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Journalists Lining Up for March

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786 Apply to Cover “Millions More Movement”

More than 700 requests for press credentials are being processed for coverage of Saturday’s Millions More Movement, the 10-year commemoration on the National Mall of 1995’s Million Man March, the organization said today.

The event is to be broadcast live on C-SPAN television and on radio station WPFW-FM, part of the Pacifica chain, in Washington. Other broadcast outlets indicated they had not determined their plans, expected routine coverage on news programs, or did not respond to inquiries.

Linda Wharton-Boyd, national director for media and public relations for the event, told Journal-isms that as of midnight Tuesday, news organizations made 786 requests for press credentials. Some were from England, British Columbia and Johannesburg, South Africa. A Web site site has been created to assist the news media.

“Instead of focusing exclusively on black men,” Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam “wants Latinos, Native Americans, women and gays to be present . . . With this diverse coalition the Chicago-based Muslim leader hopes to tackle issues including poverty, racial inequality, poor schools, inadequate health care and reparations for slavery,” Margaret Ramirez wrote Tuesday in the Chicago Tribune.

“The guest list for Saturday’s event includes members of Congress, hip-hop artists, civil rights activists, media pundits, academics and business leaders. Muslim and Christian religious figures will also participate,” Erin Texeira wrote Monday for the Associated Press.

The main controversy has been over the role of gays after the Millions More organization’s executive director, the Rev. Willie Wilson of Washington, disparaged homosexuality in a sermon. After protests, gay rights activists are now included in a panel of speakers.

The 1995 march drew hundreds of thousands to the Mall to an event in which advance coverage was dominated by discussion of Farrakhan’s role and his comments about Jews, and debate over whether the march’s emphasis on black men was unfair to women. In the end, the march was hailed for bringing together African American men from varied backgrounds who reaffirmed their responsibilities to family and to each other; Farrakhan was separated as an issue.

The next year, a Washington Post poll found that almost two-thirds of blacks — 63 percent — believed the march had a positive effect on “the black community as a whole.”

The crowd count, however, became such a sore point that in 1996, Congress ordered the National Park Service to get out of the crowd-estimating business. The Park Service estimated attendance at the march at 400,000, but organizers said it was as high as 2 million.

Researchers from Boston University, after analyzing photographs, estimated that 837,000 people attended, giving themselves a 20 percent margin of error, meaning that the size of the crowd fell between 670,000 and 1,004,000.

Among the media coverage for this year’s march:

Articles and commentary:

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NAHJ Rips Lack of Guatemala Mudslide Coverage

“NAHJ President Veronica Villafane called the lack of news coverage of the destruction caused by mudslides in Guatemala as a result of Hurricane Stan ‘shameful,’ the organization announced Monday.

“Some reports stated that Hurricane Stan is responsible for hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths in Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico. Guatemala, however, was hardest hit with the highest casualty figures. The mudslides have left thousands of Guatemalans homeless.

“. . . NAHJ performed a search of 22 major daily newspapers from Oct. 7-10 using the Lexis-Nexis database and found that a total of 10 stories ran about the tragedy and only one newspaper, the Washington Post, placed a story about the disaster on its front page. In addition, the network evening news only devoted a total of four stories to the Guatemalan mudslides from Oct.7-9, although three were only mere mentions of less than 50 words.”

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South Asian Journalists Assist on Pakistan Quake

The South Asian Journalists Association is providing resources for covering Saturday’s 7.6-magnitude quake that demolished whole towns in South Asia, mostly in Kashmir.

The death toll is believed to be more than 35,000, with tens of thousands injured, the Associated Press reported today.

“SAJA and its members are in a unique position help the US and international press better understand what’s going on,” Sreenath Sreenivasan, a founder of the organization who is dean of students at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, told Journal-isms.

“Within hours of the first quake, we had sent out an advisory and source tips to our members and to our mailing lists (members and non-members) and on SAJA.org. We fielded several calls from news orgs about who’s available to freelance in the region and even basic questions about the area. The SAJA Freelance Forum — http://www.saja.org/freelance.html — got widespread use from American and Canadian editors. We also provided info on reputable charity organizations.”

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Ivory Role in “Flux” in USA Today Rearrangement

USA Today has decided to merge the staffs of its 85-person sports section and its 22-person USA Today Sports Weekly, leaving the role of Lee Ivory, publisher and executive editor of the Sports Weekly, uncertain.

