ABC: Vargas Doing “Terrific” Job

“World News Tonight” Drops to 3rd Place

ABC declared today that “World News Tonight” co-anchor Elizabeth Vargas is doing a “terrific” job, despite the “CBS Evening News” beating “World News Tonight” for the first time since the week ending Aug. 3, 2001.

Vargas, who was raised by a Puerto Rican father and Irish-American mother, has had bad luck or bad timing since being named co-anchor with Bob Woodruff in December as a successor to the late Peter Jennings.

The pairing debuted Jan. 3 to lukewarm reviews. Then, on Jan. 29, Woodruff and his cameraman suffered serious head wounds in a roadside bomb attack in Iraq, removing him from the show.

In February, Vargas and her husband, singer-songwriter Marc Cohn, announced they were expecting their second child in late summer, and that she would be taking maternity leave then. (“This was about as unplanned as it gets,” Vargas told Gail Shister of the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I was shocked. I had just signed on to a brand-new job that I was thrilled to have.”)

Published speculation began that Diane Sawyer and/or Charles Gibson, who co-host “Good Morning America” and have filled in on “World News Tonight,” would be named to anchor the show.

Meanwhile, CBS-TV began gaining in the nightly news ratings with interim anchor Bob Schieffer hosting the “CBS Evening News.”

“There’s no question that the joy in Mudville has returned,” CBS chief Leslie Moonves said after the latest Nielsen Media Research ratings were announced, “setting the stage for a horse race between the two newscasts while ‘NBC Nightly News’ enjoys a comfortable margin in first place,” Peter Johnson wrote today in USA Today.

At ABC, a spokeswoman told Journal-isms via e-mail today: “Elizabeth Vargas has done a terrific job as anchor of World News Tonight. She is expected to take maternity leave sometime in August and then return to anchor the broadcast.”

Still, the speculation continues.

New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams wrote Tuesday:

“So the question’s being asked, when already might David Westin, who is thought to be running ABC’s news division, going to run it? . . .

“Elizabeth Vargas, a temp in the Peter Jennings seat, is still there pending Westin’s decision but taking maternity leave in two months.

“Not exactly a huge surprise. He’s had almost nine months to think about it. This baby isn’t waiting for David’s psychic to tell him what to do.”

Jacques Steinberg, writing today in the New York Times, reported:

“Under one scenario being given serious consideration within the executive suite of ABC News, Charles Gibson, the longtime anchor of ‘Good Morning America,’ would leave that program permanently to become a full-time co-anchor of ‘World News Tonight,’ said one person who has been directly apprised of the plan but was not authorized to disclose it. Ms. Vargas, under that proposal, would rejoin Mr. Gibson after her leave, and Mr. Woodruff, whose recovery is slow but progressing, would begin to contribute to the program as his health improves, eventually, perhaps, as a third co-anchor.”

• John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable: Westin Punctuates Prime Time Return

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“All Work Stopped” After Reporter Collapsed

“Virtually all work stopped” in the newsroom of the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch as emergency medical technicians worked in vain to save the life of reporter Julie R. Bailey, who collapsed at her desk Monday as she was working on a story, Jim Weiker, the Dispatch’s assistant managing editor for features, told Journal-isms today.

Bailey, a reporter for the Life section, was 45. She was a co-founder and former president of the Columbus Association of Black Journalists and is listed as a “media legend” on the group’s Web site, the Dispatch noted in its news story.

“It was oddly – it was very silent when they were working on her,” Weiker said. The incident happened about 5:30 p.m. “She sank back in her chair and started a very labored breathing, very heavy moaning. She appeared to be slipping in and out of breath. At that time the newsroom was pretty busy. We called 911 and our own security people came in.” The emergency medical technicians were in the room for 45 to 50 minutes, he said, then Bailey was taken to the Grant Medical Center, where apparently she was pronounced dead.

While Weiker said he did not know the cause of death, he said “she was heavy and, just from a casual observation, did not appear to be in the best of health.”

On Tuesday, the noon service at Trinity Episcopal Church, next door to the Dispatch office downtown, was devoted to Bailey. About 100 of the 200 attending were from the Dispatch for a service conducted by the Revs. Richard A. Burnett, who gave the homily, and Abeoseh M. Flemister.

