4 Black Programs, 2 Others Told They Need Work . . .
Journalism programs at four historically black colleges and universities received provisional accreditation today from the accrediting council for journalism education after a vigorous protest from Hampton University, and to a lesser extent, from Florida A&M University.
Among mainstream schools, New York University and Auburn University received provisional accreditation, with both having diversity issues, according to the accrediting reports.
The four historically black universities were Hampton, FAMU, Southern and Winston-Salem State. In all, the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, meeting at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., voted on 19 schools. None was denied accreditation.
It was the final step in a process that included site visits by an accreditation team this winter and a vote by a committee of the council in March.
Provisional accreditation means the schools have up to two years to come into compliance with accreditation standards. Members of the council – who come from 21 organizations that represent educators or professional practitioners, including the journalist of color organizations – said the purpose of the process is to improve the schools and give the journalism programs ammunition for support from their central administrations.
Dean Tony Brown of Hampton’s Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications appeared with university Provost Joyce Jarrett and renewed the university’s challenge to the site team’s recommendation, which had been ratified by the accreditation committee in March. Brown cited the school’s accomplishments and told the council, “As troubled as the site team attempted to make us . . . the proof is in the pudding.”
At one point, the provost decried “the site team’s inability to be open-minded,” which council member Jerry Ceppos, who retired last year as Knight Ridder vice president/news, said he found “extremely offensive.”
The Scripps Howard School is the result of a $10 million commitment from the Scripps Howard Foundation to upgrade journalism education on the historically black campus. However, the journalism program has had three leaders since 2002, and seven professors left after the last school year, an unusually high number. The school has 454 students.
Jannette Dates, the dean of the John H. Johnson School of Communications at Howard University, led the four-member site team that visited Hampton. She told the group she saw signs that “the revolving door has stopped” and said the council needed time to see if stability takes hold at the school after “five or eight years of constant change.”
The team cited as strengths the school’s partnership with the Scripps Howard Foundation, its new building, President William R. Harvey’s fundraising programs; receptivity from the journalism industry; energetic new faculty members; strong, active students and support from the central administration.
But the Hampton program was found to be out of compliance on two of the council’s nine standards. One was “Mission, Governance and Administration”; the other was “Scholarship: Research, Creative and Professional Activity.”
Dates said the turnover at the school meant no one in the Hampton program had experience with accreditation, and thus there was “no documentation of any sort of scholarship.”
Also entering into the dispute was a Journal-isms column and the administration’s 2003 seizure of the student newspaper, the Hampton Script, after the paper refused to print a front-page rejoinder from the then-provost to a story about violations in the school cafeteria.
Brown called the confiscation of the Script an “inexcusable . . . comedy of errors” from which the university had learned a lesson. “We have no relationship with the newspaper,” he said, but the seizure had become an issue “that won’t go away.”
“I hope it never does,” council member Dorothy Ridings told Brown, saying a school paper will always reflect on a journalism department, regardless of whether there is a formal relationship.
“Amen. I couldn’t agree more,” Brown said.
After the site visit and a Feb. 3 report by Journal-isms on its findings, Harvey wrote an 11-page response to Dates on Feb. 13 in which he said, “I am extremely disappointed in the unprofessional behavior and ethical conduct of a member(s) of a team representing ACEJMC during your site visit. We found it disconcerting to read what we thought to be a confidential and unofficial report on the internet.
“Though many had suggested that the review might be agenda-driven, we rejected their claims, believing that the integrity of the accreditation review process in which many of us have often participated would transcend politics and prejudices . . . Sadly our confidence in this process has been shaken.” Harvey said “the team member who talked to the Internet gossip reporter should not be allowed to represent the Council on another college campus.” Without calling its name, he derided this “notorious gossip column.”
Steve Geimann of Bloomberg News, a former president of the Society of Professional Journalists, told the council today, “I was the guilty party. I spoke to a reporter. I did apologize to the president (of Hampton) for speaking out of turn.”
