Frank Sotomayor Taking Buyout After 35 Years
A program for high school and college journalists is the latest casualty of cost-cutting at the Los Angeles Times, and the editorial chair of that program, 35-year Times veteran Frank Sotomayor, is among those accepting a buyout offer, Sotomayor told Journal-isms today.
Twenty-eight high school students and 40 college journalists participate in the Student Journalism Program (PDF). “In 2003, The Times’ Student Journalism Awards presented more than $20,000 in grants and honored seven high school newspapers and eight college newspapers for overall excellence and 38 students in individual categories,” according to the Times Web site.
“The Times presented an additional $11,000 in scholarships through its ‘Saturdays at The Times’ program, a three-day workshop for selected high school students, and the annual Jim Murray Sports Writing Workshop.”
As reported last week, Knight Ridder, the nation’s second-largest newspaper company, is canceling its 2006 Minority Scholars Program for high school students, part of a hold on corporate diversity programs while the future of that company is determined.
Of the L.A. Times program, “It’s bringing in people from diverse backgrounds and getting them started in the field,” Sotomayor said. “We’re trying to establish a pipeline. I talked about that with Bob Maynard and the founders in 1978,” a reference to the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, of which he and Maynard were among nine founders.
Others shared the sense of loss. “It’s just a shame that something so good and so valuable not only for the community and the students but for the Times will have to go away,” Chris Strudwick-Turner, the Times’ public affairs special projects manager, told Journal-isms.
“In terms of Frank stepping away, that’s one case of someone who has devoted his career to diversifying newsrooms and encouraging young people of color to get into the business,” said Sotomayor’s colleague Efrain Hernandez, who directs the reporting part of Tribune Co.’s Minority Editorial Training Program, known as METPRO. Sotomayor is assistant METPRO director.
In the Student Journalism Program, young people come to the Times for two Saturdays and get tips on the basics from some of the top Times reporters, along with career advice, one-on-one critiques and mentoring. They write a story on deadline. Sotomayor said the program won a Robert Knight Multicultural Recruitment Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The high school program started in 2002; the college counterpart in 2003.
“Basically I just sucked in everything I could,” Jonathan Abrams, who attended the program as a college student, told Journal-isms. “I made a lot of good contacts that carried over.” Abrams, who graduated from the University of Southern California this year, became a summer intern in the Times sports department and now is a METPRO reporter. The Times program includes 10 reporters; a copy editing counterpart takes place at Newsday, which is also owned by the Tribune Co. Hernandez said he had been “assured we should proceed” with METPRO despite the cutbacks.
Editor Dean Baquet wrote to the staff on Nov. 16, “The Times will have to lose about 85 newsroom jobs before the end of the year. A few of the cuts have already been made through attrition. Some will come through a voluntary separation program. But others, unfortunately, will come through layoffs. The exact breakdown won’t be known until we see how many people apply for the voluntary separation package.”
Employees had until 5 p.m. Friday to apply for a separation package. “After that, we will decide which positions must be eliminated through layoffs,” Baquet said in his memo.
According to a weekend report by L.A. Observed, “Some names on the unofficial newsroom lists of the soon-to-depart: Sacramento columnist George Skelton, movie reviewer Kevin Thomas, auto racing reporter Shav Glick, theater writer Don Shirley, religion writer Larry Stammer, ex-Metro Editor David Rosenzweig, editorial writers Judy Dugan, Bill Stall, John Needham and Sergio Muñoz, former LAT Magazine Editor Drex Heikes, Calendar writer Elaine Dutka, longtime Metro reporter Eric Malnic, longtime editor Frank Sotomayor, obituary crafters Claudia Luther and Myrna Oliver and Outdoors staffers Scott Doggett and Joe Robinson.”
[Added Nov. 29: Jube Shiver Jr. of the Washington bureau, who has been at the Times for 22 years, told Journal-isms that he, too, is taking the buyout. He has been one of the very few black journalists covering telecommunications and broadcast issues from Washington. Shiver said he plans first to travel to Mozambique, South America and South Africa.]
