Cosby and Stone

NABJ’s First Leader Stands Behind Old Friend

Bill Cosby might be taking brickbats from some for his two-year-long crusade for more personal responsibility among some black parents, but he has been able to count on longtime friend Chuck Stone, the venerated former editor, columnist and founding president of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Columnist Barry Saunders reported today in the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer that hundreds turned out Saturday night at the University of North Carolina’s Memorial Hall “to honor retired UNC journalism prof Chuck Stone and to hear The Cos talk about marriage, his childhood and his brother Russell. The only pain anyone felt was in their sides from laughing so hard.”

Stone, 81, was editor of the New York Age, the Washington Afro-American and the Chicago Defender; spent 20 years as a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, where, fearing unfriendly police, 75 black or Hispanic murder suspects turned themselves in to him; and ended a 14-year run last year as the Walter Spearman professor at the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

“Cosby flew in Saturday from Atlanta, where earlier that day his message of personal and parental responsibility received standing ovations from the thousands attending the 20th anniversary of the 100 Black Men of America convention,” Saunders wrote.

“I didn’t get a chance to talk to Cosby after Saturday’s performance. He was out the door and possibly in the air back to Philadelphia before the applause and laughter subsided.

“Professor Stone, a 40-year Cosby friend, told me Cosby is undeterred by the criticism.

“Stone said he had called Cosby ‘just to talk’ back when the chorus against him was loudest. ‘I said “Hang in there, Bill; you’re absolutely right.” I heard him call out to his wife “Hey Camille, Chuck Stone agrees with me.” ‘

“Hey Camille, so do a lot of us,” Saunders concluded.

The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC-Chapel Hill started the Chuck Stone Citizen of the World Award Fund in February,” Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan reported June 9 in the Durham (N.C.) Herald-Sun, to finance study abroad or independent international learning opportunities related to journalism or mass communication. More than $16,000 has been raised, she wrote.

“The university contacted Bill Cosby — a longtime friend of Stone — about the fund and received an offer to perform,” her story continued.

Like Saunders, Vaughan wrote that Stone had called Cosby a few years ago after some Cosby remarks about young black men.

“I called him and said, ‘Keep up the good work.’ We need to be tough love,” she quoted Stone as saying. “Too often our young brothers think being a basketball star is making it.”

“Cosby’s reason for doing the benefit show was to the point,” Vaughan continued.

“‘My admiration for Chuck Stone’s integrity as a journalist,’ he told Stephanie Gunter, assistant director of development and alumni affairs for the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.”

Saunders wrote one of many recent columns on the roles of black men and black fathers, most timed for Father’s Day:

• Lawrence Aaron, the Record, Hackensack, N.J.: They come for a trim and a sense of community
• Betty Bayé, Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal: For dads, the most important thing is keeping those promises
• Cary Clack, San Antonio Express-News: Message of Hope resonates with boys
• Patrice Gaines, Washington Informer: Reconciling Death, Reconciling with Dad
• Tannette Johnson-Elie, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Developer builds on business savvy she inherited from father
• Marc Lamont Hill, Miami Herald: Help black men be better fathers
• Erin Aubry Kaplan, Los Angeles Times: My father, man of action
• John McCann, Durham (N.C.) Herald-Sun: Why you gotta pick on Bill Cosby?
• Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times: Father’s friendship teaches hope for race relations
  
• Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times: Absence of black fathers deserves real conversation
• David Person, Huntsville (Ala.) Times: Black dads must confront unique tests
• Dawn Turner Trice, Readers express kudos, concern for black men
  
• Adrienne Washington, Washington Times: Real men take care of their fatherhood duties

MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to post a comment on this subject and view those from others.

Cuban Calls Imprisoned Journalists U.S. Agents

“The head of Cuba’s parliament denied his country had imprisoned more than two dozen journalists because they spoke out against his government,” Laura Wides-Munoz wrote Wednesday for the Associated Press, reporting on a rare interview broadcast that day at the convention of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

“‘Those reports are fairly exaggerated,’ said Speaker Ricardo Alarcón, saying those who were imprisoned were not independent journalists but were agents of the United States.”

“Alarcón waved a photocopy of what he said were declassified U.S. Department of State documents showing the CIA had paid journalists to promote anti-Cuban government propaganda for nearly five decades.

“Outside the convention, more than a dozen women dressed in black protested Alarcón’s interview with [Columbia] University journalism professor and New York Times contributor Mirta Ojito, herself a Cuban exile.”

