NPR Praises Ed Gordon’s Substitute

Network Cites Efforts to Help Host “Improve”

National Public Radio is reacting to host Ed Gordon’s criticism of its handling of his “News and Notes” show by praising his correspondent/substitute host, Farai Chideya, and saying it has tried to help Gordon “improve his performance.”

Farai Chideya

Gordon questioned NPR’s ability to connect with African Americans last week after news reports noted that “News and Notes With Ed Gordon” had lost 17 percent of its original audience. Gordon succeeded Tavis Smiley in fronting a black-oriented show for the network after Smiley left the program raising similar questions. Gordon’s show was rushed into service in January 2005.

“NPR has been concerned with stations’ and listeners’ response to News & Notes and, to reverse that, we have been consistently working with the show to make changes within it over the past 18 months,” spokeswoman Andi Sporkin told Journal-isms via e-mail. “These have included ongoing dialogues with Ed and efforts to help him improve his performance. Our work to support the show, part of NPR’s broader commitment to programming diversity, continue[s].”

Gordon had told Journal-isms last week, “There are a lot of smoke-and-mirror things that are being said. You know it’s never just about talent. Let’s say I’m a fourth” of the problem. “Where are the other three-fourths? I’ve never heard anybody” step up and take that responsibility, Gordon said. “I want people to be honest about what’s going on.”

Sporkin replied: “News & Notes has a strong, professional production staff that is predominantly African-American and represents some of the most talented people – up-and-coming or established – in the broadcasting industry. They are doing a terrific job. Farai Chideya is a powerful, insightful voice in contemporary broadcast journalism whose role with News & Notes extends beyond hosting and reaches into its heart. Both NPR and the African American Public Radio Consortium look forward to a long relationship with her.”

The African American Public Radio Consortium, public radio stations serving predominantly African American audiences, produced both Smiley’s program and “News and Notes.” It has another, with former ABC News correspondent Michel Martin hosting, in the pipeline.

Chideya told Journal-isms Sunday night: “I’m flattered by NPR’s comments. I really want this show to move forward. I believe in it. I’m here in New Orleans right now, doing the work that we all want to see, and I’m happy to work with everyone on the staff.”

Two NPR staff members told Journal-isms privately that they felt Gordon had not accepted enough blame for the show’s problems. “If I were to allocate it, I would say, 20 percent staff, and 40 percent each to Ed and management,” said one, who did not want to be identified because that “would make it a personal issue as opposed to what the issues are.”

As an example of Gordon’s alleged loss of interest in the show, this person pointed to the fact that Gordon does his part of the show from home. Gordon told Journal-isms Sunday night that “This, again, is that smoke and mirrors.” Only three staffers are in New York, and he would have to communicate with the primarily West Coast staff by telephone anyway, Gordon said. Having the ability to broadcast from home was NPR’s idea in case of inclement weather, he said. In addition, “the computers are breaking down” in the NPR office.

The sniping, he said, is an example of “so much internal strife in the show.” Gordon recalled the clumsy dismissal of Bob Edwards as “Morning Edition” host in 2004, as well as Smiley’s case. “There are things that a seasoned journalist shouldn’t have to put up with,” Gordon said of his frustrations.

Tony Cox, who served as substitute host under Smiley and has been appearing more often recently on “News and Notes,” told Journal-isms that radio and television, Gordon’s medium before NPR, require the host to take different approaches.

“Radio is very, very personal,” Cox said in Indianapolis Friday during last week’s convention of the National Association of Black Journalists. “When I’m on TV, I’m talking to the camera, not necessarily connecting. It’s more about what you’re wearing,” and “is the camera in focus?” With radio, “it’s more raw. Now I’m paying attention to what you’re saying. You’ve got to really like that format to be effective at it. I feel like I have to engage, entertain, enlighten, all of that. It’s like a roller coaster.”

Cox added that the issues African American and white audiences discuss are similar, but “it’s how that message is delivered” that differs. That adds to the complexity of producing a show with an African American focus on an outlet with a primarily white audience, he said.

“We say ‘folks.’ How many people say ‘white folks'” on NPR? “The sense of humor is different,” he said, because it comes from the black experience. Also different, he said, is the pacing of the shows.