“Julie had a very engaging personality that lit up a room,” Dispatch editor Ben Marrison said in the Dispatch story. “She was someone people loved being around, especially people she interviewed for stories. She always had an upbeat sense about her, a real can-do spirit that was contagious.”

“Julie was a great friend and colleague and assisted me during my long tenure as chapter president,” Reggie Anglen told Journal-isms, speaking of the Columbus Association of Black Journalists.

A spokeswoman for the J. Martin Smith funeral home in Columbus said no services had been arranged, no death certificate drawn or cause of death listed.

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Copy Editor Dacia D. Dunson, 33, Dies of Cancer

“Dacia D. Dunson, a copy editor for The Sun who wrote of fighting her cancer over the past two years, died of the disease Friday at her Federal Hill home. She was 33,” Jacques Kelly reported Tuesday in the Baltimore Sun.

“Born and raised in Anniston, Ala., she earned a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from Auburn University in 1996. She became a speech teacher in Dallas public schools before joining the editing staff of Newsday in Long Island, N.Y., in 2000. She moved to Baltimore a year later when she joined the news copy desk of The Sun.” She was in the 2000-2001 copy editing class of Tribune Co.’s Minority Editorial Training Program, known as METPRO.

“‘Everyone who knew Dacia loved her,’ said Jennifer Badie, features copy desk chief at The Sun. ‘She had friends throughout the newsroom – reporters, photographers, editors all gravitated to her. She was a thoughtful, caring friend who was always easy to talk to and always smiling.

“About a week after she turned 31, and a month before she was to be married to Sun colleague Michael Workman, she was diagnosed with colon cancer that had spread to the liver.

“‘I had no idea that people my age got that disease. And could this really be happening now?’ she wrote in an account of her illness, ‘Living her life, just waiting for her luck to turn,’ published in February in The Sun.

“Ms. Dunson went on to be married at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2004.”

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Hispanic Publishers Back “Earned Legalization”

Representatives of 30 Hispanic newspapers, with a combined circulation of 1,124,500, today signed a proclamation supporting “an immigration reform bill leading to earned legalization for the 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the country who are already working and paying taxes,” the National Association of Hispanic Publishers said today.

The group issued its “Principles of Immigration Reform” and members signed the document on the terrace of the U.S. Capitol, it said.

The resolution “also calls for adopting a nondiscriminatory and effective program for strengthening our nation’s borders. Reform should be based on humanitarian principles and provisions for a realistic temporary worker program that will relieve pressure on our borders,” the group said in a statement.

In Editor & Publisher today, Mark Fitzgerald noted that the proclamation “reads remarkably similar to the proposals offered by President George W. Bush in his nationally televised address Monday night.

“NAHP spokesman Oscar Reyes said the timing of the proclamation is just coincidental, since it was written before Bush floated his suggested changes. ‘But, yeah, I think in a way we are supporting Bush because we think this is the way to solve this situation,’ Reyes added in a telephone interview Tuesday,” Fitzgerald wrote.

• Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe: Anti-immigrant flag follies
• Mae M. Ngai, Los Angeles Times: How grandma got legal
• Richard Ruelas, Arizona Republic: Silence could be golden for immigrants
• DeWayne Wickham, USA Today: Life imitates art on immigration

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Waco Officials Not Ready for Lynching Apology

Although the Waco (Texas) Tribune-Herald apologized Sunday for the role that journalists played in the 1916 lynching of 17-year-old Jesse Washington, McLennan County commissioners voted 4-1 against such a resolution, J.B. Smith and Tommy Witherspoon reported in that newspaper today.

But the commissioners said they remained open to considering a reworded resolution. “Soon afterward, the Waco City Council agreed to craft its own anti-lynching resolution at a June retreat with hopes of cooperating with county commissioners,” the story said.

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“Time-Out for Diversity” Idea Losing Steam

The annual “Time-Out for Diversity and Accuracy,” when news organizations were to highlight their interest in diversity, started Sunday and lasts through June 17 – but the idea appears to be losing steam. This year it is sponsored by the Associated Press Managing Editors. Its cosponsor, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, pulled out.

Calvin Stovall, executive editor of the Binghamton (N.Y.) Press and Sun-Bulletin, and chair of the Diversity Committee of APME, conceded that only a dozen papers participated last year after “several dozen” had done so in previous years. The program started in 1999.

