Chinese-American Journalists Attacked

Editors Suspect Retaliation for Reporting on China

“The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by attacks and threats against ethnic Chinese journalists based in or near the U.S. cities of Atlanta, San Francisco, and New York. Journalists for the Falun Gong-affiliated newspaper and Web site Epoch Times told CPJ that they believe they have been targeted in retaliation for reporting and commentary that is critical of the Chinese government,” the committee reported Thursday.

“Falun Gong, which is banned in China, is a religious movement that is politically active in opposition to the Chinese government. Epoch Times often carries news and commentary that is very critical of the Chinese Communist Party.

“On February 8 before noon, Epoch Times Chief Technical Officer Li Yuan was attacked by three men in his home in Duluth, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, Li told CPJ. Two Korean-speaking men armed with a knife and a gun beat him in the face and bound him with an electrical cord, while a third asked in Mandarin Chinese the location of Li’s safe.

“‘I was bleeding and I couldn’t see,’ Li told CPJ. ‘They had duct tape on my eyes and mouth.’

“The attackers stole two laptop computers, according to a local Fulton County police report. Li said that the men went through his files but left other valuables untouched.

“He told CPJ that he believed the men may have been looking for evidence of the technical means by which Epoch Times thwarts Chinese government jamming of its Web site in the mainland, or the identities of writers in mainland China who have contributed to the news outlet. . . .

Chu Maoming, press officer at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., told CPJ today that the allegations of Chinese government involvement were ‘totally a rumor fabricated by the evil cult.’ . . .

“Other U.S.-based editors for Epoch Times have been threatened. An executive and editor at the newspaper’s San Francisco branch, Alex Ma, told CPJ that unknown individuals broke into his house on two separate occasions in 2005. Days after the first break-in, family members in China called to warn him to stop his ‘activities,’ he said. . . .

“Huang Wanqing, New York-based vice president of Epoch Times and former news editor of the Web site, told CPJ that his family in China was also visited several times in the last two years by state security agents, who said that Huang’s activities in the U.S. were under surveillance by Chinese agents. Huang’s family told him that state security agents knew private details about his life in the U.S., including his bank account information.”

• Esther Wu, Dallas Morning News: For protesters, hunger strike a small sacrifice

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Lee Enterprises Appoints 2 More to All-White Team

Lee Enterprises, which became the nation’s fourth-largest newspaper company last year when it bought Pulitzer Inc., owners of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has no people of color on its 16-member management team and none on its board of directors.

This week, it named an additional member of the board and promoted its director of editorial development to vice president/news. Neither is a person of color.

Lee spokesman Daniel K. Hayes, vice president for corporate communications, told Journal-isms that since the 1999 arrival of chairman and CEO Mary E. Junck from Times Mirror, diversity was “high on the list” for the company, based in Davenport, Iowa, home of its Quad-City Times.

“It’s one of the things we want to improve,” said Hayes, who said he was including gender diversity in his definition. He said there has never been an African American, Latino, Asian American or Native American on its board, but there have been few vacancies.

However, an additional seat was created for Wednesday’s board appointment of Richard R. Cole, dean emeritus of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Hayes said.

That appointment was followed today by the naming of Joyce Dehli, director of editorial development, as vice president for news.

Lee Enterprises describes itself as “a premier publisher of newspapers in midsize markets, with 52 dailies and a joint interest in six others, a rapidly growing online business and more than 300 weekly newspapers and specialty publications in 23 states.”

Hayes said the company attends the job fairs of the journalist organizations of color, is interested in diversity at the newsroom level, and welcomes suggestions.

Meanwhile, Kay Luna reported in the Quad-City Times that as “Davenport-based Lee Enterprises touted 2005 as a landmark year for the newspaper publishing company’s revenue and readership growth, a group of disgruntled St. Louis Post-Dispatch employees circulated flyers Wednesday that called the newspaper ‘the Lee family’s red-headed stepchild.'” The occasion was the Lee stockholders meeting.

