Veteran Wants to See “What’s on the Open Market”
Roy S. Johnson, who returned to Sports Illustrated three years ago as an assistant managing editor, is leaving the publication for the third time, he told colleagues, “to explore new opportunities in the evolving sports and media industries.”
“Nothing happens in a vacuum,” he told Journal-isms Thursday, asked if his decision was related to the turmoil that has led to buyouts and layoffs at newspapers and magazines. “Anybody in our industry looks and sees that things are changing. I’d rather be proactive than inactive. . . . I have a great opportunity to see what’s on the open market.”
Johnson, 49, is the highest ranking black journalist at the magazine. He returned in 2002 as assistant managing editor/special projects after spending more than two years as founding editor-in-chief of Savoy magazine, a black lifestyles publication he conceived, and editorial director of Vanguarde Media, which included Savoy and two other magazines. Vanguarde went out of business in 2003.
Johnson said that in his latest tour at Sports Illustrated, he had been a contributing editor at the magazine; was executive producer of television shows; created “Sports Illustrated Monday Night Live,” a 90-minute radio show on Westwood One that precedes that network’s game coverage; put writers and producers together for a Sports Illustrated film project; and developed broadband content for si.com, the magazine’s Web site. This summer, he and the magazine’s managing editor, Terry McDonnell, were among those listed as executive producers for a DVD, “the Best of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model Search.”
“I am throwing open the window and seeing what blows in,” Johnson told Journal-isms. That includes exploring a television career, he said.
“There are lots of intriguing things happening out there in sports television, magazines, film, the Internet, satellite radio and other technologies – all areas I’ve been privileged to be involved with at SI,” Johnson said an e-mail to colleagues Wednesday. “So I am truly excited about the possibilities.” He noted that “Sixteen of my 27 years as a journalist were spent at Time, Inc.,” having also been at Money and Fortune.
McDonnell was out of the country and not available for comment.
When he announced that Johnson was returning to Sports Illustrated in 2002, McDonnell said it marked “a homecoming for Roy, who began his distinguished journalism career as a reporter at Sports Illustrated in 1978,” and returned as a senior editor in 1989. “Roy’s recent experience as a publishing entrepreneur, combined Roy with his work at Time Inc., guarantees that his contribution to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED will be immediate and meaningful.”
Johnson and his wife, Barbara Johnson, formerly news director at WNBC-TV in New York, have two young children. He said he expected to leave the SI offices before Christmas.
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6 Out at Hispanic Magazine Group; U.S. Ties an Issue
Six staffers at Hispanic and Hispanic Trends magazines have been laid off by a new editorial team, replaced by a team reporting to a company with closer ties to Mexico, Central and South America.
Freelance columnist Marisa Treviño wrote Wednesday on her blog, Latina Lista: “The publishers of Hispanic Magazine, Hispanic Online (HOL) and Hispanic Trends have decided to outsource their editorial content.
“Having freelanced for my amiga, Virginia Cueto, former editor of Hispanic Trends, I was surprised to receive an email telling me of her departure from the magazine.
“Being the curious journalist that I am, and Virginia being the gracious amiga she is, I asked her what happened and she told me:
“‘It wasn’t my decision to leave . . . The entire editorial team for Hispanic, Hispanic Trends and HOL was called down Thursday afternoon at 4 p.m. and informed we no longer had jobs. We would get 2 weeks pay in December, and editorial content was being outsourced because our magazines were too costly for them to produce.
“‘Half an hour later, they sent out a press release naming our replacements. Not a very pleasant experience.'”
Christina Hoag reported Dec. 2 in the Miami Herald that “Hispanic and Hispanic Trends magazines have a new editorial team: Page One Media, which comprises a core group of staffers from the former publisher of Poder and Loft magazines.
“The newly formed Page One was brought in by Mexico’s Editorial Televisa, which owns [a majority] of Coral Gables-based Hispanic Publishing Associates, which publishes the magazines.
“A local investor group led by Chief Executive Sam Verdeja” owns the rest. Verdeja, who will stay on in his current post, was traveling and could not be reached for comment.” Verdeja is a former vice president of community relations and marketing at the Herald. Cueto told Journal-isms those laid off were four editors, an art director and an assistant.
“The move comes as 18-year-old Hispanic magazine’s advertising has dropped by 19 percent in the number of pages from January through October, according to HispanicMagazineMonitor, a Fort Lauderdale service that tracks the Hispanic publication market.
“Hispanic has a monthly circulation of 290,000. . . . ranking it seventh in the Hispanic magazine market,” the story continued.
“Hispanic Trends, with a circulation of about 75,000, is co-published eight times a year with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.”
“Page One’s mission will be to widen the appeal of the magazines and the related website Hispanic Online, aiming especially at the growing market of young Hispanic professionals, said David Taggart, general manager and group publisher of the Editorial Televisa’s Miami division.”
