Black Paper Goes to War Zone

Afro-American Emulates World War II Precedent

The Afro-American Newspapers, like most of the black press largely missing in action in covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is preparing to send a reporter to Baghdad after producing a series by a staff writer deployed to Afghanistan for two weeks.

John “Jake” Oliver, publisher of the papers, which have Washington and Baltimore editions, told Journal-isms it was the first time the papers had sent reporters overseas to cover a war in at least 30 years. Michael D. Davis was a Vietnam War correspondent for the Baltimore paper.

Part of “The Afro in Afghanistan,” by James Wright, who went to the country from July 8 to 20 and writes for the Washington edition, is still available on the Afro’s Web site.

Leonard Sparks, who writes for the Baltimore edition, has begun writing about families of service members in Iraq in preparation for his trip to Baghdad, which Oliver said was expected before mid-September. He said Sparks would be in Iraq from 10 days to two weeks.

Sparks interviewed wives of members of the U.S. Army Reserves 298th Transportation Company, who are training for deployment to Iraq.

Oliver said the idea for the war coverage came after he attended the Worldwide Public Affairs Symposium for the Army on March 7 in McLean, Va., outside Washington. It was conducted by Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, whose briefings in Doha, Qatar, in the early days of the war in Iraq caught public attention in 2003.

As president then of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the trade organization of publishers of African American newspapers, Oliver had sent George E. Curry, editor of the NNPA News Service, to Qatar, where Curry wrote about Brooks, among other topics.

Today, Brooks is chief of the Army’s Office of Public Affairs, and at the March briefing for public information officers and journalists, Oliver said he noted he was the only African American media person in the room.

He said he recalled the writings of Afro correspondents during World War II, compiled in a book, “This Is Our War.”

“Compared to what we were able to do in that particular war, all we get now are death notices of people who were unfortunate” enough to be in the war zone, Oliver recalled thinking. “But we don’t know anything about the humanities” of the readers’ sons and daughters. “I said, ‘this has got to stop.'”

“Our concern is what did they do when they weren’t on patrol. That’s what moms and dads really want to see.”

That was what Wright aimed for in Afghanistan. In the series’ final piece, Wright quoted Stella Lejeune, a civilian employee of the Engineering Corps, saying “that Black women do their own hair and do not bother to deal with the beauticians in Kabul. The beauticians tend to Afghan women, ‘But they do White women’s hair,’ Lejeune said.

“. . . Black men, however, have a set ritual. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and depending on assignments, Saturdays or Sundays, Black men get together on the basketball court at the Qalaa House complex to play basketball. The players are from Camp Eggers from across the street. There are usually about 16 Black men,” wrote Wright, who Oliver said was given a dust-resistant digital camera for the assignment.

While the black press is known for its low salaries and lack of resources, Oliver said “it’s not that expensive” to deploy reporters. “You can market the stories in different ways and you can have sponsors,” such as packaging the pieces in a special section.

“At some point” the stories will be available for use by partners in the black-press organization’s news service, he said.

Readers of the Afro, whose circulation is roughly 35,000 in each city, “were generally surprised,” Oliver said. “We look forward to being able to post stories from Baghdad on a daily basis” on the Afro’s Web site, he added.

• Committee to Protect Journalists: Two Iraqi journalists found murdered
• Sherry Ricchiardi, AJR: The Forgotten War
• Paul von Zielbauer, New York Times: Four Arrested in U.S. Journalistâ??s Kidnapping

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NBC News Pledges End to All-White Intern Classes

Under the headline “No Good Deed,” NBC News anchor Brian Williams announced on his blog today that the internship program for “NBC Nightly News” will take racial diversity into account in selecting the interns.

As reported in this space on Monday, a photo of the summer class for 2006 showed no interns of color.

“Because so much was said about this particular group of young people, I asked them all to write essays about their experience,” Williams wrote.

“As with past years, we all took a photo together. Unlike past years, this year’s photo was posted in this blog. It drew a few comments about the lack of ‘diversity’ in the group… something we all immediately noticed for the first time when they gathered together as a group in our conference room.

“All I can say is: our News managers select our unpaid summer interns based on the strength of their resumes. They are interviewed by telephone prior to their selection. In previous years, our interns have better reflected American society. I believe that we are better served when those we work with… reflect those we serve. I have always said that diversity makes us better, and it takes work.

