“A Slice of the Community Not Often Represented”
In the wake of criticism that the news media – particularly cable networks – spend an inordinate amount of time covering missing white women, a newspaper in Spartanburg, S.C., this week helped locate a missing woman who is black.
April Johnson, missing since September, was located in Atlanta after the Spartanburg Herald-Journal ran a front-page story Sunday about the mother of two who had fallen victim to drugs.
“We thought this was a story that should be told. We thought we should show a slice of the community that’s not often represented,” Managing Editor Greg Retsinas told Journal-isms today.
The story began with a plea from the woman’s family to the newspaper and culminated in a house-to-house search in the middle of the night Tuesday in Atlanta, about 175 miles away.
“The editors tossed the story my way because the family called the newsroom hoping to get a brief in the paper,” Jessica L. De Vault, a 22-year-old night general assignment reporter, told Journal-isms. She arrived at the paper only in January, after graduating from North Carolina A&T State University, and attending the New York Times Student Journalism Institute.
“I was already working on a bigger story and my editor thought a missing child case would correlate well with my project,” on missing children. “We didn’t know April Johnson was a 27-year-old woman until I interviewed the family. Luckily, my editor (Walt Wooten) let me pursue the story [anyway].”
The story in the Sunday paper – which has a circulation of 60,000 – asked, “Where Is She?”
“Mya and Dyquan Gentry won’t see their mother tonight,” it began.
“Mya, 4, sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night asking for her mother. Dyquan, 8, keeps his emotions to himself.”
“April Johnson, known by neighbors in Victoria Gardens as quiet and humble, often was seen doting over her children.
“Yet on Sept. 25, 2005, the 27-year-old mother left her Spartanburg apartment to run an errand and never returned.”
The story went on: “Her family believes she was on crack – and possibly heroin,” and that she began to deteriorate after taking up with a man she insisted loved her.
“A lot of people started calling the family members,” Retsinas said, “giving them a lot of leads. Then Tuesday night, we got a hot tip.” Johnson was at 569 Jones St. in Atlanta, as a follow-up story described. The family members asked whether De Vault wanted to accompany them to that city, and De Vault and photographer Alex C. Hicks Jr. joined them.
They watched as the family members knocked on doors without success until about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, and then the journalists headed back to Spartanburg.
But a couple of hours later, the family members found Johnson. It was 3:15 a.m. when Johnson’s niece Sheila Crawford, got the call, the Thursday story reported.
“22,” the original tipster, “said he had found April Johnson and asked the family to pick her up.”
In the morning, Johnson was driven back to Spartanburg and checked into a detox center.
DeVault said she’d been told the story received 4,200 hits on the paper’s Web site. But Retsinas said a lot of the reaction was negative. “A lot of readers told us, ‘Who cares?’ We didn’t care when she was missing. She was a woman who made bad choices. Why are you helping her?’ To that, we said we thought this was good storytelling, and two little children were missing their mother.”
It was a newspaper story all the way. “The television stations really didn’t cover it,” said a local television journalist, who said he was not allowed to be identified.
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Silence, Skepticism Greet N.Y. Times Report
The New York Times newsroom was largely silent today on what was said to be the paper’s first-ever report by employees on the diversity problems at the newspaper.
Many said they had been asked not to say anything about it, including offering their own reactions, and directed a questioner to the newspaper’s public relations office, or declined to return telephone calls.
Those who spoke on background said they were not much encouraged by management’s response, which essentially agreed enthusiastically with the “spirit” of the recommendations, but not their specifics.
Others said they had not had a chance to read the 39-page document, distributed Wednesday, and did not believe their colleagues had read it either. By midday, no comments about it had been posted on the paper’s internal Web site. “It’s an uncomfortable issue to talk about,” said Grace Wong, who administers the site. “I think people are still reading it.”
“There hasn’t been much of a reaction,” said one reporter. “Between Judith Miller and Jayson Blair and the financial situation . . . it’s a pretty dour place.” Miller left the paper last year after spending time in jail for refusing to disclose her source for a CIA-leak investigation; Blair left in 2003 after being accused of fabrication and plagiarism.
As reported Thursday, an internal 23-member committee of employees called the Diversity Council, formed in October 2004 at the request of publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., warned management, “The Times is a newspaper at risk. If it fails to diversify its work force and to make attendant changes in its corporate culture, the Times will inevitably lose stature.”
It offered eight recommendations covering both the news and business sides of the paper. The report was released to the staff, but not the public, accompanied by a 15-page response from the news executives on the paper’s masthead.