“When speaking of black representation in Cuba’s government, which has been labeled by some human-rights groups as an apartheid-style regime that gives Cuba’s black population no real positions of power, Alarcón said, ‘you have people that are blacker than my suit’ in positions of power in Cuban institutions,” Oscar Corral wrote Thursday in the Miami Herald.

He also “warned that those seeking to overthrow Cuba’s revolutionary gains will never be welcome there,” as Alfredo Corchado reported Thursday in the Dallas Morning News.

“The problem is those Cubans who want to come back to recover their land, their homes,” he said. “I assure you. I swear to you, they will never have a role in Cuba again.”

• AfroCuba Web: Cuba: Race & Identity in the News

 

• Ralph De La Cruz, South Florida Sun-Sentinel: Castro’s chief apologist a wolf in sheep’s clothing

 

• Editorial, Miami Herald: In Cuba, Truth and Those Who Tell Are Enemy of the State

 

• Macarena Hernandez, Raul Ramirez, Maria Elena Salinas, “Talk of the Nation,” National Public Radio: Reporters Take a Look at Working the Latino Beat

 

• Myriam Marquez, Ilan Stavans, Ruben Navarrette, “Talk of the Nation,” National Public Radio: Hispanic Groups Work to Bridge Competing Interests

 

• Darran Simon, Miami Herald: Foreign journalists face risks

 

• Coverage in Latino Reporter Digital, online student convention publication

MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to post a comment on this subject and view those from others.

N.Y. Times Program Targets Hispanic Students

“The New York Times announced today the expansion of its highly successful New York Times Student Journalism Institute to include a program for student members of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ). It will be held in January 2007,” the New York Times Co. said on Thursday.

“The Institute will be a highly competitive, 10-day, hands-on journalism residency program offered to aspiring student reporters, editors, photographers and designers who are members of the NAHJ. The inaugural program will be held Jan. 3-13, 2007, at Florida International University in Miami. In the second year the program will be held at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and thereafter it will alternate between the two campuses.

“This Institute is an outgrowth of a program The Times has offered since 2003 for students at historically black colleges and universities.” That program is held annually in May at Dillard University in New Orleans.

Plans for the institute were disclosed this winter by top newsroom managers who responded to an internal committee that warned in a confidential report that “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.”

Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. announced it again at a standing-room-only employee meeting on diversity on June 9. Spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said, “There was a good discussion of our diversity efforts and what we will do going forward,” but others said privately they were not as impressed with management promises.

MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to post a comment on this subject and view those from others.

Cable Needs Help With Diversity at Mid-Ranks

“A very important e-mail went out last week to all cable multiple system operators and cable programming networks. It came from Kathy Johnson, president of the National Association for Multi-ethnicity in Communications, who is updating her database about industry hiring practices,” Marianne Paskowski wrote Monday in Television Week.

“She’s asking some 50 companies to update their progress, or lack thereof, with regard to minority hiring. The feedback garnered from NAMIC’s earlier surveys doesn’t show stellar performance, but the needle is sort of moving in the right direction, Ms. Johnson said. ‘Cable has a great track record in hiring women, but not necessarily minorities,’ she said.

“NAMIC, which embraces diversity in the workplace, is in its fourth year of polling companies about their multiethnic hiring practices. Yes, companies are attaining higher scores for hiring people of color, but basically most of the progress is being made at the entry level.

“And according to Ms. Johnson, study results from last year reflected a slight tick upward — from 5 percent to 7 percent — in the number of minorities at cable companies at the senior VP level or above.

“The bad news is that middle-ranked managers, mostly people of color, are fleeing cable’s ranks. Minorities are very underrepresented at that level, she said, explaining that Hispanics are poorly represented in cable’s hierarchy largely because many of them are immigrants and don’t have college educations.

“NAMIC will release its latest survey findings at its annual national conference in September in New York.”

Two online surveys, a corporate survey and a NAMIC member employee survey, were completed via e-mail by 15 cable companies and 250 NAMIC members, respectively. Cable news networks were not separated out, Johnson told Journal-isms.

According to the group’s 2004 survey results, blacks comprise 14.7 percent of the cable industry workforce, Asians 4 percent, and Latinos 8 percent.

“Overall, minorities represent over 26 percent of the cable industry workforce. . . . Minorities also represent 17 percent of employees in management positions,” reads an executive summary of the 2004 report.

“Within the cable industry workforce, however, of those employees in management positions, minorities accounted for only 7 percent of top-management positions. They accounted for 13 percent of employees in middle-management positions, and 22.7 percent of employees in lower-management positions.”

MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to post a comment on this subject and view those from others.