Sotomayor said he was looking for a position in teaching or in another newsroom. He was an assistant metro editor at the Times for 18 years and co-editor and one of the 13 writers of the 1983 Times series on Latinos in Southern California, which won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for public service. Sotomayor was the first director, in 1980, of the Maynard Institute’s Editing Program for Minority Journalists, held at the University of Arizona. At the Times, he later assisted in the launching of METPRO.
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Despite Gloom, Young Staffers Offer Encouragement
“You’ve read about it: severe staff cuts at newspapers from Boston to Los Angeles, investor pressure to produce ever higher profits, labels such as ‘dying breed’ and `death spiral’ attached to a struggling industry,” Mike Needs, public editor of Ohio’s Akron Beacon Journal, wrote Sunday.
“In such a dismal economic climate, why would smart, young people choose to work for newspapers? That’s what I asked the four newest members of the Beacon Journal staff.
“If you think all hope is lost for the future of the profession, think again,” Needs said. He quoted Elissa Hummel, 2004 graduate of Oakland University; Delano Massey, 2002 graduate of the University of Akron; Elizabeth Suh, 2004 graduate of the University of Maryland and Erin Hill, 2005 graduate of Hampton University.
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And Don’t Forget “Flourishing” Ethnic Media
“As America’s major newspapers continue to lose readers and cut reporting staffs, thousands of smaller publications are flourishing,” Nathaniel Hoffman wrote Sunday in California’s Contra Costa Times.
“These news outlets are not catering to Internet users, nor are they trying to reach a generation that has lost interest in the news.
“Instead, they depend on loyal immigrant communities that prefer the news in their native tongues.
“. . . New ethnic publications continue to hit the newsstands without concern for the Internet or larger market forces. A recent study by New American Media found that nearly a quarter of U.S. adults consume some form of ethnic media, including about 8.7 million people who rely on ethnic newspapers as their primary news source.
“. . . The ethnic press in the United States is a booming, highly varied wing of the media that serves American communities — new and old — in ways that mainstream papers have not.”
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Katrina Prompts Retelling of 1921 Tulsa Riot Story
“Eighty-five years ago, allegations that a black man had tried to assault a white woman in a city elevator spurred hundreds of whites to attack what was one of the country’s most prosperous black communities, a bustling neighborhood called Greenwood,” Tina Susman recalled in Newsday today.
“Today, the two are among fewer than 100 known survivors of the May 31-June 1, 1921 riot, for which no one was punished and no reparations ever paid, despite the loss of hundreds of lives, businesses and fortunes. With survivors dying off, activists are hoping to change that, spurred not only by the injustice done to riot victims, but also by the plight of Hurricane Katrina’s mainly poor, black survivors, who they say are a reminder that the inequality of 1921 isn’t a thing of the past.
“. . . Riot survivors have provided eyewitness accounts used in the fight for reparations, which took an unusual turn last month when Global Rights, a Washington-based human rights group, asked the Organization of American States to rule on whether riot survivors should be compensated. The 35-nation organization represents Western Hemisphere nations and normally intervenes in human rights abuses outside the United States.
“‘I think when Katrina came and hit and sort of unveiled the reality of the lingering effects of Jim Crow on African-American communities, it made even more sense for us to do something,’ said Gay McDougall, executive director of Global Rights, which hopes an organization ruling in favor of survivors will pressure the city of Tulsa, the state of Oklahoma or the federal government to make amends.”
- Lolis Eric Elie, New Orleans Times-Picayune: Storm turns holiday cheer to fear
- Esther Wu, Dallas Morning News: Korean family’s gratitude endures Hurricane Katrina
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Terry Neal Leaving Post Web Site for Newsroom
Three years ago, we reported on Terry M. Neal, who left the Washington Post for a public relations firm. He had covered the George W. Bush campaign but was not assigned to follow Bush to the White House. But he decided he missed journalism too much, and returned to the news business as chief political correspondent at washingtonpost.com.