Page One Media is described in a news release as “a content provider and . . . owner of PODER and LOFT magazines in the United States, Mexico, Central and South America. Poder is currently published in Mexico in partnership with Editorial Televisa and will be relaunched in the U.S. market and in Colombia in December. LOFT . . will be re-launched in the U.S., Mexico and Colombia in 2006.”
Calls to Hispanic magazine and Hispanic online were greeted by a constant busy signal or voice mails today.
Treviño wrote, “According to the press release, ‘Page One Media’s staff will be charged with broadening the appeal of HPA’s two print magazines and Web site,'” referring to the Hispanic Publishing Associates.
“I wonder what the term ‘broadening’ means?
“Could it mean that Editorial Televisa isn’t satisfied with being the premier publisher for Hispanic Americans and wants to be the premier publisher for Hispanics period?
“If that’s the case, then Editorial Televisa is as guilty as every ignorant soul who thinks Mexicans, [Colombians], Puerto Ricans, etc. are all the same because we’re all categorized as Latinos or Hispanics.”
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BET’s Lee Among Black Leaders Meeting With Bush
Debra Lee, president and CEO of Black Entertainment Television, was among nine black leaders, nearly all from the civil rights and political establishment, who met with President Bush at the White House Wednesday, the NAACP announced.
In the Baltimore Sun Thursday, Kelly Brewington and Julie Hirschfeld Davis called the closed-door session “a first for the administration,” which has met previously with blacks who share its conservative ideology.
“The meeting was an outgrowth of a private White House meeting between Bruce S. Gordon, President & CEO, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the President in September. At the September meeting, Gordon encouraged the President to continue their discussion and to expand participation to a larger group of African American leaders,” an NAACP news release issued Wednesday said.
“In addition to Gordon, today’s meeting included Donna Brazile, Founder and Managing Director, Brazile & Associates, Inc.; Dr. Dorothy Height, [Chair], National Council of Negro Women; Debra Lee, President and CEO, Black Entertainment Television; Marc Morial, President & CEO, National Urban League; Ted Shaw, Director-Counsel and President, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; Rev. Dr. William J. Shaw, President, National Baptist Convention; H. Patrick Swygert, President, Howard University and Rep. Melvin L. Watt (D-NC), Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. The President was joined by several members of his staff including, Andrew H. Card, Jr., White House Chief of staff; Karl Rove, Deputy Chief of Staff; and Claude Allen, Chief Domestic Advisor.”
“They discussed what one aide to a participant called ‘issues of great concern to the African-American community,’ including the botched government response to Hurricane Katrina and Gulf Coast revitalization efforts, re-authorizing and strengthening the Voting Rights Act and economic issues such as unemployment and the cost of home heating oil.
“The meeting also touched on broader issues, including the war in Iraq and the nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr., Bush’s pick for the Supreme Court. The Congressional Black Caucus plans to announce today its opposition to Alito.” (It did.)
Sources who did not wish to be quoted by name said the meeting was an outgrowth of an unpublicized Sept. 14 meeting at Howard University that drew 50 notables, from entertainer-activist Harry Belafonte to Height, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Calvin Butts of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church and seven members of Congress. This meeting, convened after the dismal federal response to Katrina this fall led to Gordon’s meeting with Bush and then Wednesday’s White House meeting. Lee’s role was said to represent black business (though BET is owned by the Viacom conglomerate), and to raise such issues as employment and minority business access to Gulf region rebuilding.
- Kathy Chaney, Chicago Defender: Bush meets with prominent African American leaders; Jackson, Sharpton not invited
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Offensive Student Show Gone; Station to Return
Free-speech advocates at Syracuse University won a partial victory in restoring a student television station after one of its shows included “segments about ‘smelly Indian kids,’ jokes about mentally retarded people” and Chancellor Nancy Cantor’s “desire for ‘thick black sausage,'” the Student Press Law Center reported Tuesday, quoting the Daily Orange, the student newspaper.
“Instead of disbanding the station, called HillTV,” a faculty panel “said it could begin airing shows in February provided station managers fulfill a number of restructuring requirements,” the center said.
“Cantor disbanded HillTV in October after some students expressed outrage over an entertainment show modeled after ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart‘ called ‘Over the Hill.’ . . . The show, which had been airing for less than a year over the Internet and on the Orange Television Network, made light of eating disorders, date rape and lynching, among other issues. Students began reacting to the show after The Daily Orange wrote a story about it titled “Your Student Fee. . . : HillTV’s ‘Over the Hill’ Prompts Re-evaluation of programming.'”
“More than 60 professors and staff in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications,” where Charlotte Grimes holds the Knight Chair in political reporting, “wrote a letter to The Daily Orange” over “Cantor’s move to shut down the station. The letter said Cantor’s decision ‘damaged’ free speech and free press values as well as diversity values.
