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Will It Be, “Thanks, but No Thanks?”

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Days before Black Enterprise offered high-school senior Darryl Terrell an internship, he won a scholarship from Ford Motor Co. From left: Ron Recinto, Detroit Free Press assistant news editor; Paul Anger, publisher and editor; Terrell; Jim Graham, Ford Motor Co. Fund community relations manager; and Erin Hill, Free Press High School Journalism Program coordinator. (Credit: William Perry/Special to the Free Press)

Gift of Black Enterprise Internship May Be Lacking

Detroit high school senior Darryl Terrell received a nice surprise on Monday when, by chance, both he and Earl Graves Sr., founder of Black Enterprise magazine, found themselves together at a meeting of the Detroit City Council.

Terrell was being honored as the best student in the Ford Motor Co./ Detroit Free Press High School Journalism Program.

On the spot, Graves offered Terrell an internship at Black Enterprise after his freshman year.

"’One of these days, we’re going to be working for you,’ Graves told the student while taking a photo with the council," Darren A. Nichols reported Monday for the Detroit News.

There’s one thing Graves did not say, however.

When Journal-isms asked Black Enterprise spokesman Andrew P. Wadium whether the scholarship was paid, Wadium said:

"All of our internships have come with a stipend save this summer, 2009, due to the economic circumstances. This year we are working with the schools to provide credit whenever possible. We have a great program here, and I always enjoy having students. They remind me of how great the future can be with their enthusiasm.

Terrell told Journal-isms, "My mother thought it was paid. I thought it was college credit."
Graves gave him the card of a Black Enterprise employee to call, but Terrell said Friday he hadn’t yet done so.

Would he be able to take an unpaid internship?

"I can’t tell you I would go," Terrell said. He said he doesn’t know anyone in New York. Where would he live? Who would pay the rent?

"Terrell, a 17-year-old senior, received a $24,000 scholarship¬†to Oakland University to study journalism. He said he was overwhelmed by the offer to work in either the print or online divisions at ‘Black Enterprise,’" as the Detroit News reported.

"’I’m just so shocked. I’m really excited and happy about it,’ said Terrell, who also is getting a free subscription to the magazine."

As reported in March, Black Enterprise has told freelance writers it can no longer afford to pay them to write for the magazine.

The practice of offering unpaid internships has been criticized for favoring students who can survive on money from their parents, but penalizing others.

Wadium said Black Enterprise had not yet determined which colleges would agree to the course-credit arrangement. "We may not know this for all of 2009 and much of it is still to be determined for the summer," he said, adding, "I have had 1 intern for credit from Baruch College in 2009."

Terrell, who was getting ready for the Kettering High School prom Friday night, said he planned to start out in college studying print journalism. thinking of writing for "an urban magazine" such as Vibe. After studying print, he said he wanted then to transfer to radio and television and behind-the-scenes work, "like a producer or manager."

President Obama, speaking Thursday at the National Archives, shared the headlines with former vice president Dick Cheney. (Credit: Pete Souza/White House)

Obama: Too Many Journalists Were Silent on Bush

It was just a word in his litany, but President Obama Thursday implicated journalists as complicit in letting the Bush administration make decisions based on "fear rather than foresight."

The reference came in Obama’s speech at the National Archives on interrogation techniques, Guantanamo Bay and related national security issues.

"Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions," Obama said. "I believe that many of these decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that all too often our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight; that all too often our government trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, too often we set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And during this season of fear, too many of us — Democrats and Republicans, politicians, journalists, and citizens — fell silent."

Later, he said, "It’s no secret there is a tendency in Washington to spend our time pointing fingers at one another. And it’s no secret that our media culture feeds the impulse that lead to a good fight and good copy. But nothing will contribute more than that than a extended relitigation of the last eight years."

Former vice president Dick Cheney challenged Obama in a long-planned speech that defended the Bush administration’s actions on interrogation techniques. Some debated whether it was wise for Obama to schedule his talk on the same day, and whether the news media should have given them near-equal, point-counterpoint coverage.

White House press aides did not respond to a request to elaborate on Obama’s remarks about journalists.