“Therefore, I have spoken to Steve Capus, the President of NBC News, and going forward, racial diversity will now also be a factor in our unpaid summer internship program, because our newsrooms have to better reflect our society.”

The posting did not explain how diversity would be factored into the process.

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McKinney Staffer Scuffles With Photographers

“Outgoing Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney returned to her campaign headquarters to address her supporters after midnight Tuesday, soon after some of her staffers scuffled with news photographers, Donna Lowry reported on Atlanta’s WXIA-TV.

“During her concession speech, McKinney said her mother was hurt and one of her staffers required stitches after members of the media hurt them during the night. Police were eventually called to the scene by 11Alive News.

“As McKinney walked outside her campaign headquarters after losing her reelection bid to Hank Johnson, a boom microphone carried by a photographer struck members of McKinney’s entourage. In the confusion, McKinney staffers struck an 11Alive photographer and knocked his camera equipment to the ground.

“A short time later, the 11Alive news desk called 9-1-1 after some people followed an 11Alive staff member into the station’s satellite truck outside the McKinney headquarters.

“Earlier Tuesday, a McKinney staffer scuffled with another 11Alive photojournalist, who videotaped as McKinney supporters waved some signs while the Congresswoman remained in her vehicle.”

McKinney’s bodyguard had shoved another reporter, Scott MacFarlane of Atlanta’s WSB-TV, in Washington on April 6, that station reported then.

Meanwhile, McKinney offered swipes at the news media in her concession speech. “Members of the press, as well as our political leaders, don’t give us explanations that explain, or conclusions that conclude,” McKinney said, the Associated Press reported. “There comes a time when people of conscience are compelled to dissent.”

McKinney is still demanding a retraction of statements made in a July 30 column, by Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, her lawyer, J.M. Raffauf, told Journal-isms.

“The outcome of the election has no effect,” Raffauf said.

McKinney is disputing Tucker’s recap of McKinney’s encounter this year with a U.S. Capitol police officer, and challenges Tucker’s assertion that Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., is more effective.

Under Georgia law, Raffauf said, if the paper issues no retraction within seven days, the complainant may be entitled to punitive damages if the complaint is upheld.

• Carlos Campos, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: McKinney alleges voting irregularities

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In Conn., Maxine Waters Congratulates Bloggers

“After midnight, after Ned Lamont had left the Four Points Sheraton ballroom’s confetti-strewn floor, one of the national politicians who helped him pull off his remarkable upset against Joe Lieberman in Tuesday’s Democratic senatorial primary walked down the hall to pay homage to the raucous crew she believes has rewritten the rules of American campaigns: the bloggers,” Paul Bass wrote in the New Haven (Conn.) Independent.

“The politician was charismatic California Congresswoman Maxine Waters. She visited Connecticut three times in recent weeks to shepherd Ned Lamont through urban black neighborhoods to build support for his ultimately successful challenge to three-term Sen. Lieberman.

“. . . Upon Waters’ approach, the blog room erupted in cheers. Then a hush spread among the bloggers, excepting for the clicks of digital cameras.

“Do you know what you have done?’ Waters asked them. ‘You have upset the status quo, for real. You have given me faith that change is possible.’

“. . . She said that in her visits to Connecticut she ‘really wanted Ned to understand there was a lot of potential support out there in the African-American community. Many in the African-American community do not support the [Iraq] war. We got attention from the bloggers. We didn’t get attention from the mainstream media.'”

Reggie Hales, who edits and publishes the Hartford Inquiring News, a 16-page weekly that succeeded the defunct Hartford Inquirer, told Journal-isms that he made no endorsement in the race “because they haven’t placed one ad with me. If they don’t, I have cut back on my coverage of those guys and increased on positive news of people of color,” he said. He called his paper the largest African American newspaper in the state.

Stan Simpson, columnist for the Hartford Courant, and Sonji Jacobs, reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, analyzed the election results on the Web site blackpolicy.org.

Simpson told Journal-isms tonight “it would be a mistake to say black voters surged for Ned,” despite the presence of Waters and other black politicians, and that the primary also attracted 30,000 unanticipated voters. African Americans supported both Lieberman and Lamont, he said.

