Black Weekly Called on Ties With Politician
A writer at the three-reporter, 17,000-circulation Kansas City Call, an African American weekly once edited by Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, will be doing no more consulting work for Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., now that two publications have written about their business relationship, Cleaver said today.
Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post this morning picked up on an October report by the Kansas City alternative paper The Pitch that said, “Emanuel Cleaver’s congressional campaign wrote two checks in June and July totaling $1,500 to something called ‘One Goal Consultants’ for ‘media consulting.’
“According to the Missouri secretary of state’s records, One Goal Consultants is 100 percent owned by Eric L. Wesson, the journalist who writes many of the stories in Kansas City’s African-American newspaper, The Call.”
Cleaver’s spokesman, Phil Scaglia, said in the Pitch that Wesson had been paid for “Some ad copywriting, some script writing. Things of that nature.”
Kurtz added today: “Luther Washington, who managed Cleaver’s campaign, said Wesson’s firm was given a new contract after the congressman’s election. ‘We used him for brainstorming for ideas for national news stories specifically targeted to the black press,’ Washington said. Meanwhile, Wesson, who will write the releases under the rubric ‘Congressman’s Corner,’ has continued to cover Cleaver.
Cleaver issued this statement today:
“There is no on-going financial relationship with Eric Wesson or any other person in the media. I am committed to upholding the highest ethical standards. While I have been completely forthcoming with regard to this matter, in order to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, our campaign will not enter into a consulting contract with a reporter who covers our campaign.”
Wesson and his paper’s owner and managing editor, Donna Stewart, indicated that they saw nothing wrong with what took place, though Wesson did not want to comment on the situation today and Stewart was unavailable.
Wesson, 46, is a former elementary teacher who has written for the Call for two years, his first journalism job. The Call’s Web site shows his byline on all four of the local front-page stories. One Goal is a mentoring program, he said. Wesson told Kurtz that the Call “has always written articles favorable to African American candidates. We’re an advocacy newspaper.”
During the campaign, Cleaver was the only African American in the field, and would naturally have been endorsed by the Call, he said. Amber Moon, a spokeswoman for Cleaver, told Kurtz, “I’m not sure he had a need to court favorable journalism with that paper.”
Wilkins wrote for and edited the Call in the 1920s and was executive secretary of the NAACP during the civil rights movement. He died in 1981.
Spinning Frenzy: P.R.’s Bad Press (Timothy L. O’Brien, New York Times)
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Cartoonist Morrie Turner Honored at Schulz Museum
Cartoonist Morrie Turner, who integrated the comic strips with “Wee Pals” in 1965, was honored at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, Calif., Saturday as four younger black cartoonists discussed the state of race and cartooning today.
One of them, an African American college student, won an award that landed him a job when he graduates.
About 170 people were present at the museum, marketing director Gina Huntsinger told Journal-isms, as the cartoonists drew and signed books. Its “Community Day” celebrated Black History Month and the 40th anniversary of “Wee Pals.” Turner, 82, has said he was inspired by Schulz’s “Peanuts” characters.
Cartoonists Steve Bentley of “Herb and Jamaal,” Robb Armstrong of “Jump Start” and Keith Knight of “the K Chronicles” joined in a discussion of the craft, she said.
Nate Creekmore, a student at David Lipscomb University in Nashville, received a development deal with Universal Press Syndicate—a job after graduation—as a result of receiving the 2004 Charles M. Schulz National Cartoonists Award, Huntsinger said.
Turner’s “Wee Pals,” which still appears in about 40 papers, did not achieve national syndication until after the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Three strips about black children—adults were deemed too threatening— found national audiences then: “Wee Pals,” Brumsic Brandon Jr.‘s “Luther” and Ted Shearer‘s “Quincy.” Only “Wee Pals” remains.
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Vibe’s “Girly Version” Debuts Next Week
“The urban music and lifestyle title Vibe next week will give props to its large female following—and the advertisers chasing them—with the launch of Vibe Vixen,” Tony Case reports in Mediaweek.
