20 in Cross-Country Crash Course on Indians
When Lewis and Clark were heading west 201 years ago with no white women nearby, what do you think they did for female companionship out on the trail?
And those guffaws at last year’s Unity convention at President Bush‘s answer when he was asked to explain Indian sovereignty—”Tribal sovereignty means that, it’s sovereign. I mean, you’re a—you’re a—you’ve been given sovereignty and you’re viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities”—in retrospect, how did Bush really do?
The Lewis and Clark team and Bush’s comment were just two issues that came up this week during an unusual weeklong series of seminars and site visits for journalists who cover or would like to cover Native Americans. The 20 writers and broadcasters, mostly from the West, were in the nation’s capital Sunday through today, and go on to Albuquerque, N.M., Window Rock, Ariz., and Palm Springs, Calif., for the rest of the week. They have put up a blog on their experiences and a video is to follow.
The program is sponsored by the Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the Annenberg School for Communication, in partnership with the Native American Journalists Association.
“This program is like a dream come true for Indian country,” Jacqueline Johnson, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, a lobbying group, told those assembled on Sunday. “This has been our biggest challenge—how do we make sure the public at large truly understands who we are and the issues we’re facing.”
Brian Bull of Wisconsin Public Radio raised the issue of the sex lives of members of the Lewis and Clark expedition Tuesday while discussing stories that no one else had done in a year of seeming overload on the Lewis and Clark bicentennial.
Bull did the story last year based on Lewis’ diary. He found some Indians who some say are Lewis’ descendants, and filed a piece locally and then for National Pubic Radio’s “Day to Day.”
One Lewis diary entry read, “An old woman and wife to a chief of the Chinooks came and made a camp near ours. She brought with her six young squaws, I believe, for the purpose of gratifying the passions of the men in our party [which included a slave, York]. Those people appear to view sensuality as a necessary evil and do not appear to abhor it as a crime in the unmarried state.”
Bush’s sovereignty answer, which was considered such a gaffe that it became a campaign commercial created by a Bush basher, heightened awareness of the issue, said Dan Lewerenz, president of the Native American Journalists Association and an Associated Press reporter.
On Sunday, as the group met at a Washington restaurant, Johnson said that the Bush campaign later issued a paper on tribes “that included sovereignty—and did it very, very well.”
“He answered it about as well as 95 percent of the American public,” Lewerenz said of Bush’s Unity response. “I’m not sure candidates for any office could have answered it any better. But our job is [to see] that 40 years from now, they’ll be able to answer it better.”
According to Johnson, the crash course in Indian issues comes as Natives are realizing they need allies and when Homeland Security funding policies and federal budget cuts are making life more difficult; but also after Natives won their first-ever unanimous Supreme Court ruling. A March 1 decision means the Cherokee Nation could recover more than $8.5 million in back health care maintenance costs from the federal government.
And though such stories as that of the Lewis and Clark team and of Bush’s views on sovereignty are fairly accessible, mistrust of the news media and nuance in the subject matter conspire against simplistic, easy coverage, participants were told.
“There’s very little out there that requires the specialized knowledge” that covering Indians does, said Denny McAuliffe, project director of Reznet News of the University of Montana School of Journalism. Too many editors treat Natives as general-assignment news, he said, saying, “Get me an Indian story.”
Moreover, John M. Coward, author of “The Newspaper Indian: Native American Identity in the Press 1820-90,” after discussing racist stereotypes of Indians perpetuated in newspapers of that era, maintained that “the journalistic legacy lives on, embedded in popular discourse and imagery. Then and now, the press and public believe that they ‘know’ what Indians look like, what they wear, how they talk, how they act, and so on.”
Among the issues panelists said warranted coverage were Indian hip-hop music, the threat from developers to about 40 places of worship for Native people; and an Indian group on the Bering Sea that faces $15 million in penalties from the federal government because it alienated powerful interests by taking title to a World War II-era Navy dry dock in Hawaii.