Other political news and commentary:

• Editor & Publisher: Lamont Upsets Lieberman – and Editorial Pages
• Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News: Seismic shift for Dems
• Dwight Lewis, Nashville Tennessean: State will make history either way in Senate race
• Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe: Candidates squawk, but money talks
• Sheryl McCarthy, Newsday: Rangel’s threat is justified
• Ruben Navarrette, San Diego Union-Tribune (July 19): Toe the party line, or else

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N.Y. News’ Albor Ruiz, Photog Gain Entry to Cuba

While more than 150 foreign journalists have been turned away from Cuba since Fidel Castro transferred power to his brother, Raul Castro, New York Daily News columnist Albor Ruiz and his photographer, Corey Sipkin, were admitted into the country and filed a column that ran on Sunday.

“Believe me, there is nothing going on,” Ruiz told Journal-isms today. “People are going about their lives. They are worried about Castro’s health, of course, but it is their normal stuff. There is no rush to embrace U.S.-style democracy.” When asked about that prospect, “Everybody said, ‘I hope it’s not going to be like Iraq’.”

Ruiz, 65, is a Cuban-American who came to the United States in 1961. He has a Cuban passport, “as all Cubans do.” On Aug. 2, Cuban immigration authorities held him for two hours at the airport in Havana, but they allowed him to enter “because I have family in Cuba. I would not be granted a permit to work as a journalist,” he said.

Nevertheless, Ruiz said he went to work anyway and interviewed a dissident. “I really don’t think they were watching what I was doing,” he said of the authorities.

Sipkin, the photographer, entered as a tourist. He is married to a Cuban and told authorities he came to see his family, Ruiz said.

The two left on Friday after asking the News not to publish their work until they had departed.

• Ana Menendez, Miami Herald: Cuba is more than a symbol; it’s a country
• Nancy San Martin, Miami Herald: TV Martí boosts broadcasts to Cuba
• Tonyaa Weathersbee, BlackAmericaWeb.com: If Bush is Serious About Helping Cuba, He’d Lift the Embargo and Travel Ban

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Unity Picks Makwakwa as Executive Director

Onica Makwakwa

Onica Makwakwa, director of development of the YWCA USA, has been named executive director of Unity: Journalists of Color, Inc., the coalition of the associations of black, Hispanic, Asian American and Native American journalists, the organization announced today.

“Makwakwa, who has more than ten years of professional experience in the non-profit sector and a strong background in fundraising and event management, will lead UNITY into their next convention July 23-27, 2008, in Chicago that is expected to draw some 10,000 journalists,” the announcement said. She assumes the position Sept. 5.

“Makwakwa succeeds Anna Lopez, who served from July 2003 until April 1. She had been executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

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“Majority Minority” Milestone Brings Out Bigots

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel ran its Aug. 4 story, “Minorities become a majority in Broward: Caribbean, Latin American population altering demographics,” by Alva James-Johnson and Robin Benedick, just days after the paper’s Web site set up a bulletin board for reader comments.

So far, the story has drawn 137 postings.

“ONCE BEING A MAJORITY, WHERE DO I GO NOW TO SIGN UP FOR ALL OF THE FREE PROGRAMS, STAMPS, FOOD, FREE MEDICAL, FREE ANYTHING THAT ARE NOW ENTITLED TO ME AS A MINORITY,” was the first one.

“All Broward County needs to do is look to the example of either Miami-Dade or Los Angeles counties both of which are now part of the Third World,” wrote another.

Kevin Courtney, a spokesman for the Sun-Sentinel Co., said of the bulletin board today, “We look at it as the modern-day marketplace of ideas,” noting that it started only the previous Tuesday. “We’re trying to find the best way to “make it work for us. I would say it’s a lively debate,” though he said some postings have had to be deleted as offensive.

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Retired Korean-American Editor Hopes to Inspire

“The career of K.W. Lee, a former Gazette reporter, offers a study in what the aging can do with a proverbial eye on business as well as what’s going on in one’s community,” Edward Peeks wrote Tuesday in the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette.

“Lee, 76, now a California resident, was honored in May, not on his birthday or for his age. Singer/songwriter Phyllis Chang and scores of other celebrities and friends saluted him at the first annual banquet of the K.W. Lee Center for Leadership in Los Angeles.

“A mission of the center, organized by Lee and colleagues, includes ‘inspiring a new generation of Asian-American journalists seeking social justice and fair representation for their communities.’

