Verdict Over Unapproved Fliers: Community Service
“While many Hampton University students were still asleep or getting ready for an early-morning class, about 40 gathered on Dec. 2 to support seven students who faced disciplinary charges after distributing unapproved fliers last month advertising an anti-war protest,” Hampton’s Bravetta Hassell wrote today on the Black College Wire.
[Added Dec. 3: By Friday evening, the verdicts were decided: “For at least five, it was performing 20 hours of community service, said two of the accused students, Iyabo Ali and John Robinson. Ali said she received only a warning. The students learned their fate after being called into the dean of women’s office to pick up letters revealing the university’s decision,” Hassell wrote in an updated version of the story.
[“However, one of the women students chose not to come for her letter, Robinson said, though he assumed she was asked to do community service as well.”]
“The hearing garnered national attention. An online petition by the World Can’t Wait, an organization that sponsored the nationwide antiwar protest, drew more than 1,000 signatures, many from university professors, and from such well-known writers as Michael Eric Dyson, Jill Nelson and Howard Zinn,” the story continued.
“Three students from Howard University in Washington came to support the students. John Robinson, one of those accused, said the group had received words of support from as far away as Spain. Bryan Ogilvie, another accused student, appeared on Pacifica Radio’s ‘Democracy, Now!’
“In that forum and others, interviewers referred to the administration’s 2003 seizure of the student newspaper, the Hampton Script, after it did not publish an administration statement on the front page.
“The university issued a statement saying, ‘The matter was simply an issue of compliance with University policies and procedures. The University certainly permits peaceful protests; however, all policies and procedures must be adhered to by students as stated in the Hampton University Official Student Handbook (2004 Edition). . . .
“‘No students were disciplined for their beliefs. . . . Hampton University has always and continues to be a champion of free speech and free expression.'”
- Ciara Famble, Black College Wire: Hampton U. Students Face Discipline in Free-Speech Case
- Editorial, Daily Press, Newport News, Va.: At Hampton University, restrictions shouldn’t muzzle students
- Wil LaVeist, Daily Press, Newport News, Va.: HU would give wrong message by punishing activists
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More Cuts in Chicago, Baltimore; at Newsday
A black reporter was among 17 newsroom employees at the Baltimore Sun who took a voluntary buyout, Sam Davis, assistant managing editor for recruitment and staff development, told Journal-isms tonight.
Davis declined to name the reporter, but said that “to lose 17 people for the newsroom, to lose [only] one” person of color, “it’s a good situation for us.” He said the number of journalists of color at the paper would remain at about 16 percent. Some of the 17 who are leaving are support staff, he said.
[Added Dec. 4: M. William Salganik, a Sun business reporter who is president of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, said the cutbacks do “make it harder to achieve diversity goals. There are fewer opportunities for people.” However, he told Journal-isms, the Sun’s diversity numbers might go up, because “they tend to offer buyouts to the higher-salaried people,” who are white. Buyouts were automatically offered to those with 45 years’ experience, he said. Only two newsroom people met that standard. The rest were volunteers, and most were not reporters, he said.]
The Sun was only one Tribune Co. paper making further cutbacks.
“Promised cuts came Thursday to the Chicago Tribune, with a net loss of 28 editorial positions, the end of its stand-alone WomanNews section and the demise of a legendary local news service,” Phil Rosenthal wrote today in the Chicago Tribune.
“New City News Service, the descendant of the City News Bureau that sent a young Mike Royko and generations of other cub reporters onto Chicago’s streets to chronicle crimes and fires, wound up in the morgue.”
In Baltimore, “The Sun said today that 70 employees will participate in a companywide, voluntary buyout program, eliminating the need for layoffs,” Andrea K. Walker wrote in a story on the Sun’s Web site today.
“The newspaper said earlier this month that it was offering the buyouts, which would be final in January, to reduce costs in response to a sluggish advertising environment and declining revenue. Seventeen of the job cuts will come from the newsroom, which has a staff of about 350.”
At a third Tribune Co. paper, on Long Island, N.Y., “Newsday yesterday dismissed 72 employees from across the newspaper and announced that 40 additional vacant jobs will be eliminated,” Randi F. Marshall wrote today.