“The 425,000-circ beauty, fashion and lifestyle book will be published twice this year, with spring and fall issues, and aims to go quarterly in 2006. ‘A girly version of what the ladies love about Vibe,’ as Vibe and Vibe Vixen editor in chief Mimi Valdés put it, the super-glam spinoff is being mailed to female subscribers of Vibe. Vibe Vixen, like its sibling, will also be available on newsstands.”
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A Telemundo Channel for Mainland Puerto Ricans
NBC Universal launched a new Spanish-language cable network on Feb. 1 that features 35 hours per week of programming imported from WKAQ-TV in Puerto Rico, including news. Telemundo Puerto Rico is expected to reach 1.3 million homes on Cablevision’s digital platform in New York and New Jersey, according to the Hollywood Reporter and a Telemundo news release. At least one-third of the Puerto Rican population on the mainland lives in New York.
Telemundo’s chief competitor, Univision, has been criticized for de-emphasizing Puerto Rican programming in favor of shows from Mexico and Venezuela.
As the Communication Workers of America reported last month, an alliance of Puerto Rican media unions and community groups has urged the Federal Communications Commission to deny license renewal to the island’s largest television station, WLII in San Juan, operated by Univision.
“The Alliance of Puerto Rican Artists and Support Groups, whose acronym in Spanish is APAGA, charged that Univision has all but dropped local production of telenovelas and game shows in favor of canned programming from Mexico and Venezuela, the source of most of Univision’s production. Puerto Rican programming has dropped from about 50 programs a week down to only three since Univision took over in 2002,” the union said.
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Fake Editorial Circulates on Nevada Reservation
“Tribal politics took a turn for the defamatory Friday when somebody doctored-up a false ‘tribal editorial’ using the name of Lahontan Valley News reporter Josh Johnson and inserted copies of it into newspapers on the Paiute-Shoshone reservation east of Fallon,” Cory McConnell reported Saturday in the Lahontan Valley News of Lahontan, Nev.
“‘You have to have thick skin to be a reporter,’ Johnson said. “The real victim is the tribe’s reputation.”
“The ‘editorial’ falsely claims to have been written with facts gathered by the LVN in the course of Johnson’s coverage of the tribe. In it, various charges of impropriety and immorality are levelled against four candidates vying for tribal council seats in Saturday’s election. Each of the candidates mentioned are challengers.
“. . . LVN Publisher Rick Swart filed a criminal complaint with tribal police, who confiscated newspapers from a rack or racks on the reservation and began trying to determine who penned the fake editorial.”
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D.C.’s Examiner Seeks Out White Neighborhoods
“On Feb. 1, in its debut issue, the Washington Examiner splashed this headline across its tabloid front: ‘”Stop the violence; stop the shooting.”‘ The story detailed a movement to end the spate of killings that claimed the lives of 24 D.C. children in 2004. Along with subsequent crime stories, the piece signaled the Examiner’s commitment to covering life in some of the District’s African-American communities,” Erik Wemple and Jeff Horwitz report in the Washington City Paper.
“The Examiner, however, won’t deliver to them.
“. . . To demystify the Examiner’s D.C. home-delivery patterns, Dept. of Media called 274 advisory neighborhood commissioners and received responses from 119. The question, in each case, was straightforward: Have you received home delivery of the Washington Examiner? To supplement the data, Dept. of Media interviewed scores of other residents and conducted several field trips to District neighborhoods.
“According to the survey, majority-black neighborhoods are lucky to get even spotty service. The paper’s red plastic missives tend to land in exclusively white neighborhoods, with some exceptions here and there.”
“Mr. Magazine” to Chair J-Dept. at Ole Miss
Samir Husni, the country’s foremost expert on magazines, has been named chair of the University of Mississippi Department of Journalism, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported today.
“Mr. Magazine,” who is Lebanese-American, had been serving as interim department chair since the death of former chair Stuart Bullion last April, the paper said. It was Husni’s third stint as acting or interim chair of the department.
Mexican Reporter in Hiding After Report on Cartel
“A TV reporter is in hiding after producing a news story that named individuals said to be involved in the disappearances of Americans in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico,” Jesse Bogan reported Thursday in the San Antonio-Express News.