The report was delivered to management in October, yet in January the Times announced seven news management promotions, none of a journalist of color, which some said today they saw as evidence of management’s lack of sincerity.
“I think people realize that management is still in denial. Where was that passion when they made those masthead appointments?” one staffer said.
The emphasis in management’s response on entry-level jobs, rather than on management or on mid-career journalists at the paper was another issue. And one staffer noted how easy it was to hire journalists who were people of color in name but not in culture.
“The lack of people in the managerial ranks is the part that a lot of people worry about, in terms of retention and luring people to the paper,” Charles Blow, the highest-ranking journalist of color at the paper and most often the only person of color in the daily page-one news meetings, told Journal-isms. Blow is deputy design director for news.
Some said they were waiting to see what Sulzberger will say next week in his annual “State of the Times” address to employees, and at a meeting later in the month with the Diversity Council.
Officially, Sulzberger said through a spokeswoman: “I am very proud of the work done by the Diversity Council. Our business environment requires that we continue to push ourselves to become more diverse because our audiences are changing. We must change along with them and systematically hire and promote from a wider segment of the population.”
Journalists outside the Times were watching the developments as well. A broadcast journalist noted the Times’ agenda-setting role, saying that sometimes news managers are skeptical of story ideas about people of color unless the Times does them first.
Ernest Sotomayor, a former president of Unity: Journalists of Color and now career services director at the Columbia School of Journalism, wondered about the Times’ stated decision to shift resources to training young journalists. “They can’t just focus on people in the pipeline. Those programs are great, but there are people in the business whose careers are stagnating, and if they were able to retain a lot of these people, our numbers would be vastly different,” he said. Sotomayor had spoken briefly before the Diversity Council as it gathered material.
Meanwhile, veteran reporter James Dao, an Asian American who was Southern bureau chief and a national correspondent, starts Monday as deputy metro editor. He will work with Metro editor Joe Sexton, the former deputy metro editor who was promoted in January, creating a vacancy. Dao, named about a month ago, has been working out of the Washington bureau.
“This opening came up and I was urged to take it,” Dao told Journal-isms today. “This is a great opportunity – a chance to run a desk,” he said.
In a note to the staff, Sexton said of Dao, “I have already told him that I will rely on him to speak the truth, exercise judgment, instigate ideas, counsel reporters, evaluate hires, coordinate efforts across desks and promote laughter. . . . He has the makings of a true leader of the paper, and he will begin showing metro the way into the future in early March.”
Diabetes Series Draws Hundreds of Letters
Two months after it was published, a four-part series in the New York Times about the growing problem of diabetes continues to resonate, according to an editor who worked on the project.
“My own sense, which I think is shared by the rest of the crew, is that the reaction pretty much went beyond what we had anticipated,” Kevin Flynn told Journal-isms this week. “We knew the looming crisis deserved coverage, and had the widest of implications, but we weren’t sure whether the series would engage a broad spectrum of readers. It seems to have, though. Several of the stories were among the most e-mailed for the month and they drew hundreds of letters, more than usual, many of them expressing the idea that it was clearly time to focus more attention on the disease.”
The first piece by N.R. Kleinfield ran Jan. 9 and said, “Within a generation or so, doctors fear, a huge wave of new cases could overwhelm the public health system and engulf growing numbers of the young, creating a city where hospitals are swamped by the disease’s handiwork, schools scramble for resources as they accommodate diabetic children, and the work force abounds with the blind and the halt.
” . . . One in three children born in the United States five years ago are expected to become diabetic in their lifetimes, according to a projection by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The forecast is even bleaker for Latinos: one in every two.
“New York, perhaps more than any other big city, harbors all the ingredients for a continued epidemic. It has large numbers of the poor and obese, who are at higher risk. It has a growing population of Latinos, who get the disease in disproportionate numbers, and of Asians, who can develop it at much lower weights than people of other races.”
“African-Americans and Latinos, particularly Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans, incur diabetes at close to twice the rate of whites. More than half of all New Yorkers are black or Hispanic, and the Hispanic population is growing rapidly, as it is around the nation.”
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Readers Told They Didn’t See What They Thought
No, the basketball-game photo didn’t reveal what some thought they saw, Ray Wilkerson, executive editor of the Bryan-College Station (Texas) Eagle, told readers today.
“It’s the type of picture photojournalists savor and sports editors expect,” he wrote. “Plus, fans seize on such pictures because that victorious moment frozen in time carries with it universal bragging rights – until the next game.
However, Wilkerson continued, “This picture caught readers’ attention for another reason. Beyond the winning shot by Acie Law, many readers – and some by word of mouth, without seeing the picture – were absolutely convinced the picture showed a University of Texas player moving to block the shot and, in the process, exposing himself.”
