Blacks Weigh Response to Editor’s Firing
The Gainesville Guardian, the New York Times Co. weekly originally portrayed as targeting the African American community in that Florida city, made its debut late today, two days after the editor who spearheaded its development, Charlotte Roy, was dismissed.
The paper was unveiled at a 5:30 p.m. invitation-only reception at an art museum to which 200 guests were invited, including community members who had some connection to the project. Three of them spoke with Journal-isms, and their reactions to the developments ranged from wait-and-see to outrage.
In discussing the debut issue, Roy had remarked, “Everybody I’ve been working with has said it is a remarkable job.” The Rev. Kevin Thorpe, pastor of the city?s Faith Missionary Baptist Church, agreed. “The quality is as good if not better than the Gainesville Sun,” the parent paper, Thorpe said after picking up a copy at the reception.
The 24-page tabloid featured Thorpe in a group photo on the cover, illustrating a story about an African American summit that had taken place. Thorpe also took out a full-page ad inside. Moreover, he wrote a religion column in question-and-answer style, with the first question on how to find the right church. “We have quite a lot invested in the paper,” Thorpe said.
Roy’s dismissal “is just such a passionate issue,” he continued. “It’s a matter of the community deciding what its position is on this.”
Roy had initially described the weekly as a “the first New York Times-owned black newspaper,” but amid criticism from the black press, the Times Co. backed away from that description.
In a story today announcing Roy’s two interim replacements, Sun publisher James E. Doughton described the Guardian as “a community publication designed to serve both east Gainesville and the African-American community.”
However, Thorpe said, “I have never gotten the sense that it was designed to be anything other than an African American paper. That’s what was presented to us.”
Vanessa Gordon, a Realtor who was part of the advisory board for the new paper, said she was outraged by the way Roy was treated.
Roy told Journal-isms on Tuesday, “I just was called down and told that it wasn’t a good fit.”
“Unless she came in the office spinning on her head like a top, and acting totally insane, they could have done something to work out this relationship with her,” Gordon said. “It’s a slap in the African community’s face and there’s no way they can clean this up. I felt so bad for her.”
To Gordon, who said that as a consultant she had trained 7,000 people in race relations, and who once worked at the St. Louis Reporter, a black paper, the Sun’s treatment of Roy was of a piece with the behavior of the University of Florida, the big employer in town. “That’s their perception,” Gordon said of the two institutions: “They don’t have to treat African Americans with any kind of respect. You continually have to prove yourself as a professional, and it’s still never good enough.”
Larry McDaniel, who is president of Focus on Leadership, formed with the Gainesville Sun in 1990 to help develop leaders of color, also was a community adviser to the paper. “There is nothing bad that anybody will say about Ms. Roy; the proof is in the product. My hope is we’ll be able to work through this.” The important thing, McDaniel said, is that issues of concern to African Americans be covered in a constructive way.
“What happens when we have a summit or a rally, or [issues of] environment, growth, or a Wal-Mart” controversy, asked McDaniel, who is also alternative-sentencing manager for the Alachua County court system. “There is no voice to get that out other than the Gainesville Sun. That’s why I believe this community was so willing to accept a paper that was going to represent the African American concerns.”
Still, McDaniel said, much is unresolved, such as “whether everything gets buried in the Guardian and the Gainesville Sun doesn’t cover minorities. There has to be some discussion of that issue, as well as how, between the two different newspapers, they manage that process.”
However, he acknowledged, “I don’t believe that any community-based group is going to tell a company how to operate their business.”
The online version of the Guardian should be up on Thursday, Doughton said.
[Added Aug. 25: Online version]
Meanwhile, these individual stories were posted:
- NAACP conference on race, students
- Overrepresentation and special education
- Soul Kitchen
- Gardening co-op makes a splash with kids
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Miami Editor Quitting After Teele Suicide
“Miami New Times Editor Jim Mullin said Monday that he plans to leave his post next month after an 18-year career at the weekly newspaper,” Christina Hoag reported Tuesday in the Miami Herald.
“He’ll be replaced by Chuck Strouse, the current editor of New Times Broward-Palm Beach and a former Herald reporter. Tony Ortega, current managing editor of The Pitch, a New Times paper in Kansas City, will take the helm in Broward.
“Mullin’s departure, which was announced to New Times staffers on Monday, comes less than a month after the suicide of suspended Miami City Commission Arthur Teele.
“Teele killed himself in the lobby of The Herald on the day the New Times published a cover story based on police reports that Teele had consorted with a transvestite prostitute. The New Times came under heavy criticism from the local community for having published the unsubstantiated allegations.
“Mullin, 56, said that the Teele incident influenced his decision but he had been considering moving on from the New Times for the past year.
”’Of course I was profoundly affected by the Teele tragedy. It had an effect on my thinking, as did deaths in my family,’ he said. `It has been playing on my mind. It was a very, very sobering experience. We received hundreds of letters almost universally condemning us.'”
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Talk-Show Host Fired for Remarks About Islam
“Washington radio station WMAL-AM fired talk show host Michael Graham yesterday after he refused to soften his description of Islam as “a terrorist organization” on the air last month,” Paul Farhi reported Tuesday in the Washington Post.
Today, an Internet-based radio station announced that, “Graham will be joining the web based conservative radio network RIGHTALK.com as of Monday August 29th. Graham, recently released from WMAL in Washington D.C. over controversial remarks about Islam, will be hosting a daily program at noon eastern called ‘Michael Graham Unleashed.’ He has not moved his show to KFI, as some in the media have reported,” a reference to Los Angeles station KFI-AM.
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Columnist Says Johnson Must Be Shaking His Head
“I didn’t know John H. Johnson. But given everything I’ve heard about him since his death on Aug. 8, he must be looking down on black folks and shaking his head. Will we ever learn?” Mary Mitchell wrote Tuesday in the Chicago Sun-Times.
“Or will most black people continue to look to white people to validate their worth until the bitter end? Since Johnson’s death, there’s been a campaign to shame white-owned media into giving Johnson’s life and death greater coverage. Under pressure, some publications and news stations managed to pull packages together at the end of last week.
“But in begging these news outlets to celebrate Johnson’s contributions, doesn’t that make a mockery of the legacy we claim to honor?”
- Greg Simms Sr., Dayton Daily News: John H. Johnson: Working for icon ‘priceless’
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