His Interviewer Asks Who Network Is Targeting
Talk-show host Tavis Smiley left his National Public Radio show Thursday without an extended goodbye to listeners, but on salon.com, he issued more detailed broadside at NPR than he has previously. The interviewer, meanwhile, raised questions about whether NPR believes it is in its best interest to target listeners of color.
“Top to bottom. Top down, this organization needs to be more inclusive. From the people who run it to the on-air talent,” Smiley said to interviewer Brian Montopoli. “To the producers. To the subject matter they cover. To the treatment they give topics.”
Smiley cited a lack of “marketing, promotion, outreach. You’d be amazed at the number of people of color who do not know what NPR is. . . . But if they did, they’d tune in. So there’s so much work that needs to be done, that can be done, and after three years of doing most of the heavy lifting, I just wanted a little help.”
However, Montopoli premised some of his questions on an interpretation of public radio research that the research firm challenges.
Montopoli said:
“Public radio has been enormously successful in recent years, thanks in part to David Giovannoni, a public-radio analyst the New York Times calls ‘quite possibly the most influential figure in shaping the sound of National Public Radio today.’ Giovannoni’s research shows that NPR’s core audience — affluent white baby boomers — doesn’t want programming geared toward minorities, or young people, even in moderation. Every time they turn on the radio, he argues, that audience wants to hear the dulcet tones of the Linda Wertheimer sound-alikes who’ve come to define public radio. Many stations believe that following the advice of Giovannoni and his disciples means they will attract more listeners, which means more donations. As a result, their programming has become aggressively unsurprising, rarely straying far from the predictable approach.”
Giovannoni’s firm disputes that analysis of its research.
“Central to Giovannoni’s work (which includes two proprietary analyses of The Tavis Smiley Show) is the finding that formal education and world view . . . are prime predictors of public radio listening,” Leslie Peters, the firm’s “knowledge manager, audience research analysis,” said in a message to a public radio listserve.
“Public broadcasters have long understood how this methodology transcends the limitations of simplistic age, sex, and race demographics.”
Peters referred Journal-isms to the firm’s analysis of “Public Radio’s Minority Audiences,” described as “a special report commissioned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as part of Audience 98, which is the largest and most comprehensive study of the public radio audience to date.”
It begins: “The most important thing to understand about public radio’s minority audience is this:
“There is one.
“In fact, there are many.
“One-in-seven listeners identify themselves as being other than white. That’s over three million minority listeners tuning in each week — double the number of 10 years ago.
“The second most important thing to understand is what serves these listeners:
“Most listen because of their interest in public radio’s hallmark programming.
“Efforts to ‘target’ minority audiences are not without merit or success. But public radio serves more minority listeners — and generally serves them better — with the news, information, and entertainment programming for which it is best known by all of its listeners.
“The remaining point to take away is this:
“Public radio’s minority audience will continue to grow because the college-educated minority population will continue to grow.”
In the salon.com piece, Smiley concluded: “There’s an old adage that says, ‘He who breaks through the brush first, gets the thorns.’ So, I’m leaving with a few thorns that I’ve picked up here and there, but I can tell you this: I don’t know that I made NPR any better, but NPR has sure made me better.
“I leave NPR not bitter, but better. Better as a person, better as a man, better as a talent, this experience for me — it’s made me feel better about America. I cannot begin to tell you how this program has made me smarter. I’ve learned so much just hosting the show. I’m going to miss that intellectual vigor, that challenge every day . . . I so much appreciate the opportunity and experience that I’ve had. I just hope that the decision that I’ve made will, for future generations, be a plus in terms of making this network sound more like America looks.”
On the air, Smiley ended his broadcast “by thanking NPR, the African American Radio Consortium,” which had pushed for such a show, “his staff, the member stations and the listeners,” his publicist said.
NPR loses out as Smiley leaves (Leah Samuel, Progressive Media Project)
Amid Buyouts, Isabel, Adams Promoted at Newsday
Amid dissatisfaction among black journalists and a slimmer newsroom as the result of buyout offers, new Newsday editor John Mancini has begun a newsroom reorganization by naming two white women managing editor and elevating two black journalists, one to deputy managing editor; the other to assistant managing editor, among other changes.
