Top 2 Editors Leave Merged Project
Less than six months after Africana.com shut down its Web site and merged into AOL BlackVoices, the editor of the merged site has resigned and his deputy has left as well.
AOL Black Voices, based at AOL’s Dulles, Va., headquarters, represents a merger of AOL’s old Black Focus; Africana.com, formerly based in Cambridge, Mass.; and Black Voices, founded in Orlando, Fla., then based in Chicago and acquired by AOL last year from the Tribune Co.
Combining the three cultures has been difficult, according to staff members.
Gary Dauphin, the director of AOL African American programming who was Africana’s editor, told friends last week that he had resigned and was returning to Cambridge. His deputy, Barbranda Lumpkins Walls, programming director, left Thursday, though she is techically on board until July 1. She told Journal-isms that, “I think I want to go back into the print media.” Others from Africana are also said to be leaving.
Walls, a onetime USA Today Life section editor and former managing editor of the now-defunct health magazine Heart & Soul, had joined AOL only about eight months ago.
On Friday, Dauphin referred questions to AOL’s corporate communications department. Lori Dolginoff, an AOL spokeswoman, told Journal-isms late today that it would be several weeks before a new head of AOL Black Voices was announced.
The uncertainty worries some, such as media columnist Amy Alexander, who joined the site from Africana and who writes for it on a contract basis.
“I hope AOL doesn’t give up on this endeavor,” she said. “It’s still got a lot of potential. I feel like our readership is building. I understand bottom-line concerns,” Alexander told Journal-isms, but if AOL is in the business of building its content to stave off declines in users, it cannot ignore its African American audience. “I’m nervous,” Alexander conceded. “I need the job. I’m the only black woman now with a national forum for writing about race and the media.”
At the beginning of the year, AOL named Bill Wilson, a man with a background in the music business, to oversee all AOL content, including news, finance and sports.
He — and AOL, where editors are “programmers” and stories are “content” — represent a different approach from that of Africana or Black Voices.
The Africana.com Web site was founded in January 1999 by Harvard professors Henry Louis Gates and Kwame Anthony Appiah. Black Voices, launched in December 1995, was especially known for its coverage of black college sports, producing a quarterly devoted to the topic, as well as black travel, entertainment news, photogalleries at live events and its thriving chatroom. It sponsored an annual Summer Splash party weekend in Orlando, where its members met and partied, former editor David Squires recalled.
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Watergate Editor Says Don’t Believe the Hype
Last week’s disclosure that Mark Felt was the Watergate figure “Deep Throat” prompted a flood of commentary. Included were pieces by Barry Sussman, who edited Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward‘s Watergate stories at the Washington Post, columns by several journalists of color, and one by the senior vice president/news for the Gannett Co., the nation’s largest newspaper company, who was prompted to review how the Watergate case relates to Gannett policies on anonymous sourcing.
Sussman, now editor of the Nieman Watchdog Project, posted an edited version of a 1997 essay that contends that Felt’s importance has been hyped. “Deep Throat barely figured in the Post’s Watergate coverage. He was nice to have around, but that’s about it,” Sussman wrote.
“Deep Throat may have known a lot but he didn’t give much away. As a mole he was pretty feeble; I can’t recall any story we got because of him. True, he offered encouragement that Watergate was important at a time when hardly any other news organizations were going after the story. That was nice, but we knew it on our own.
“Deep Throat also could be decidedly unhelpful,” Sussman went on.
Another former Post writer and editor, William Greider, now at the Nation magazine, wrote that he was struck by the relationships among the journalists. He wrote that, “This remarkable story of human interactions inside an important institution—people taking a conscientious gamble on one another—is what now seems so unique and meaningful to me. Can we imagine these events happening inside government or media today?”
Gannett’s Phil Currie reviewed the Gannett Newspaper Division’s Principles of Ethical Conduct for Newsrooms, writing:
“Yes, a Deep Throat still could exist today under the Principles of Ethical Conduct for Newsrooms.
“But not first without trying to get him on the record.
“And that effort of pressing to get people on the record would apply to all other sources in all [other] stories— including a story like the eventually-retracted ‘Periscope’ item in Newsweek,” reporting that U.S. investigators at Guantanamo Bay had confirmed that a guard had deliberately flushed a prisoner’s Koran down a toilet.
