Idea of Starting Independent Outlet Rejected
A group of Hampton University journalism students, discussing their plight amid charges of intimidation by administrators and minimal support for the student newspaper, decided last night that they will try to improve the paper within the existing environment rather than attempt to start a newspaper independent of the administration.
The meeting at the Virginia campus followed by three weeks a meeting between administrators and faculty and leaders of the National Association of Black Journalists, at which the faculty and administrators pressed for evidence of the alleged intimidation but the NABJ leaders said they would not disclose names in such a meeting, attended by 16 people. The NABJ leaders were then criticized as unprepared.
Last night, however, students freely discussed an atmosphere in which they said some of their colleagues declined to write for the paper, the Script, because they thought it might lead to trouble down the line.
One student, Daarel Burnette II, said that in a previous school year he had written a column in the Script describing the dormitory director walking into his room uninvited and removing a cooler he said was unauthorized. Woodson Hopewell, dean of men, then wrote Burnette a letter threatening further action if Burnette did not retract the column, which the dean said violated the university’s code of conduct by embarrassing administrators, according to Burnette. No retraction was forthcoming, but the dean was offered an opportunity to reply, he said.
Hopewell did not respond to a message left at his home last night.
In discussing whether they could launch an independent online publication, students noted that the Web site BlackPlanet.com has been blocked for a number of years from university-owned computers, and said the same fate could await an independent student publication.
Still, the sentiment was that, “we want to put as much effort as possible” into improving the student paper, incoming editor Bravetta Hassell told Journal-isms today. “I don’t think we’ve exhausted every resource we have within the institution. So I think that it’s best that we do that before we look outside.”
The meeting was facilitated by Pearl Stewart, founder of the Black College Wire, a project that works to improve newspapers at historically black colleges and universities. She had said she believed “the students need an independent, online publication” and that “Black College Wire would be very willing to help them produce that.”
Among the professionals meeting in person or by telephone with the nine students were Bryan Monroe, vice president for print of the National Association of Black Journalists, who was at the meeting with university President William Harvey; Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center; Valerie White, chair of the Black College Communication Association, an organization of student newspaper advisers; Benita Newton of the Norfolk (Va.) Virginian-Pilot and Kafi B. Rouse, president of the Hampton Roads Black Media Professionals.
Hampton’s journalism program is the recipient of a $10 million commitment from the Scripps Howard Foundation, including a new building. Portrayed as an initiative to put more African American journalists into the profession, the program has had three leaders since 2002. Last weekend, Journalism Dean Tony Brown said in the Daily Press of Newport News, Va.: “I can state categorically that there’s no climate of fear” at the journalism school. “That’s the most absurd statement I’ve ever heard.”
But the students said that Brown and some of the faculty members who pressed NABJ for documentation of intimidation are not as close to the students as some observers believe. Moreover, they said, many of the marquee names that the school has attracted are teaching advanced courses, not those where students are expected to be taught the basics.
Participants in last night’s meeting decided to put together a “boot camp” to teach basic skills that many students are said to be lacking, to work with professionals in the Hampton Roads Black Media Professionals and to seek to put the paper online.
Hassell said today, “If the students are not getting the writing skills we need, we want to give them another venue to do it, because we want the Script to be an educational tool.”
Stewart said she was pleased with the results. “It is better for them to come together and work on improving the Script and use the resources of the professional journalists in the area,” she said.
The course the students decided “is actually better, because they realize that if they put their strength and efforts in one place, they can probably improve the paper. I just hope that the university appreciates what they’re trying to do. The students made it clear that they’re going to do in-depth reporting. That’s a very important step. The students were finished with their classes [for the semester]. It’s very significant that they stayed” for the meeting.
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. . . Black Planet Expects to Be Back at Hampton
Omar Wasow, founder of the interactive Web site BlackPlanet.com, told Journal-isms that Hampton University students had alerted him today to the blocking of his Web site, one of the points made in the discussion among student journalists Tuesday night.
“We don’t know the rationale behind the decision and so are not in a position to say something about this specific act,” Wasow said.
“In the past we’ve seen schools temporarily close off access to the site when gossiping and rumor mongering that in a prior generation would’ve never left a locker room or bathroom wall migrates to the Web.
“Typically the student, police or school authorities will contact us and upon following a standard procedure we’ll close the offending page down. Assuming the Hampton situation is similar to our past experiences (and those at AOL and Yahoo), I expect that access to BlackPlanet.com will be restored as soon as whatever internal matter they’re working through is resolved.
“Though unfettered online publishing inevitably leads to some inappropriate actions, we believe it is a small price to pay for providing millions of young people with the power of the press.”
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Film Leads to Decision to Exhume Till’s Body
“Nearly 50 years after 14-year-old Emmett Till‘s murder shocked a nation and galvanized the civil rights movement, his body will be exhumed as federal authorities attempt to determine who killed him, the FBI said Wednesday,” Dan Babwin reported today for the Associated Press.
“Till’s body, buried in a cemetery in the Chicago suburb of Alsip, will be exhumed within the next few weeks so the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office can conduct an autopsy, said Deborah Madden, spokeswoman for the FBI’s office in Jackson, Miss.”
It was another victory for filmmaker Keith Beauchamp, who spent nine years making a documentary on Till’s death.
“Beauchamp believes five people who are still alive could lend new insight into the case and that as many as 10 people either observed or took part in the slaying,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported today.