The managing editors are Debbie Henley, who is to oversee newsgathering by all departments, except the New York City desk, and Debby Krenek, who is to “supervise the news desks and aspects of content development while continuing to oversee Internet and multi-media activities and the photo and art departments,” according to a story Thursday by James Madore.
Lonnie Isabel and Steve Ruinsky were promoted to deputy managing editor. “Isabel, 53, will oversee the health and science department in addition to his current supervision of national, foreign and state coverage,” the story said. Isabel, a black journalist, is a graduate of the Maynard Institute’s Summer Program for Minority Journalists.
Named as an assistant managing editor for the Part 2 Features section was Genetta Adams, another black journalist, who rises from entertainment editor.
About 20 black journalists at Newsday met with Mancini Dec. 2 and told him of their frustrations over limited mobility and shabby treatment by editors. Mancini said to watch his actions, not his words. Under orders from Tribune Co. to cut costs, some 50 newsroom staffers signaled their intention to accept buyouts. Mancini said then he would try to persuade a number of the 10 black journalists on the buyout list to stay.
Meanwhile, Madore reported today that the New York Daily News has confirmed plans to reduce its newsroom staff through voluntary buyouts.
And the Seattle Weekly reported this week that Seattle Times Managing Editor David Boardman “has been meeting with the more than 300 news staffers to discuss the possibility of layoffs if the paper, as expected, loses more than $12 million this year.”
In addition, after nine years of trying to catch up with CNBC, Time Warner’s CNNfn went off the air Wednesday.
Producer Alturo Rhymes told Journal-isms he has accepted an offer to go to CNBC as a producer for “Power Lunch.”
Fletcher, Sugawara Rise at Washington Post
At the Washington Post, where journalists of color have also been restless, Michael Fletcher has been assigned to the White House team, the first black journalist to have that beat for the Post since Juan Williams 20 years ago; and Sandy Sugawara has been named deputy assistant managing editor for business.
Sugawara has been local business editor, and her resume includes time as the Post’s Asian economic correspondent in Tokyo and reporter covering the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Fletcher, who formerly covered education and race relations, has been out on book leave writing about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with Post associate editor Kevin Merida.
Liz Spayd, assistant managing editor for national news, confirmed a column item by Harry Jaffe in the Washingtonian magazine that Fletcher will join reporters Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker.
Diversity in the Washington Newspaper Press Corps (PDF) (Unity: Journalists of Color, August 2004)
Man Confesses in ’84 Killing of Copy Editor
“A 20-year-old murder case that fomented racial mistrust and led to an innocent man serving 18 years in prison came to a close yesterday, when a suspect identified last year through DNA testing pleaded guilty, acknowledging publicly that he killed newspaper copy editor Deborah Sykes,” Lisa Hoppenjans and Phoebe Zerwick report in North Carolina’s Winston-Salem Journal.
“Willard E. Brown pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, first-degree rape, first-degree kidnapping and common-law robbery in the attack on Sykes in downtown Winston-Salem. As part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, Brown, 44, of Winston-Salem, was sentenced to life plus 10 years in prison.”
The case was the subject of “Murder, Race, Justice: The Case of Darryl Hunt,” an award-winning eight-part series in 2003 by Zerwick, the Journal’s metro columnist,
“The Darryl Hunt case has helped define Winston-Salem’s race relations for nearly 20 years, in terms few people can ignore,” the series introduction said. “He’s that black man the police framed because they couldn’t let the rape of a white woman go unpunished. He’s that black man who’s gotten more second chances than anyone deserves because they played the race card.”
It continued: “In a six-month investigation, The Journal has found that the police used questionable tactics and relied on even more questionable witnesses to bore in on Hunt as a suspect. It shows how legal decisions kept piling up against Hunt, sometimes because defense tactics failed. And it reveals how the state changed its theory of the crime to fit the new DNA evidence rather than re-investigate the case.”
Editor “Haunted” by Gary Webb’s Suicide
“After any suicide, survivors feel guilty. Was there a way it could have been avoided? Was there something we could have said or done to change such a terrible end?” wrote Scott Herhold in California’s San Jose Mercury News.