He explained further: “The specific section of the picture in question showed nothing more than the white inside liner of the player’s uniform. The color was distorted for a variety of reasons, primarily because of the angle at which the picture was taken, the lighting, orange color of the uniform on the left pant leg reflecting up into the groin area, and the specific moment that was captured.
“It’s that simple.”
Still, the photo was the subject of discussion on at least one blog, which enlarged the photo in question.
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A “Boondocks” Exit; an Earlier “Watch Your Head”
“‘The Boondocks’ sabbatical had barely been announced when the Washington Post Writers Group decided to launch the ‘Watch Your Head’ comic on March 27 rather than May 21,” Dave Astor reported Tuesday in Editor & Publisher.
“March 27 is one day after the last new ‘Boondocks’ strip will run until Aaron McGruder’s six-month leave of absence ends this October.
“‘Watch Your Head’ creator Cory Thomas is also in his mid-20s and, like McGruder, an African-American cartoonist.
“‘Watch Your Head’ is set at the predominately black Oliver Otis University, and focuses on six student characters (mostly African American but one a white Canadian).
“Thomas is a Howard University graduate who lives in the Washington, D.C., area.” He was cartoonist for the Howard student paper, the Hilltop, winning an award for best cartoonist in the annual contest among papers at historically black colleges and universities.
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Kenyan Police Deliver Blows to the Press
“Dozens of masked police officers forced a television station off the air in an early morning raid here in the Kenyan capital on Thursday before moving to a newspaper plant, where they disabled the printing press and burned thousands of papers, witnesses said,” Marc Lacey reported today in the New York Times.
“Newspapers smoldered Thursday after armed and masked police officers stormed The Standard’s offices and put its TV station off the air.
“The crackdown on the country’s second-largest media company came after the government jailed three of its journalists this week over a recent article about political intrigue involving President Mwai Kibaki. Mr. Kibaki, elected in 2002, has experienced a flurry of critical press coverage in recent months as his administration has grappled with accusations of corruption and political infighting.”
- How Attack Was Executed (East African Standard, Nairobi)
- Angry Kenyans Condemn Raid On ‘Standard’ And KTN (East African Standard, Nairobi)
- Kenyan police raid newspaper (Committee to Protect Journalists)
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St. Regis Tribe Challenges Drug-Trafficking Story
“The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe calls a New York Times story about drug running on the reservation ‘one-sided’ and demands an apology from the Watertown Daily Times for reprinting it,” WWTI-TV in Watertown, N.Y., reported Monday.
“The story was published Sunday Feb. 19th as part of a New York Times series about drug trafficking on American Indian reservations.
“The story said an estimated $1 billion in marijuana and Ecstasy are smuggled annually from Canada through the St. Regis Reservation.
“The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe says it issued a rebuttal to the story for ‘its unfair depiction of the St. Regis Reservation and the Mohawk people,’ but the paper refused to print it.
Tribe spokesman Brendan White said the $1 billion estimate is an exaggeration.
“We are satisfied with the soundness of our reporting,” New York Times spokeswoman Catherine J. Mathis told Journal-isms.
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Teen Journalists Pledge to Become Role Models
High-achieving teenage journalists of color brought together about 45 students from 20 schools in the Madison, Wis., area – elementary, middle and high school – to urge them to model good behavior for younger students who might not have the same positive influences, Samara Kalk Derby reported Monday in the Capital Times of Madison.
“In small groups the students took a pledge: ‘I will be an active role model for younger students. I will work to spread a positive message of engagement at my school and in my community. I will encourage academic success among my peers.’
“After pledging, students were given black and white ‘Close the Gap’ T-shirts and were signed up for a free subscription” to the Simpson Street Free Press,” Derby wrote.
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March 31 Deadline for Editorial-Writing Seminar
March 31 is the deadline to apply for the 11th annual Minority Writers Seminar to be held May 4-7 in Nashville at the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute at Vanderbilt University.
Enrollment is limited to 25 for the seminar, sponsored by the National Conference of Editorial Writers Foundation in partnership with the Diversity Institute and supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation.
“Its purpose is to give experienced minority journalists an opportunity to explore the nuts-and-bolts of opinion writing and encourage them to consider making a career move. Minority journalists who have been writing opinion less than two years may also apply,” an announcement says. More information is available on the NCEW Web site.