“It’s unfortunate what has happened; I hope it can be resolved,” Cox concluded. “There’s an audience that deserves to be served and given an excellent product, and there’s no reason that can’t happen. It appears from the results . . . that they’re not all pulling together.”

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New Black Enterprise Show Hopes for Headlines

“My hope is to really use it to make some headlines,” Ed Gordon said Friday at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Indianapolis. He was speaking at the official announcement of “Our World With Black Enterprise,” a syndicated television show that Gordon is to host.

The half-hour show, which begins Sept. 30, replaces “America’s Black Forum,” a syndicated public affairs show created in 1977 and sold late last year to Chicago-based Central City Productions, Inc., producer of such fare as “Stellar Gospel Music Awards,” “Minority Business Report” and the “Soul Train Music Awards.”

The new show is to be produced with Black Enterprise as a “partner,” according to the press material, but with all the top Black Enterprise executives present for the announcement, including founder Earl Graves Sr., the show appeared to be a Black Enterprise production.

“When you talk about appointment television for black folks, it’s just not there,” Gordon said. Naming entertainment figures Jay Z and Russell Simmons, he said, “We know that our lives are greater than just those images.” It was similar to the language he used when launching “News and Notes” on National Public Radio last year. He told Journal-isms his contract with NPR allows him to appear on other programs.

Gordon mentioned that when he was a reporter at NBC, staffers were encouraged to do such stories as, he said in a sing-song voice, “This is little Johnny . . . who has to dodge bullets to get to school everyday.”

He said “Our World” would aim for a fuller picture of black America, including a roundtable segment similar to that on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.” Gordon mentioned such potential guests as scholar Cornel West, columnist Stanley Crouch and commentator Armstrong Williams.

A major challenge will be securing better time slots than were granted “America’s Black Forum,” which was shown in the wee hours in many markets.

Alfred A. Edmond Jr., senior vice president and editor-in-chief of Black Enterprise, said African Americans should care as much about who is not advertising on the show as who is. “Believe me, we are getting played,” he said of black consumers. “The numbers are appalling” on how little advertisers spend in black media.

Gordon’s statement that he wanted the show to make headlines takes the show back to its roots. Glen Ford and Peter Gamble, co-publishers of the Web site blackcommentator.com, wrote that they created “America’s Black Forum” as “the first nationally syndicated Black news interview program on commercial television. Under their guidance, ABF was quoted weekly by national and international news organizations. A feat no other Black news entity has accomplished, before or since.”

• Demetrius Patterson, Chicago Defender: Joint venture between Chicago production company and Black Enterprise creates new tv news show
• Lisa Sanders, Advertising Age: ‘Black Enterprise’ Magazine Chief Calls Ad Industry ‘Racist’

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NABJ Treasurer: “The Hemorrhaging Has Stopped”

“The hemorrhaging has stopped” and the National Association of Black Journalists should end the year in the black, John Yearwood, the organization’s treasurer, told members Thursday at the NABJ convention in Indianapolis.

Yearwood said the board implemented a number of recommendations for better financial controls after a six-person Finance Committee co-chaired by Rodney A. Brooks and Jackie Greene of USA Today found that “over the years several policies had been relaxed, core skills were missing and there was a general lack of financial controls.”

As reported in June, “The financial and management issues â?? undisclosed to the organization’s membership of 4,000 â?? led to the surprise and sudden resignation in March of Tangie Newborn, one of NABJ’s longest-serving executive directors, President Bryan Monroe told Journal-isms.”

A Finance Committee report to the board dated Aug. 14 said, “NABJ ended 2005 with a $240,000 deficit primarily because of the lack of management controls in the national office. This means that NABJ did not generate enough cash to cover the cost of the 2005 expenses. The organization did end 2005 with about $1.7 million in cash and reserve funds. Are we broke? No, but we did use money from the reserves to correct the problem and to pay off the outstanding debt.”

Yearwood, who is world editor at the Miami Herald, said, “When we found out what happened, your board took extremely swift action” to require additional signatures for expenses and similar steps. Among Yearwood’s disclosures to the membership was that a $100,000 debt to the Newspaper Association of America had gone unpaid and that “the American Express card was used to pay a number of office expenses that should not have paid” that way.

However, the Finance Committee said, “We did not discover any attempt to take money from the organization or to misuse funds entrusted to the national office.”