[Added Dec. 10: The open letter “called on the SU community to reflect on the false choice her action in disbanding the WHOLE station posed for folks who value free speech, a free press AND diversity,” Grimes told Journal-isms. She added that the show itself is “gone, zip, dead. And no one — including me — is mourning its loss.”]
“And Grimes said the faculty panel’s decision, depending on how it is enforced, could institutionalize a censorship board that oversees the station. This could have a negative impact on preparing broadcast journalists for professional careers because ‘in the real world, we don’t have those kind of boards,’ Grimes said.” Grimes headed the journalism program at Hampton University before being named at Syracuse.
[“The SHOW wasn’t cancelled; the whole STATION, including its news operation, was shut down,” Grimes continued Dec. 10. “Our overall point — still, I think, our major concern,” she told Journal-isms, “is that more speech is usually a better option than closing down a media outlet, that the press part of the outlet should not have been caught up in this, that it’s better to let students handle these things instead of the administration stepping in and that this is going to have a chilling effect on free speech and free press on campus. I do know other student media are extremely worried that they will be targeted now too. That’s not healthy.”]
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AOL BlackVoices Hires 8 from Print, Web Sites
The AOL BlackVoices Web site, which named Janet Rollé of MTV as vice president and general manager in July and former reporter Nick Charles as editor in chief in September, is adding “eight industry experts to its editorial and management team,” the company announced today.
They include Terrence Samuel, recently laid off as Washington correspondent at U.S. News & World Report, as programming director for news, sports and finance; Jessica Green, formerly executive editor at BET.com, as programming director for entertainment and lifestyle; Tiffani Whitehead, already with AOL as community manager, overseeing the community areas for News and Personal Finance; and special columnist Roy S. Johnson, assistant managing editor of Sports Illustrated, who just announced he is leaving that publication.
“Additional new members of the AOL Black Voices team include the former Editor of Vibe.com Tanisha Blakely, who has joined as Programming Manager for Lifestyle; the former author of the nationally syndicated weekly . . . column [of entertainment and lifestyle news,] the RU Report, Karu Daniels, who will update a new original column three times per week called the “The News Report.” This new column will serve as an Entertainment Newswire for those wishing to get the latest facts on celebrities; Branden Cobb, who will serve as Producer for News, Sports, Work & Money; and Angela Bronner who will act as Roving Producer.”
AOL Black Voices, based at AOL’s Dulles, Va., headquarters, represents a merger of AOL’s Black Focus; Africana.com, formerly based in Cambridge, Mass.; and Black Voices, founded in Orlando, Fla., then based in Chicago and acquired by AOL last year from the Tribune Co.
Less than six months after Africana.com shut down its Web site and merged into AOL BlackVoices, the editor of the merged site, Gary Dauphin, resigned and his deputy, Barbranda Lumpkins Walls, left as well.
Combining the three cultures was difficult, staff members said then.
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Africa Price Named Managing Editor in Tallahassee
Africa Price, managing editor at the Jackson Sun in Jackson, Tenn., has been named managing editor of Florida’s Tallahassee Democrat, giving those who gave her a hand along the way a chance to claim a share in the achievement.
“The Tallahassee Democrat’s pioneering internship program with Florida A&M University has paid another dividend: One-time FAMU intern Africa Price has been named the newspaper’s managing editor,” Gerald Ensley began his Democrat story today.
“Africa is a graduate of the Gannett Corporate News Department Management Development Program,” the corporate announcement noted.
The Freedom Forum includes Price on its Chips Quinn diversity program site, with an entry from her describing “My First Job.”
The appointment of the former Africa Gordon, 35, restores an African American to the paper’s top editorial management. Mizell Stewart was managing editor and then editor until Knight Ridder sold the paper to Gannett Co. in August.
Her husband, Stephen Price, 37, a reporter for the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, will join the Democrat as a reporter in the Capitol bureau, the Tallahassee paper said.
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C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” Skews Right, White
“Despite C-SPAN’s stated goals,” of political balance, the left-leaning media monitoring group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting found the network’s “Washington Journal” “skewing rightward, favoring Republican and right-of-center interview subjects by considerable margins over Democratic and left-of-center guests,” Steve Rendall of FAIR reports in the November/December issue of FAIR’s Extra magazine. “The study also found that women, people of color and public interest viewpoints were substantially underrepresented.
“Overall, people of European ancestry made up 85 percent of Washington Journal’s guestlist – 563 out of 663. (Extra! was able to identify the ethnic background of more than 99 percent of guests.) People of African (26) and Asian (24) heritage accounted for 4 percent each, while those of Middle Eastern (22) and Latin American (18) descent represented 3 percent each. No Native Americans were identifiable on the guestlist from November 1, 2004 to April 30, 2005.
