“Once You Go Black” Line Makes Newscast
When the student newspaper at a recent convention of the National Association of Black Journalists decided to start a column of outrageous quotes, it titled the feature, “Oh, No, He Didn’t!”
Columnist Jose Lambiet came up with a likely candidate Sunday in Florida’s Palm Beach Post.
“Since it seems more people saw WPTV-News Channel 5 sports director Ben Becker‘s apology than those who saw his on-the-air racial and sexual comment,” Lambiet began, “here is what he said:
“‘Once you go black, you never go back!’
“Becker was winding down his sports segment on the 6 p.m. show Thursday with news about a Nike golf ball the pros have started using. The new ball is black. He made the offending comment while signing off. Yikes!” Lambiet continued.
“The baby-faced sportscaster, who has been with the station since 2001, was back on at 11 p.m. He apologized for his ‘inappropriate and insensitive’ words.
“He didn’t want to be interviewed, but his boss, news director Peter Roghaar, told Page Two the matter was addressed internally. He didn’t say how.
“‘We received four complaints about it between the 6 and 11 news,’ he said. ‘He was just trying to make a joke.'”
It’s no doubt small consolation to Becker, but he isn’t the first to use the line in a G-rated venue.
After guest hosting CBS-TV’s “The Late Late Show,” actor Michael Ian Black tried it with New York Daily News television critic David Bianculli in December, describing his chances of becoming the new permanent host. He was wrong. The job went to Scottish comic Craig Ferguson.
And on NBC-TV’s “Saturday Night Live” last November, “President Bush” used it to explain why he chose Condoleezza Rice to replace Colin Powell as secretary of state.
Maynard Institute Revives Editing Program
The Maynard Institute is reviving the Editing Program, which trained 207 journalists to be copy editors from 1980 to 2002.
“Over the past three years, we heard from many of you about the value of the program,” Evelyn Hsu, the program director, and Dori J. Maynard, Maynard president, said in a letter to friends of the Institute. “It launched many management careers. Your support convinced us that the Editing Program plays a vital role in the industry.”
Maynard Institute board member Addie Rimmer, a former deputy managing editor/news at the Detroit Free Press and a graduate of the Editing Program, is to direct the six-week program. Classes start June 1 at the University of Nevada at Reno.
The program, which began life as the Editing Program for Minority Journalists, had been at the University of Arizona at Tucson.
According to the latest census from the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 10,554 copy editors work at mainstream daily newspapers. Of those, 1,223, or 11.6 percent, are black, Latino, Asian American or Native American. Those groups represent 31.7 percent of the U.S. population. Of the 7,016 journalists of color in daily newsrooms, 17.4 percent are copy editors.
Lerone Bennett Retires Again from Ebony
“Lerone Bennett, the longtime executive editor at Ebony Magazine, has retired and been named executive editor emeritus, the company announced today,” the Chicago Defender reports for Thursday’s editions.
“Bennett, who officials said is on a Black History Month tour and won’t be available for interviews until next week, will continue to write several articles a year for the nation’s largest Black magazine. He has worked for Ebony in a variety of positions for 50 years,” the story continued.
“This is Bennett’s second retirement announcement. In September, Bennett, 75, announced that he was stepping down from the position, but after discussions with Ebony founder John H. Johnson, he chose to delay his retirement.”
Diaz Succeeds Ibargüen at Miami Herald
Jesus Diaz Jr., general manager of the Miami Herald Publishing Co., will succeed Alberto Ibargüen as publisher of the Miami Herald and of El Nuevo Herald, and as chairman of the publishing company, Knight Ridder announced Tuesday.
Ibargüen announced Jan. 28 that he is leaving in July to become president and CEO of the Knight Foundation.
Unlike Ibargüen, who joined the company in 1995 as publisher of El Nuevo Herald, served as the Herald’s vice president of international operations, and had been executive vice president for operations of Newsday and New York Newsday, Diaz’s newspaper experience is solely with the Herald.
“Diaz, 44, has been in his current job since 2002,” a news release said. “Prior to that, he had worked twice at Ernst & Young. He started there in 1982, then moved to The Miami Herald in 1993. In 1996, he resigned to become financial services manager for the Greater Europe Group of the Coca-Cola Company. He went back to Ernst & Young in 1997, and became managing partner of the Miami office two years later. Under his leadership, it became the largest accounting firm in South Florida. He returned to The Herald in 2002.”
ABC Radio Sets First Hispanic Network
“ABC Radio Networks is preparing to launch this fall the radio industry’s first Hispanic network,” Katy Bachman reported Monday in Mediaweek.