“No ‘news gathering personnel’ were affected by yesterday’s announcement, according to a memo to employees from publisher Timothy P. Knight, issued yesterday afternoon. The move comes a month after the newsroom staff was reduced by 59 people, largely through buyouts.”
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McClatchy, Equity Firms Consider Knight Ridder
“An alliance of private equity firms and the McClatchy newspaper group are both considering entering the running to buy Knight Ridder, according to people familiar with the situation,” Chris O’Brien and Pete Carey reported today in California’s San Jose Mercury News, a Knight Ridder paper.
“In addition, a board member of Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper company, said Thursday the company is not planning at this time to bid on Knight Ridder, the San Jose newspaper company facing a shareholder revolt demanding the company be sold.”
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Escobar Quits as City Editor in D.C., Stays at Paper
Gabriel Escobar, District of Columbia editor at the Washington Post, abruptly quit his job Wednesday night and took time off, apparently unhappy that he had been turned down for another job at the paper one time too many, colleagues at the paper told Journal-isms.
“After six and a half years of distinguished work leading the District staff, Gabe Escobar has decided to step down as City Editor effective today,” Robert J. McCartney, assistant managing editor/metro, said in an e-mail to the metro news staff Thursday night. “Gabe oversaw outstanding coverage of a variety of issues including award-winning work on the District’s problems with lead in its drinking water. He was City Editor for most of Tony Williams’s tenure as mayor, the Sept. 11 attacks, the sniper saga, the baseball stadium debate (which continues today), two presidential inaugurations, and countless marches and rallies.”
Escobar, born in Bogotá, Colombia, moved with his family to New York when he was 7. He worked at the Dispatch in Union City, N.J., the Hartford Courant and the Philadelphia Daily News before joining the Post in 1990. He covered local news, and the national immigration beat and was the paper’s South America bureau chief.
He could not be reached for comment, but colleagues said he had not quit the newspaper. “The choice of Gabe’s successor will be an important one. For the time being, Paul Bernstein will be in charge of the District staff,” McCartney said in his note.
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“Reporters of All Races . . . Didn’t Make the List”
Garrett M. Graff, this year’s author of the Washingtonian magazine’s quadrennial list of the city’s “50 Best & Most Influential Journalists,” responded to Wednesday’s Journal-isms questioning the low numbers of journalists of color on the list Thursday by saying, “of course in a city with this many journalists, there’s a long list of talented reporters of all races who didn’t make the list.”
Graff, 24, responded on the media blog he co-edits, Fishbowl D.C.
Theola Labbé, president of the Washington Association of Black Journalists and a Washington Post reporter, saw it differently. “Any list is invariably about selection, but it’s fair to ask why it wasn’t more diverse. This is not even about minorities versus non-minorities, it’s about reflecting the fact that the world, like journalism, is much more diverse than five, 10, 20 years ago. So when an esteemed columnist like Colbert King receives a Pulitzer, if that doesn’t mean heavyweight, or influential, I’m not sure what does.”
Labbé, 31, and fellow Post reporter Krissah Williams, chosen by the National Association of Black Journalists as “Emerging Journalist of the Year” for 2004 and 2005, respectively, were not among the magazine’s “people to watch.”
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“Who’s Who of Philadelphia” Honors Acel Moore
“It was a who’s who not just of journalism but the Philadelphia community and beyond whose lives were touched by Acel” – Acel Moore, that is, Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Melanie Burney told Journal-isms today.
Burney was describing a farewell to the retiring Inquirer associate editor held Thursday night at the Moore College of Art, an event attended by about 250 people, attendees said. Mayor John Street was one of them, and he presented Moore with a crystal bowl from the city.
“Those in attendance included Joe Davidson and Lorraine Branham, Reggie Stuart, and Acel’s Pulitizer prize co-winner Wendell Rawls,” Burney continued. “Acel also received painting lessons from his Inquirer colleagues. That’s his new hobby. The art gallery owner who will be doing the lessons also gave Acel a beautiful painting by [Henry Ossawa] Tanner. There were great speeches and stories that had not been heard by some of us. So many people wanted to speak that Amanda Bennett,” the Inquirer editor, “had to cut it off.”
