A year in the quest for a news media that looks like America:
1. Layoffs and cutbacks
It’s been three years since Jay T. Harris resigned as publisher of the San Jose Mercury News, warning that parent company Knight Ridder’s focus on profits was “essentially blind to all else . . . There was virtually no discussion of the damage that would be done to the quality and aspirations of the Mercury News as a journalistic endeavor or to its ability to fulfill its responsibilities to the community.”
|
|
Knight Ridder executives denied Harris’ claims at the time, but in 2004 there was no denying that cutbacks and budget targets took their toll on diversity efforts, and thus, quality.
The Tribune Co. led the way, announcing a cost-cutting initiative in June. At the Los Angeles Times, that led to 42 people accepting a buyout offer and 20 more involuntarily laid off. By the end of the year, Newsday, on the East Coast, had a buyout list of 50.
In October, the Belo Corp.’s Dallas Morning News engaged in what some called a “massacre,” laying off 60 to 70 news people, and the Houston Chronicle followed. The Associated Press laid off its most well-known diversity advocate, Pulitzer Prize winner Fred Sweets, senior photo editor for training and development in its Washington bureau.
Not all the cutbacks were due solely to greed. CNN shut down its financial news channel, CNNfn, eliminating 60 jobs, including those of six journalists of color, after the channel failed to seriously challenge CNBC.
Diversity in Hard Times: Hard Choices, Hard Work (Keith Woods, Poynter Institute)
2. Missing on the campaign trail
Voters of color were on the losing side in the presidential election, and journalists of color lost out in being part of the agenda-setting for political coverage. (A notable exception was the June appointment of Paul S. Mason as senior VP of ABC News.)
In June, when Ronald Reagan died, the news media engaged in an orgy of celebration of the Reagan presidency, for days ignoring the fact that African Americans weren’t in the 40th president’s Amen Corner.
|
|
|
|
In August, Unity: Journalists of Color released a survey showing that less than 10.5 percent of the reporters, correspondents, columnists, editors and bureau chiefs in the Washington daily newspaper press corps were journalists of color — 60 out of 574.
African American, Latino, Asian American and Native journalists were merely a sprinkling of those covering the Democratic and Republican conventions and the presidential campaign. Urban issues were missing from the campaign dialogue.
Gwen Ifill of PBS became the highest-profile black journalist involved in the campaign when she moderated the vice presidential debate. She struck a chord when she asked about the rate of HIV among black American women, and the candidates appeared clueless.
3. Unity exceeds expectations
The Unity: Journalists of Color convention in Washington drew more than 8,100 people, exceeding projections by 1,000. And Unity President Ernest Sotomayor said it was not unrealistic to expect 10,000 at the next gathering in 2008.
|
|
|
|
Republican George Bush and Democrat John Kerry appeared and made news, but more important was the intangible effect on the participants of communing in solidarity with members of the other journalist of color organizations.
The effect on the industry remains in question. Sotomayor wrote in December that, “Four months since we adjourned the largest convention of journalists ever held, it is difficult to see just how serious some in the industry are about making our newsroom look more like our nation?s population.”
Meanwhile, the National Association of Black Journalists reported a record 4,695 members; and in October, the Asian American Journalists Association also hit a record — 2,320 members — surpassing the roster of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
4. The passing of legends
The year saw the passing of pioneers who not only wrote but led:
Leroy Aarons, a co-founder and board member of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education who was founding president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association; Frank del Olmo, the Los Angeles Times associate editor whose advocacy for Hispanics and Hispanic journalists dated to 1972 and his co-founding of the California Chicano News Media Association; Vernon Jarrett, a founder, former president and elder statesman of the National Association of Black Journalists; Lu Palmer, the Chicago activist-journalist who called himself too hot for the white press to handle; and Carl Morris, who founded the National Association of Minority Media Executives and helped build NABJ as its executive director.
Slain reporter Derek Ali of the Dayton Daily News set a standard for being part of one’s community; and Ralph Wiley produced “arguably the best sports commentary on the web,” as executive editor John Walsh of ESPN said at the time.
The Gannett Co., the nation’s largest newspaper enterprise, told its member papers in September that 36 newspaper staffs met or exceeded the percentage of minorities in the community’s Metropolitan Statistical Area or home county or counties; that 34 newspapers had news-management staffs that met or exceeded the MSA benchmark, that 60 newspapers met or exceeded the MSA benchmark for newsroom hiring, and that 44 met or exceeded the benchmark for hiring or promoting news managers of color.
|
|
|
|
“Both the total number (1,054) and the percentage (18.6) of journalists of color at Gannett newspapers reached record levels in 2004,” news executive George Benge said.
In another measurement, Gannett came out the top newspaper company when a Knight Foundation-funded study compared the presence of journalists of color in newsrooms with the population of color in the newspapers? coverage area.
Among those named editor at Gannett papers this year were black journalists Everett J. Mitchell at the Tennessean in Nashville and Wanda S. Lloyd at the Montgomery Advertiser in Alabama.