“Is there anything you are taking constructively from the report that you intend to act on?” a council member asked Jarrett, the provost.
Jarrett replied that the school needed more professors with doctorates and that the school wanted to be “a good steward.” But she said she had trouble with the “vagueness” of the language on noncompliance with the standard on governing. She declared her respect for the council.
The committee’s recommendation for provisional accreditation was upheld almost unanimously, with site team members abstaining.
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. . . FAMU, Winston-Salem, Southern Pledge Changes
Florida A&M, Southern and Winston-Salem State universities – the three other historically black colleges up for reaccreditation today – promised action to bring their schools into compliance.
In 1997, FAMU won praise from Time magazine as College of the Year and in 1999, from the Freedom Forum for having the “administrator of the year” in its journalism school. The university has undergone a number of crises since then, and this year, FAMU’s School of Journalism and Graphic Communication failed the “mission, governance and administration” standard, as Dean James E. Hawkins told Journal-isms in March.
Hawkins noted that the school’s journalism director, Kimberly Godwin, left in October for a job as assistant news director (she is now acting news director) at New York’s WCBS-TV.
He appeared with Juanita Hayes, interim journalism director, and wrote the accrediting council a four-page letter asking for full accreditation rather than provisional. The school is searching for a new permanent director, he said. The accrediting team praised the school for its “truly impressive” new facilities and “lots of student enthusiasm,” but cited “uncertainty about the future,” communications problems between the school’s administration and faculty, and lack of a diversity plan.
Hawkins said the plan was actually in place. A substantial number of council members voted against the committee’s recommendation, though no vote total was announced.
Brian Blount, who chairs the mass communications faculty at Winston-Salem State, promised to increase the publication frequency of the student newspaper, the News Argus, which publishes monthly, a schedule not unheard of at HBCUs. He told Journal-isms he planned to increase it to twice a month.
His school also needed more “convergence,” or multi-media activities, Barbara Hines of Howard University told him. Winston-Salem State had improved from last fall and enjoyed support from university administrators, the accrediting committee said.
Interim Chair Mahmoud Braima of Southern University’s Department of Mass Communication in Baton Rouge, La., said he had advertised for a public relations and a broadcast faculty member, which “will reduce the faculty load tremendously, starting in the fall.” He also said radio and television labs were being added, and a new student magazine would launch in the fall. The school was prompted to re-establish ties with the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University.
The site team had urged more scholarship on the part of the faculty, said its growth had been too limited and its teaching loads too heavy, noted that the school had outdated radio equipment and cited a lack of ties with professional organizations. The school’s pluses included a dedicated faculty and an excited student body.
Heavier course loads are often cited as one difference between historically black colleges and mainstream schools. Cornel West, the celebrity author and academic who is now at Princeton, has cited the course loads as one reason he has not taught at black colleges.
In his Feb. 13 letter to Jannette Dates of Howard University, Hampton President William R. Harvey made this argument for the importance of historically black colleges in journalism education:
“Of the 458 journalism and mass communication programs, only 27 (5.9%) are at HBCU institutions. Yet, their importance to journalism and communication education can be seen in the fact that 24.2% of the Black students who earn bachelor’s degrees in journalism and communications receive them from the 5.9% that are HBCU institutions. For example, without the HBCU programs, eight in 10 of the bachelor’s degree recipients from journalism and communication programs nationwide would be White. But with the HBCU output, the ratio drops to three in four because, in part, of the comparatively smaller number of Black graduates at the 80.4% of ‘Not HBCUs.’ It has also been noted that some journalism students from these ‘selective’ colleges do not get jobs and/or are not suitable for professional employment. Some will never get a job in journalism and many of them are Black and Latino students from those ‘Not HBCU’ programs.”
Among mainstream schools, Brooke Kroeger, journalism chair at NYU, noted that James McBride, author of “The Color of Water,” was named a distinguished writer-in-residence at the school, which failed on the diversity standard.
Auburn University, which also failed the diversity standard, as well as those on curriculum and instruction, and full-time vs. part-time faculty, had suffered from “instability of leadership,” council members said.