“He covered the civil rights movement for the Gazette in the 1960s and was known as K.W. (short for Kyung Won) by fellow reporters, readers and residents of Central Appalachia.

“A decade later, as a reporter for the Sacramento Union, K.W. wrote a series of articles that helped lead to the acquittal of a Korean immigrant named Ohol Soo Lee (no relation), who had been condemned to die for a Chinatown gang murder in San Francisco.

“In 1992, he was English editor of the Korean Times in Los Angeles when a riot erupted between Korean-Americans and African-Americans.”

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Short Takes

• In Detroit, as the search for Raven Jeffries, a 7-year-old girl who disappeared in her flowered flip-flops, stretched into its fifth day, one of Raven’s older brothers rushed WXYZ-TV reporter Kimberly Craig during an on-scene report after the remains of a severely burned child were found Monday in Romulus, Mich. David Hosler, 19, pleaded with Craig not to link the burned body to his little sister. “‘That means you people do not have faith,’ he shouted,” Joe Swickard and Jack Kresnak reported today in the Detroit Free Press.
• “Second-quarter profit at Radio One Inc.,” the nation’s largest black-owned radio network, “was down 59 percent, the . . . media company reported yesterday,” Frank Ahrens wrote Tuesday in the Washington Post. CEO Alfred Liggins “alluded to freezing wages and hiring as part of possible cost controls.”
• “New Federal Communications Commissioner Robert M. McDowell signaled that the agency may roll out suggested changes to media ownership piece by piece, potentially avoiding snags that let an appeals court strike down a similar proposal in 2003,” Ira Teinowitz reported Tuesday in TV Week.
• “As part of its mission to encourage in-depth coverage of South Asia and the South Asian Diaspora,” the South Asian Journalists Association is calling for submissions for its 2nd Annual SAJA Reporting Fellowships, the organization announced today. “Open to freelancers and staff journalists in any medium, the fellowships . . . cover a portion of reporting expenses. A total of up to $10,000 may be given out annually, divided among projects or a single project at SAJA’s discretion.”
• “Kudos to Dan Ponce, rookie reporter at WLS-Channel 7, for demonstrating grace under fire,” Robert Feder wrote Tuesday in the Chicago Sun-Times. “On the ABC-owned station’s 10 p.m. newscast Saturday, Ponce was delivering a live report from Lollapalooza in Grant Park when a young woman in the crowd ran up and licked the side of his face. Without missing a beat, Ponce laughed and said: ‘I remember my first beer, too.'”
• Alan Hughes, features editor at Black Enterprise magazine, has been named managing editor. He succeeds Kenneth Meeks, who is now supervising editor/television.
• “After 12 years of a new South Africa, in South African newsrooms it’s still a question of ‘same old’. In a male-dominated industry, women are still on the receiving end of discrimination,” Hila Bouzaglou and Riaan Wolmarans reported Tuesday in the Mail and Guardian of Johannesburg. “This is the conclusion of a report conducted by the South African National Editors’ Forum.”
• “Nearly two years after the death of former San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb, uncertainties remain over exactly what drove him to suicide, who was to blame for the problems with his controversial CIA/crack series, how much of the reporting was accurate, and how the harsh reactions to the series affected its impact,” Joe Strupp wrote Tuesday in Editor & Publisher. The upcoming “Kill the Messenger” by investigative reporter Nick Schou, “seeks to clear up some of the uncertainties, while defending much of Webb’s reporting, criticizing the major newspapers that attacked him, and pointing out several new facts related to his infamous series and tragic death.”
• “Two journalists with Niger’s Le Republicain newspaper have been formally charged for spreading false news and defaming the state of Niger after alleging the government wanted to court Iran, one of them said on Tuesday,” Sapa-AFP reported Tuesday.
• “Reporters Without Borders has vehemently condemned the treatment of [the] editor-in chief of the private weekly ‘Le Républicain’, Mamane Abou, and one of the paper’s journalists, Oumarou Keita, who were arrested and detained after being charged with ‘publishing false information’ and ‘defamation’, of the Nigerian government, in the newspaper,” the organization reported on Tuesday.
• Ghana plans to host an African International Media summit from Sept. 18 to Sept. 20 “to discuss ways of re-branding Africa for a brighter future and enhanced development,” Public Agenda in Accra, Ghana, reported Monday.