In a memo Monday to the two staffs, Monte Lorell, who has been USA Today’s managing editor for sports since 1996, and Ivory wrote, “For the better part of two decades, USA TODAY and Sports Weekly have been at the forefront of innovation ? inside and outside the building.

“Through it all, the newsrooms have worked independently while overlapping in coverage in some areas.

“That’s about to change.

“The staffs of Sports Weekly and USA TODAY Sports soon will come together to form one newsroom. The target date is Dec. 1.

“. . . Both publications will report to Monte; the newsroom structure is still to be worked out. We will pull together a few teams to help iron out the details of the consolidation.”

Lorell told Journal-isms that Ivory “will be working with me on the transition. His ultimate role is still a bit in flux. In the meantime, he will be working with me to make sure we do it right.”

He said the merger was instituted not to cut costs, but because “it makes sense” to avoid duplication. No one will lose a job, he said. But, Lorell said late today, “A lot of the staff was stunned when it first came out. I’ve talked to a lot of them. People are starting to understand it.”

Ivory, a longtime Gannett employee, is one of only six African American top sports editors in the country, according to a list compiled by Don Hudson of the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger and posted on the Web site of the National Association of Black Journalists.

The Sports Weekly targets baseball and football fans and publishes year-round.

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Number of Women on Sunday Talk Shows Up 3%

“In our most recent study, Who’s Talking Now: A Follow-Up Analysis of Guest Appearances by Women on the Sunday Morning Talk Shows, conducted from November 7, 2004 to July 10, 2005, we are pleased to report a slight improvement in the presence of women. Women now make up 14% of the combined total of guest appearances on the five Sunday morning talk shows ?- an increase of 3% since our initial study,” Marie C. Wilson, president of the White House Project, said in introducing its latest report, dated October 2005.

“Making good on their promise, CBS showed the most improvement, increasing women’s appearances from 9% to 18%.

“. . . The White House plays a considerable role in guest selection since it, rather than the network, often determines who will represent the administration’s point of view.

“Because 85% of the members in Congress are male, there is a larger pool of men than women from which the producers can select guests for the legislative segments of their shows. But as the recent progress at CBS demonstrates, these factors need not play a significant role,” Wilson wrote.

Wilson also announced, “In the fall of 2005, The White House Project, in partnership with the Women’s Funding Network and Fenton Communications, will launch SheSource (www.shesource.org), an online resource database of expert women whose participation in our nation’s political deliberations will create more robust debates and will further democratize our political system. The problem is not a paucity of women leaders ready and available to debate the issues; the problem is their exclusion from the venues where such debates take place.”

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Tony Perkins to Leave “GMA” to Return to D.C.

“Good Morning America weatherman Tony Perkins will leave the ABC morning show Dec. 2 to return to his former TV station WTTG Washington D.C., putting an end to months of speculation. Perkins will stay with GMA through the key November sweeps ratings period and plans to start at WTTG Jan. 2,” Allison Romano reported today in Broadcasting & Cable.

“Before joining GMA in 1999, Perkins was weatherman on WTTG?s Fox Morning News from 1993 to 1998 and then spent a year co-anchoring the show. Under his new deal, Perkins will be the weekday weatherman and also contribute other features to the newscast.

“Although it is hard to leave GMA, the show is in a strong position right now, and for many reasons, both professional and personal, this is the right time to move on to a new and exciting chapter of my life,? Perkins said in an note to the GMA staff, Romano reported.

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Latino College Grads Consume Newspapers, Radio

A study of the media habits of Hispanic college graduates shows that while just 21.5 percent of all college-educated adults are heavy radio listeners (180 minutes or more per/day), 26.8 percent of college-educated Hispanics are.

The Media Audit by International Demographics, Inc. of Houston found that 20 percent of all college graduates were heavy readers of newspapers (1 hour or more per day), but that slightly less than that figure — 18.9 percent of college-educated Hispanics — were heavy newspaper readers.

However, the study said, more than 50 percent of the Hispanic graduates read a newspaper on an average weekday and 39.6 percent read one on an average Sunday, compared with 41.0 percent and 31.4 percent among all graduates.

The Media Audit is described as “a syndicated media ratings service currently covering more than 80 metropolitan markets.”

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Paper Prints in N.O.; Concern for Poor on Wane

As the New Orleans Times-Picayune printed from its plant in New Orleans Monday for the first time in more than a month, reporters and commentators raised concerns that the awareness of the poor generated by the photographs from Hurricane Katrina would be short-lived.