“Gunmen riddled the reporter’s parked car with bullets three days after the Televisa report, which featured a hooded informant accusing alleged members of the Gulf Cartel, a gang thought to control the drug trade in the border cities of Matamoros, Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo,” Bogan reported.
“Jorge Cardona, 30, a reporter for Televisa Monterrey, wasn’t injured in the early morning shooting Monday in front of his home in Monterrey . . .
“‘We gave him some time to rest,’ said Francisco Cobos, news director at Televisa Monterrey. ‘For his protection, we decided to put him in a house that nobody knows about.'”
S.F. State Photography Student Faces Charges
“A San Francisco State University photography student faces criminal charges in what his lawyers and journalism professors are calling a potentially precedent-setting First Amendment case,” Wyatt Buchanan reported Friday in the San Francisco Chronicle.
“Attorneys for 18-year-old Omar Vega, a freshman from Stockton, say he was documenting life in the freshmen dorms for the school’s student newspaper last fall when he took pictures of students breaking into a vehicle.
“However, according to university police and the San Francisco district attorney’s office, Vega’s actions violated the law. This week, he was arrested on campus and appeared Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court, where he was charged with two misdemeanors, burglary and tampering with a vehicle or its contents.
“. . . The charges stem from an incident Oct. 24 of last year when a student living in the dorm found a set of car keys with a remote entry, according to witness statements in a university police report. That student and several others including Vega decided to find the vehicle and try to determine who it belonged to, according to the report.
“Instead, someone in the group stole 20 CDs and $15 in cash from the car, and the students threw the found keys into the bushes after they were done. . . . The other students interviewed by police said Vega had never entered the vehicle and only had taken pictures, but one student told police, ‘Omar was part of the group. We’re all friends, and he wanted to find the car just as bad as everyone else.’
“. . . SFSU photojournalism Professor Ken Kobre, who teaches Vega, says he believes Vega’s actions were ethical.
“‘Journalists can’t be expected to stop an event that is taking place, otherwise they are stopping history,’ Kobre said.
NABJ’s “Idol” Winner “Doing a Lot Better”
Richard Koonce, a part-time reporter for Ohio’s Akron Beacon Journal who was seriously injured when his car was struck from behind at a tollbooth Jan. 2, says he’s “doing a lot better” and has returned to pursuing his doctorate at Bowling Green State University.
Koonce, 45, was the winner of the “NABJ Idol” contest at last summer’s National Association of Black Journalists convention, where he sang LTD’s “Love Ballad” and Stevie Wonder‘s “Knocks Me Off My Feet.”
He told Journal-isms today that his heart rate had dropped so dramatically after the accident that he agreed to have a pacemaker installed. He had bleeding and swelling on the brain.
Koonce got another scare when his primary health insurance from Norfolk State University was canceled—in error, as it turned out. The driver who struck his car, flattening all but the quadrant where Koonce was sitting, was uninsured and was driving with a suspended license, he said.
Koonce has worked as a reporter at the Beacon Journal every other weekend since June. As the paper reported last month, he is on leave from Virginia’s Norfolk State University while he pursues a doctorate at Bowling Green. He taught journalism and advised the student paper at Norfolk State.
He said he was awaiting medical advice before deciding whether to return to the Akron job, though he said he would like to do so in about a month.
Oscar Garza of L.A. Times to Edit “Tu Ciudad”
Oscar Garza, who spent 15 years at the Los Angeles Times, as deputy editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine and editor of the daily Calendar section, has joined Tu Ciudad Los Angeles, a bimonthly English-language magazine aiming at upwardly mobile Latinos in L.A.
“It was an idea whose time has come” and the owners had “a really solid plan,” Garza told Journal-isms today. He said it was time to do something new.
Garza’s managing editor is Yvette Doss, previously at L.A. Alternative Press and Frontera, a cultural magazine in L.A..