McAuliffe, a former Washington Post editor, presented a list of recommendations for reporters new to covering Indians prepared by retired Post reporter William Claiborne. It began, “Above all, DO be absolutely straight with Indian sources. Don’t try to bullshit them like we do with white sources to get them to talk about something, because they’ve already heard all the bullshit there is and can recognize it quickly.”
Native Americans & Taxes (Jodi R. Rave, Poynter Institute)
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Black Columnists Assess Dan Rather Departure
- Wayne Dawkins, BlackAmericaWeb.com: Newsman Dan Rather May Be a Character, But He’s Also a Crusader
- Eric Deggans, St. Petersburg Times: Rather’s loss could become CBS’s gain
- Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: Oh, For Cryin’ In the Buttermilk
Dan Rather Signs Off ‘CBS Evening News’ (David Bauder, Associated Press}
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David Yarnold Quits Mercury News after 27 Years
David Yarnold, who held all three top news and editorial jobs at California’s San Jose Mercury News and has been a diversity advocate within the newspaper industry, announced today that he was leaving the paper for New York to become an executive at the nonprofit environmental advocacy group Environmental Defense.
“After all, there aren’t many jobs left for me to do at the Mercury News. Thanks to an incredibly supportive series of mentors and supervisors here and at Knight Ridder, I’ve served in nearly every newsroom role, from copy editor to executive editor. That kind of flexibility and acceptance of change remains a hallmark of this newspaper,” he said in a note to the staff.
Yarnold, 52, chaired the Diversity Committee of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
He started the Time-Out for Diversity and Accuracy project, now approaching its sixth year, which encourages newsrooms “to set aside one week in the spring to explore ways to improve their ability to reflect their diverse communities.”
“Time-Out, a project of the Associated Press Managing Editors and the American Society of Newspaper Editors, is focused on the proposition that any newspaper that values accuracy must reflect its entire community,” its Web page says.
“How can you say it’s about accuracy if you don’t see a Vietnamese person [in the paper] in a year?” Yarnold said at a conference on covering race and ethnicity.
At last year’s ASNE conference, Yarnold reported on a 2 1/2-day “diversity institute” attended by 21 top newspaper editors that discussed sociological issues and how newsroom culture affects newspaper content. It was so successful that the project should be continued, Yarnold told ASNE, which sponsored the program.
In 2003, Yarnold was given the Catalyst Award for print by the National Association of Minority Media Executives.
“The Mercury News is the only major newspaper to publish two foreign language weeklies,” NAMME noted. “It publishes El Nuevo Mundo in Spanish and Viet Mercury in Vietnamese. The publishers of both report to Yarnold.”
Yarnold was less successful in maintaining the level of diversity that once existed at top levels of the newsroom, and he was managing editor at the time of the ill-fated 1996 “Dark Alliance” series that linked the CIA-backed contras to crack cocaine in inner cities. The paper disavowed the series, and its author, Gary Webb, left the paper and was unable to find daily newspaper work again. Webb committed suicide in December.
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3 Radio Firms to Meet With Sharpton on Violence
“Three radio companies have reportedly agreed to meet with Al Sharpton in response to the Reverend’s call for R&B and hip-hop stations to voluntarily ban artists promoting violence for 90 days. Among them is Emmis, owners of R&B/hip-hop WQHT (Hot 97) New York, which was the site of a shootout between members of 50 Cent and the Game’s posses late in February,” Bram Teitelman reported today on BillboardRadioMonitor.com.
“While Sharpton’s call wasn’t directed solely at Emmis and Hot 97, the company has released a statement, and its spokeswoman says they’ve already spoken to Sharpton and will continue to do so.
“‘All television and radio stations are required to meet community standards established by the FCC,’ the Emmis statement reads. ‘We make every effort, and will continue to make every effort, to meet and even exceed those standards through quality programming that is in touch with our audience, coupled with such community outreach as Hip Hop Has Heart. We are an entertainment option. We in no way condone acts of violence. We hope that the perpetrators of these violent acts are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law by the proper authorities.'”