But, Stovall told Journal-isms today, “This is a time when editors at papers not only need to participate, but let people in the APME know what they’re doing and that they have new ideas that they need to be looking at. It is also important that word gets out that we as an industry are genuinely interested” in diversity.

ASNE reported last month that “the percentage of minorities working in newsrooms crept up from 13.42 to 13.87 percent. Though newspapers are increasing their hiring and retention of minority journalists, newsroom diversity is falling behind the nation’s rapidly changing demographics.”

This year’s Time-Out theme is immigration. APME is encouraging news organizations to do “further in-depth reporting on immigrant issues in their communities and to hold in-house discussions with immigrants and newsroom staffers,” Stovall said in an announcement. Gannett Co., the nation’s largest newspaper group, encouraged its newspapers to participate.

Stovall said participation might have dropped because “the demands of things going on in newsrooms have just changed considerably” in the past couple of years.

Scott Bosley, executive director of ASNE, said his organization still supports the concept and would help the managing editors group, in the words Stovall used in his announcement, “find ways to rejuvenate interest in Time-Out or to launch a totally new program.”

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Hollywood TV Writers of Color Outnumbered 3-1

“Ethnic minorities, which comprise 30 percent of the population, are outnumbered 3-1” among writers for television, according to preliminary findings released Monday by the Writers Guild of America, Greg Hernandez wrote Tuesday in the Los Angeles Daily News.

His story appeared as the new CW network, successor to the soon-to-be-defunct UPN and WB networks, was assembling its fall schedule. African American-oriented sitcoms were expected to take a hit. However, the UPN comedies “Girlfriends,” “All of Us” and “Everybody Hates Chris” apparently made the cut, along with Tyra Banks’ “America’s Next Top Model,” Nellie Andreeva reported today in the Hollywood Reporter. A “Girlfriends” spinoff, “The Game,” apparently also got the OK.

“During the current season, there were 206 minority writers on the staffs of television shows, up slightly from the prior season. But since the overall number of TV writers grew between the two seasons by 17.3 percent, the minority share actually decreased from 13 percent in 2004-05 to 12 percent in 2005-06,” Hernandez wrote.

“‘These statistics should remind everyone in a position to affect decisions during this hiring season of the underemployment of minority and female writers in series television,” said WGA West board member Melissa Rosenberg, who chairs the guild’s Diversity Strategy Committee. ‘That outcome can be prevented and, instead, progress can be made if intentional steps are taken to reach beyond familiarity, tapping diverse writers at all levels, promoting those already working, and seeking out new writers in these underrepresented groups’,” the story continued.

• Chuck Barney, Contra Costa (Calif.) Times: Unlikely pairing: WB, UPN tie knot
• Gary Levin, USA Today: Here comes the new-in-name-only CW

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Print Reporters Decline to Back CNN’s Joe Johns

“An association of print journalists marshaled their forces yesterday against their broadcast-media brethren’s efforts to gain more access to members of Congress through the use of hand-held cameras,” Jackie Kucinich and Jonathan Allen wrote Tuesday in the Capitol Hill newspaper the Hill.

However, the executive committee of the Senate Radio/TV Gallery, the office charged with overseeing broadcast reporters, took a contrary view, backing CNN’s Joe Johns, according to the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. Johns’ use of a hand-held camera drew a protest from Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.

The gallery’s executive committee met and found that the incident “was not an ambush interview.” Furthermore, the committee said, “Joe Johns did not act unethically or deceptively,” and “the rules in place governing camera coverage on Capitol Hill are outdated, unclear and open to differing interpretations,” Roll Call reported.

Print reporters differed. The Standing Committee of Correspondents of the daily-writing press gallery said in a letter to the Senate sergeant at arms, “We do not endorse the use of hand-held video cameras on the second floor. We also do not want our interviews with senators in the hallway . . . to be recorded,” according to the Hill.

A Radio TV Correspondents Association meeting, “which lasted a little less than an hour, became heated at times when the prospect of revoking Johns’s press credentials was raised,” the Hill story continued.

Fox News producer Jim Mills argued, “I feel like this meeting [was the result of] years and years of neglect for not pushing back on the First Amendment. It is an abomination that we are having a meeting on this to challenge Joe Johns’s right to do his job in that hallway,” the story said.

