Lou Gehrig’s Disease Claims Pulitzer Winner
Norman Lockman, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist who worked at the Boston Globe and the Wilmington News Journal in Delaware, died today after a four-year battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, his colleague, Wilmington editorial page editor John Taylor, said. He was 66.
For 35 years, Lockman wrote a weekly column on politics, education, social and civic affairs. From 1991 until he retired them in November, Lockman’s columns were distributed nationally by the Gannett News Service and carried by about 65 newspapers.
“It’s not a good day around here,” said News Journal publisher W. Curtis Riddle. “We’ve been expecting it for a while, but it’s still hard when it happens. I’ve known him for 25 years. He loved making people think. He loved being an advocate for issues — all kinds of issues,” he told Journal-isms.
But Lockman was particularly passionate about education — the quality of education, standards for teachers and improving test scores, Riddle said.
From 1984 to 1991, Lockman was managing editor of the News Journal, one of the first African Americans to hold such a position on a mainstream daily. He was last associate editor and a member of the editorial board, writing editorials on politics, foreign affairs, education and government. He founded, appointed and coordinated the paper’s Community Advisory Board.
In a column that is still on the paper’s Web site, Lockman announced to readers that his disability had forced him to end his column.
“Journalism is like driving. You need to know when to stop doing it well before you become a hazard to yourself and others. Good journalism cannot be done by phone,” he wrote. “It requires being able to scurry around, seeing, tasting and smelling the things you write about from as close as possible without getting mixed up in the story. My chronic illness makes that hard to do, so I’m going to hang up my slouch hat and turn in my press card while I can still bring this old career of mine in for a nice smooth landing. I’ve seen too many plummet to earth like ruptured ducks from hanging on too long.”
In 1984, while at the Globe, Lockman was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative specialized reporting for a series examining race relations in Boston. He was at the paper for nine years, as a reporter, editorial writer, political columnist and State House bureau chief before returning in 1984 to Wilmington, where he had begun his career in 1969.
Lockman was also a founding member of the Trotter Group of African American columnists. Among black columnists, some might consider Lockman, who was fond of bow ties and vacations in Italy, a moderate.
When Ronald Reagan died last year, Lockman had this to say:
“Like him or not, Reagan’s leadership style bucked up a nation mired in self-doubt. To him, the presidency was more than a job; it was a role to be played for the benefit of the nation’s image.
“Bush has taken many of his cues from Reagan, but Reagan never swaggered before the world. He was always eager to seem down-to-earth, whether he really was or not. It won him friends around the world and the evidence is the historic number of world leaders flocking to his funeral in Washington.
“Reagan was an American original. Copies are bogus.”
Journalists recalled their own interactions with Lockman. “I went to Jordan with Norman and about a half a dozen other NABJ journalists in 2002. He was the most lovable grumpy old man I’ve ever known!” Tamara Banks of Denver’s WB2 news said tonight. “Norman was insightful, interesting and extremely well read and I enjoyed just being around him absorbing all his wealth of knowledge.”
“The last time I saw Norm was at the SPJ convention in New York last winter,” recalled syndicated Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page. “He was rolled in on a wheelchair, but his spirit had wings. He was a perceptive commentator, a gifted writer and a truly engaging personality. He faced his last days with a courage and grace that should give us all more strength to face the battles ahead.”
DeWayne Wickham, USA Today and Gannett News Service columnist and a convener of the Trotter Group, told this story:
“Norman Lockman was an old-school gentleman and a no-nonsense journalist. A few years ago, during a reporting trip to Cuba, I saw the best of both of these qualities in him. One night, after a long day of official meetings and interviews, Norm was the only man in our group who was willing to take Betty Baye dancing at a Cuban club. Like the rest of us he was tired, but the irrepressible gentleman in him wouldn’t let Betty go to that club alone.
“The next day, when a Cuban government official took our small delegation of black journalists on a tour of a new tourist resort, Norm tired quickly of this outing. During a bathroom stop on the way to the resort, Norm got off the bus at an aging hotel and told the surprised government handler he wasn’t going any further. ‘Pick me up on the way back,’ he snapped as he disappeared into the hotel bar. It wasn’t until much later that I learned Norm had spotted the president (chief justice) of Cuba’s Supreme Court lounging poolside at that old hotel.