Inquirer photographer Sarah J. Glover, secretary of the National Association of Black Journalists (Burney is parliamentarian), added the names of these guests: Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., Moore’s wife, former columnist Linda Wright Moore; Michael Days, Philadelphia Daily News editor; Joe Natoli, publisher of the Inquirer and Daily News; Sandra Long of Knight Ridder; Joe Davidson of the Washington Post, an NABJ founder along with Long and Moore; Arlene Morgan of Columbia University; and Jerry Mondesire from the NAACP.
“A past student of the Acel Moore Workshop spoke. I read comments on behalf of Bryan Monroe, NABJ President. . . . The Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists “presented Acel with a proclamation and named a scholarship after him, called the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists Acel Moore Scholarship, which will be awarded in 2006.”
As Moore wrote in a farewell column Nov. 20, “I will continue work as a consultant (I like that title better than emeritus), will maintain my office there, and will write columns on local and national issues – as many as three a month. I also will be involved with staff development and community outreach projects representing The Inquirer.
“The difference is that I will come in when I need to, but not every day. You can say that I have the best of all worlds.”
Another Plagiarism Case, Handled More Discreetly
Those who suspect that journalistic sins might be treated unevenly might examine a plagiarism case discreetly mentioned in an “editor’s note” in today’s New York Times.
“An article in The Arts on Monday described the films of the Israeli director Amos Gitai, the subject of a retrospective by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. It included two paragraphs, about Mr. Gitai’s background and goals, that were virtually identical to a passage in an article by Michael Z. Wise in the August issue of Travel + Leisure magazine.
“The Times reporter, who had portions of the electronic version of Mr. Wise’s article in his computer, inadvertently mingled them with his own notes from an interview with Mr. Gitai, and then used some of them in the Times article without attribution. The material from the magazine should have been credited to it.”
“Yes, it’s a frank and straightforward note,” blogger Rachel Sklar of FishBowl NY wrote today, “except for one thing: the reporter’s name, NYT star writer and editor, the Laventhol Award-winning Stephen Erlanger. Even I feel a little weird burying the name four paragraphs down.”
Should Erlanger, former Times cultural editor and Mideast correspondent, lose his job over this, as have a number of other journalists of varying races and experience levels?
“It’s not the number” of words stolen that matters, Aly Colón of the Poynter Institute said in this space on Nov. 18. “It’s the intent. The person is still accountable, but the way you handle it is different. I don’t think we can have one-size-fits-all” response. There is “not one silver bullet.”
Cartoonist Links Klan, Black-on-Black Killing
“Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson finds nothing funny about murder,” G.W. Miller III wrote Wednesday in the Philadelphia Daily News.
“And he took great offense with yesterday’s Daily News cartoon depicting a Ku Klux Klan travel agent touting Philadelphia as a place with ‘great views of young black men killing each other.’
“. . . The commissioner held up the cartoon, created by Daily News editorial cartoonist Signe Wilkinson, during an anti-violence press conference yesterday at police headquarters.
“‘I think the News has an obligation to be responsible,’ Johnson said. ‘To compare the Ku Klux Klan with the young black men being killed in the city of Philadelphia is irresponsible.’
In the story, Daily News Editor Michael Days replied, “An editorial cartoon, of course, is open to interpretation. But when I saw it, it struck me that Signe’s message is that, unfortunately, too many young black men have become like the Klan. The only difference now is that we have turned the hatred inward, and are hunting and killing our own.”
Days and Johnson are African American; Wilkinson is white.
Cristina’s Magazine, No. 2 With Latinas, Folding
“The magazine of Hispanic television talk show queen Cristina Saralegui, one of Miami’s best known stars, is folding after 15 years in publication,” Christina Hoag reported Wednesday in the Miami Herald.
“The December issue of Cristina La Revista will be the last.
“The closure took industry watchers by surprise: Cristina La Revista is the No. 2 Spanish-language women’s magazine in the nation. However, it comes at a time when competition is heating up in the Spanish-language magazine industry, as companies make plays for the burgeoning Hispanic population.
“Publisher Editorial Televisa and Cristina Saralegui Enterprises said Tuesday they could not reach an agreement to extend their contract, which expires Dec. 31.”
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“Competition for Acculturated Hispanics Is Intense”
“Spanish-language publications need staff members who are both bilingual and bicultural, especially on the news side,” Jeanne Fox-Alston of the Newspaper Association of America wrote Nov. 14. She was summarizing a “Webinar” led by Gilbert Bailon, editor and publisher of the Dallas Morning News’ Spanish-language Al Diá newspaper.
