Burt-Murray Returns to Black Women’s Magazine
Angela Burt-Murray, executive editor of Time Inc.’s Teen People and once Essence magazine’s fashion and beauty features editor, today was named Essence editor-in-chief.
Burt-Murray, who turns 36 on Sunday, told Journal-isms that she would focus on Essence’s core mission of “putting black women first,” and that she would bring to the job some of the approaches she used at Teen People.
In addition to entertainment-oriented articles, she said Teen People tells stories of “ordinary people overcoming extraordinary obstacles.” That’s also part of the Essence tradition, she said: “finding heroes and telling their stories and getting the message out to our people.”
Asked about complaints by some older readers that Essence seemed to leave them behind as it sought a younger audience, Burt-Murray said that by “connecting the dots” in discussing “core issues that resonate with the older demographic,” the 1.06 million-circulation magazine for African American women can remain “relevant and necessary to a broad readership.” She listed those issues as health, beauty and fashion; spiritual growth and financial empowerment.
Also on Burt-Murray’s resume is service from 2001 to 2003 as executive editor of Honey magazine, a publication published by the now-defunct Vanguarde Media that was created to compete with Essence for a younger demographic (and plans to resurface under new ownership). “We will continue to explore some of the issues we brought out” at Honey, she said.
She is co-author, along with Denene Millner and Mitzi Miller, of the humor book “The Angry Black Woman’s Guide to Life” and the forthcoming novel, “The Vow.”
Burt-Murray succeeds Diane Weathers, editor-in-chief since 2001, who announced in March that she would step down after the June issue to become an editor-at-large.
Susan L. Taylor has overseen the editorial direction of the magazine in the meantime. Burt-Murray’s “understanding of the lives of Black women, her passion for helping them excel and stellar leadership skill make her perfect for the editor-in-chief position. In many ways, Angela is the embodiment of the Essence woman,” Taylor said in a statement.
The appointment of Burt-Murray, who begins Aug. 8, is the first evidence on the editorial side that the buyout of the publication by Time Inc. this year is providing the cross-pollination between other Time Inc. publications and Essence that Time Inc. editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine said he had hoped for.
“We have some folks here who would like to work at Essence, and we hope those people [at Essence] might think, ‘Here is a way to expand my career horizons.’ We can create opportunities and they don’t feel completely pigeonholed,” Pearlstine told Journal-isms in January.
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“Harry Potter and the Imbalance of Race”
In American books, newspapers and magazines, it’s an axiom not often stated, but understood: If no race is mentioned, the person is white.
And for Keith Woods, dean of the faculty at the Poynter Institute and a fan of the Harry Potter books, last weekend’s frenzy surrounding the release of the latest in the series, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” provided an opportunity to make the point in a clever way.
In a piece called “Harry Potter and the Imbalance of Race,” Woods, as “Poynter Prefect,” transformed Harry into a reporter on the Daily Prophet:
“Since his earliest days at the Prophet, Harry’d noticed that people who weren’t of The Race That Shall Not Be Named got a lot less description out of people like Skeeter/Rowling,” Woods wrote, referring to a journalist character in the book, Rita Skeeter, and its author, J.K. Rowling.
“He’d noticed it in the newspaper, in books, on TV -? everywhere.
“‘Potter!’ Goot screeched, yanking Harry back to the immediate problem. ‘Is the Muggle black or The Race That Shall Not Be Named?!’
“This, Harry knew, would be an unpopular fight, and it would be downright blasphemous for him to drag Skeeter/Rowling into it. But he had survived five encounters with the Dark Lord Voldemort. Surely he could handle someone who went by the name Goot.
“‘Why is it that you ask me about race when the people are black,’ Harry asked, ‘but you’re OK with describing just the blonde hair of someone who’s white?'”
“The problem,” Woods told Journal-isms, “has always been more than simply bigotry.” It’s really one of majority group vs. a minority one. Straight people identify gay people but not other straights, he said; liberals identify conservatives but not other liberals.
Meanwhile, the images of Potter fans have been mostly white, but are they accurate?
Mixed answers from two bookstores catering to African Americans. At Karibu Books in Hyattsville, Md., outside Washington, assistant manager Keoni Flowers said the book sold a disappointing 21 copies out of 195 received. But at Hue-Man Books in Harlem, about 50 people came in costume for a Friday night Potter party and 152 copies were sold, said Tiffany Samuel, a senior sales executive. Still, she said, Karrine Steffans‘ “Confessions of Video Vixen” is outselling Harry there.
