“We Add a Little Spice to the Newsroom,” One Says
Fifty-five journalists have been hired under the Parity Project launched in 2003 by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the E.W. Scripps Co., NAHJ announced Tuesday at the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention in Washington.
In a statement today expressing the organization’s disappointment with the “dismal increase” in Latinos in the latest ASNE newsroom census, NAHJ said:
“The association?s Parity Project, dedicated to increasing the number of Latino journalists working in the news media, demonstrates that daily newspapers can be agents of change and diversify their staffs rapidly.”
The Denver Rocky Mountain News and Texas’ Corpus Christi Caller-Times might agree.
The Rocky was the first paper to participate in the project, and has nearly doubled its Latino staff in two years, from 12 to 23, NAHJ said. The Caller-Times, which joined the next year, went from 15 Latinos to 22 in seven months.
Nationally, by contrast, over a one-year period, “the number of Hispanic journalists working at U.S. dailies went from 2,258 to 2,323 last year, just a 0.12 percent increase (4.17 to 4.29 percent). At that rate, ASNE?s goal for reaching parity with the Latino population by 2025—18 percent—would take more than 90 years to achieve,” NAHJ said.
“We were in their position once as well,” Michael Madigan, an assistant managing editor at the Rocky, said of the other newspapers. “I’m always a believer in ‘you achieve what you emphasize.’ John Temple,” the president, editor and publisher, “put a huge emphasis on this. It isn’t an easy thing to do. It takes a lot of time and you really do have to emphasize it, but if you do that, there’s obviously talent out there. There’s a way to do it without stealing from others in the industry,” he told Journal-isms.
The Parity Project started at the Rocky in April 2003, taking the form of the “Scripps Howard Academy for Hispanic Journalism,” a two-year fellowship with four people in the program each year. Five are present now; four reporters and a copy editor. “The reporters start out as general assignment reporters and are all given beats after a short period of time. They work right alongside journeymen reporters. Most that we’ve hired have had one- or two-years’ professional experience; we’ll also consider people straight out of j-school if they’ve had a couple of internships and show promise,” Madigan said.
“The goal is after two years, they become full-time reporters here or at other Scripps Howard newspapers. The healthiest thing would be if we retained some and some moved to other papers.”
Madigan said he received 10 applications for every one chosen. “We want early-career” people with potential, he said. With a lot of coaching and mentoring, “we can get them to a level where they can contribute on a level with others on the staff,” But, he said, “you really have to invest a lot of time.”
At the Caller-Times, “It’s really making sure you have a diverse pool from which to choose” for every opening, Shane Fitzgerald, managing editor, said.
“A lot of it is growing our own,” he added; going into the high schools, hiring local students as editorial assistants, and “looking very closely” at nearby Texas A&M, at students who “maybe we weren’t looking at before.”
One new reporter, Katy Garcia, had a journalism degree but had gone into fund-raising. The new photo editor, Jim Sanchez, arrived after seeing a job posting on the NAHJ Web site.
“They just threw me right into the fire. I love it,” Sarah Langbein, the Rocky’s first hire under the project, told Journal-isms. “I’m a crime reporter. I think more newspapers should offer opportunities like this. We have something different to offer. We add a little spice to the newsroom. We’re a young bunch.”
The project now boasts 16 newspapers and two television stations.
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Editors Weigh What Might Happen to Albom
As a Detroit Free Press investigative team looks into sports columnist Mitch Albom‘s previous work and how a column describing a fabricated event saw newsprint, an informal survey of editors found that most did not yet think Albom’s transgression had risen to a firing offense.
Meanwhile, Tribune Media Services will offer its clients other columnists while Albom’s work is suspended by the Free Press, Dave Astor reported in Editor & Publisher.
“‘We want to make sure folks who subscribe to Mitch have alternatives during this period,’ said John Twohey, TMS vice president for editorial and operations. He told E&P that possible substitutes being discussed by the syndicate this morning include Leonard Pitts Jr., who won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, and Kathleen Parker,” Astor reported.