“I’m very disappointed about what’s going on,” longtime member Sheila Brooks said, urging that financial matters be addressed in the organization’s strategic plan. Condace Pressley, the organization’s president from 2001 to 2003, urged an expression of thanks for the board members’ volunteer service, then asked, “is there not a little bit of blame to go around?”

“All of us have responsibility as a board of directors,” Monroe replied.

• Adena Andrews and Danielle Wilson, NABJ Monitor: Board Adopts Fiscal Remedies
• Amber Ellis, NABJ Monitor: Money woes worry veterans

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NABJ Lost Hotel Bookings After Terror Plot News

Hotel reservations at the three official convention hotels for the National Association of Black Journalists dropped by 200 on Aug. 10, the day the news broke of a terrorist plot to blow up transatlantic airplanes, NABJ President Bryan Monroe said.

The cancellations reduced the hotel bookings from 107 percent of capacity to 73 percent, Monroe said, which would have left NABJ with a bill of $20,000 to $30,000 in unmet hotel obligations.

Monroe said at NABJ’s business meeting that quick thinking helped the organization keep its commitment. It asked enough registrants who were booked at the non-official hotels to switch, and they agreed.

As of Saturday night, convention attendance stood at 2,452, Monroe said at that night’s awards presentations.

In other business, members heard of plans to move the national headquarters to larger quarters on the University of Maryland campus in College Park, and Minneapolis, Orlando and Philadelphia were announced as finalists for the 2011 convention city selection.

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NABJ Journal Discussion Referred to Committee

The question of the role of the NABJ Journal and other means of communicating with members of the National Association of Black Journalists, framed by this columnist as a question of conflict of interest, has been referred to an NABJ committee whose members have yet to be chosen.

The issue arose when the organization’s vice president/print, Ernie Suggs, a reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, assumed the role of Journal managing editor. It was apparently the first time that a board member had taken an official editorial role with the publication, which reports on board activities, among other items.

At the NABJ’s business meeting Thursday at the Indianapolis convention, President Bryan Monroe said Suggs stepped up when Roland S. Martin, who edits the Chicago Defender, said he could not edit the NABJ Journal since he was beginning a new radio show. Monroe said he was proud of the work Suggs had done. “The content has been spectacular” and it has served to “lift up our members,” he said. He noted that the NABJ board is ultimately responsible for the publication.

This columnist, who is a former Journal editor and acknowledges his own conflict of interest in writing this, noted the Journal’s tradition and said that in other countries, one would call the current publication “state-controlled media.”

Angela Dodson, who was editor as the Journal was transformed from newspaper to glossy magazine in 1996, said that “When I took over the Journal, some of the people who are saying it’s OK” to have a board member as editor had said then that “the Journal is an organ of the membership. It’s function is to report on the board . . . It is not an arm of the board.” Dodson edits Black Issues Book Review.

The new NABJ executive director, Karen Wynn Freeman, said she wanted a glossy publication that can serve to recruit members and that she can show to potential funders.

Martin said the membership should be faulted for not volunteering to edit the publication, and said a quarterly was not timely enough to accommodate breaking news.

Finally, Kathy Times, an investigative reporter at WVTM-TV in Birmingham, Ala., proposed “that the Publication Committee explore ways to internally and externally communicate via publications, Internet, etc. with the NABJ membership.”

Her motion passed by a voice vote of the membership.

In a related matter, the NABJ Monitor, the daily convention newspaper staffed by students and supervised by professionals, was criticized by Dennis Ryerson, editor of the Indianapolis Star, over a story about Mpozi Tolbert, the photographer who collapsed and died July 3 in the Star newsroom. “The Indianapolis Star is pleased to have provided computer equipment and arrange for the printing, on our presses, of the NABJ Monitor,” Ryerson began his communication.

Editor Linda Williams, who is also deputy managing editor at the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer, replied on the NABJ convention news blog, “We strive for the students to uphold the standards of the industry, and, as editor I take full responsibility when those standards are not met. However, I also tell board members that the Monitor will not make in the news pages special concessions to NABJ sponsors, NABJ board members or NABJ staff members.”

Old Heads Impart Advice at NABJ Inductions

In sometimes surprisingly brief acceptance speeches, old heads and young ones accepted honors from the National Association of Black Journalists on Friday and Saturday nights.