Meanwhile, Austin Fenner, Adam Nichols and Tracy Connor reported in the New York Daily News today that, “the city’s carpenters union, which owns the SoHo building, said artists will be allowed to bring only one person into the radio station with them.
“The union also wants to know who is appearing on Hot 97 a week in advance so it can call in the cops, hire extra security or rent a metal detector if necessary.
“The rules were sparked by the Feb. 28 shootout outside Hot 97 headquarters at 395 Hudson St. following interviews with rapper 50 Cent and his former protégé The Game.”
Thug Radio: Beef and bullets in rap’s corporate ratings war (Jarrett Murphy, Village Voice)
Cashing in on a culture of violence (Dennis Duggan, Newsday)
Artists, activists accuse radio station of fueling hip-hop violence (Tracey Ford, Rolling Stone)
Sharpton’s rap vs. rappers (Jenice Armstrong, Philadelphia Daily News)
Blood Money: The Financial Fruit Hip-Hop Death (Adisa Banjoko, AllHipHop.com)
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Blacks Seemed Less Engaged in ’04 Campaign
2004 was a breakout year for the Internet in American politics, surpassing radio, and in some cases newspapers, as an important source of campaign news for regular Internet users, according to research released this week.
But the trend likely does not hold true for African Americans, who seemed less engaged in the political campaign than other groups, according to John Horrigan, director of research for the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
The Pew report, released Sunday night, said, “Fully 75 million Americans—37 percent of the adult population and 61 percent of online Americans—used the internet to get political news and information, discuss candidates and debate issues in emails, or participate directly in the political process by volunteering or giving contributions to candidates.”
However, Horrigan told Journal-isms that the figure for blacks lagged, though he said he strongly suspected that the gap in Internet use among the races—once called “the digital divide”—was narrowing.
He said the sample of online users was too small for a racial breakout.
But the overall polling sample of 2,200—including both online users and nonusers—was large enough. When asked, “where do you get most of the news about the campaign?” 66 percent of whites said television, 41 percent said newspapers, 18 percent said the Internet and 17 percent said radio.
Among blacks, 74 percent said television; 33 percent newspapers, 14 percent radio and 13 percent said the Internet.
Among English-speaking Hispanics, 67 percent named television, 34 percent newspapers, 20 percent Internet and 10 percent radio.
The survey was conducted in English and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent. Included were 246 blacks and 223 Hispanics, Horrigan said.
To the question, “Have you ever used the Internet to get news,” 32 percent of whites said yes, compared with 17 percent of blacks and 28 percent of English-speaking Hispanics. Asked if they were following the election closely, 57 percent of whites said yes, compared with 40 percent of blacks and 41 percent of English-speaking Hispanics.
Of those polled, 22 percent of Hispanics had graduated from college, but only 16 percent of blacks did.
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All But One Lose Jobs at Fort Wayne TV Station
“The end came quickly Tuesday afternoon for 57 employees of WISE, Channel 33, who lost their jobs just hours after their station’s acquisition by Granite Broadcasting Corp.,” one of the nation’s few black-owned television companies, Linda Lipp reported today in Indiana’s Fort Wayne News-Sentinel.
“The sole survivor of the WISE, Channel 33, news team was anchor Linda Jackson, who now anchors the WISE evening news broadcasts from the studios of WPTA, Channel 21.
“The local NBC affiliate’s purchase by Granite, and Granite’s corresponding sale of ABC affiliate WPTA to Malara Broadcasting, closed Tuesday. Granite will manage both local stations under a shared-services agreement.
“The biggest impact of that agreement, and the one that already has caused viewers considerable confusion, is that WPTA news programming is now broadcast on WISE.
“Some job cuts had been expected as a result of the agreement, but neither company had revealed plans to eliminate the WISE 33 news staff, including its on-air personalities, camera operators and other behind-the-scenes workers.