“The Hispanic Advantage Network . . . will include inventory made possible by ABC’s five-year deal with Spanish Broadcasting System last November to syndicate the Spanish-language radio group’s top-rated morning shows hosted by Renan Almendarez Coello and Luis Jimenez. Also included in ABC’s new network will be inventory from ESPN Deportes, broadcast on about 32 stations, and ABC Radio Network’s Hispanic Major League Baseball coverage.
“With top radio groups, Clear Channel and Viacom’s Infinity Broadcasting, making commitments to Hispanic radio, it was only a matter of time before the once local, niche format developed a national presence,” Bachman wrote.
Reporter’s “Marriage Day” a Hit With Laura Bush
Nisa Islam Muhammad is a reporter in the Washington bureau of the Nation of Islam’s newspaper the Final Call, but when she went to the White House Tuesday and introduced herself to first lady Laura Bush, it was because of her involvement in “Black Marriage Day.”
Muhammad told Journal-isms she was invited last Thursday by the Office of Public Liaison to attend President Bush’s ceremony honoring Black History Month, saying she was told that Bush wanted to recognize people promoting marriage in the black community.
“I explained that I work for the Final Call, I’m not a Bush supporter, I’m in the Nation of Islam. Are you sure you have the right person?” Muhammad said she asked.
Assured that it was she the White House wanted, Muhammad attended the East Room ceremony. There, Bush “spiritedly endorsed placing a national museum dedicated to black life and culture on the Mall,” as Jacqueline Trescott wrote today in the Washington Post.
During the reception with black members of Congress and others, Muhammad said she approached Laura Bush and explained that she was helping to put on the annual “Black Marriage Day” March 27. She received a cordial, “Thank you for doing that.”
Muhammad said she didn’t know what might happen now that the White House is aware of her project, but said the Final Call and the Nation of Islam have been supportive. They, too, have been alarmed by the declining rate of marriage among African Americans, she said, adding that 90 percent of incarcerated young black men come from single-parent homes.
AAJA Objects to “Asian Invasion” Headline
The Asian American Journalists Association objected to a headline in the Wall Street Journal last week referring to an “Asian Invasion,” and the Journal replied the next day that it meant no offense.
At issue was a Trend report headline of Jan. 31, “Furniture—Coping with the Asian Invasion.”
“‘Asian invasion’ implies something ominous and dangerous; it also reinforces the bigoted belief—it continues to fester in some quarters of our society—that people of Asian descent are foreigners who are to be kept out at all cost,” wrote Abe Kwok, AAJA Media Watch Committee co-chair and AAJA national vice president of print.
“In fact, the phrase long has been used to smear Asians and Asian Americans, evoking for some the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in WWII and perpetuating the stereotype that we are sinister ‘others’ who cannot be trusted,” Kwok wrote.
Larry Rout, the Journal’s editor for special reports, replied: “As I’m sure you can appreciate, we certainly didn’t intend to play to any stereotypes or bigotry; if the competition had come from Canada, we would have referred to the Canadian invasion.
“Having said that, I also agree that words can have a power and meaning beyond our intention, and I’m glad you brought this to our attention. We depend on readers to keep us on our toes, and to push us to write the best possible stories—and headlines—we can.”
South Asian Journalists See More Tsunami Stories
The Dec. 26 tsunami disaster “brought in unheard of sums of money. Where is it all going? Is it helping the people it’s meant to help? How long will recovery take?,” Deepti Hajela, new president of the South Asian Journalists Association, said in an interview with Aly Colón of the Poynter Institute.
Hajela, a New York-based Associated Press newswoman, was replying to a question from Colón about stories on the catastrophe that remained to be done.
“We need to cover the rebuilding efforts over time,” Hajela continued. “There’s also ways of covering the story locally. South Asian communities here were among the first to pitch in with aid. Those efforts are going to continue, how effective will they be? Other Americans were introduced to some of these South Asian communities in their own neighborhoods because of the tsunami, because they wanted to reach out and help. Will those relationships continue?”
Broward Sheriff Spread Dirt About Reporter
“Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne asked a subordinate to spread negative information about a Herald reporter who exposed how his department allegedly falsified crime statistics, the subordinate has testified,” Jay Weaver reported Tuesday in the Miami Herald.
“Jenne, court papers show, handed the aide the booking and arrest records of Wanda DeMarzo, The Herald’s police reporter in Broward County. DeMarzo said she had been arrested three times since 2000 on drunken-driving charges and convicted once, in 2001. DeMarzo said she has been sober for several years.
“That did not stop Jenne, according to John deGroot, a BSO executive assistant,” referring to the Broward Sheriff’s Office. “DeGroot gave a deposition last August to Broward prosecutors, who are investigating Jenne’s department.
“DeMarzo’s reports have helped lead to changes at the BSO and culminated in the arrests of two BSO deputies, charged with official misconduct for falsifying crime reports in Weston, where the BSO is under contract.