Commentary from journalists of color ranged from the Raleigh News & Observer’s Barry Saunders remembering the African American security guard who discovered the break-in, Frank Wills, to Colbert King in the Washington Post reminding readers of Felt’s involvement in COINTELPRO, in which “FBI agents conducted clandestine and illegal operations against innocent Americans.” Sam Fulwood of the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote that the Watergate scandal inspired his career in journalism.
- Sam Fulwood, Cleveland Plain Dealer: Thanks, Mr. Felt, aka Deep Throat
- Bob Herbert, New York Times: Truth and Deceit
- Colbert I. King, Washington Post: Deep Throat’s Other Legacy
- Roland S. Martin, Creators Syndicate: Felt did the right thing in exposing Nixon’s lawlessness
- Sheryl McCarthy, Newsday: Felt didn’t betray his country, Nixon did
- Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: Deep Throat: Dirty tricks, dirty hands
- Les Payne, Newsday: The mighty taken down by the unlikely
- Ken Rodriguez, San Antonio Express-News: Student got a B for ’99 research paper unmasking Deep Throat
- Barry Saunders, Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer: Watergate’s discoverer and uncoverer
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Natives Not Satisfied With CNN Explanation
CNN said last week that the Native American Journalists Association was left out of its donation of $1 million in scholarship money to journalists-of-color associations because “CNN chose the three organizations with which it had the most extensive relationships,” as reported on Thursday.
But that answer does not satisfy NAJA, according to president Dan Lewerenz. “It almost becomes a chicken-and-egg situation,” he told Journal-isms on Friday. “The lack of a relationship goes to the very heart” of the problem. To his knowledge, CNN has no Native journalists, Lewerenz said, people who could have created such a relationship. “It’s not been that we haven’t reached out,” he continued, though he acknowledged that CNN has contributed to the upcoming NAJA convention, and has said it will do so in the future.
The NAJA president said he requested a meeting with CNN President Jim Walton and Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons to discuss future support for Native students and NAJA programs. Christa Robinson, CNN’s senior vice president for public relations, did not respond today to an inquiry on the status of Lewerenz’ request.
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Suede Subscribers to Receive Essence Magazine
Since Time Inc. put Suede magazine on “hiatus” in February, readers have posted to the Journal-isms message board their dissatisfaction and, in some cases, complaints that they have not received their money back.
Subscribers are being notified that Essence will honor Suede subscriptions, Sonya McNair, vice president for public relations and corporate communications for Essence Communications, parent company of both Essence and Suede, told Journal-isms today.
The readers are receiving this message, she said:
“Dear Subscriber,
“We appreciate your subscription to Suede Magazine. The magazine has ceased publication. Please be advised that the remainder of your subscription will be honored by Essence magazine. For each issue of Suede you will get 1.08 issues of Essence. Your first issue of Essence will be August 2005.
“If you are already a subscriber to Essence, your subscription term will be extended accordingly. If you would prefer not to receive Essence, and would prefer another Time Inc magazine or have the remainder of your subscription refunded, please contact us by mail within the next 30 days at Customer Service, PO Box 62490, Tampa, Florida 33660, or call 1-800-274-9398.”
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Pitts to Ga. Writer: “Get Your Own Damn Words”
“Chris Cecil, associate managing editor of a Georgia newspaper, was fired yesterday for plagiarizing at least eight columns by Miami Herald/Tribune Media Services commentator Leonard Pitts Jr.,” Dave Astor reported Friday in Editor & Publisher.
“‘I’m sick and embarrassed about this whole thing, and so is the news staff,’ said Charles Hurley, editor and publisher of The Daily Tribune News in Cartersville, Ga. Hurley told E&P that he fired Cecil—who wrote a weekly column along with his editing tasks—after being informed of the plagiarism by the Herald.”
Astor’s story appeared the same day as Pitts’ own column on the matter, addressed to Cecil.
“Let me say something on behalf of all of us who are struggling to learn how to write, or just struggling to be honorable human beings,” Pitts wrote.
“The dictionary is a big book. Get your own damn words. Leave mine alone.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution added that, “Pitts said he’s indebted to the reader who first noticed the plagiarism. He said he’ll be in Atlanta this summer and will ‘look forward to taking her to lunch.'”