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Short Takes
- “One can only wonder how the Washingtonian has weathered nearly four decades of Census fluctuations to remain among the whitest magazines not regularly publishing features on the Confederate flag,” John Metcalfe and Erik Wemple wrote in a cover story for the March 3-9 issue of the Washington City Paper. In a sidebar, the paper acknowledged its own lack of diversity: “Editor in chief: white guy (and a gentrifier, too). Arts editor: white guy. Senior editor: white guy. Senior writer: white guy. Copy editor: white woman,” wrote Huan Hsu.
- “A survey by the market research business Outsell Inc., which echoes other recent studies, determined that 61 percent of consumers look to their newspapers as an essential source for local news, events and sports, followed by television (58 percent) and radio (35 percent). About 6 percent turn to the major Internet search engines for local news and information,” Nick Madigan reported Tuesday in the Baltimore Sun.
- Radio One Inc. said its fourth-quarter profit fell nearly 50 percent because of a national slowdown in the radio industry, which faces increased competition from satellite radio, Internet music services and MP3 players, Krissah Williams reported Feb. 24 in the Washington Post.
- Veronica Flores, whose San Antonio career in newspapers began at the now-defunct San Antonio Light in 1991, has returned to the Texas city as metro editor of the Express-News. “Flores left the Express-News in October 2002 to join the Houston Chronicle, where she served as assistant national editor before becoming the paper’s city editor. Both the Chronicle and the Express-News are owned by the Hearst Corporation,” the Express-News noted last month.
- “These five people have opened many doors for Asian-Americans. Unfortunately, too few people know the stories behind their successes,” Esther Wu, national president of the Asian American Journalists Association, wrote Thursday in her Dallas Morning News column. She was speaking of lawyer Angela Oh, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sabeer Bhatia, lawyer Bill Lann Lee and actors George Takei and Lou Diamond Phillips, who are to be honored by the association in Dallas March 11.
- Spanish Broadcasting System, Inc. announced Wednesday the launch of Mega TV Channel 22 (WSBS-TV), its television debut in the South Florida market. “Renowned Hispanic journalist Maria Elvira Salazar is back with her own, signature show and a MEGA TV original production. ‘Polos Opuestos’ is a hybrid debate/game show highlighting opposing viewpoints on today’s controversial issues and events.”, a release said.
- Creaxion, an Atlanta marketing firm, announced Tuesday it had been selected by Renaissance Urban Media Group to help launch Mecca Magazine, “a smart, sophisticated glossy by, for and about African Americans who live, work and play in Atlanta.”
- Bing Dian, or Freezing Point, a weekly supplement to the China Youth Daily newspaper,” whose shutdown a month ago prompted an outcry by free-speech advocates was set to resume publishing Wednesday, carrying an article criticizing an essay published under fired editors,” the Associated Press reported Wednesday. Detained journalist Li Yuanlong, meanwhile, has been charged with subversion after posting essays on the Internet, according to the New York-based group Human Rights in China, the AP said.
- Kristal Brent Zook, freelance author, journalist and broadcast commentator, is one of 12 journalists from the United States and Europe selected for the second annual Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science & Religion, which include research and scholarship at the University of Cambridge in England, the program announced Tuesday.
- “Editors and news directors need to ask a fundamental question, even before visiting campuses and interviewing young Hispanic journalists,” Allan Richards, chair of the Florida International University Department of Journalism and Broadcasting, wrote Tuesday in Editor & Publisher. “What does it mean to be Hispanic in America? They will discover that there isn’t one answer, and that is the key in beginning to understand and represent this varied people they will have to serve, increasingly.”
- Samuel F. Yette met Wednesday with the staff of the Aurora, the student newspaper at Knoxville College, Lola Alapo wrote today in the Knoxville (Tenn.) News. The author, former Newsweek reporter and academician “hopes to mentor the group as well as other students who aspire to be writers. He said he also plans to teach journalism classes in the future through which students can produce pieces that would be published nationally.”
- “I’m standing in front of a long rack of black boots at the American Army & Navy Store on South Orange Blossom Trail, pondering that age-old question: What should I wear to my first Nazi rally?” began a story by James Carlson, a white reporter, Thursday in the Orlando Weekly. Carlson “embedded” himself among the neo-Nazi marchers.
- “March 8 will mark the return to the airwaves of veteran local anchor Ron Oliveira, who departed ABC affiliate KVUE last year and signed two months later with KEYE, the CBS affiliate,” Kevin Brass reported today in the Austin (Texas) Chronicle. “But under terms of a no-compete clause in his KVUE contract, KEYE cannot use him on the air, promote him, or use his likeness until March 8, when he will be free to once again read the news with conviction and a pleasantly stern demeanor.”