Columnist Urges Legalizing Seasonal Laborers

"In spring, whenever storm clouds gather heavy with hail capable of ripping fragile crops to shreds, my Kansas-born mother always offers the same reflection: ‘I‚Äôm sure glad I‚Äôm not a farmer anymore, depending on the weather, which is so undependable.’ In late summer, as the rains become scarce and harvests are endangered by horticultural thirst, there she is again: ‘I‚Äôm sure glad I‚Äôm not a farmer anymore, depending on the weather, which is so undependable,’‚Äù Mary Sanchez wrote¬†Tuesday in the Kansas City Star.

"I‚Äôll add my own refrain on behalf of the less than 2 percent of the U.S. workforce still involved in agriculture: ‘I‚Äôm sure glad I‚Äôm not a farmer trying to hire immigrant agricultural help legally, depending on the whims of Congress, which is so undependable.’ Half a million U.S. farmers are in just that situation. They have more than 3 million agricultural jobs to fill every year, much of it seasonal labor. Many find few options other than hiring illegal immigrants.

"That’s why it’s critical that Congress passes the Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits and Security Act, introduced May 14. The bill presents at least a partial solution to our immigration problem, because it seeks to legalize a group of longstanding seasonal laborers, as long as they meet certain conditions, and also temporarily and legally match new immigrant workers to unmet labor needs."

Meanwhile, a poll "confirmed for the umpteenth time that immigration is a defining issue for the 12 to 13 million Hispanics who are eligible to vote in the U.S.," Albor Ruiz wrote in the New York Daily News.

"’The anti-immigrant movement’s divisive tone and demagogic rhetoric keeps politicizing Hispanics and bringing them together in support of a new immigration policy,’ Sergio Bendixen, president of Bendixen and Associates, concluded about the survey results."

Roxana Saberi Returns to U.S. After 100-Day Ordeal

"Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi returned to the United States on Friday after enduring a 100-day ordeal in an Iranian jail," CNN reported.

"Landing at Washington’s Dulles International Airport on a flight from Vienna, Austria, a smiling Saberi said she was feeling ‘very good.’

"Saberi thanked those who campaigned for her release, including her supporters in Iran.

"’The one thing that kept me going when I was in prison was singing the national anthem to myself,’ said Saberi, flanked by her parents. ‘It may sound corny, but I am so glad to be home in the land of the free.’"

Tavis Smiley’s "Soul Patrol" visits the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

TV One Airing Tavis Smiley’s First Documentary

A year ago, when Tavis Smiley left radio’s syndicated "Tom Joyner Morning Show" amid complaints from some listeners that his criticism of candidate Barack Obama was a little too strident, the activist and broadcast personality insisted that "Contrary to what has been suggested, I have decided to clear some things off my plate so that I can devote my time and attention to some exciting and empowering projects that The Smiley Group, Inc. and other divisions of my company have underway this summer, this fall and beyond."

Now, on Sunday night, TV One debuts one of those projects. Smiley’s first film, the two-hour "Stand", records a bus visit to Tennessee by Smiley and 10 of his black male friends last summer. In a trip that might remind some of "Get on the Bus," Spike Lee’s 1996 film about a group on its way to the Million Man March the previous year, the crew discuss race relations, the meaning of the Obama campaign and the legacy of the civil rights movement.

Joining in the unscripted conversations are such celebrity scholars and activists as Michael Eric Dyson, Cornel West and Dick Gregory and gospel singer Bebe Winans. The visitors include Memphis soul man Sam Moore of the ’60s duo Sam and Dave. The late Memphis musician and actor Isaac Hayes makes what is said to be his last filmed sit-down conversation.

They go to Fisk University in Nashville, to the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where King was killed, and to Mason Temple, where King preached his famous, final "I’ve Been to the Mountaintop" sermon. Historic photographs are sprinkled throughout,

The extent to which one enjoys the film in large part depends on how much of the widely exposed Smiley, Dyson and West one wants to hear. A particularly moving portion shows the group watching last summer’s CNN documentary, "Black in America," in which Dyson and his incarcerated brother, Everett, discuss the choices each made in life.

Attempts at original programming should be commended, even if not always successful. TV One spokeswoman Lynn McReynolds told Journal-isms, "High quality documentary specials and public affairs programming have had a place in TV One‚Äôs original programming lineup since the network‚Äôs inception, beginning with TV One‚Äôs first original documentary, ‘Reparations,’ in 2004.

Pulitzer Winner Says Now’s the Time for Racial Talk

Douglas A. Blackmon, the Atlanta journalist and winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction books for ‚ÄúSlavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II," says the Obama era is the time for more, not less discussion of race.