Columnist Wants Action After Rosenbaum Report

“Colbert King, the Washington Post columnist who spent months digging up evidence that former New York Times reporter David Rosenbaum was improperly treated by D.C. emergency crews after he was assaulted in January, believes a city report released today supporting his findings is positive, but not enough,” Joe Strupp wrote today in Editor & Publisher.

“King, who wrote more than a half-dozen columns and at least two editorials about problems related to the poor treatment Rosenbaum received during the Jan. 6 incident, told E&P the report’s contention that police, paramedics and hospital staffers all erred means changes should be made and those in charge held accountable.

“‘Now the question is, ‘what will happen?’ What will the mayor do? Who will be held accountable for this?’ he said Friday, just hours after reading the report from the D.C. Inspector General’s Office. ‘There are specific things in the report that cry out for personnel changes.'”

• Valerie Strauss, Washington Post: Emergency Worker Fired Over Response to Attack [June 18 update]

MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to post a comment on this subject and view those from others.

N.Y. Times’ Chinese Researcher Pleads Not Guilty

“A Chinese researcher for The New York Times pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of leaking state secrets in a case that rights activists say underscores Beijing’s continued rejection of press freedom,” Gillian Wong reported today for the Associated Press.

“The closed-door trial for Zhao Yan, 44, who has been detained for 22 months, ended Friday after one day with no verdict, one of his lawyers, Mo Shaoping, said.”

The Times editorialized Thursday: “If Mr. Zhao is convicted, it means that despite China’s many advances in recent years, the government and the legal system are moving backward. It means that the government is tightening control over information. And it means that China is willing to abuse its citizens’ rights and the country’s legal code when it needs a scapegoat in the name of state security.”

• Committee to Protect Journalists: Ailing journalist sentenced to jail after reporting on corruption

MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to post a comment on this subject and view those from others.

Editorial Writer’s Side Dish: “Cultural Dining”

Nancy Ancrum, editorial writer at the Miami Herald, is going on the road with her business partner, Robbie Bell, in conjunction with the dining column they write in the Herald, “The Cultural Kitchen.“

“I and my business partner and fellow foodie, Robbie Bell, put on cultural dining,” Ancrum told Journal-isms. “We work with chefs to develop a meal that highlights a people, a culture, a technique, etc. The chef will give a little talk to our patrons in between courses about the cultural significance of what they are about to eat.

“It’s a lot of fun — people get to socialize, network and learn something all in one shot. We’re hitting the road to Memphis and the Mississippi Delta in September for a food and culture tour —including dinner at Morgan Freeman‘s restaurant and cocktails at his blues club.” The Memphis-born Freeman co-owns Madidi in Clarksdale, Miss.

MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to post a comment on this subject and view those from others.

Maynard Was “at Least 10 Years Ahead of the Curve”

“As I’ve watched the world of journalism unfold at the Newseum and the Knight Foundation, it has become clear that in a business where most people can’t see past lunch, Bob was a true journalism entrepreneur, who lived his life at least 10 years ahead of the curve,” Eric Newton said June 10 as the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University unveiled its Bob Maynard Suite.

Newton, founding managing editor of the Newseum, the Freedom Forum’s museum of news; managing editor of the Oakland Tribune under the ownership of Bob and Nancy Maynard; and director of journalism initiatives at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, said the Tribune practiced in the 1970s and 1980s what would later be called “civic journalism.”

“Then there was the matter of Tribune TV, the newsroom television program we were right in the middle of developing, and the on-line service we were considering and the magazines and books we did — all before the invention of the World Wide Web. . . .” Newton continued.

In remarks published on the Poynter Institute Web site, Newton said, “the Tribune’s newsroom diversity numbers blossomed in advance of those at other big American dailies, but more than that, Bob’s newsroom didn’t just look more interesting, it had a more interesting way of acting. We had a more open, inclusive way of doing journalism. . . .

“And finally, Bob and Nancy did something that wasn’t just ahead of their time, but transcended time. During the 20th century in America, more than 1,000 daily newspapers closed. The Oakland Tribune was not one of them. The Maynards saved it.”

MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to post a comment on this subject and view those from others.

Short Takes:

• “Television-like ratings are coming to print journalism as newspapers move to the Internet and harness technology that, for the first time, shows which stories attract readers and which do not,” Jube Shiver Jr., formerly of the Los Angeles Times, wrote in the June/July issue of the American Journalism Review. “The ability to track interest may point the way for newspapers to engage readers in the Digital Age. Or, some fear, it could fuel a paparazzi-like rush to tabloid journalism.”