“While we spent the afternoon touring that resort, Norm got a one-on-one interview with one of Cuba’s highest ranking black officials.”
“He had tremendous insight, a sharp intellect, a delightful sense of humor and an independent spirit,” said another Trotter member, Stan Simpson of Connecticut’s Hartford Courant. “He was a Pulitzer prize winner who wasn’t caught up with his stature. I’m gonna miss him.”
At the News Journal, Lockman progressed over four years from general assignment reporter to city hall reporter to government editor to Washington correspondent during the Watergate years. He had been co-editor of t he Desert Wings, the military weekly newspaper at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Before that, he worked for a weekly newspaper in his hometown, Kennett Square, Pa.
Lockman earned a master of arts in liberal studies from the University of Delaware. In 1998, he was a Hechinger Fellow at Teachers College at Columbia University. Among his survivors are his wife, Virginia Trainer Lockman, and three daughters.
Funeral arrangements have not yet been made. But when they are, Riddle said, “you can be sure that Norman was in charge” of deciding them.
Spellings Chided for Response to Williams Report
“Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said Friday that senior agency officials showed ‘serious lapses in judgment’ and a disregard for taxpayer money in the hiring of conservative commentator Armstrong Williams,” the Associated Press reported.
“Spellings, responding to a department investigation of the hiring, appeared to put blame for the controversy on her predecessor, Rod Paige, though she didn’t name him.”
Meanwhile, Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten reported Saturday in the Los Angeles Times that, “A White House aide was told about potential problems with the Education Department paying a conservative commentator to promote an administration policy but did not prevent the contract from being renewed, according to a new government report.
“The White House involvement, noted briefly in a report Friday by the Education Department’s inspector general, appears to contradict statements by President Bush in January that the White House had no knowledge of the $240,000 contract with Armstrong Williams.”
Today, Suzette Martinez Standring, president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, told Editor & Publisher that, “I laughed out loud when Education Secretary Margaret Spellings suggested the $240,000 payoff to Williams might have begun as a hint by senior officials, later misread by minions that, in turn, may have led to a ‘chain reaction within the building to carry out the request.'”
Standring added: “The report comes across as a chagrined ‘oopsie!’ It describes Armstrong’s hiring to shill for No Child Left Behind policies as ‘poor judgment.’ We maintain ‘ethical lapse.’ They say ‘mistake,’ we say ‘abuse.’ In our dictionary, the Department of Education’s ‘public relations minority outreach’ is better defined under ‘covert propaganda.’ You say potahto, I say payola.'”
She added for Journal-isms: “Government paid-for-puffery will be curtailed once the teeth of the Lautenberg-Kennedy ‘Stop Government Propaganda’ bill bites down. Three times the amount of misspent taxpayer funds and an additional $5,000 to $10,000 penalty on offending officials will make government ‘oopsies’ into real ‘ouchies’.”
The Stop Government Propaganda Act states, “Funds appropriated to an Executive branch agency may not be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States unless authorized by law.”
White House Is Impeding Armstrong Williams Probe, Dem. Lawmaker Says (Editor & Publisher)
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Outside Panel to Review Findings on Mitch Albom
The Detroit Free Press will appoint an outside panel to review its investigation of columnist and bestselling author Mitch Albom before the paper’s report is made public, Editor & Publisher reported Friday.
“‘It adds another layer of transparency,’ John Miller, the Free Press public editor, told E&P at the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ annual conference in Washington. ‘I think another one of the reasons we’re doing it is also so we can move more quickly on it.'”
Meanwhile, Joe Strupp reported in Editor & Publisher that, “The Los Angeles Times will publish an editor’s note ‘within the week’ regarding reporter Eric Slater, who has drawn criticism for several weeks following a poorly reported story he wrote about the death of a college student, according to Times spokeswoman Martha Goldstein.
“Word spread in the newsroom today that Slater had been fired, but Goldstein would neither confirm nor deny that report.”