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Editors Said to Hamper Women’s Sports Coverage
“Some newspapers aren’t giving adequate coverage to women’s sports in part because editors believe women are less athletic and less interested in sports than men, a Penn State University researcher says,” according to the Associated Press.
“In a survey of 285 newspapers, nearly 25 percent of editors agreed with the statement, ‘Women are naturally less athletic than are men,’ according to a study by Penn State journalism professor Marie Hardin.
“Roughly half of editors said that Title IX has hurt men’s sports. The 1972 law, best known for promoting women’s athletics, bars sex discrimination in any educational program receiving federal funds.
“The views may influence coverage at a time when there is growing participation and interest in women’s sports, Hardin said.”
An editorial Friday in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer added:
“In an interview yesterday, Hardin suggested sports editors should listen more to their readers and that women on sports staffs ought to at least equal their nearly 30 percent share of sports-section readership. She said preliminary figures from major newspapers show about 11 percent female sports staffs, the approximate figure for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.”
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Michael Dyson Renounces Public Use of “N” Word
Author and commentator Michael Eric Dyson, who has championed use of the “N” word along with other hip-hop poses, now says, “I have decided to retire the use of the ‘N’ word in public,” according to the Web site playahata.com.
“Why? Not because I believe that it has lost its power as a term of endearment among black folk who use it with love and affection. Not because its meaning has become so bastardized that one may not recover its redemptive use by black folk who intend it to signify profound love and respect,” the University of Pennsylvania professor is quoted as saying.
“I have decided to stop using it for two reasons: many black folk who otherwise supported my work and agreed with my perspectives were thrown off by my public identification with the downtrodden and the debased of our race through use of the term. Despite all the good they thought I did, they believed that the use of the word made it difficult for them to fully embrace me.
“[To paraphrase The Apostle Paul said in the Bible that ‘if meat offends my brother, I don’t eat meat.’] Finally, Rev. Jesse Jackson, after we both attended Johnnie Cochran‘s funeral, and after we engaged in a healthy political discussion with Stevie Wonder, asked me to refrain from publicly using the ‘N’ word because it obscured what he termed the effectiveness of my intellectual witness.”
Dyson threw in a caveat: He will refrain from using the word “where I cannot explain the context of the word and its association with traditions of racial response to degradation. When I can explain it, I will feel free to engage in its use, although I realize those opportunities may be rarer than I’d like.”
Dyson could not be reached for comment. He has been promoting his book, “Is Bill Cosby Right?”
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Blacks Embrace BET More Than Motown, Ebony?
On Thursday, Robert Johnson made his long-expected announcement that he is stepping down as CEO of the Black Entertainment Television network he started 25 years ago, and that Debra Lee, the network’s president and chief operating officer for the past nine years, immediately becomes the new CEO.
During a conference call with reporters, Lee made the statement that, “I grew up with brands like Ebony and Motown, and BET has surpassed those companies and has really become the number one brand in African American households,” according to a story by John Maynard in the Washington Post.
Journal-isms asked BET spokesman Michael Lewellen whether there was a factual basis for Lee’s assertion.
Lewellen replied:
“Various statistical reasons, for example:
- “BET’s value of $3 billion paid by Viacom in 2000 (neither Motown or Johnson Publishing have such a market valuation);
- “BET’s distribution to 80 million homes in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean;
- “Existing national market research that rates the BET brand name as recognized by 99% of all African Americans.”
Noting that only the first point compared the three companies, and that that spoke only to dollars paid for the company, Journal-isms asked whether there was another measure that spoke to brand acceptance or recognition in African American households.
Lewellen’s response:
“That amount paid by Viacom was based on a variety of financial factors, including market valuation of BET assets.
“As for BET’s brand recognition, that’s derived from a TNS Image Tracking Study often used by brands . . . doing comparative marketing analysis.
“Finally, our distribution number of 80 million homes is straight from Nielsen Media Research. While I’m sure Motown has sold more than 80 million records in its long, long history, I doubt if their more recent data registers that high. And you could combine all of the annual subscription numbers for every Johnson magazine and NOT reach 80 million.”