Blackmon, Atlanta bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, said Friday on public radio’s "The Michael Eric Dyson Show" that the post-Civil War period he unveils in his book is little discussed because for whites, it challenges the idea that "Lincoln successfully freed the slaves," and because older blacks did not want to pass down a history they thought "humiliating and shameful" because their rights were taken away. Moreover, they knew "it was not a safe thing for young African American men to be walking around with a heartful of incredible anger." Blackmon is white.

"I just don’t get this whole conversation about a post-racial society, and certainly any claim that we have entered it simply by the election of our first African American president," Blackmon said. "I’m not sure what that would be, but it sounds like an incredibly boring thing to me. After all these years and years of conversation in America about the value of diversity and the importance of diversity and the way that different kinds of people bring different kinds of strengths to the table, how on earth and why on earth would suddenly overnight we declare that we want to be post-racial, that we want to ignore the fact that there are differences between all of us, because those differences are manifest in the vigor and strength of our society? So I’m puzzled by, particularly by very smart people like Juan Williams and others, both black and white, who have had a lot to say about a post-racial era and even crazier ideas of doing away with Black History Month and some of those very important gestures that I absolutely can’t see a reason to do away with.

"In terms of how we move to this next place, . . . and maybe this sounds Polyanna-ish somehow, but I believe that honest, candid conversation is an extraordinarily healing thing. And the starting point for constructive conversation and constructive visioning of that American destiny . . . is to acknowledge this past, study this past, if for no reason other than that we fully understand how our society was structured in the way that is today and so we can work on the structures that need to change.

"We can never fix things unless we understand how they were built in the first place, and I think there’s an opportunity now ‚Äî and the election of President Obama is a powerful demonstration of it ‚Äî there is an opportunity now to have a kind of conversation that we were never able to have before, not even 10 years ago."

Death Penalty Foes Hurt by Smaller News Staffs

"Opponents of the death penalty looking to exonerate wrongly accused prisoners say their efforts have been hobbled by the dwindling size of America’s newsrooms, and particularly the disappearance of investigative reporting at many regional papers," Tim Arango wrote Wednesday in the New York Times.

Meanwhile, the Detroit Media Partnership, which operates the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News, said Thursday that it would lay off up to 150 employees in the face of continuing severe economic conditions, John Gallagher reported. "The layoffs will be spread throughout the company, including about 25 positions to be eliminated in the Free Press newsroom."

The Times article continued, "In the past, lawyers opposed to the death penalty often provided the broad outlines of cases to reporters, who then pursued witnesses and unearthed evidence.

"Now, the lawyers complain, they have to do more of the work themselves and that means it often doesn’t get done. They say many fewer cases are being pursued by journalists, after a spate of exonerations several years ago based on the work of reporters."

Tuesday Deadline for Journalism-Educator Nominations

The National Conference of Editorial Writers annually grants a Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship ‚Äî actually an award ‚Äî "in recognition of an educator’s outstanding efforts to encourage minority students in the field of journalism." The educator should be at the college level.

Nominations, which are now open for the 2009 award, should consist of a statement about why you believe your nominee is deserving.

The final selection will be made by the NCEW Foundation board and will be announced in time for the Sept. 23-26 NCEW convention in Salt Lake City, Utah, when the presentation will be made.

Since 2000, an honorarium of $1,000 has been awarded the recipient, to be used to "further work in progress or begin a new project."

Past winners include: James Hawkins of Florida A&M University (1990); Larry Kaggwa of Howard University (1992); Ben Holman of the University of Maryland (1996); Linda Jones, Roosevelt University, Chicago (1998); Ramon Chavez, University of Colorado, Boulder (1999); Erna Smith of San Francisco State (2000); Joseph Selden of Penn State (2001); Cheryl Smith; Paul Quinn College (2002); Rose Richard, Marquette University (2003), Leara D. Rhodes of the University of Georgia (2004), Denny McAuliffe of the University of Montana (2005), Pearl Stewart of Black College Wire (2006), Valerie White of Florida A&M University (2007) and Phillip Dixon of Howard University (2008).

Nominations may be e-mailed to Richard Prince, NCEW Diversity Committee chair, richardprince (at) hotmail.com. The deadline is May 26.

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