“. . . Dave Wilson, managing editor of The Broward Herald and sports, said: `Wanda DeMarzo has reported on a lot of important stories about BSO. Many of those stories have led to revelations and sometimes policy changes. The Herald stands firmly behind her reporting.”’
Washington Post Colleague Calls Out Wilbon
“When Washington Post writer Michael Leahy was assigned to cover Michael Jordan in Washington, D.C.—first as an executive for the Washington Wizards, then as a player in a two-season comeback—he got used to being ignored by the N.B.A. megastar,” media columnist Tom Scocca wrote today in the New York Observer.
“Unless Mr. Leahy asked Mr. Jordan a direct question in the media scrum, the player treated the reporter as ‘a pane of glass,’ he writes in When Nothing Else Matters: Michael Jordan’s Last Comeback.
“But when Mr. Leahy got word—third-hand, through a colleague who’d read it in a magazine—that Post sports columnist Michael Wilbon purportedly also wasn’t speaking to him, it was the first he knew of it.
“When Nothing Else Matters is many things in its 435 pages: a close-up portrait of an aging star’s vanity, a cold-blooded case study in organizational politics, the perhaps over-detailed diary of a man who has seen nothing but bad basketball for months on end. It is also a scathing work of media criticism—one that calls out Mr. Wilbon by name.”
“Mr. Wilbon is one of The Post’s superstars, deeply embedded in the world of sports celebrity . . . Mr. Leahy is a well-regarded but fairly obscure feature writer; he had no previous N.B.A. beat-reporting experience.
“Though Mr. Leahy’s Post stories dealt with the ties between Mr. Jordan and the press, he never named Mr. Wilbon in the newspaper. Nonetheless, in 2003, Mr. Wilbon declared in a chat on the Post Web site that ‘I don’t particularly care to read Michael Leahy’s work on the topic of pro-basketball or Jordan.’
“Mr. Leahy, he added, had a book deal to write about Mr. Jordan. ‘So, sportswriters who have covered Jordan aren’t the only ones who have agendas, are they?'”
Savoy Magazine Returns Next Week
“Savoy magazine is back with a brassy flourish, stylish rhythm and new arrangements,” Dave Hoekstra wrote today in the Chicago Sun-Times.
“After a three-year run, the upscale African-American magazine hit the downbeat in December 2003 and went bankrupt. The magazine is named after the historic Savoy ballrooms—one in Harlem, the other at South Park Way and East 47th Street in Chicago.
“Publisher Hermene Hartman is the founder of N’Digo, which has the largest black newspaper circulation in the United States, with a weekly readership of 625,000. She purchased Savoy last June through Jazzy Communications, a subsidiary of her Hartman Publishing Group. In November, Hartman named Monroe Anderson, former community affairs director at WBBM-Channel 2, as Savoy’s editor.
“With Barack and Michelle Obama on the cover, the 115-page Savoy magazine hits national newsstands next week.
“. . . Hartman shows the January issue of Vanity Fair with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver on the cover. Inside is a two-page portrait of the Obamas,” the story continued.
“The senator has the glum look of a guy going through a tax audit. His wife is smiling, sitting far away from her husband in the lower left-hand corner of the portrait. ‘Look at that picture,’ Hartman says. ‘They ghettoized that. Sure, there’s a picture of Ali and Lincoln, but look at his desk. Don’t you think someone might have cleaned it off before they took it?
“‘By contrast, look at how they covered Arnold and Maria.’
“Hartman turns to a photo of Schwarzenegger and Shriver, embracing and smiling together. It looks like a casting call for ‘American Idol.’
“‘Well, that’s how we cover Barack and Michelle,’ she says. ‘That’s our romantic story. And we didn’t see Vanity Fair [until after deadline]. How we cover things differently is the N’Digo/Savoy lesson. People say, “How can you compete with Time-Warner or the Tribune Company? They got all the money on earth.” For black folks there’s still a difference. This is huge.'”
Chicago’s Mary Mitchell Quits Radio Show
“After only six months on the air, Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell has resigned as Sunday morning public-affairs talk show host at Crawford Broadcasting’s WSRB-FM (106.3), WPWX-FM (92.3) and WYCA-FM (102.3),” Robert Feder reported Tuesday in his Chicago Sun-Times column.
“Mitchell called it quits after station bosses told her they were moving the show, which has been airing at 11 a.m. Sundays, to 6 a.m. ‘As far as I’m concerned, they didn’t care about public affairs programming,’ she said. ‘I was not going to move to 6 a.m. when no one was listening.’
“Taft Harris, general manager of the Crawford stations, confirmed plans to move the show to 6 a.m. He praised Mitchell’s performance, but cited low ratings for the move.”