“Most of the time, the rational answer is no. . . . Yet we’re still haunted, particularly if the person committing suicide distinguished himself doing what we do. Even more so if there’s history.”
Herhold was reflecting on the suicide of Gary Webb, the former Mercury News investigative reporter who shot himself in the head a week ago after being unable to find another job at a metro daily. Webb wrote the 1996 “Dark Alliance” series, which tied the CIA to drug rings that spread crack cocaine in inner cities.
“When the Mercury News backed away from the series in 1997, Gary’s journalistic career was essentially ruined. Gary left the paper not long afterward and took a job as an investigator for the Legislature. More recently, he began writing for an alternative weekly,” Herhold wrote.
“Maybe that’s why the knife twists: Dark Alliance was as much an institutional failure as it was a personal one. Yet Webb bore the chief consequences,” wrote Herhold, who describes himself as Webb’s editor for a year after he came to the Mercury News in 1989.
“How closely were those events linked to last week’s? We may never know. The grapevine among Sacramento reporters says Webb had been depressed for a year, roughly since he was laid off from his legislative job. But his death won’t let us off easy. He didn’t go gentle into that good night.”
Others were harsher on the news media. “First the L.A. Times helped kill off Gary Webb?s career,” wrote Marc Cooper in the L.A. Weekly. “Then, eight years later, after Webb committed suicide this past weekend, the Times decided to give his corpse another kick or two, in a scandalous, self-serving and ultimately shameful obituary.” The L.A. Times, along with the New York Times and Washington Post, wrote stories that sought to discredit Webb’s series.
- Gary Webb Is Dead (David Corn, The Nation)
- Kill the messenger (Nick Schou, Orange County Weekly)
- Fascist smears against Gary Webb continue even in death (Junious Ricardo Stanton, syndicated column)
- Death by Press (Kevin Uhrich, L.A. City Beat)
Added Dec. 19:
- The Pariah (Charles Bowden, Esquire, 1998)
- The culprit behind the crack plague (Eugene Kane, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Stephen Hill Declared Sexual Predator
“Former WCPO reporter Stephen Hill was declared a sexual predator today by a judge in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court,” John London reported Thursday on Cincinnati’s WLWT-TV.
“That means Hill, who had already agreed to serve five years in prison for molesting four teenage boys he was mentoring, will have to report his address to law enforcement officials, report to authorities every 90 days and notify his neighbors that a sexual predator lives in their area.
“Hill would not have had to register if Judge Robert Ruehlman had declared him a sexual offender instead.”
Reporter Disciplined After Using “Colored”
“A Star Tribune reporter was disciplined Thursday after he disclosed that he wrote an e-mail to a Minneapolis police official that contained racially insensitive language,” Paul Gustafson reports in the Star Tribune.
“David Chanen, a police reporter, told editors that he used the term ‘colored officers’ in an e-mail sent Wednesday to Minneapolis Police Inspector Donald Banham, who is black.
“Star Tribune Managing Editor Scott Gillespie sent a letter Thursday to Minneapolis Police Chief Bill McManus saying that the newspaper “owes you and your department a deep and sincere apology” for the language used in the e-mail.
“McManus said Thursday night that the newspaper’s apology ‘should be made to Minneapolis Police Department officers of color, not to me. Certainly, they are all offended by it. This isn’t the 1960s anymore.’
“Gillespie and Chanen said the reporter had intended to use the term ‘officers of color,’ but made an error in rushing to send the e-mail. Gillespie said he couldn’t comment on the details of the discipline because it was a personnel matter,” the story continued.
Ex-Journalist Becomes University President
“Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s next president is a journalist-turned-academic who most recently served as provost and vice president for academic affairs at Youngstown State University,” reports Eleanor Chute in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
“Tony Atwater, 52, was named yesterday by the board of governors of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education.
“. . . He earned a bachelor’s degree in mass media arts with a minor in journalism from Hampton University in Hampton, Va. He has a master’s degree in education from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a doctorate in mass media research from Michigan State University.
“He worked at radio and television stations in Virginia, including serving as a news director, reporter and assignment editor.
“At Virginia Tech, he helped train cooperative extension agents in how to present themselves on television.