Now Neal is leaving the Internet for a management job at the newspaper itself. He is joining the Maryland news desk as local government editor, the newspaper announced Wednesday.
“I’ve been doing this for 3 1/2 years, a year longer than I thought I’d be doing it,” Neal said of his Web job. “One thing on my resume that’s missing is managing folks. I wanted to move in that direction a little bit.
“When I started, everybody was saying, ‘why would you work for a Web site?'” Neal told Journal-isms. But he found that the online chats and columns translated into local television appearances.
Neal’s wife, Jill Hudson Neal, is design and fashion editor at the Washington Post Magazine. Because of the Post’s anti-nepotism rules, she is leaving her staff position and will work on a year-to-year contract, Terry Neal said.
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Fear Prompts Calls to Drop Hyphen, Says Columnist
“In the 1940s and ’50s, even those born on this side of the border were commonly referred to as Mexicans. By the 1960s, many were identifying themselves as Mexican-Americans as if to say, ‘This is my country too,'” columnist Ruben Navarrette argued Wednesday in his column in California’s San Diego Union Tribune.
“Now things have come full circle. A lot of people want me to drop the hyphen and call myself a plain ol’ American.
“. . . the more I think about it, the more I think it’s mostly about fear. Consider that the number of Latinos in the United States has now surpassed 40 million, that they are expected to account for one in four Americans by 2050, that they have an annual buying power of more than $800 billion and that both political parties are courting them.
“For those who worry that the country is changing in ways that could make them less relevant, it must be tempting to try to neutralize the effect by insisting that those you’ve always considered different are suddenly not so different after all.”
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Short Takes
- “It has been a rough year for American journalists. But things could be worse; we could be trying to work in China, Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan or rural Brazil,” columnist Clarence Page wrote yesterday in the Chicago Tribune. “Those are the countries where death, jail, beatings, exile or intimidation color the daily working conditions of this year’s recipients of the Press Freedom Awards, given out by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, of which I am a board member.”
- Glenn Mitchell, “THE voice of the voice . . . an exceptionally talented radioman who would become the envy of his colleagues throughout the market,” died Nov. 20 at age 55, columnist Bob Ray Sanders wrote Wednesday in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Sanders worked as station manager while Mitchell was program director of KERA radio.
- New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez, whose paper tested members of the New York Army National Guard who served in Iraq and found signs of depleted uranium exposure, followed up Thursday with a column on war veteran Gerard Matthew. “For Matthew, who was so apolitical he never even voted before last year, becoming a national advocate for veterans was unexpected,” Gonzalez wrote.
- The Dallas Chapter of the NAACP selected Brian Custer as honoree at its annual gala on Dec. 2, Cheryl Smith reported in the Nov. 23-Nov. 29 cover story in the Dallas Weekly, not yet posted. The honor came just as “word traveled” that KTVT-TV would not be renewing Custer’s contract as weekend sports anchor and host of the Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Cowboys pre- and post-game shows, Smith wrote. Custer was vice president of the Dallas-Fort Worth Association of Black Communicators.
- “The president has never been willing to rein in the racists in his ranks,” Cynthia Tucker wrote Sunday in her Atlanta Journal-Constitution column. “That’s because he needs them: Their dirty work helps to ensure GOP victories. Sure, the president may not be a bigot, but if you stand on bigots’ shoulders, what does that make you?”
- “NBC weatherman Al Roker is developing a comedy series for the network tentatively titled ‘Meet the Rokers,'” Reuters reported today. “The project, loosely based on the life of the ‘Today’ mainstay, centers on a weatherman and father of two who realizes that he has become his own dad, for better and worse. NBC has given a script commitment to the project.”
The transformation of Alice Walker’s book “The Color Purple” from film to stage are likely to revive the debate over its portrayal of black men, E.R. Shipp wrote today in the New York Daily News. But “whatever the critics’ verdicts, I welcome ‘The Color Purple’ to Broadway and the debate to our dinner tables,” she wrote.