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On Race IDs: “We Are Not Agents of the Police”
Friday’s column mentioned a Boston Herald story reporting that an e-mail exchange about the use of racial descriptions in newspaper crime stories led to the suspension of two staffers at the Lawrence (Mass.) Eagle-Tribune and to “a mini-brouhaha about political correctness run amok at the Lawrence newspaper,” in the words of the Herald.
But Eagle-Tribune editor Bill Ketter tells Journal-isms that, “The Boston Herald story was wrong and incomplete. There was no new edict or policy on identifying crime suspects by race. The policy has been in effect at the Eagle-Tribune newspapers for years, and an editor on the copydesk was simply reminding everybody of the policy because of a sketchy description that got into the paper the previous day of a jewelry thief,” he said in a response first made to Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times, who is president of the Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists.
“The policy states simply that racial or ethnic identification should be used only when it is relevant and sufficient, and that reporters should always press police for details that distinguish suspects from other persons of the same racial or ethnic group,” Ketter said.
Ketter, a former president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, provided a copy of his memo. It reads, in part:
“Sketchy police descriptions are often meaningless and may apply to large numbers of innocent persons. ‘Black man in a green jacket and baseball cap’ is sketchy, and could take in many males of color. Especially in today’s multiracial society. A black man could be a dark-skinned Latino, an African-American, a Pakistani or any immigrant from a country of color. The jacket and baseball cap are general descriptions of clothing, not specific descriptions.
“So, the rule is avoid mentioning a person’s race unless it is relevant to the story and — in cases of suspects and fugitives — the description must be detailed enough to be meaningful if we determine race is pertinent.
“Yes, we should report what we know, but we should not unfairly brand a race because police use sketchy or general descriptions to identify a suspect or fugitive. We should press for more details about particulars if we believe a person’s race is relevant to the story. We have an obligation to be fair. We are not agents of the police.”
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Columnists Relate to Threats on Naming Sources
Some journalists of color have their own reasons for concern about the case of Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter serving jail time for refusing to disclose her source.
Writing in the Nashville Tennessean this month, Dwight Lewis recalled interviewing a former vice squad officer in 1979 who was serving a 10- to 15-year sentence for selling heroin.
“During his 1976 trial here, he testified that he had never dealt in drugs but after granting me the interview that day changed his story. He said he ‘did it strictly for the money’ and could live comfortably when he was released,” Lewis wrote.
The story made the front page the next day, and the district attorney, contemplating charging the ex-officer with perjury, wanted the young reporter to sign an affidavit stating that the statements were reported accurately and that he had written the story. Lewis agreed after some negotiating.
It’s a decision Lewis says he regrets. “How could I ever go to him [the former officer] again and ask for an interview? Would other inmates not talk to me either? I often think about the Tony Bouchard case and have said if I had to do it over again, I would go to jail rather than sign that affidavit,” Lewis wrote.
In Sunday’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram, columnist Bob Ray Sanders concluded a two-part column on his own use of sources.
“One of my primary sources of information — a man I never quoted in a news article — probably knew the workings of the courthouse better than any other person there,” Sanders wrote. “He led me to more stories than any other source by giving me just enough details to know what to ask someone else whom I would be able to quote, on the record or confidentially.
“We always met in the basement, and as far as I know, no one ever suspected that this man was guiding me to some of the biggest stories in the county.
“. . . When I was covering the beat, Mr. Mills had a shoeshine stand in the basement of the historic courthouse.”
- Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Jailing reporters betrays our nation
- Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald: A watchdog is muzzled in prison
- Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: Press `privilege’ under siege
- Bob Ray Sanders, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: News sources planted seeds of information
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TV Version of “Boondocks” Will Use “N” Word
“Cartoonist Aaron McGruder’s controversial strip The Boondocks debuts Oct. 2 as an animated cartoon. In the 60-second clip shown to television critics Sunday, the N-bomb is dropped,” Chase Squires, television critic at Florida’s St. Petersburg Times, reported today.
“McGruder, a black man who said he tries to slip the word into his syndicated comic strip (which runs in about 300 newspapers including the St. Petersburg Times), admitted most newspaper editors won’t go along with him. But on TV, it’s his show, and he’ll write what he wants.
“‘The N-word is used commonly, not only by myself, but by people I know. It feels fake not to use it,’ McGruder said.
“. . . The Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the country’s most recognizable civil rights activists, was less than enthusiastic about McGruder’s choice to use the racially charged term so casually.