“‘It dawned on me one day that this was teaching journalism and communication. That led me to consider the prospect of professorship,’ he said.”
Press Witnesses Natives’ Meeting With Sen.-Elect
“American Indian leaders challenged South Dakota Sen.-elect John Thune, a Republican, on Thursday to fight for the treaty rights, obligations and responsibilities due to the state’s nine reservations” — in a meeting that in the end was opened to the public, as Jomay Steen reported in South Dakota’s Rapid City Journal
“The meeting was to have been a closed session, but Tom Iron, vice president of Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, said that when Indian people traditionally gathered with national leaders, it needed to be open to everyone.
“‘I expect the public to be a part of the audience, and I frown on the leaders who would only listen to tribal leaders,’ Iron said.
“Tribal Chairman Mike Jandreau of Lower Brule concurred.
“‘We should be open to the press. We get accused enough of doing too many things under the table as it is,’ Jandreau said. The audience stayed, and the tribal leaders presented their concerns to Thune and Rounds.”
Frank King, publisher of The Native Voice in Rapid City and vice president of the Native American Journalists Association, helped organize the event and had said he was working to try to open it to reporters and others, according to a previous Associated Press story.
Reno School Named for Hispanic Publisher
A school in Washoe County, Nev., will be named after Miguel Sepulveda, a Hispanic businessman and founder and publisher of northern Nevada’s Spanish-English newspaper Ahora after action by the county school trustees.
It marks the first time a school in the Washoe District has been named for a Hispanic, Ray Hagar reported in the Reno Gazette-Journal.
Sepulveda, a Puerto Rican immigrant who made the Reno-Sparks area his home since the 1960s, died in 2000 of an asthma attack. He was 59, the Las Vegas Sun reported at the time.
“With a typewriter and a logo made by his wife, Sheila, the Sepulvedas started the independent Ahora newspaper in 1983,” the Sun said then. The paper was described as the only source of print news for Spanish-speaking Hispanics in Reno.
Some African American and Hispanic community leaders had complained that the school trustees had put supporters of a black educator, Jesse Hall, and of Sepulveda in competition for the school’s name.
However, the trustees finally decided to name a school for each.
“Tony Brown, who has been a weekend host on news/talk WLS-AM (890) since July 1999, is calling it quits from radio. The author and host of the long-running ‘Tony Brown’s Journal’ on PBS cited his increased work load as dean of the Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communication at Hampton University in Hampton, Va., reported Robert Feder in his Chicago Sun-Times column.
“Brown, who originated his WLS show from a studio in New York, most recently was on from 10 a.m. to noon Sundays. His last show airs this weekend.”
Detroit’s Frank Vega Moving to S.F. Chronicle
“The head of Detroit Newspapers Inc., the agency that oversees Michigan?s two largest newspapers, announced his retirement today to become publisher and CEO of the San Francisco Chronicle,” the Detroit Free Press reports.
“Frank Vega, 56, who has been president and CEO of Detroit Newspapers since 1991, will step down from the post effective Dec. 31. No successor was named and no timetable was announced to name his replacement.
“Prior to his work in Detroit, Vega, a 26-year veteran of Gannett Co. Inc. and a native of Tampa, Fla., served in a variety of positions with the company, including a tenure at the Oakland Tribune in California. Vega was the vice president of circulation for USA Today when the flagship was launched. He was publisher of Florida Today from 1984 to 1991, and was also a regional president, where he oversaw a number of Gannett newspapers.”
Vega was chief executive of Detroit Newspapers during the lengthy newspaper strike of the 1990s. A 1995 story described how he sold newspapers on the street himself.
TV Study Finds Drop in Latino Lead Characters
“Television series feature largely white casts even when the setting is an ethnically diverse city such as Los Angeles or New York, according to a study released Tuesday,” reports the Associated Press.
“An analysis of shows on the six major networks found a drop in Hispanic and other minority lead characters, according to the Chicano Studies Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“Television is presenting a distorted microcosm of society that is ‘at odds with our nation’s changing demographic,’ study co-authors Chon Noriega, the center director, and Alison Hoffman said in a statement.
Looking For Latino Regulars on Prime-Time Television: The Fall 2004 Season (PDF)
