, who has been at the paper 33 years. “People appreciated that. He talked to people. They want somebody who will clear the path for them,” Lewis said of the staff.
Mitchell previously worked for Gannett papers in Salem, Ore., and Louisville, Ky.
Sutherland, who retired after 15 years of leading the Tennessean, followed the legendary editor and publisher John Seigenthaler, who was also an aide to Robert Kennedy, was USA Today’s first editorial page editor and was founder of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center in Nashville.
A series by Willy Stern in the alternative Nashville Scene, “Grading the Daily,” portrayed the Gannett-owned paper as having declined in quality since the Seigenthaler era. It won the National Press Club press criticism award in 2002, and was honored in other contests.
While Nashville is known for country music, it has sought to widen that image. It has aggressively rebuilt its downtown. It has a civil rights tradition and is the home of historically black Fisk and Tennessee State universities and Meharry Medical College. As home to the First Amendment Center and the Freedom Forum’s Diversity Institute, it has also become a magnet for visiting journalists.
[Added Dec. 7: Lelan A. Statom, a meteorologist at WTVF-TV who is president of the Nashville Association of Black Journalists, said his advice to Mitchell is to “get out more in the African American community and continue to work on diversity. They have done a good job, but they’re not all the way there. And there is a growing Hispanic community,” he added. He said he was largely satisfied with the paper’s coverage of African Americans, particularly with its Davidson County (Nashville) supplement, Davidson A.M.]
Jeff Rivers Among Those Laid Off in Hartford
Jeff Rivers, who has been newsroom recruiter at Connecticut’s Hartford Courant for 15 years as he performed other duties there, was told today that his is among seven positions being eliminated under cost-cutting orders from the parent Tribune Co.
“Going down these positions, after 17 months of attrition, is a serious hassle,” editor Brian Toolan said in a memo to the staff. “Disrupting the careers of worthy people who had committed to The Courant is just plain awful. We also confront downsizing in Washington. We have five people who have been working from there. That number will be reduced to two. . . .
“Three other staffers here have left in the past six weeks. Two have resigned and another has retired. A fourth person is also considering resigning. These reductions and the dollars that are attached to them should satisfy the targets we were directed to reach.
“. . . If you are disappointed in anyone, then be disappointed in me,” Toolan added. “I thought I could keep layoffs from hitting the newsroom. I was wrong.”
Rivers, 50, and the father of a 16- and an 11-year-old, was upbeat as he discussed his career at the Courant, mentioning that he had written a sports and features column simultaneously until November 2001, and had also been a corporate trainer and a school teacher. “I don’t regret a single moment I spent at the Hartford Courant,” he told Journal-isms.
A 1981 graduate of the Maynard Institute’s Summer Program for Minority Journalists, Rivers was also a recruitment and placement director for the institute in the late 1980s.
He said that anyone with job leads may e-mail him at rivrite@hotmail.com.
In another development, Knight Ridder Tribune told its Washington office staffers last week that it was closing its News in Motion section, which created animated graphics. Three people of color are among those who will be laid off.
Ritual, Song Punctuate Services for Roy Aarons
There were Cole Porter tunes, dance, readings and slide shows as some 250 to 300 people gathered at the Center for Spiritual Living Saturday in Santa Rosa, Calif., to mourn and celebrate the life of Leroy Aarons.
Aarons, the Maynard Institute founding board member, onetime editor of the Oakland Tribune and founder of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, died Nov. 28 at age 70 after a heart attack. It followed a struggle with bladder cancer.
The tributes were more personal than professional, said Steve Montiel, who worked with Aarons at the Maynard Institute and later at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication, where Aarons created and directed the Sexual Orientation Issues in the News program. Montiel directs Annenberg’s Institute for Justice and Journalism.
At Saturday’s service, guests were invited to participate in an old Jewish mourning ritual by tearing a part of a black ribbon and attaching it to their clothes. The Cole Porter numbers “Every Time We Say Goodbye,” “You Make Me Feel So Young” and “You Do Something to Me” punctuated the service, and a slide show featured music from “Prayers for Bobby,” based on Aarons’ book by that name. The work is an account of a family coping with the suicide of a gay son who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge. A friend read from it.
Among the journalists present, Montiel said, were Geoff Cowan, dean of the Annenberg School; Joel Dreyfuss, editor of Red Herring magazine; Mireya Navarro of the New York Times; Raul Ramirez of KQED-FM in the Bay Area; Larry Olmstead of Knight Ridder; Bruce Brugmann of the San Francisco Bay Guardian; Lisa Chung of the San Jose Mercury News; Erna Smith of San Francisco State University; Tim Porter, formerly of the San Francisco Examiner; Kevin Fagan of the San Francisco Chronicle; and Dori J. Maynard and Steven Chin of the Maynard Institute. They represented the various phases of Aarons’ career.
“Everyone still feels so shocked because even though he had gone through so much, he was doing so well. He was planning to go to L.A. this week. I was going to have lunch with him,” Montiel recalled.
The service “was so Roy,” said Pamela Strother, executive director of NLGJA. “The man who delivered the service,” Edward Viljoen, minister at the center, “really knew Roy. There couldn’t have been anyone more critical to the ceremony, knowing him as we did. It was an incredible moment in my life. The family was so incredibly raw and open with their emotions, it gave us all permission to just let it go.” Of Aarons, she said, “It was so important to him to have all those who he loved to love each other.”
An East Coast memorial service is planned in Manhattan for Saturday, Jan. 22, from 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., she said.
Flying Dreams: Memorial for Roy Aarons (Steven Chin, Maynard Institute)
Brian Williams: “Bigger Problems” Than Diversity
Others might be concerned that the retirements of Dan Rather at CBS and Tom Brokaw of NBC apparently will be followed by another generation of white male network anchors, but Brokaw’s successor, Brian Williams, isn’t sweating it.