“At a panel promoting his upcoming political talk show Cuttin’ Up on TV One, Sharpton said he was concerned. ‘Where do you draw the line?’ he asked. ‘You have to be very careful.’
“Roland S. Martin, executive editor of the black-oriented Chicago Defender newspaper and host of TV One social commentaries, was more direct.
“Without hesitation, he said he opposed the use of the N-word. Period.
“‘You can bet I’ll be talking about it,’ he said.”
Have We Forgotten Luther This Quickly?
“It’s been two weeks since Luther Vandross left us,” Donna Britt wrote Friday in her Washington Post column. “Apparently, everybody — including the radio stations that did retrospectives of his hits, the celebrities like Usher and Erykah Badu who appeared at his star-packed funeral, and even the blog author who half-jokingly suggested that Vandross be deified — has moved on.
“Everybody but me. Somehow, all that’s been written about the man who sang ‘Never Too Much’ wasn’t enough. Something about Luther’s spirit — or is it that voice ? — won’t let me go.”
Well, not just Britt, if these are an indication:
- Lawrence Aaron, The Record, Bergen County, N.J.: Luther Vandross: He wasn’t afraid to dream
- Joi Gilliam, Black College Wire: Young Blacks Can Take Lesson from Vandross Death
- Wendi C. Thomas, Memphis Commercial Appeal: He was the one; he was Luther
- Jamie Walker, syndicated: Thousands bid farewell to Luther Vandross
- Laura Washington, Chicago Sun-Times: Blacks must wake up to problem of obesity
Short Takes
- Karla Garrett Harshaw, the editor of Ohio’s Springfield News-Sun who underwent surgery last week for the removal of a recently diagnosed brain tumor, is progressing fine, with a possibility that she will go home very soon, Sylvia Krupp, director of human resources at the paper, told Journal-isms today. Harshaw is immediate past president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
- The crew of the weekly “Beat the Press” edition of WGBH-TV’s “Greater Boston” will be in Washington to accept the Arthur Rowse Award for press criticism on TV or radio from the National Press Club, Michele Greppi reported today in Television Week. The regulars include panelist Callie Crossley, a former vice president of the National Association of Black Journalists.
- “John L. Procope, an entrepreneur and former publisher of The New York Amsterdam News, died on Friday. He was 82 and lived in Queens,” Jennifer 8. Lee reported today in the New York Times. “Mr. Procope left the newspaper in 1982 to focus on E.G. Bowman, an insurance company that had been founded by his wife that was one of the first major African-American-owned businesses on Wall Street.” He also was president of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, publishers of the black press.
- “Joseph Montes‘ parents wanted their son to be a teacher, while Rubina Madan’s family expected her to carry on the family tradition of pursuing a science career. Instead, Montes and Madan chose journalism ? partly because they love writing, but mostly because each day brings a chance to learn something new,” public editor Angela Tuck wrote Saturday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, introducing summer interns Madan, Lori Marie Todd, Jennifer Burk, Robert Howard, Jocquise Robinson, Erin Hill, Robin Roger, Rachel Matthews, Montes and Robert Miller.
- “In a country containing over one million attorneys with less than ten percent being minority, three black women lawyers have decided to strike it on their own and open a bi-coastal firm focusing on communications and entertainment law work. The firm will become the first black women owned communications law firm in the country,” the Ghatt Law Group announced. The firm is based in Chevy Chase, Md., with offices in Manhattan and Los Angeles. The three are Jeneba Jalloh Ghatt, Nicolaine Lazarre, and Fatima Fofana, and were scheduled to attend the third annual Access to Capital Conference in Washington, sponsored by the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council.
- The National Conference of Editorial Writers Foundation has received $100,000 from the McClatchy Co. to help establish a $500,000 endowment for the foundation’s Minority Writers Seminar. In 2004, $150,000 from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation provided operating funds for the seminar while the foundation established an endowment to ensure the seminar’s future funding. The foundation also received $100,000 from the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation.
- Merlene Davis of Kentucky’s Lexington Herald-Leader ruffled feathers last month when she wondered aloud whether Mississippi had shed its racist past. But last week in the Chicago Tribune, columnist Dawn Turner Trice confessed that she, too, is apprehensive about visiting the state. “Though I’m here for work, it has nothing to do with Emmett Till or Edgar Ray Killen, whose trial has been front-page news here. But as I drive, I see Emmett’s face. I see Killen’s,” she wrote last week.
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