In the most rousing, Lerone Bennett Jr., longtime editor of Ebony magazine, said he was moved to “go from this place and make myself worthy” of his induction into the NABJ Hall of Fame. His granddaughter, he noted, is attending the John H. Johnson School of Communications at Howard University, a school named after his longtime colleague, the late founder of Johnson Publishing Co.

Bennett said he had worked every day for 52 years for the black press “because the black press made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” and worked to make sure that Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. DuBois and Earl Graves “did not edit and publish and dream and struggle in vain.”

Longtime Washington Post columnist William Raspberry, another Hall of Fame inductee, said it was “just poetic for me” to be inducted in Indianapolis, where half a century ago he began his journalism career as a college student, working in the black press at the Indianapolis Recorder.

“All of us decided not to follow a path but to go where there was no path and leave a trail,” Raspberry said of the inductees. “You young people especially have more opportunities. You have people with faith in you. You have the NABJ. You have all the local affiliates. You have us old heads. Use us and make us earn our place in the NABJ Hall of Fame.”

Al Fitzpatrick, a third inductee who was the first black staffer at the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal and rose to assistant vice president of Knight Ridder, said he was proud of the organization’s president, Bryan Monroe, whom he mentored. Monroe was an assistant vice president for news at the now-defunct company, and Fitzpatrick preceded him 20 years ago as NABJ president. Fitzpatick, who said he developed five diversity programs for Knight Ridder, told the crowd, “you cannot tell the truth of African Americans without getting out there and doing the job.”

Graves, the Black Enterprise magazine founder and another inductee, invoked the words of John B. Russwurm and Samuel E. Cornish, who wrote, “We wish to plead our own cause” when they founded Freedom’s Journal, the first African American newspaper, in 1827.

Trymaine Lee of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, a co-winner of the Emerging Journalist of the Year award, said he would continue to “try to give voice to the voiceless and tell our stories the right way,” and urged his audience to “keep New Orleans in your prayers.”

Errin Haines of the Associated Press, the other co-winner, noted that in writing about Coretta Scott King this year, she first ran her stories by her mother.

The Journalist of the Year, editorial page editor and columnist Cynthia Tucker, said she had just finished reading the upcoming “The Race Beat” by Gene Roberts and Tucker’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution colleague Hank Klibanoff, on covering the civil rights movement. “That book, among other things, gives long-overdue credit to the black press,” she said, adding that she was inspired by the story of civil rights activist Daisy Bates. “I, too am standing on the shoulders of giants,” Tucker said.

The Community Service Award went to DeMarco Morgan of WISN-TV in Milwaukee. Ruth Tisdale, who led Howard University’s newspaper, the Hilltop, to daily publication, was Student Journalist of the Year, Kip Branch of Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina was Journalism Educator of the Year, and Monroe presented his President’s Award to Ryan Williams, the organization’s program development manager, who “doesn’t complain, he just gets the job done.”

In the “Salute to Excellence Awards,” CBS-TV won four awards, for â??Bridge to Gretnaâ?? on “60 Minutes,” “Born in the USA,” also on “60 Minutes,” â??Mother-Child Reunionâ?? on “The Early Show,” and â??Zeleder Barnes, Insurance Sagaâ?? by Bill Whitaker on the “CBS Evening News.”

List of winners

More from the NABJ Convention:

• Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times: Virgil Smith to receive 2006 Wells award
• Associated Press: Muslim panel asks for balanced news
• Chicago Sun-Times: Mitchell wins top award
• Eric Deggans, Poynter Institute: The “NABJ ‘Heyyy'”
• Jackie Jones, BlackAmericaWeb.com: A Testy Mayor Nagin Tells Black Journalists ‘No One’s Covering’ His City
• Shauntel Lowe, Black College Wire: Young Black Journalists Prepped on Landing Dream Job
• Mary Mitchell blog, Chicago Sun-Times: Why We Still Need the National Association of Black Journalists
• News release: The New York Times and National Association of Black Journalists Establish Leadership Academy; Workshops Designed For Newsroom Managers
• News release: Survey Findings Show African Americans Try to Quit Smoking Cold
• Les Payne, Newsday: Where, oh where, is black leadership

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New Gumbel Flap May Be Good for Ratings

“The NFL Network’s choice of Bryant Gumbel as lead play-by-play announcer for its games that begin in November is already giving the network a PR boost after outgoing NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue today responded to comments Gumbel made on his HBO show, Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel,” Ben Grossman reported today in Broadcasting & Cable.