 

• “With less than one-fourth of the 2006 World Cup tournament’s 64 matches completed, it appears viewers in the United States are choosing Univision’s Spanish-language broadcast over ABC/ESPN2’s English-language coverage, according to Nielsen ratings,” Moses Frenck wrote Thursday in Marketing y Medios.

 

• “Johnson Publishing Co. is launching a line of Ebony-branded products in an effort to give its readers a chance to emulate the lifestyle portrayed in its flagship magazine,” Lorene Yue reported Thursday in Crain’s Chicago Business. “The Chicago-based company said Thursday it had landed its first licensing deal to put Ebony Home bedding and bath products on store shelves by spring.”

 

• “The lodging investment fund controlled by Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson has closed on 63 hotels for $1 billion, part of a $1.7 billion transaction that involves the purchase of 100 hotels,” Neil Adler reported Thursday in Washington Business Journal.

 

• “Fox News Channel anchor Neil Cavuto told Lisa Guerrero on the air that her appearance in Playboy was ‘a bad move.’ He might have been wrong,” Richard Huff reported today in the New York Daily News. Guerrero, best known for her time on the sidelines at “Monday Night Football,” had 30 job inquiries even before the pictures appeared, Huff wrote. Guerrero starts next week as a correspondent for the syndicated “Inside Edition.”

 

• “CBS News and Dan Rather might be divorcing, but ’60 Minutes’ veteran Ed Bradley is reupping,” Lloyd Grove wrote today in the New York Daily News. “‘I just signed for three years,’ the 64-year-old Bradley told me yesterday, confirming the end of a reportedly sticky contract negotiation. ‘I’m a happy camper.'”

 

• “Crusading small-town newspaper editor Ken Woodley yesterday challenged journalists across the state to support a national apology for slavery,” Kathryn Orth reported Thursday in the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch. “Accepting the 2006 George Mason Award from the Society of Professional Journalists — Virginia Pro Chapter, the editor of The Farmville Herald asked newspaper editors and broadcasters to encourage politicians to support a congressional resolution of apology that would be delivered publicly by the president.”

 

• “Meredith Corp. said Tuesday it has joined with Hong Kong-based SEEC Media Group Limited to publish a Chinese-language version of Better Homes & Gardens magazine,” David Pitt of the Associated Press reported on Tuesday.

 

• “Diversity Times,” a new monthly newspaper in Utah, is out this month, “with features on a new biography about Reverend France Davis, a report of Mexican President Vicente Fox‘s visit to Utah and the latest efforts by the International Rescue Committee to help refugees resettle in Utah,” KCPW public radio in Salt Lake City reported on June 5. The publisher is Albert C. Jones, who says he has worked at dailies and weeklies in Pontiac, Mich.; Denver; Columbus, Ohio; Sheboygan, Mich.; Cleveland; Westerville, Ohio, and Las Vegas.

 

• Michelle Fitzhugh-Craig, reporter for the Tri-Valley Herald in Pleasanton, Calif, is a contributor to the upcoming “Chicken Soup for the African American Woman’s Soul.” Her story, “Friday Afternoon at the Beauty Shop,” was distributed to newspapers by King Features Syndicate for publication June 10. Fitzhugh-Craig also chairs the Council of Presidents of the National Association of Black Journalists.

 

• “VH1 has ordered a new reality series in which white rappers compete for a cash prize,” James Hibberd reported Thursday for Television Week. “Eight episodes of ‘The (White) Rapper Show’ have been ordered for an early 2007 debut. Rapper Michael ‘MC Serch’ Berrin (of the group 3rd Bass) will host.”

 

• Steve Echeverria Jr., reporter with the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune, who helped create the paper’s entertainment blog “24seven,” today launched “the buzz,” “a temporary web log focused on daily journalism and blogging. This unique blog is an outgrowth of a workshop, which takes place at this yearâ??s NABJ national conference in Indy.”

 

• “A Gambian newspaper journalist arrested two months ago for allegedly writing false news has been freed on bail, the paper’s manager said on Tuesday,” a Sapa-AFP report said on Wednesday. “Lamin Fatty of Gambia’s bi-weekly Independent was released on Monday.”
• “The Committee to Protect Journalists called today for a full investigation into the death of Arun Narayan Dekate, a reporter with the Marathi-language daily Tarun Bharat in Nagpur, central India,” the organization said Thursday. “Up to four unidentified men attacked Dekate on June 8 as he was riding with a friend on a motorcycle, according to The Hindu newspaper. He was pounded with rocks and died from his injuries.”