There was this commentary on the Albom case:
- Connie Coyne, Salt Lake Tribune: Simple fact-checking saves newspapers a lot of grief
- Paul Moore, Baltimore Sun: Fame shouldn’t protect writers who fabricate
- Joe Posnanski, Kansas City Star: It’s hard to see a hero fall
- Rochelle Riley, Detroit Free Press: Stars aren’t enough to read by
- Don Steinberg, Philadelphia Inquirer: Albom blunder causes credibility quicksand
Will Albom’s woes taint journalism? (Peter Johnson, USA Today)
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Crouch Among 12 Awarded $50,000 for Race Work
“Twelve artists, writers and scholars, including professor Anita Hill and former Black Panther Party activist Kathleen Cleaver, were named Friday as the inaugural winners of $50,000 fellowships for work that improves race relations and illuminates civil rights issues,” the Associated Press reported.
“The awards were financed by the Fletcher Foundation, an organization created by financier Alphonse Fletcher Jr.
“Recipients are critic and writer Stanley Crouch; Arthur Mitchell, founder of the Dance Theatre of Harlem; painter Glenn Ligon; Elizabeth Alexander, a professor of African American studies at Yale University; Devon Carbado, a law professor at UCLA; Roland Fryer, a Harvard University fellow; Nina Jablonski, an anthropologist with the California Academy of Sciences; Robert P. Moses, an educator in Cambridge, Mass. [and former activist with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee]; Thomas Sugrue, a professor of history and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania; and Deborah Willis, an art professor at New York University.”
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Spanish Radio, TV Scored for Mocking Gays
“On-air mockery of gay men, lesbians and transgender people is common on Spanish-language radio and television, media watchers say, and it has raised the ire of gay rights groups,” Rona Marech wrote Saturday in the San Francisco Chronicle.
“If I were to put on a scale the sensitivity of Spanish-language radio to gay and lesbian issues, I would have to put it at less than 1 on scale of 1 to 10,” said Iván Román, executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. “It’s ridiculous. It’s seen as perfectly normal to ridicule gays and lesbians, to see them as less than human.”
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Lalo’s Red Lake Cartoon Prompts Reader Warning
“The Star Tribune warned its readers Saturday that some might be offended by a comic strip about the Red Lake Indian Reservation shootings,” the Associated Press reported. The strip, by Lalo Alcaraz, deals with social and political issues for young Latinos.
“In the syndicated ‘La Cucaracha’ strip that also ran Saturday, a teacher asks what President Bush might have said to console those affected by the shootings last month which left 10 people dead, including the teenage gunman,” the report continued.
“One student answers, ‘I’m really so sorry you’re not an Anglo suburban reservation.’ Another says, ‘You shoulda stuck to arrows.’ A third says, ‘Pow? Wow!’
“Editor Anders Gyllenhaal, in a note to readers, said the paper was not aware of the topic of the comic strip until after the section had been preprinted. He said the paper gives broad latitude to comics and rarely pulls a strip, but it wanted to recognize that some readers could find the cartoon inappropriate.”
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Ole Miss Paper Apologizes for Inflammatory Ad
The University of Mississippi student newspaper issued a retraction and apology today for running an inflammatory advertisement about immigration and diversity, as Riva Brown wrote it would on Saturday in the Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss.
“The ad, published Friday in The Daily Mississippian, pictured a white baby with light hair and eyes under the heading, ‘Will She Be a Racial Minority by the Time She Turns 40?’
“It was paid for by the New Century Foundation, which publishes American Renaissance, an Oakton, Va.-based monthly publication about race and immigration.”
Editorial- UM intolerant of intolerance (Emery Carrington, Daily Mississippian)
Column- Renacimiento Americano (Michael Patronik, Daily Mississippian)
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Asian Journalists Protest Rex Reed Film Review
“What else can you expect from a nation weaned on kimchi, a mix of raw garlic and cabbage buried underground until it rots, dug up from the grave and then served in earthenware pots sold at the Seoul airport as souvenirs?” Rex Reed wrote in the New York Observer, reviewing the Korean film, “Oldboy.”
“That one line reduces an entire people to a backward, ‘different’ lot that’s meant to be mocked. The punch line of a cruel joke,” wrote Abe Kwok, Media Watch Committee co-chair and national vice president for print of the Asian American Journalists Association, joining other Asian American groups in protest. “We’re not laughing.”
The review has apparently been removed from the New York Observer Web site.
Observer editor Peter W. Kaplan did not respond to telephone messages from Journal-isms.
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