Six weeks ago, “some 240 employees of the newspaper left the building in the back of newspaper delivery trucks on the morning after the hurricane, as water from the 17th Street Canal breach rose around the plant,” the paper recalled Tuesday in a blog on its Web site. “The paper left a team of editors, reporters and photographers in the city while other employees drove to Baton Rouge and established a temporary base there.

“This week they returned to a fully functioning and thoroughly cleaned Howard Avenue facility.”

Meanwhile, Jason DeParle wrote in the New York Times Tuesday that, “As Hurricane Katrina put the issue of poverty onto the national agenda, many liberal advocates wondered whether the floods offered a glimmer of opportunity. The issues they most cared about — health care, housing, jobs, race — were suddenly staples of the news, with President Bush pledged to ‘bold action.’

“But what looked like a chance to talk up new programs is fast becoming a scramble to save the old ones.”

In her regular column, Marion Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund asked, “How can the Bush administration and Congress give enormous tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans who have benefited most from the economic recovery while seeking to undermine the guarantees and cut the budgets for Medicaid, food stamps, and other programs that assist poor children who continue to be left behind?”

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Some Celebrated Holiday by Bashing Columbus

While Monday was officially Columbus Day, some media outlets took the occasion to present the voices of Native Americans who believe that Columbus paved the way for Indian genocide and African slavery in the Americas.

For two hours on Washington’s Pacifica outlet, WPFW-FM, Native representatives, including one from United Native America, discussed efforts to negotiate with the Order of Sons of Italy in America to change the holiday in a way that both groups could celebrate, and other topics that portrayed Columbus negatively.

The Daily Californian at the University of California at Berkeley noted that Berkeley had proclaimed the Saturday nearest Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day, and that both days are citywide holidays.

A few mainstream newspapers ran an op-ed piece by Mark Anthony Rolo of the Progressive Media Project that began, “There’s only one reason to keep Columbus Day on the national calendar: not to continue honoring the sailor as a great explorer but instead to remember him as a great exploiter.”

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“Doomed by Diversity” Writer Rejects Criticism

Columnist Harry Jaffe of the Washingtonian magazine is rejecting criticism by the Asian American Journalists Association of his use of the phrase “doomed by diversity” to describe the failure of the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who is white, to land a permanent job in the 1980s at the Washington Post.

As recounted on Sept. 30, the debate played itself out on Slate.com and in the Romenesko forum on the Poynter Institute Web site.

Goldberg told Jaffe for his Sept. 23 column that he was denied a job at the Post after “an editor took him aside and said, ‘We would like to hire you, but we have to hire a Hispanic for that slot.'” Jaffe later called his use of the phrase “doomed by diversity” to describe Goldberg’s situation a “lame attempt at alliteration.”

But Abe Kwok, media watch co-chair of the Asian American Journalists Association, wrote Jaffe on Oct. 3 that “we’re even more irked by the flip reason you offered for using the phrase.

“Alliteration is a lousy excuse . . . With those three words, you’ve added fuel to a dangerous — and latently widespread — belief that diversity efforts are harmful to non-minorities and to journalism itself.”

Jaffe told Journal-isms today, “I stand by my column, as written, though it apparently touched many nerves.

“To characterize me as a ‘diversity critic’ shows a total lack of reporting on my record as a journalist and a columnist. To attack the facts that I reported is tantamount to killing the messenger.

“Facts hurt, but they are facts, as Jeff Goldberg related them to me.”

Megan Scott Joining AP’s Young-Reader Service

Megan Scott, reporter for the St. Petersburg Times, joins the Associated Press’ new service aimed at younger readers on Oct. 24, Ted Anthony, editor of the new asap service said today.

Asap, which began Sept. 19, “will produce original news using text, photos, video and audio, to be offered to U.S. newspapers that are members of the 157-year-old news cooperative,” according to a Sept. 19 Associated Press story.

“The service will cull some breaking news from the AP’s main news feeds, but the vast majority of the material on asap will be produced by its own staff, Anthony said. He said the company decided to set up a separate unit in order to allow the most flexibility in choosing what kind of medium to tell each story.”

Anthony told Journal-isms today his staff included African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans and that he was working with AP staffers around the world to appeal to people with different life experiences.

While he declined to disclose his staffers’ ethnicities, he did name the editors: Eric Carvin, Shazna Nessa, Caryn Brooks, Lisa Tolin, Jacky Myint, Jaime Holguin, Bernadette Tuazon, and Hillary Rhodes.

Scott, 27, who worked for the AP before joining the St. Petersburg paper, will be a reporter.

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