In the November issue of United Airlines’ Hemispheres magazine, Williams was interviewed by Sherry Amatenstein, who asked:
“There are few women and people of color in top jobs at news organizations. How do we address this lack of diversity?
Williams replied:
“We have bigger problems. There are no black members of the U.S. Senate. We should keep some perspective on this. Nevertheless, I am constantly interested to hear of examples in our coverage where viewers think we got it wrong in one way or another because of a skewed viewpoint.”
The item was spotted by Robert Redding of the Washington Times as he was traveling, and he wrote about it on his Web site.
NBC spokeswoman Barbara Levin did not return a telephone call from Journal-isms about Williams’ comment.
Tavis Smiley: NPR Not Moving “Fast Enough”
Tavis Smiley apparently isn’t soothed much by National Public Radio’s insistence that his talk show attracted “the most diverse audience of any on National Public Radio,” as vice president for communications David Umansky replied last week after Smiley announced he would leave the network.
In his first interview since the Nov. 29 announcement, Smiley told Christopher John Farley of Time magazine, ?We had agreed on the destination we were to arrive at, but somewhere along the line NPR wavered in the journey. Our show is the most multiracial in NPR?s entire history, it has the youngest demographic of any show in NPR?s history, so progress was being made. My concern was the pace the network was moving at — it wasn?t fast enough.”
“It is ironic that a Republican President has an Administration that is more inclusive and more diverse than a so-called liberal-media-elite network,” the talk-show host said later in response to Time’s “10 Questions For Tavis Smiley.”
Meanwhile, NPR announced today that Renee Montagne and Steve Inskeep would become permanent hosts of “Morning Edition,” posts they assumed in May when they abruptly replaced Bob Edwards.
NPR spokesman Chad Campbell told Journal-isms that others had applied for the jobs.
“The search process was the same one used by NPR in seeking the All Things Considered hosts and backup hosts for Morning Edition,” he said via e-mail. “The openings were posted on NPR’s website and interested parties were invited to send their bios. Once the bios were culled, finalists were interviewed by NPR staff/executive(s), and they were required to do off-air interviews and write interviews. At the end of the process, senior management determined Steve and Renee were the best choices.”
A Disabled Norman Lockman Retires His Column
Norman Lockman, columnist and associate editor at the News Journal in Wilmington, Del., has told readers he has written his last column, though he remains with the paper and on its masthead.
“Journalism is like driving. You need to know when to stop doing it well before you become a hazard to yourself and others. Good journalism cannot be done by phone,” he wrote. “It requires being able to scurry around, seeing, tasting and smelling the things you write about from as close as possible without getting mixed up in the story. My chronic illness makes that hard to do, so I’m going to hang up my slouch hat and turn in my press card while I can still bring this old career of mine in for a nice smooth landing. I’ve seen too many plummet to earth like ruptured ducks from hanging on too long.”
Lockman, 66, told Journal-isms today he has been battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, for four years.
“The only time I have not written one or two weekly columns in the past 35 years was during the seven years when I was the Journal’s managing editor. I was delighted to get kicked upstairs in 1991 to be associate editorial page editor, so I could be a columnist again,” he wrote. The column is also syndicated via the Gannett News Service.
In 1984, while at the Boston Globe, Lockman was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative specialized reporting for a series examining race relations in Boston. He was at the Globe for nine years, as a reporter, editorial writer, political columnist and State House bureau chief before returning in 1984 to Wilmington, where he had begun his career in 1969.
In April, Lockman attended a gathering of Pulitzer winners of color in Washington, sponsored by the National Association of Minority Media Executives. He was photographed there in his wheelchair, surrounded by other Pulitzer winners. Lockman is also a founding member of the Trotter Group of African American columnists.
Asked what he planned to do next, at first he said, “nothing — absolutely nothing.” Then he said he planned to “go through memorabilia, sort through it — it will be fun.”
D.C. Journalists Spend 5 Weeks With High Schoolers
Five Washington journalists are taking part in a program that releases them from their regular newsroom duties for five weeks to help high school students start student-run news media or reinvigorate existing ones.
The five are reporter Sam Ford and veteran camerawoman Pege Gilgannon of WJLA-TV; Kim Willis, features editor at USA Today; Jonathan Blakley, associate editor of the National Public Radio Newscast Unit, and Doug Mitchell, who heads NPR’s Next Generation Radio program.
Director of the program is Dorothy Gilliam, retired Washington Post columnist and Maynard Institute board member, who helped secure a $150,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to fund the one-year pilot program, which is called Prime Movers.
The program builds on Gilliam’s experience as founder and director of the Washington Post?s Young Journalists Development Program, which encourages high school students to pursue careers in journalism.
Gilliam left the Post in July 2003 after 35 years to expand the concept of working with high school journalists nationally, through George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs.
Gilliam estimates that the five journalists collectively will work directly with more than 300 students. Eight George Washington students are to assist the veteran journalists and teachers in the assigned high school, visit the media properties and be mentored by the journalists. Participating schools are Ballou and Roosevelt senior high schools in Washington, D.C., and J.E.B. Stuart and Mount Vernon high schools in Northern Virginia.
Fla. Paper to Launch Spanish-Language Weekly
“The Ledger in Lakeland, Fla., will launch a Spanish-language weekly on Dec. 8 to serve a growing Hispanic population in its market between Orlando and Tampa Bay,” Mark Fitzgerald reports in Editor & Publisher.
“Vision Latina will be mailed to 20,000 households with Hispanic surnames and another 10,000 to 15,000 copies will be distributed through newsracks placed in areas with heavy Hispanic populations, Ledger Publisher John Fitzwater said in a telephone interview Thursday.”