Other schools that won accreditation or reaccreditation were: University of Utah, U. of Arizona, Nicholls State, Eastern Illinois, U. of Georgia, Elon University, South Dakota State, U. of Florida, U. of California-Berkeley, U. of Oregon, U. of Montana, U. of Louisiana-Lafayette and Virginia Commonwealth.
. . . Hispanic and Gay Journalist Reps Have Their Say
Representatives of the journalist of color organizations have been on the accrediting council since the mid-1990s, and later the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association was added. Delegates from two of those groups made their presence known at today’s meeting.
Mercedes Lynn de Uriarte of the University of Texas at Austin, representing the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and Robert Dodge of the Dallas Morning News, representing NLGJA, hardly let a school representative pass without asking how well his or her group was represented in faculty (Uriarte) or curriculum (Dodge) or both (Dodge).
In 2003, teaching journalism students about sexual orientation issues was added to race and gender as part of the diversity standard.
Uriarte got at least one historically black school to say it might look for Afro-Latinos.
Dodge held up a story from the April Fool’s edition of the NYU News with the headline, “Gay frat bros caught getting girl head,” and said to Brooke Kroeger, journalism chair at NYU, “It makes me wonder what’s being taught in the classroom. Are stereotypes being taught? I’m really troubled by the diversity issues.”
The question was ruled not germane, as the headline and story were not mentioned in the site visit or committee reports.
Jackie Jones, a veteran editor who is now a writing coach, represented the National Association of Black Journalists, and Evelyn Hsu, program director at the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, was there for the Asian American Journalists Association.
- ACEJMC Accredited Programs, 2005 – 2006
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U.S. Won’t Study Minority Broadcast Ownership
The National Telecommunications and Information Agency has no plans to conduct a study on the state of minority broadcast ownership, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists reported on Thursday.
“NAHJ sent a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez April 3 calling on the department to conduct a minority ownership study. The NTIA, which is an agency within the U.S. Commerce Department, has conducted several studies monitoring trends affecting minority owners. The last report was released at the end of the Clinton Administration,” an NAHJ release said.
“Responding on behalf of Sec. Gutierrez, NTIAâ??s John M.R. Kneuer informed NAHJ President Veronica Villafañe that his agency had no present plans to conduct a minority ownership study, but that the Administration shared the associationâ??s concern that ‘American media reflect the diversity of the nationâ??s people.’â??
“The last report the NTIA published was in December 2000. It found that people of color only made up 3.8 percent of all broadcast station owners and that media consolidation posed a serious threat to the future of minority ownership.”
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Columnists Remember Earl Woods, That Hug
“When he approached his son after the final hole at Augusta in 1997, he received the kind of hug that we as parents hope to get from our children once they become adults. It’s the heart-squashing, take-your-breath-away squeeze that tells us we did well. Earl Woods nearly needed oxygen after that one,” Shaun Powell wrote Thursday in Newsday.
It was one of several remembrances of Earl Woods – and that hug. Woods, father of golfer Tiger Woods, died Wednesday at age 74.
“Everybody who picks up a golf club thinks about Earl Woods and that hug. Everybody who has a son or a daughter or a father or a mother thinks about Earl Woods and that hug – the promise and the pride,” Tim Kawakami wrote Thursday in the San Jose Mercury News.
In the Chicago Tribune, Fred Mitchell recalled “As Father’s Day approached nine years ago, Earl wrote a personal letter to his son,” which Mitchell quoted. “The letter was read on ‘Oprah’ when Tiger and Earl were Winfrey’s studio guests. And Tiger wept,” Mitchell said.
“Earl Woods did much more than raise a supremely talented golfer,” Eugene Robinson wrote today in the Washington Post. “In an age when it’s rare to read a sentence with the words ‘African American’ and ‘father’ that doesn’t also include ‘absent’ or some other pejorative, Earl and Tiger Woods were the world’s most visible, and inspiring, counterexample.”