“The problem is that while many U.S.-born Hispanics may be conversant or fluent in Spanish, their reading comprehension and ability to write in Spanish often aren’t as strong. As Digby Solomon Diez, publisher and CEO of Hoy Newspapers (Chicago), notes: ‘There are not a lot of people out there who are Hispanic and really understand the language,'” continued Fox-Alston, who is NAA’s vice president for diversity.
“What’s more, the competition for acculturated Hispanics is intense. Even within media, newspapers are competing with Spanish-language broadcast and advertising agencies for fluent Spanish speakers, and they tend to have higher salaries than newspapers. Other industries, including consumer product and financial service companies, also are fishing in the same pond, so to speak. Newspaper companies must be willing to take a risk on and nurture young talent, Bailon says, and to try creative, nontraditional means of finding staff.”
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A Rejoinder to “Funny, You Don’t Look Black”
The “Dear Prudence” feature on Slate.com Thursday pondered this inquiry:
“I am black, with a light complexion, as is my immediate family – without any white parent or grandparent. I have often been in the position of going to school or working in an almost entirely white environment where whites have had little personal contact with blacks. Often they will tell me they thought I was Native American or Mexican. I have no trouble with this, but some will often say to me in a tone that suggests a compliment, ‘You don’t look black,’ which I find insulting. . . “
For an answer on how to address such a situation, Prudence said she turned to Karen Grigsby Bates of National Public Radio: “She is a fair-skinned black journalist who’s spent much of her career writing about race. When she read your letter, she said, she rolled her eyes and thought, ‘Been there; living that.’ She borrowed Prudie’s cap, and here’s her answer: ‘If you want to be bothered with broadening people’s cultural landscapes, you could say something like, “Well, black is a very flexible color in America. We run the gamut.” Then leave it at that. Or you could elaborate: “My whole family is black and everyone is a different color. It’s very common.” Personally, I like the second option. Should you be in snarky-educational mode, try: “Funny, you don’t look white to me – but maybe that’s because you look so much like one of my favorite aunts.”‘”
Bates co-authored the 2002 etiquette book, “Basic Black: Home Training for Modern Times.”
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Sportswriter Howard Bryant: “I Hit You Back”
Howard Bryant arrived just three weeks ago at the Washington Post from the Boston Herald, where he was a sports columnist. Today he’s the subject of a column in the Washingtonian magazine.
“Conflict between NFL owners and journalists is a fact of life in many newsrooms, but the snarling between the Washington Post and the Washington Redskins in the past year has turned petty and at times mean,” Harry Jaffe wrote online today.
“Howard Bryant, the Post’s new Redskins reporter, sounds like he’s ready to rumble. ‘You hit me, I hit you back,’ says Bryant, 36. ‘I’m pretty good at that.’
“A baseball writer from Boston, Bryant replaces Nunyo Demasio, who moved to Sports Illustrated. He’s never covered football, but he’s come of age covering the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees, whose owners often spar with reporters, just as Redskins owner Dan Snyder has been battling the Post.”
In his farewell column Nov. 9 in the Herald, Bryant took on the media as well as readers who said, as they do to many Afrcian American columnists, that he wrote too much about race.
“The Globe’s cozy relationship with the Red Sox and NESN [New England Sports Network] can no longer be laughed off as nonsense, if it ever could. It is the macro version of the micro alliances that have always existed. During playoff time, all MLB clubs offer tickets to the writers who cover the club. They are not free, but the money isn’t the issue. The access is.
“During the World Series, every member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, me included, receives access to purchase four tickets to every game. When the game is sold out, access is as good as gold,” Bryant wrote.
“In another conflict, some Herald reporters earn money from the all-powerful radio voice, as do reporters from other newspapers except the Globe. It is a shrewd maneuver on the part of WEEI that insulates it from criticism. Any journalist seeking long-term employment in Boston cannot afford to offend the twin monoliths, WEEI and the Globe, and, as choice dwindles, the consumer loses.”