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Rice Lists Her Top Musical Works for Editor Bono

“Rock star Bono was in the editor’s chair at the Independent on Tuesday and he used the occasion to promote his ‘Red’ campaign fighting Aids in Africa,” the BBC reported.

“The front page boldly declares ‘No news today’ but below says ‘Just 6,500 Africans died today as a result of a preventable, treatable disease’.

Also in the edition, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was asked to name her “Ten Best” musical works. She listed pieces by Brahms, Cream, Kool and the Gang, Aretha Franklin, Elton John, Mussorgsky, Beethoven and Bono’s group, U2.

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Short Takes

• Jimmy Hart, city editor of the Jackson (Tenn.) Sun, has been named executive editor of the Daily News Journal at Murfreesboro, Tenn., the Sun announced on Friday. “Hart joined the Sun in 1995 as a Communities clerk. He was named region reporter in 1996. He was named assistant city editor in 1999 and city editor in 2001. Hart was responsible for directing award-winning coverage of the 2003 tornadoes that damaged downtown Jackson,” Gannett announced.
• Pamela Strother, executive director of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, announced Tuesday she will not seek to renew her contract in October and is “ready to move forward in my career path and take on new challenges and opportunities.” Eric Hegedus, president of the association, said, “Over the past ten years, Pamela has served with distinction – first as our Director of Development, and for the past six years as Executive Director. With more than 1,300 members nationwide, a staff that’s now grown to seven employees, and our first-ever $1 million budget this year, it’s clear that our organization is stronger and better for her efforts.”
• “I’m not afraid of any Mr. Dyson,” Bill Cosby said at the University of the District of Columbia Tuesday night, referring to Cosby critic Michael Eric Dyson. “Mr. Dyson is not a truthful man.” Cosby has taken his “Call Out” tour across the country. His D.C. appearance was sponsored by the Washington Association of Black Journalists, Paul Schwartzman wrote today in the Washington Post.
• Among the books written by Richard (Rick) Stengel, named managing editor of Time magazine today, are 1990’s “January Sun: One Day, Three Lives, A South African Town” and a 1993 collaboration with Nelson Mandela, the bestselling autobiography “Long Walk to Freedom.” Stengel later served as co-producer of the 1996 Oscar-nominated documentary “Mandela,” a news release noted.
• Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, San Francisco Chronicle reporters who wrote a book about Barry Bonds’ alleged steroid use, have been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury regarding court documents they used in their articles. “Media advocates said The Chronicle case arises in one of the worst possible circumstances for journalists: a federal grand jury investigation, proceedings whose secrecy is jealously guarded by the courts,” Bob Egelko wrote May 10 in the Chronicle.
• “A freelance writer was sentenced to 12 years in prison yesterday, receiving an unusually harsh penalty amid one of China’s most severe media crackdowns since the 1980s,” Joe McDonald reported today for the Associated Press. “The sentencing of Yang Tianshui on subversion charges was one of a flurry of court actions yesterday against Chinese reporters.”
• “Kenyan Security Minister John Michuki has warned he may order new raids against the media just days after a deadly attack on a radio station. Mr Michuki warned that the government would not hesitate to use force against any news group that demeans the state,” the BBC reported Tuesday.
• “Fifty-two students of color have been named Chips Quinn Scholars for Summer 2006 by the Freedom Forum and participating newspapers,” the Freedom Forum announced Friday. “Scholars will work in paid internships across the country at 41 daily newspapers, two Associated Press bureaus and one news service beginning in late May.”
• Reporter Marcela Rojas’ multimedia package in the Journal News of Westchester County, N.Y., described the quinceañera – traditional Hispanic 15th birthday coming-of-age celebration – of local student Guadalupe Mejia, and earned a spot on the Gannett Co.’s diversity page.
• The Native American Journalists Association has approved its first official NAJA student chapter at the University of Montana, NAJA announced last week.
• The Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists is honoring nine journalists during its second annual awards program on June 11: broadcaster Malcolm Poindexter; Francine Cheeks, formerly of WCAU-TV; Greg Morrison of the Black Family Channel; Reggie Bryant of WURD-AM; Mal Johnson, former WKBS-TV reporter; Joe Davidson of the Washington Post; Denise James of WPVI-TV; Kia Gregory of the Philadelphia Weekly and community activist Sonny Driver of Scoop USA, the organization announced.