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Black Columnist Moved as Memphis Paper Zones

The Memphis Commercial Appeal, moving March 1 to a local section zoned for city and suburbs, has moved African American columnist Wendi C. Thomas out of that section after some of the new section publishers decided they did not want to keep her column on their section fronts, Managing Editor Otis Sanford confirmed today.

In December, Thomas was named one of Presstime magazine’s “20 Under 40,” journalists who can guide newspapers to new audiences. Presstime is published by the Newspaper Association of America, the trade organization of newspaper publishers.

“At a time when many newspaper companies are investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in print and online products to improve reader engagement, Thomas is a one-woman lightning rod, receiving as many as 150 phone messages a week from fans and foes,” the Presstime story said.

On Sunday, Feb. 12, the Commercial Appeal announced to readers: “Wendi C. Thomas has moved.

“Her Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday column is now on page A2.

“This change gives Wendi’s column an even more prominent space in The Commercial Appeal. She is now just one turn away from the front page.

“In addition, the page A2 location will ensure that Wendi’s column is anchored in the same place each day so readers will always know where to find her.

“Why is she moving?

“Over the next 30 days, the local news section of the paper will shift to a more tailored news report targeted to five geographically defined zones. This means on many days local news from these new zones will fill all the space on the cover pages of these local news sections.”

Sanford, who is African American, told Journal-isms that the decision to move Thomas’ column out of the local news section was not his, but confirmed that the new associate publishers for each of the new zones did not all want Thomas’ column out front. Some of the publishers carry the additional role of editor of the section; others of advertising director. He said none of the associate publishers is a person of color.

Editor Chris Peck was out of the office today and unavailable for comment.

[Added Feb. 28: “The volume of phone calls and e-mails from readers has shrunk since the move, but they’re slowly starting to pick back up to pre-move levels,” Thomas told Journal-isms. “With the consistent promotion of my column on 1A, I’m hopeful that my loyal fans and critics will follow me to 2A.”]

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Native J-Teacher Dies in Crash; Instructor Held

Paul Boswell (Anishinaabeg Ojibwe), who ran the University of North Dakota’s Native Media Center, a School of Communication division that trains Native American students for careers in journalism, was killed last weekend after an automobile accident. He was 46. Another instructor at the school has been charged with a drunken driving violation, the Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald reported.

The director of the School of Communication called off classes and ordered offices closed all day so that students, staff and faculty could attend today’s funeral, the paper reported. Boswell had served as director of the school’s Native Media Center since May 2004.

“Paul believed in Native students and diversity, and his work at UND and during NAJA’s college Student Projects and the newspaper workshop at Crazy Horse showed as such,” President Mike Kellogg (Navajo) of the Native American Journalists Association said in a statement. “We’ll miss a great advocate for Native journalism and young Native journalists.”

Boswell was named director of the Native Media Center in 2004 after the School of Communications received a $305,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, according to a university press release. In 2004, the university gave Boswell the Martin Luther King Award after he created an anti-racism training program at the university.

A brother, Mark Boswell, is graphics designer and reporter at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, NAJA said.

“Jenny Lynn Saplis, 25, of Grand Forks, reported to police that she was driving the vehicle that Paul Boswell, 46, came out of about 10:45 p.m. Friday night on the 4200 block of South Columbia Road. Boswell suffered head injuries and was taken to Altru Hospital, where he later died,” the Herald reported.

“Police say they do not know if Boswell’s exit from the car was an accidental fall or if he jumped,” the story said.

Family members set up a scholarship fund in Boswell’s name at Bemidji State University that will be used to aid Native American high school and college students in their education, NAJA said.

• Leaving a Legacy (Editorial, the Dakota Student)

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Cartoon Furor Becomes Press Freedom Crisis

“Controversy over the publication of drawings of the Prophet Muhammed continued to grow as an international press freedom crisis on Thursday as Indian authorities imprisoned a magazine editor and Belarusian prosecutors opened a criminal probe into a weekly newspaper. In each case, the publications said they printed one or more cartoons to provide context for the worldwide furor that has now claimed at least 48 lives,” the Committee to Protect Journalists reported Thursday.