The informal survey of editors was taken by Joe Strupp of Editor & Publisher at the Washington convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
“Is it a fireable offense?” Terry Headlee, executive editor of the Herald-Mail in Hagerstown, Md., asked in the story. “It’s awfully close. It bothered me a lot. But I feel that a person’s whole career needs to be taken into account.”
Albom submitted on April 1 a column for the Free Press’ April 3 edition about a Michigan State University basketball game on April 2. “He would not have gotten caught, except that the column reported on two former Michigan State University basketball players attending the game, who did not attend,” as Strupp explained.
In the rival Detroit News, columnist Laura Berman wrote Tuesday that “Over the years, Mitch Albom’s reputation—his legend, locally—has grown to outsize proportions, as he’s added careers (radio show host, novelist) with seemingly no limits.
“That first Friday in April, filing the column that’s landed him in journalistic hell, Mitch Albom made a judgment call that no average, competent reporter would make,” Berman concluded.
“If that’s his failure, it’s also the fault of the newspaper editors who believed their special star shone so brightly, he wouldn’t, couldn’t possibly, need a net.”
Other journalists related Albom’s dilemma to their own experiences. In the Romenesko letters column on the Poynter Institute site, Murray Seeger said:
“Mitch Albom’s error reminded me [of] a much bigger mistake the old Cleveland Plain Dealer made back when no one paid much attention. An office clerk ground out short pieces about graduation ceremonies in advance only to discover that one of the speakers at a high school dropped dead on the platform. The PM Press had a field day on that, but the PD had the last laugh when the Press disappeared some years later.”
Editor does KU proud (Chuck Woodling, Journal-World, Lawrence, Kan.)
Who among us has never cut a corner? (King Kaufman, salon.com)
Mitch Albom’s Phony Side Revealed (Bill Gallagher, Niagara Falls Reporter)
Tuesdays With Sorry (Matt Welch, Reason.com)
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African Leaders Score U.S. Media Coverage
“American media coverage of Africa has concentrated on bad news to the exclusion of more positive developments, hurting investment in and aid to the world’s poorest continent, African leaders say,” according to a story credited to the South African Press Association and Associated Press.
“A survey of African coverage in five prominent US publications found little mention of the fewer civil wars, South Africa’s economic growth or increased access to education, a panel of 11 former presidents told a Johannesburg news conference.
“‘Negative perceptions lead to negative outcomes—lower levels of aid and lower investments,’ said former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano, who led the country out of decades of civil war.
“The survey studied coverage of Africa between 1994 and 2004 in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and US News and World Report.”
In October, a survey conducted for the BBC showed that more than 90 percent of Africans were proud of their continent. More than 7,500 people were interviewed in 10 countries.
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CNN Assigns Koinange, Van Marsh to Africa
“To bolster network coverage of Africa, CNN recently made two key appointments. Lagos, Nigeria, bureau chief Jeff Koinange assumes the newly created role of Africa correspondent, and Alphonso Van Marsh, currently based in Istanbul, will transfer to Johannesburg as a video correspondent,” CNN announced.
Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Johannesburg bureau chief, left CNN March 25 and now does reports for National Public Radio as well as freelance assignments in print and broadcast.
Van Marsh, a 2001 graduate of the Maynard Institute Cross Media Journalism Program at the University of Southern California, was mentioned in this column in December 2003, when he was embedded with U.S. troops in Tikrit, Iraq. He had become the first to send back images from the scene when Saddam Hussein was captured.
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Red Lake Council Closes Meeting to Outsiders
“Normally, the regular meetings of the 11-member Red Lake Tribal Council are open to the public,” Stephen J. Lee wrote today in North Dakota’s Grand Forks Herald.
“But Tuesday, the first meeting held since the deadly March 21 reservation shootings was closed to nontribal members, according to Tim Sumners, council spokesman.
“Because of the traumatic events three weeks ago that left 10 adults and teenagers dead, the council decided to allow only tribal members in as the council addressed, for the first time together, how to carry on and lead the recovery, Sumners said.”