“After Gumbel suggested that Tagliabue show incoming commission[er] Roger Goodell ‘where he keeps [NFL players union chief] Gene Upshaw’s leash,’ according to the Associated Press, Tagliabue on Monday fired back, ‘What Gumbel said about Gene Upshaw and our owners is about as irresponsible as anything I’ve heard in a long time.'”

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Short Takes

• “Former local news anchor Warren Savage was arrested Thursday night on charges of marijuana possession and giving police a false name or information, police said,” Ken Sugiura reported Saturday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
• “WLIB (1190 AM) is switching from the liberals to the Lord,” David Hinckley reported today in the New York Daily News. “After 29 months as the flagship station for the progressive talk network Air America, WLIB will become a full-time black gospel music station on Sept. 1.” WWRL-AM, the new Air America station, had this format from the early 1980s to the mid- to late-1990s, media historian Todd Steven Burroughs told Journal-isms.
• “Tiger Woods’ dominant play in the PGA Championship helped drive ratings for CBS Sports over the weekend to their highest levels since 2002,” Jon Lafayette reported today in TV Week.
• Joe Ritchie, journalism professor at Florida A&M University, is riding in the 100-mile Livestrong Challenge in Austin, Texas, on Oct. 8 in support of several cancer survivors and patients, ­ including one of his journalism students,­ and in memory of others who have died of cancer, including two late black journalists he counted among his mentors: Detroit Free Press editor Bob McGruder and Bob Maynard, namesake of the Maynard Institute.
• “Where are the new magazines? Following a flurry of major launches last year – among them, Condí Nast’s Domino, Cookie and Men’s Vogue, Rodale’s Women’s Health, Hearst Magazines’ Quick & Simple and Weekend, and Northern and Shell’s British import OK! – publishers have put the brakes on developing new titles, focusing instead on growing their established brands,” Tony Case reported today in Mediaweek.
• “Georgia has the fastest-growing illegal immigrant population in the nation, more than doubling in the last five years, according to a federal report released Friday,” Carlos Campos and Jim Tharpe reported Friday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
• “The United States is home to nearly 2.4 million American Indians and Alaska Natives, the Census Bureau reported on Tuesday, with Cherokee, Navajo, Sioux and Ojibwe the most prominent tribal affiliations,” Indianz.com reported Wednesday. “Overall, Native Americans are only about 0.8 percent of the total population. But their ranks grew by nearly 10 percent in just one year, according to the 2005 American Community Survey. And when mixed-raced Native Americans come into the picture, the number jumps to 4.2 million, representing an increase of nearly 4 percent from 2004.”
• Felicia Middlebrooks, morning anchor on Chicago’s all-news WBBM-AM, has co-written a book about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “Called: ‘Hello, My Name Is Mrs. Jefferson. I Understand Your Plane Is Being Highjacked’ tells the story of Lisa Jefferson, the telephone supervisor who took the inflight call from Todd Beamer on United Flight 93,” Robert Feder reported Friday in the Chicago Sun-Times.
• Why did the Jon-Benet Ramsey case, in which an arrest was made last week, get so much media attention? “It must not be lost on anybody that JonBenet was white, and pretty, and her parents rich,” Antonia Zerbisias observed Thursday in the Toronto Star.
• “It’s been a year and a half since Polly Gonzalez died in a car accident near Death Valley, California. We all still miss her,” KLAS-TV in Las Vegas reported Thursday. “She was a news anchor and reporter for a number of years at KLAS-TV Channel 8. On Thursday, a special celebration was held at a place she would have loved. Shortly after Polly died, the Las Vegas City Council voted to name a park after her in honor of her contributions to the community.”
• “A group of Indian television journalists gave a man matches and diesel [fuel] to help him commit suicide in order to get dramatic footage which was later broadcast on the news, police said on Thursday,” Reuters reported on Thursday from Kolkata, India. “The man died from severe burns to his body in hospital in Gaya town in the eastern state of Bihar on August 15, India’s Independence Day.”