“At least nine countries worldwide have now taken punitive actions against publications or their editors for reprinting one or more of the 12 depictions first published last year by a Danish newspaper, according to research compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Six newspapers in three countries have been forced to close and at least nine journalists in four countries have been arrested and face potential criminal prosecution. Governments have also issued censorship orders and sponsored protests.”

Meanwhile, the New Straits Times in Malaysia avoided punishment for publishing a “Non Sequitur” cartoon about the controversy, offering an apology accepted by the government Friday, Vijay Joshi reported today for the Associated Press.

On Sunday in the Washington Post, Danish publisher Flemming Rose explained “Why I Published Those Cartoons,” concluding:

“I think the cartoons now have a place in two separate narratives, one in Europe and one in the Middle East. In the words of the Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the integration of Muslims into European societies has been sped up by 300 years due to the cartoons; perhaps we do not need to fight the battle for the Enlightenment all over again in Europe. The narrative in the Middle East is more complex, but that has very little to do with the cartoons.”

• Stanley Crouch, New York Daily News: Warriors drown out the voices of reason in Islam
• Gregory Kane, Baltimore Sun: U.S. Muslims put cartoon dispute in perspective
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Ruben Navarrette Jr., San Diego Union-Tribune: Offenses are in the eyes of the offended

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In Britain, Too Liberal to Be Racist?

“A chorus of disapproval and defensiveness greeted comments by the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, that the media are institutionally racist when it comes to reporting murder,” Esther Armah, director of a multi-media production company and a freelance broadcaster, wrote Thursday in London’s Guardian newspaper, in an argument familiar to Americans.

“Too many white, middle-class liberals define racism solely as a crude and extreme reality. To think that is the only kind of racism that exists is to reside on Planet Denial, Defensive and Dishonest. The real issue for them is they are not prepared to define racism as educated, articulate discrimination; as subtle, complex and dangerous, with calculated intention.”

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“Ask a Mexican”: Inquiring Gringos Want to Know

“Dear Mexican, Why do Mexicans call white people gringos?” began the Column One story by Daniel Hernandez on Thursday in the Los Angeles Times.

“It was the type of impolite question few people would dare ask in everyday Southern California, much less in print.

“‘Dear Gabacho,’ began Gustavo Arellano’s answer in the OC Weekly alternative newspaper. ‘Mexicans do not call gringos gringos. Only gringos call gringos gringos. Mexicans call gringos gabachos.'”

“Arellano went on to explain that gabacho is a sometimes pejorative slang term for white Americans, with ‘its etymological roots in the Castilian slur for a French national.’ “Ask a Mexican” was meant as a one-time spoof, “but questions began pouring in.

“Arellano has responded each week, leading an unusually frank discussion on the intersections where broader society meets the largest and most visible national subgroup in the country: Mexicans.

“Nothing is taboo.”