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Black Backlash on Immigration Explored
“Despite some sympathy for the nation’s illegal immigrants, many black professionals, academics and blue-collar workers feel increasingly uneasy as they watch Hispanics flex their political muscle while assuming the mantle of a seminal black struggle for justice,” Rachel Swarns wrote Thursday in the New York Times.
Brian DeBose, writing Thursday in the Washington Times, was more pointed: “Black leaders say Mexicans and other Hispanic nationals are getting preferential immigration treatment, as the U.S. systematically turns away people from countries with largely African-descended populations, such as Jamaica and the Dominican Republic,” his story began.
- Lawrence Aaron, the Record, Hackensack, N.J. No exceptions: Immigrants must adhere to the law
- Tammy L. Carter, Orlando Sentinel: Rise up! Protests and rallies are a sight for sore eyes
- Tim Chavez, Nashville Tennessean: U.S. always belongs to those who work hard
- Merlene Davis, Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader: Blacks’ bigotry toward Hispanics is intolerable
- Carlos Guerra, San Antonio Express-News: Here’s what you need to skip the wait to get an immigrant visa
- Brenda Payton, Oakland (Calif.) Tribune: Worker boycott marks a birth
- Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald: Bush dusts off the compassion on immigration
- Raul Reyes, USA Today: ‘They’re people just like my grandpa’
- Leslie Sanchez, Los Angeles Times: Boycott? More like bullying
- Bob Ray Sanders, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: You can love your country in any language
- George Wilson, Washington Informer: Immigrants Raising “Street Heat”
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Duke Case Prompts Memories of Her Own Rape
“Now we wait for the trial of two Duke University lacrosse team members charged with raping one of two ‘exotic dancers’ hired to perform at a team party in March. Since the allegations surfaced, I have watched and listened carefully, trying to decipher what has changed in the 35 years since I was raped,” begins a Thursday column in the Washington Informer by Patrice Gaines, the former Washington Post writer who chronicled her previous life in “Laughing in the Dark: From Colored Girl to Woman of Color – A Journey from Prison to Power.”
“I was not surprised to hear that this young woman had filed charges before against three men she said raped her as a teen,” Gaines continued. “It is not unusual at all for victims of rape, especially those who have been raped by men they know – fathers, friends, and uncles – to be raped again. Having been treated once as a sexual object, these young women often grow up to believe they are damaged or dirty goods. Or, an unconscious belief takes root: If men want to use my body, then I’m going to get back at them by using it myself to get things I need like a job, money, drugs or a college degree,” Gaines wrote.
Other commentary:
- Jenice Armstrong, Philadelphia Daily News: Nice gesture, Jesse, but . . .
- Gregory Clay, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service: Another sordid case of tentacles, reverends and talk shows
- Alton H. Maddox Jr., New York Amsterdam News: Raping Black women is an American tradition
- Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: Court of public opinion goes loco
- Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: Tough Questions in Durham
- Barry Saunders, Raleigh News & Observer: Panthers right on, finally
- Jason Whitlock, Kansas City Star: Justice is getting lost in Duke case
- DeWayne Wickham, Gannett News Service: Blame poor judgment in rape scandal
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Earl Graves Jr. in Bidding for the Source
“David Mays, the ousted founder of The Source, threw another legal wrench into the works surrounding the troubled former hip-hop bible. The auction of the firm’s stock and assets to a new owner is now on hold for a second time after Mays declared personal bankruptcy,” Keith J. Kelly reported today in the New York Post.
“Said one former Source executive, ‘It’s amazing, once again, David Mays has managed to prevent creditors from getting what is rightfully theirs.’
“The three potential suitors for The Source include Marc Ecko, the fashion designer who also owns Complex magazine, Earl ‘Butch’ Graves, Jr., and his investment fund Black Enterprise Greenwich Street Growth Partners, and a surprise bidder, Partnership Equity and Adam Blumenthal.”
In January, Earl G. Graves Sr., founder of Black Enterprise magazine, named “Butch” Graves the company’s new CEO and president.