As announced last month, Angelo Figueroa, founding editor of both Time Inc.’s People en Espanol and the San Jose Mercury News’ Nuevo Mundo, a Spanish-language newspaper, is the editorial director. Figueroa is also a 1987 graduate of the Maynard Institute’s Summer Program for Minority Journalists.
Indianapolis-based Emmis Publishing, which owns Los Angeles magazine, is the publisher.
Garza said the first issue was due in June.
Nashville Reporter’s Outfits Part of His Story
“Darian Trotter is a serious journalist with a serious sense of style,” Anna Watson wrote last week in the Nashville Tennessean, in a story accompanied by photos of Trotter in various outfits.
“Indeed, it’s not often that one sees a TV news reporter sporting an ascot at a crime scene—much less a cheerful florescent pink and lime green plaid shirt worn under a navy Burberry jacket with a coordinating pink and green handkerchief peeking out of the pocket.
“. . . Nashville Lifestyles magazine recently named him one of Nashville’s top 10 best-dressed, while Out & About newspaper praised his work by anointing him their favorite reporter. According to Nashville Scene’s latest readers’ poll, he’s one of the town’s best reporters,” Watson’s story continued.
“Viewers e-mail Trotter on a nightly basis, providing feedback on both his performance and his outfits. The comments range from quick thumbs up to elaborate commentaries about his style.
” . . . Critics argue that his flashy style takes away from his reporting. Angry viewers have written in citing certain outfits as inappropriate for a news story. (Even his mom called to question his judgment after the segment featuring the aforementioned neon pink and green get-up aired.)”
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Marriott’s Diversity Pledge: $1 Billion in Business
Journalist of color organizations who examine the diversity records of the hotels where they conduct business might be interested in Marriott International’s pledge last week to do $1 billion in business with women- and minority-owned suppliers over the next five years and to double its number of women- and minority-owned franchisees over that period, as Annys Shin reported in the Washington Post.
“The Bethesda-based lodging company also said it has invested $20 million in RLJ Development LLC’s Urban Lodging Fund headed by Robert L. Johnson, chairman of Black Entertainment Television. The fund is one of four minority- and women-owned financial institutions with which Marriott said it signed agreements. RLJ owns four Marriott-branded properties,” Shin wrote.
“More than 270 of Marriott’s franchisees—about 15 percent—are operated or under development by women and minorities, said Stephanie Hampton, a Marriott spokeswoman. “Last year, Marriott spent $210 million with suppliers owned by women and minorities, already exceeding the $200 million-a-year pace in its new pledge. But David Sampson, Marriott’s senior vice president for diversity initiatives, said, ‘We’ve been averaging about $150 million to $175 million over the past five years. For us to spend $200 million a year for the next five years is a solid goal. It’s going to take a lot of focus.'”
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Audio Excerpts of Ossie Davis Service Posted
Pacifica Radio this morning played excerpts from Saturday’s memorial service for actor and activist Ossie Davis and made it available on the “Democracy, Now!” Web site.
Among those whose tributes were captured were Maya Angelou, Harry Belafonte, Bill Clinton, Malcolm X daughter Attallah Shabazz and Davis’ grandson, Brian Day. A musical tribute by Wynton Marsalis is also included. In New York, Pacifica station WBAI-FM is offering a DVD of the service to those who donate to the station, according to its Web site.
Covering the event for the Associated Press was Deepti Hajela, new president of the South Asian Journalists Association.
At funeral, Ossie Davis is hailed as man of the people (Hannan Adely, Journal-News, Westchester-Rockland, N.Y.)
Ossie Davis Remembered (Herb Boyd, The Black World Today)
Tears Flow in Harlem (Kerry Burke, Leslie Casimir and Tracy Connor, New York Daily News)
Thousands Bid Farewell to Ossie Davis (Corey Kilgannon, New York Times)
Memories of a father, a son and singing the blues (Brian Lewis, Springfield News-Leader, Mo.)
Majestic farewell to ‘a king’ (Deborah S. Morris and Nicole G. Ray, Newsday)
Ossie Davis showed wisdom, courage (Les Payne, Newsday)
Ossie Davis, never afraid to do the right thing (Leonard Pitts, Miami Herald)
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