- A Pivotal Shift at BET: New CEO Sees the Need for Wider Range of Programming (Annys Shin, Washington Post)
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Columnist Discounts “Buffing” of “Ivory Tower”
Laura Washington, writing today in the Chicago Sun-Times, did not think much of the May 26 announcement that, “A national initiative led by five of America’s leading research universities with the support of two major foundations will advance the U.S. news business by helping revitalize schools of journalism.”
Washington wrote: “This effort may be well-intended. It is also wrongheaded. It is preoccupied with enhancing their status and buffing up the work of, as the ivory tower types like to say, ‘the academy.’
“Joe Six-Pack doesn’t read the newspaper over his morning eggs and coffee anymore. The couch potatoes are furiously clicking off the nightly news.
“Readers and viewers see the media as an elitist bunch that neither live nor reflect their reality. The news honchos who have the most sway over writing and producing the news are mostly white men over 50. The old cigar chomping, street-savvy newsman is gone. Today’s correspondents are more likely to have multiple college degrees and live in the suburbs. They can’t remember the last time they lived from paycheck to paycheck. . . .
“Talk about ivory tower. I have spent most of my career practicing and teaching investigative reporting. It is a vital and rarefied field. It may also be the most exclusive club in American journalism. There are probably no more than a dozen people of color practicing the craft full time.
“A survey commissioned by the Knight Foundation shows that the staffs at many of the nation’s newspapers are less diverse than the communities they serve. . . . The New York Times’ newsroom staff is 16.7 percent non-white; it serves a community that is 30.9 percent non-white. The Miami Herald’s newsroom is 29.9 percent non-white while its circulation area is 70.1 percent non-white.
“Take another look in that mirror, guys.”
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Short Takes
- Doug Smith, former USA Today writer who is an assistant professor of journalism at Hampton University and adviser to its student newspaper, the Script, denounced leaders of the National Association of Black Journalists today in the Daily Press of Newport News, Va. Writing about an April 13 meeting between NABJ leaders, Hampton administrators and others on the campus, Smith said the NABJ delegation could not back up its charges that students were being intimidated and that, “the NABJ members’ actions raise more questions about their judgment, sense of fairness and integrity than my own.”
- George Haj, assistant managing editor/business at the Houston Chronicle, was named deputy managing editor/news “and will oversee the local news operations, state desk, business, foreign, national and projects staffs,” the paper reported today. Haj, 43, is a member of the Asian American Journalists Association.
- Jamaican journalist Fitzroy Nation, a freelancer in the Netherlands who had worked as an editor for the Inter Press Service, died May 31 after a brief battle with cancer, the Jamaica Observer reported. He was 52.
- Kim Baca, a former wire service and newspaper reporter and longtime member of the Native American Journalists Association, has been hired as NAJA’s interim executive director, effective immediately, NAJA announced. She most recently worked at the National American Indian Housing Council.
- Jabari Asim, senior editor of the Washington Post’s Book World section and a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group, has been promoted to deputy editor of the section. Before he arrived at the Post almost nine years ago, Asim worked for the arts pages of the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
- “Wednesday’s column questioning the induction of WBBM-AM (780) morning news anchor Felicia Middlebrooks into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame struck a nerve with many readers,” Robert Feder wrote Thursday in the Chicago Sun-Times, quoting from letters pro and con (but mostly con).
- “The National Society of Newspaper Columnists said it’s dropping former Sacramento (Calif.) Bee columnist Diana Griego Erwin as a June 24 conference speaker because she didn’t respond in time to phone calls,” Dave Astor reported in Editor & Publisher. Griego Erwin resigned last month from the Bee over charges that she fabricated some sources.
- “A prominent Hong Kong reporter detained by China on spying charges was actually a patriot who worked behind the scenes to help Beijing improve relations with Taiwan and Hong Kong, his wife said in an open letter to China’s president, Hu Jintao, which was released Friday,” Joseph Kahn reported Saturday in the New York Times. The reporter is Ching Cheong, the chief China correspondent of Singapore’s main newspaper, The Straits Times.
- Market surveys in New York and Los Angeles “found that 56.2 percent of radio listening by Chinese-speaking Asian Americans is to Chinese language radio,” the Arbitron research firm announced last week. “The leading English language formats for these listeners are adult contemporary (6.4 percent), news (6.2 percent) and pop contemporary hit radio (5.2 percent).”
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