“. . . Granite and Malara closed a similar deal Tuesday in Duluth, Minn.,” the story continued. “Malara immediately eliminated all but three members of KDLH?s newsroom, according to the Duluth News Tribune, The News-Sentinel?s sister Knight Ridder paper. The only on-air personalities retained there were an anchorman, a meteorologist and the sports director.”
Granite was the 1995 Black Enterprise Company of the Year, but by last June had dropped to number 31 on Black Enterprise magazine’s Industrial/Service 100 list. W. Don Cornwell is chairman and CEO.
Granite posts $30.2M loss (Linda Lipp, Fort Wayne News-Sentinel)
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AAJA Joins in Demanding Apology From Coulter
The Asian American Journalists Association has joined a chorus protesting conservative columnist Ann Coulter‘s reference to reporter Helen Thomas as “that old Arab.”
“We ask that you retract the use of the slur and apologize publicly,” wrote Abe Kwok, AAJA’s Media Watch Committee co-chair.
Thomas, 84, who is of Lebanese descent, received AAJA’s “Pioneers in Journalism” award in 2004.
Universal Press Syndicate removed the Arab reference from the version of the column that it distributed.
Nairaj Warikoo reported Tuesday in the Detroit Free Press that, “Coulter’s comments in her Feb. 23 column have sparked concern from metro Detroit’s Arab-American communities and 26 U.S. members of Congress, led by U.S. Rep. John Dingell, a Dearborn Democrat.” The legislators sent a letter of protest last week to Universal Press Syndicate.
Dave Astor wrote in Editor & Publisher yesterday that the syndicate and Coulter had agreed to remove Universal’s copyright from columns on AnnCoulter.com that differ from columns sent to newspapers. The “Arab” reference remained on the version of the column on Coulter’s site, along with Universal’s name.
As White House correspondent for United Press International, Thomas covered every U.S. president since John F. Kennedy. She is now a columnist for Hearst Newspapers.
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Ads, Circulation Up for Black Magazines
“So much attention lately has been on the growing Hispanic marketplace, especially Hispanic magazines. But when it comes to ethnic media, titles serving African Americans are doing as well or better,” Lorraine Sanders wrote Tuesday in Media Life.
“Ad pages are up, and so is circulation. ‘They’ve been bucking the industry trend. Whatever the trend is in magazines, they are ahead of it,’ says Ken Smikle, president of Target Market News, a Chicago firm specializing in African American marketing. ‘It’s been the case for as long as I’ve been looking at it.'”
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“Mad Black Woman” Fans Deluge Movie Critics
While most mainstream movie critics panned the hit movie “Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” “moviegoers love it and are letting critics know—loudly,” Li Wang wrote Tuesday in the Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pa.
“The faith-based film is a mix of melodrama, revenge fantasy and slapstick, with underlying messages of hope and forgiveness. It was written by Tyler Perry, a word-of-mouth sensation whose theatrical productions have grossed more than $75 million playing to predominantly black audiences,” the story continued.
“I think black folks see this movie through a different glass,” said state worker Kathy Gross in the story. “A lot of things that I’ve read in the papers show that [the critics] are not seeing the same picture.”
Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert “was taken aback by the response to his one-star review,” Wang wrote. “He said he received more e-mails after his thumbs-down for ‘Diary of a Mad Black Woman’ than he did for any other review, outnumbering the response for ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ and ‘The Passion of the Christ’ combined.
“. . . Across the nation, most critics panned the film, including black reviewers Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe and Lisa Kennedy of the Denver Post.”
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Media Scored on Images of Native People, Ads
Tim Giago, a founder of the Native American Journalists Association, lashed out this week at “advertising agencies and the media in general [whose] executives who are unintentionally insensitive to the thoughts and feelings of minorities and women.
“Whether the news is from Rapid City, SD or from Albuquerque, NM, the oversight, at least to racial minorities, stands out like a sore thumb.