Also deserving a look was the Greeley Tribune in Colorado. “In an area that’s 30.8 percent nonwhite, the newsroom, according to the 2004 American Society of Newspaper Editors survey, is 22.9 percent nonwhite,” the American Journalism Review noted in its August/September issue, in an article titled, “What works?”
6. Trouble in the pipeline
A survey in the winter 2003/2004 issue of the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education showed that, “there are no blacks whatsoever on the editorial boards of the student newspapers at 13 of the 19 highest-ranked universities that responded to our survey.”
|
|
|
|
On the second tier, at the 17 universities with accredited undergraduate journalism programs that responded to the survey, there were 181 student editors — of whom eight, or 4.4 percent, were black.
At Hampton University, where the Scripps Howard Foundation has poured millions to teach journalism, including funding a new journalism school, new dean Tony Brown distanced the school from the student newspaper The Script, which the university administration had seized the previous year.
A bright spot was Howard University’s The Hilltop, which announced it would become the first daily newspaper on a black campus come Feburary.
In addition, the Black College Wire, a news service for black college students that aims to improve the student newspapers on historically black campuses, began a partnership with the National Association of Black Journalists.
7. Bill Cosby’s comments on parenting
|
|
|
|
For columnists, Bill Cosby’s comments on the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board school desegregation decision became the gift that kept on giving.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal,” he declared May 17 at Washington’s Constitution Hall, in remarks that first surfaced in the Washington Post’s gossip column. “These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids — $500 sneakers for what? And won’t spend $200 for ‘Hooked on Phonics.’ . . . “
After months of debate over the actor-philanthropist’s comments, Cosby appeared before 2,000 people at an October event sponsored by the Wisconsin Black Media Association, the NABJ chapter in Milwaukee, his position refined but unchanged.
8. Pressuring the broadcasters
A casual comment by new “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams that appeared to downplay the importance of newsroom diversity led to a December meeting between the leaders of the National Association of Black Journalists and the news leadership of NBC.
“It was groundbreaking for NABJ,” said one of the participants, Sidmel Estes-Sumpter, NABJ president from 1991 to 1993 and executive producer at WAGA-TV in Atlanta. “I cannot remember having such a frank and freewheeling discussion with someone so high up in the network as Shapiro,” a reference to NBC News president Neal Shapiro.
|
|
|
|
Meanwhile, National Public Radio felt the heat from talk-show host Tavis Smiley, who announced in November that he was not renewing his contract with NPR because the network had failed — “in the most multicultural, multiethnic and multiracial America ever” — to reach out sufficiently to people of color.
NPR responded by accelerating its approval of a new talk show hosted by Ed Gordon, best known for his BET work, that is to start in late January.
The public radio network announced in July that it planned to invest $15 million over the next three years in new reporters, editors, producers, managers and domestic and international bureaus, funded in part by a bequest from the late philanthropist Joan B. Kroc. “This represents our best opportunity ever to broaden the pool of candidates of color for jobs at NPR,” said Walt Swanston, director of diversity management.
9. Restlessness at Washington Post, Newsday
|
|
The failure to name black journalist Eugene Robinson as managing editor at the Washington Post, and continuing concerns over lack of mobility and shabby treatment at Newsday, led to meetings between top news management and journalists of color at both newspapers.
In each case, managers responded by including journalists of color in the next round of appointments, and pledged to continue steps to redress the journalists’ complaints.
10. A less colorful New York Times
A year after fabricator Jayson Blair ignited a crisis at the New York Times that led to the resignation of its first African American managing editor, Gerald M. Boyd, journalists of color appear to have been set back at that institution.
The highest ranking people of color in the newsroom have become Kathleen McElroy, the dining editor, and Charles Blow, the graphics editor.
Elvis Mitchell, who had the most influential platform of any African American film critic, quit in May after another critic, A.O. Scott, was promoted over him.
As for Blair, his book bombed, and a more serious scandal at USA Today involving white reporter Jack Kelley failed to generate as much ink.
|
|
|
|
The new climate claimed two black reporters at Georgia’s Macon Telegraph, Khalil Abdullah and Greg Fields, amid plagiarism allegations.
Macarena Hernandez, the reporter whose work Blair lifted, turned down an offer from the Times and remained at the San Antonio Express-News. At her Texas paper, she spent more than a year researching and writing her family’s story on both sides of the border, and her series ran in December.
Investigating the Blair fiasco, an in-house Times panel known as the Siegal committee last year recommended “the appointment of a senior masthead editor — directly below the level of executive and managing editors — for Career Development.” Part of that manager’s job would be to “ensure that the commitment to diversity extends beyond hiring and is considered in all personnel decisions.”
The committee also urged the paper to “expand the search for mid-level minority reporters and editors, with special attention to Latinos and to minority managers and copy editors.”
Glenn Kramon, business editor, was named associate managing editor for career development in October 2003. Executive Editor Bill Keller did not return a request for comment on what progress has been made.
Diversity’s Greatest Hits, 2003
2001 in review (NABJ)