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Short Takes

• The National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Publications Foundation have launched a joint internship program for Latino journalism students interested in careers at Hispanic or Spanish-language media publications, the groups announced Thursday. Four students are to complete summer internships in the nation’s capital this year. The program is sponsored by the Ford Motor Company Fund.
• “Conde Nast Publications’ Spanish Vogue issue in March created a new record for the Vogue franchise. The issue is 1,006 pages long and weighs just under 6 pounds. The magazine includes a 606-page supplement on fashion collections that is bound into the book,” Mickey Alam Khan wrote today on DMNews.com.
• “Quince Girl launches March 1 in the United States. The New York-based magazine targets 400,000 Hispanic girls who turn 15 each year with content focusing on that advance into adulthood,” Mickey Alam Khan’s article continued on DMNews.com.
• “Planet Africa, a quarterly urban lifestyle magazine aimed at 25- to 60-year-old professionals of African and Caribbean descent,” debuted in Canada this week with an initial run of 10,000 copies, the Wooden Horse Publishing newsletter reported Wednesday. Fred Sherman is editor-in-chief.
• Fashion columnist Robin Givhan of the Washington Post “has carved her niche as a journalist who turns the attire of the powerful into social, political, and cultural commentary. She thinks Cheney’s parka and Condi Rice’s boots reveal more about them than just their sense of style,” Harry Jaffe wrote today in the Washingtonian, referring to Vice President Dick Cheney and the secretary of state. “‘There’s this ridiculous taboo about talking about people’s clothing,’ she says. ‘Most of the time I am just acknowledging the obvious. People say it’s so shallow that it doesn’t matter. It does.'”
• “The continuing saga of the potential sale of Knight Ridder has kept the company’s own business reporters on top of their game,” Kevin Sweeney of the American Press Institute’s BusinessJournalism.org site wrote Thursday. Joe DiStefano of the Philadelphia Inquirer is quoted as saying, “It’s a little weird to be calling our own bosses and bosses’ bosses for comment, but they stonewall me just like many of the other companies on the beat.”
• Deepti Hajela, an Associated Press newswoman, was re-elected president of the South Asian Journalists Association for a second year, SAJA reported as it announced new officers. Gopal Ratnam, a senior staff writer for Defense News and Sudeep Reddy, a reporter for the Dallas Morning News, were added to the board.
• After four months, it seems “Geraldo at Large,” starring Geraldo Rivera and airing mostly on Fox stations, “isn’t faring any better than what it replaced. Or to put it more bluntly, it’s no less a disaster than ‘Current Affair,'” Abigail Azote wrote today in Media Life Magazine.
• “Kejal Vyas, one of my best journalism students at Rutgers-Newark, in Newark, New Jersey, was in Delhi completing some academic work,” columnist Allan Wolper wrote Monday in Editor & Publisher, “when he received this Feb. 1 e-mail from Nancy Sharkey, senior editor/recruiting for The New York Times, responding to his inquiry about an internship: ‘Hi Kejal, Based on what Allan Wolper has written about us, I cannot imagine that he would want one of his students to intern here. I guess if we need students from New Jersey, we will go elsewhere. Best, Nancy.'”
• “A college professor’s proposal to honor the publisher of Little Saigon’s first Vietnamese newspaper by renaming a street after him was rejected after community leaders questioned how much the journalist had contributed to the community,” Jonathan Abrams wrote today in the Los Angeles Times. “The Westminster City Council voted unanimously late Wednesday to table the proposal that sought to rename a stretch of Moran Street after Yen Do, founder of Nguoi Viet Daily News.”
• Rhonda Stewart, an arts reporter at the Boston Globe who left the paper Feb. 7 to relocate to Washington, has been named assistant editor of Jazz Times magazine, based in Silver Spring, Md. “Eventually I’ll do some writing as well,” she told Journal-isms.
• “Radio One, the largest radio group programming to African Americans, plans to grow the company by better integrating and monetizing all its platforms,” Paul Heine reported Thursday for Billboard Radio Monitor. Alfred Liggins, president and CEO, “said he will launch an African American-targeted Web portal this year that exploits Radio One’s radio, TV, syndication and new video content. In April, the company will market a faith-based film called ‘Preaching To The Choir’ targeted at the adult African American audience. Liggins said that Radio One is involved with the distribution, broadcast and DVD rights to the new theatrical movie.”
• Roger Hernandez, syndicated New Jersey-based columnist whose work appears in the Passaic County (N.J.) Herald News, wrote Sunday that he applauded “when the Supreme Court put an end to the undergraduate admissions system at the University of Michigan,” but was happy to join AARP’s table Feb. 16 at the annual National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ scholarship banquet in New York. That’s because “Michigan’s old undergraduate admissions system was based on a racist premise: that all members of ‘minority’ groups are so inferior by virtue of ethnicity that they need extra help to get into college,” Hernandez wrote.
• Commentator Julianne Malveaux and Michelle Singletary, a syndicated Washington Post personal finance columnist, are to participate in a panel on “Economic Empowerment: Building and Leveraging Wealth in the Black Community,” airing 9 a.m. to noon on C-SPAN Saturday as part of Tavis Smiley’s “7th Annual State of the Black Union” event. Three dozen African American leaders join Smiley and radio personality Tom Joyner to discuss economic issues facing black communities. It airs on C-SPAN from 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., repeating on C-SPAN 2 on Monday at 8:30 p.m.