“. . . According to the U.S. Census, about 70 percent of Americans are white and non-Latino; about 12 percent each are Latinos of all races, and non-Latino African-Americans; about 4 percent are Asian-American and 1 percent are Native American. (Middle Eastern descent is not a census category.)
“On gender, Washington Journal was even more imbalanced when compared to the general population, with a guestlist that was 80 percent male (533 guests) and 20 percent female (130), a four-to-one imbalance. Furthermore, 69 percent of guests were white males (457), while just 3 percent were women of color.”
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Short Takes
- “Zhao Yan, a researcher for the Beijing bureau of The New York Times who has been imprisoned in China for more than a year, was named journalist of the year on Wednesday by the international press freedom advocacy group Reporters Without Borders,” the Times reported Thursday.
- A Middle Eastern American cable network, based in Southfield, Mich., plans to expand beyond North America into Africa and Europe, and pursue a younger, English-speaking Arab audience, Shawn D. Lewis reported Thursday in the Detroit News. To achieve that goal, CEO Wally Jadan has changed its name from TV Orient to MBN America, for Middle East Broadcasting Network.
- The Journal-News, based in White Plains, N.Y., “laid off 19 people Thursday in the first-ever involuntary departures for the 130,531-circulation Gannett Co. daily,” Mark Fitzgerald and Joe Strupp reported today in Editor & Publisher. John Tuller, public relations director, could not give a breakdown of layoffs, which included the newsroom, production, and business departments, they wrote. Ranking editor Bob Fredericks, local news editor, passed word to Journal-isms tonight that only the public relations department, gone for the weekend, could respond to inquiries.
- “A newscaster shouldn’t appear in commercial spots, but history has shown ads are fair game for those in the supporting roles,” Richard Huff wrote today in the New York Daily News. “Ask WNYW/Ch. 5’s likable weathercaster Mike Woods. Woods, one of the most energetic on-air people in the mornings, appears in sponsored segments for Bally Total Fitness health clubs.”
- In New York, “Geraldo at Large,” the new newsmagazine program hosted by Fox’s Geraldo Rivera, will move Monday from its original 4 p.m. time period to 6:30 p.m., replacing “The Simpsons” on WNYW, Fox Television’s flagship, Katy Bachman wrote Wednesday in Mediaweek. The move puts Rivera opposite the network news shows.
- “Lynne White is back on the air — full time,” Richard Huff wrote today in the New York Daily News. “After an on-air tryout subbing for A.J. Hammer as the host of Court TV’s ‘Hollywood Heat,’ White yesterday was named permanent host of the program. White’s first show will be Jan. 5 at 11 p.m.”
- “The Akron Beacon Journal, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning paper now operating as a ‘zine for the geriatric set, is getting squeezed to comedic proportions by San Jose’s Knight Ridder, its parent company,” according to the Cleveland Scene. “Executives recently asked employees to share pens and notepads with other departments, since no more office supplies will be purchased this year. The problem is that some departments have already run dry, including the photo department, which ran out of batteries and paper. ‘They did make an exception and ordered the photographers new batteries,’ says reporter Paula Schleis.”
- “I was appalled to see Native reporters on a panel at a national journalism conference a few years ago invent the culture myth that Indians have no word for ‘news,'” Suzan Shown Harjo wrote Thursday in Indian Country Today, in a column on myths about Native Americans. “No word for news? Native languages have many words for news, more than are found in the European languages.”
- “Zimbabwean officials seized the passport of newspaper publisher Trevor Ncube yesterday, informing him that he was one of more than 60 government critics who would be prevented from travelling outside the country,” Andrew Meldrum reported today in the Guardian of London. “Mr Ncube is the publisher of Zimbabwe’s last two independent newspapers, the Zimbabwe Independent and the Sunday Standard, and the owner of South Africa’s Mail & Guardian.”
- Great Barrington, Mass., home of W.E.B. DuBois, scholar and editor of the NAACP ‘s The Crisis, “has finally decided to honor its most famous citizen,” the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education says in a summary of its upcoming issue. Voters “approved a nonbinding referendum by a vote of 850-431. The resolution authorizes the erection of signs on roads leading into the town that would read: ‘Birthplace of W.E.B. Du Bois.’ Some voters . . . disapproved of the signs bearing DuBois’ name citing his views on communism and his expatriate exile to Ghana, where he died in 1963.”
- “The editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary have selected ‘podcast’ as the Word of the Year for 2005. Podcast, defined as ‘a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player,’ will be added to the next online update of the New Oxford American Dictionary, due in early 2006,” according to a news release from Oxford University Press.
- “The annual Gallup Poll asking Americans to rate, on a scale of one to five, the honesty and ethical standards of those in 21 professions again placed nurses at the very top with an 82% [favorite] score. Journalists, U.S. senators and congressmen trailed badly,” Editor & Publisher reported Monday.