He also wrote:
“For the record, since so many Herald readers seemed convinced I was obsessed with playing ‘the race card,’ here are my final statistics, courtesy of the Boston Public Library: Since joining the Herald in November, 2002, 573 stories appeared under my byline. Exactly 16 contained the keywords ‘racism,’ ‘race,’ or ‘African American.’
“Sixteen.
“That’s 2.79 percent of my stories.
“That means more than 97 percent of the time, I was writing about something else. I don’t think I’m the one who was sensitive to the topic.”
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Fletcher P. Martin, First Black Nieman Fellow, Dies
“Fletcher P. Martin, a former Louisville Defender editor and the first black journalist to receive the prestigious Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University, died Sunday. He was 89,” Paula Burba wrote Thursday in Kentucky’s Louisville Courier-Journal.
“Martin died of complications from diabetes in Indianapolis, his son Peter N. Martin Sr., also of Indianapolis, said yesterday.
“In 1939, he became city editor of the Louisville Leader, a weekly newspaper that covered the African-American community. The newspaper had a circulation of 22,000 and a staff of 20 by the time Martin joined it.
“Martin spent 22 months during World War II in that theater, including a time as the first black war correspondent with Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s forces.
“In 1947, he won the Nieman Fellowship and studied government, philosophy and economics at Harvard.
“Then the Washington Post offered him a job, but Martin turned it down when he learned the newspaper had segregated restrooms.”
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Short Takes
- “Television reflects more diversity today than it did six years ago, but there’s still a long way to go, according to a report released Thursday, the Associated Press reported yesterday. “Individual report cards were issued by the National Latino Media Council and the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition. Mark Reed, chairman of American Indians in Film and Television, gave the networks F grades across the board.”
- “The awful truth is that Ebony has been A.W.O.L. on every big story in recent years – the big job discrimination cases at Texaco, Coca-Cola, and Wal-Mart; welfare ‘reform;’ affirmative action; and the war in Iraq,” Alex Walker, a former software engineer active in the NAACP, wrote Thursday on the BlackCommentator.com Web site. Spokeswoman Latrina Blair told Journal-isms that Publisher Linda Johnson Rice was out of the office today and so, “We won’t be able to respond at this time.”
- “The best friend the native peoples of the United States and Taiwan have is a free press, said Mark Anthony Rolo, American Indian author and journalist,” Jeffry Babb reported Thursday in the China Post. “Rolo was speaking direct from the campus of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he is now writer in residence, to a group of local journalists. The journalists, many of whom were Taiwan aboriginals, said that the difficulties they face are similar to those the American Indians encounter.”
- “As the keynote speaker for the Greater St. Louis Association of Black Journalists awards ceremony late last month,” departing editor Ellen Soeteber of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch “encouraged writers to keep challenging racial tensions in the region,” columnist Sylvester Brown Jr. wrote Thursday in the newspaper. “‘Change, real change, change that sticks . . . is not an event . . . it’s not an order or a single action . . . it’s a process,’ Soeteber said. ‘We have to cover sensitive issues, including racial ones, with sophistication, and nuance and boldness.'”
- “Andres ‘Andy’ Ricardo Morin, the most veteran weatherman on San Antonio TV, will hang up his mike and maps at the end of this month,” columnist Jeanne Jakle reported Thursday in the San Antonio Express-News. “After 42 years with Spanish-language station KWEX, the 65-year-old teddy-bearish forecaster with the trim mustache and infectious grin said he will wave goodbye to his 5 p.m. news post Dec. 31.”
- Reporter Daniel Zwerdling of National Public Radio “examines how Richard Rust, a 34-year-old Jamaican detainee in Louisiana’s Oakdale Federal Detention Center, collapsed and died after government employees apparently disregarded national medical standards by neglecting to give him basic emergency care,” according to an NPR news release. “Prison employees subsequently put dozens of immigrants at Oakdale in near-solitary confinement after they protested what had happened.” The report airs Monday on “All Things Considered.”
- “Gay men are being portrayed inaccurately and unfairly in coverage of the Vatican’s guidance on the role of gay men in the Roman Catholic Church, the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) says in an ‘open letter to the news industry,'” Editor & Publisher reported Wednesday. “‘Some of those reports have included references to sexual ‘preferences,’ and reporting without verification parishioner statements that most of the priests involved in the Church’s sex-abuse scandal were gay,’ the letter, addressed to ‘fellow journalists,’ states.”