“The U.S. Justice Department announced plans last year to reopen the Till investigation, saying it was triggered by several pieces of information including a documentary by New York filmmaker Keith Beauchamp,” Babwin’s AP story said.
“‘The exhumation is a logical continuation of that,’ Madden said. ‘An autopsy was never performed on the body and the cause of death was never determined.'”
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Drugs Tested on “Poor or Minority” Foster Kids
“Government-funded researchers tested AIDS drugs on hundreds of foster children over the past two decades, often without providing them a basic protection afforded in federal law and required by some states, an Associated Press review has found,” John Solomon reported today for the AP.
“The research funded by the National Institutes of Health spanned the country. It was most widespread in the 1990s as foster care agencies sought treatments for their HIV-infected children that weren’t yet available in the marketplace.
“The practice ensured that foster children ? mostly poor or minority ? received care from world-class researchers at government expense, slowing their rate of death and extending their lives. But it also exposed a vulnerable population to the risks of medical research and drugs that were known to have serious side effects in adults and for which the safety for children was unknown,” Solomon wrote.
Solomon referred questions this evening about how he came upon the story to the AP’s Corporate Communications Department, which was not available.
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Albom Finds Little Sympathy from Other Writers
“Mitch Albom must have spent much of his brief paid suspension hanging out in cut-rate delis, because the Sunday column that marked his return to print was jam packed with cheap cheese and rancid baloney,” the News Hits column wrote today in Metro Times Detroit.
The Free Press’ star columnist and author had described events taking place among fans at a game that had not yet taken place, leading to a suspension of the column and unspecified disciplinary action.
“News Hits isn?t certain what turned our stomachs most about the piece in the Free Press ? Mitch?s absolute refusal to admit his true transgression, the attempt to downplay the significance of that ethical breach, or his blatant attempt to generate sympathy because of the battering he?s taken. Poor, poor Mitch.”
Meanwhile, on the Web site sportsjournalists.com seemingly each line of Albom’s column to readers about his fabrication was picked apart.
One writer using the pseudonym “Mystery Meat” noted Albom’s line, “I made a careless mistake in a column. It wasn’t malicious. It didn’t harm the subjects.”
“Okay, one more time with feeling: REPORTING SOMETHING THAT HAS YET TO HAPPEN AND TREATING IT LIKE IT ALREADY HAPPENED, COMPLETE WITH IMAGINED DETAILS, IS NOT A CARELESS MISTAKE. That’s called ‘making stuff up and passing it off as fact’. A careless mistake is saying the final score was 90-86 when it was 90-68. The first half of the second paragraph of this supposed mea culpa column and he’s already trying to justify himself,” the writer said.
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Short takes
- Vanessa Bauza, Vindu Goel and Tony Norman are among the 12 named to the next class of the University of Michigan Knight-Wallace Fellows program, “meaning that our class is 25% people of color,” a spokeswoman told Journal-isms today. Bauza, of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, plans to study “challenges facing democracy in Latin America”; Goel of California’s San Jose Mercury News is taking up “the impact of religion on politics”; and Norman, a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist, “rumor, religion and reform in the African-American experience.”
- “Van Williams, who covered City Hall for The Eagle for the past three years, resigned Monday to become the city’s public information coordinator,” Fred Mann wrote Tuesday in Kansas’ Wichita Eagle. Columnist Mark McCormick wrote today that Williams “made everything I’ve accomplished here much easier because of the dignified way he conducted himself as a top-notch reporter, editor and manager . . . I’d seen a successful black journalist, so I was able to become one. As far as I know, he’s the first black newsroom manager in the 100-plus-year history of The Eagle.”
- “After spending most of the last 17 years behind a desk, Washington Post photo editor Michel duCille is returning to his first love: taking pictures. On June 1, the two-time Pulitzer winner will relinquish his position as the newspaper’s No. 2 photo editor to become the Post’s senior photographer,” Jay DeFoore wrote Tuesday in Photo District News.
- “Pacifica Radio’s beleaguered WBAI New York is now looking for a new General Manager. After only two years at the helm, the overwhelming pressure of running one of radio’s most contentious top tier market stations finally forced Don Rojas, 53, to move on,” according to Richard Wills on radiofile.net.
- David Shuster of MSNBC described Monday how he and Alison Stewart crashed the exclusive Bloomberg party that followed the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Saturday night.
“Alison smiled and said, ‘I’m Alison Stewart of MSNBC and this is David Shuster of MSNBC.’ The woman smiled at Allison and waved us through without even checking the list. As Alison noted, See, it helps to be nice.'”
- HBO’s “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel” won two Sports Emmys Monday night. The Asian American Journalists Association reports that three of its members won as part of production teams: Brian Wong and Elaine Sung of SportsCenter ESPN; and Lawrence Yee of ABC Sports.
- “Ron Oliveira, who recently left ABC affiliate KVUE-TV after contract negotiations broke down, joined rival station KEYE-TV, the CBS affiliate said Monday,” Texas’ Austin Business Journal reported. Oliveira has said he thinks he might have been the first Hispanic main anchor in Austin, starting in 1981.
- Gallup polling finds that 75 percent of whites think that the child molestation charges against pop star Michael Jackson are “definitely or probably true,” while only 49 percent of blacks think they are, Editor & Publisher reported Tuesday.
- “Indian Country Today, the national weekly newspaper, is looking to start a newscast on PBS to expand its audience—and influence—from Native Americans to the general public,” Mark Fitzgerald reported last week in Editor & Publisher, following up on a mention of the idea earlier in the week in the New York Times.
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