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Gunman Brian Nichols’ Mental Health Overlooked?
“In the aftermath of the tragic killings in and around Atlanta’s Fulton County Courthouse last month, media coverage focused primarily on the Georgia woman who managed to keep the alleged gunman from continuing his crime spree,” Amy Alexander wrote today on AOL BlackVoices.com.
“That focus is somewhat understandable, given the compelling narrative of Ashley Smith‘s recent past: The 26-year-old white single mother had married young, witnessed the death of her husband following a stabbing, then experienced a period of personal turmoil involving substance abuse and arrest.”
But, Alexander wrote, “While I believe that journalists should be forgiven for initially neglecting the details of [gunman Brian] Nichols‘ story, the lack of in-depth analysis and questioning of the particulars of Nichols’ experience is also a troubling reminder of a longstanding shortcoming of the press: the inability to consider the very real possibility that Nichols, like several other black men who have committed highly publicized, seemingly ‘senseless’ crimes in recent years, was acting out from an especially insidious, race-related form of emotional and psychological distress.”
Alexander is co-author, with Dr. Alvin Poussaint, of 2000’s “Lay My Burden Down: Unraveling Suicide and the Mental Health Crisis among African Americans” (Beacon Press).
Meanwhile, the AOL BlackVoices site has been nominated for two Webby Awards, in the lifestyle and social networking categories. “The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence in Web design, functionality and creativity,” the awards’ Web site says.
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Guild Protests Reuters’ Outsourcing of Jobs to India
The Newspaper Guild of New York has begun a legal challenge to the Reuters news agency’s attempt “to cover Wall Street from Bangalore,” Indiantelevision.com Team reports from India.
The Guild’s “charge is that offshoring US-based editorial jobs violates its contract with Reuters. The case will be heard before an independent arbitrator, whose decision is binding.
“The case could take months to complete. As the lawyers square off, journalists and other employees picketed Reuters US headquarters in Times Square and other US bureaus at lunchtime. Their aim was to call attention to the dispute.”
“New York Guild president Barry Lipton says, ‘Instead of focusing on producing the highest quality news, Reuters is now focussed on producing the cheapest news. This change is not just bad for our members, it’s bad for Reuters and its clients.'”
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“Capturing a Moral Victory Before it Fades Away”
In 1997, David Appleby “began working on a new documentary about a nearly forgotten story from the civil rights movement,” Corey Pein writes in the Columbia Journalism Review.
“Hoxie: The First Stand shows how an Arkansas mountain town voluntarily integrated its schools in 1955, two years before the better-known story of Little Rock, when President Eisenhower sent federal troops to the city to protect nine black students who had volunteered to attend an all-white high school.
“The Hoxie story strays from the familiar civil rights narrative, which is why Appleby was attracted to it. Hoxie?s integration was early and successful, thanks to the town?s justice-minded school board, which voted unanimously to integrate and held its ground in the face of death threats.
“Most outside reporters were turned away, but on the first day of school, a Life magazine photographer was present to capture black children and white children playing happily together. A ‘moral victory,’ declared the magazine. This brought trouble. Segregationists were infuriated, and came to Hoxie from all over the South.
“Other than Life, there were few news cameras in Hoxie. This, decades later, left Appleby with few pictures to fill an hour—so few that he nearly gave up. But he says he felt a responsibility to the people involved. Despite the lack of original footage, Appleby produced a documentary that is visually compelling, juxtaposing the contemporary South with the filmed remnants of Jim Crow.”
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Mexican Newspaper Owner Killed in Ambush
Raúl Gibb Guerrero, 53, owner of a Mexican Gulf Coast daily that covered organized crime and drug dealing, was killed in weekend ambush just hours after he oversaw the launch of a new edition of his newspaper, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported Monday.
The Committee “expressed alarm at the brazen attack and called on Mexican authorities to ensure a prompt and thorough investigation.”
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