“In Rapid City, the television crew is allowed to perch above a path where prisoners walk from one building to another,” Giago wrote in his “Notes from Indian Country” column. “Nearly every night, adapting the television adage that ‘if it bleeds it leads,’ inmates are captured by the media in handcuffs and leg irons shuffling from one building to another. The inmates in Rapid City are, for the most part, Native American and those in Albuquerque are mostly Hispanic.”
Meanwhile, “flyers for K-Mart, Wal-Mart and Target often feature African Americans in their ads in lieu of Native Americans although African Americans are a very small minority in the state of South Dakota. The same can be said of the ads run by major corporations in New Mexico.”
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Black Papers Target Milwaukee’s Kohl’s Stores
“After getting Home Depot to advertise in African-American newspapers, and pressuring Office Depot and T-Mobile Wireless to do likewise, black newspapers have a new target: Kohl’s Department Stores,” Tannette Johnson-Elie wrote Tuesday in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“Kohl’s is the target of a boycott orchestrated by Kimber, Kimber & Associates, a Fresno, Calif., advocacy advertising agency that represents 250 black-owned newspapers across the country.
“The purported offense: Kohl’s practice of excluding black newspapers from its print media buys.”
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Pulitzer-Juror Service Stirs Maynard Memories
“Walking across the snowy campus of Columbia University in New York last week was like stepping back in time. I was there as one of 77 jurors, mostly top newspaper editors, for journalism’s most esteemed awards the Pulitzer Prizes. It was my third time as a Pulitzer juror,” Wanda Lloyd, executive editor of Alabama’s Montgomery Advertiser, wrote Sunday.
“My mind took me back to the summer of 1972, a time of racial and political turmoil when journalism was coming into its own as a profession of choice among high school and college students searching an idealistic world for career choices. I served 12 weeks on the faculty of the Summer Program for Minority Journalists at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, taking a leave of absence from my newsroom in Providence, R.I., to help train 20 adults who had no journalism experience.
“All of us students and faculty—wanted to make a difference by using our unique voices to tell stories, mostly from the perspective of our ethnicity. I was 22 years old, very fresh in the newspaper business and younger than every student in the class.
“The faculty that summer included Bob Maynard, who later became the first African American to own and publish a mainstream daily newspaper (the Oakland Tribune); New York Times reporter Earl Caldwell, a central figure that summer in a Supreme Court case in which he refused to reveal his source (he would also later be known as the only reporter to witness the death of Martin Luther King Jr.); and Charlayne Hunter Gault, who integrated the University of Georgia in 1961 and is now a CNN correspondent in South Africa.
“. . . the Summer Program at Columbia was one of the newspaper industry’s first efforts at developing newsroom talent from the so-called minority community. In the years since, at least four graduates of that program have themselves become Pulitzer Prize winners, according to Dori Maynard, whose father, Bob, founded the summer program.”
Finalists in Photo Categories Added to ‘Leaked’ Pulitzer List (Editor & Publisher)
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Pasadena Station Not Picking Up Gordon’s NPR Show
A Pasadena, Calif., public radio station that carried Tavis Smiley‘s National Public Radio show has yet to pick up Ed Gordon‘s “News and Notes,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
“While vastly different in sensibility, ‘News & Notes’ airs on 81 of the stations that used to run ‘The Tavis Smiley Show.’ Pasadena-based KPCC-FM is among the stations that used to air Smiley but haven’t picked up ‘News & Notes.’ It has opted, for now, to fill the gap by expanding its airing of the BBC World Service,” Susan Carpenter wrote in the newspaper’s Calendar section, for which the paper charges for online access.
“We’re listening to it,” Craig Curtis, KPCC program director, was quoted as saying. “Whenever NPR puts out any serious new product, we’re automatically going to consider it pretty seriously.”
Curtis said in the story that the station plans to make a decision “within the near future.” Gordon’s show debuted in January.
NPR gets edgy with new talk program (Chris Baker, Washington Times)
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