Maynard Institute archives

Every Day Will Be Katrina Day

by richard0476

Spike Lee Film Kicks Off Anniversary Coverage

Spike Lee‘s four-hour HBO documentary “When the Levees Broke” has received a “tremendous reaction” that has just about been “all positive,” HBO spokeswoman Lana Iny told Journal-isms today. Lee’s unprecedented production was in large part the opening salvo in what is hoped will be a broad and deep media examination of the tragedy that struck the Gulf Coast region a year ago next Tuesday.

“Newspapers in the still-recovering Gulf Coast region are walking a careful tightrope between not hitting readers too hard with stark reminders of the most devastating natural disaster in U.S. history, and giving it deserved recognition,” Joe Strupp wrote Monday in Editor & Publisher.

“Noting that coverage of the hurricane aftermath and clean-up has never really stopped since the Aug, 29, 2005 disaster, editors told E&P that marking the one-year date is part daily story, part special approach.

“‘Every day is Katrina day,’ said Stan Tiner, editor of the Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., which shared a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage with the Times-Picayune of New Orleans. ‘This thing is so fluid, it has always been necessary to keep up with it.'”

“Times-Picayune managing editor Peter Kovacs agreed. ‘Evidence of what happened here is still around here, people’s memories are still pretty recent and raw,” he said. “There are neighborhoods that don’t look any different now than they did when they drained the water out of the city.

“Still, those papers, and The Advocate in Baton Rouge, are marking the one-year occasion with different approaches, most of which focus on the future and the planned recover[y] and improvements. The Sun Herald appears to be the most ambitious, with a five-day series of special sections, ranging from 24 pages to 40 pages, that will begin this Friday and run through next Tuesday, the anniversary date.”

Broadcasters planned a variety of ways to commemorate the occasion, from investigative reports to sending anchors to the region. News releases from ABC, BET, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, Fox News Channel, National Public Radio, NBC and TV One are compiled today in this separate column.

“When the Levees Broke,” which aired Monday and Tuesday nights, will re-air on Aug. 29, then on other HBO channels, such as HBO on Demand, Iny said. It will eventually be released on DVD.

Meanwhile, John M. Higgins reported Monday in Broadcasting & Cable that, “A cheer went up in the New Orleans media community last week over the return of something as vital as water in their business: ratings. For the first time since Hurricane Katrina blew through town, radio-audienceâ??measurement service Arbitron issued a book for the market.

“With thousands of people leaving town, TV stations have far fewer viewers to sell advertisers and possibly many fewer businesses to buy advertising. For a long time, New Orleans may stay out of the top 50 markets targeted by many national advertisers.”

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N.O. Paper Agrees Recovery Money Not Being Spent

“When Congress allocated more than $110 billion for hurricane recovery along the Gulf Coast, some lawmakers worried it would be misspent, with one senator memorably comparing Louisiana’s ‘culture of corruption’ to that of Iraq,” Bill Walsh reported today in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

“And congressional investigators have unearthed some eye-popping instances of fraud, especially in the chaotic weeks after the Aug. 29 storm. But a year after Hurricane Katrina, the biggest money concern in the disaster zone isn’t misspending or overspending, but whether recovery money is being spent quickly enough.

“According to figures compiled by the Bush administration, only about 40 percent of the money available — or about $45 billion — has been doled out by the federal government. And the bulk of that money has gone for the initial rescue efforts, debris removal and the emergency repairs to New Orleans’ ruptured levees, proving that even in Louisiana water flows faster than money.”

As reported last week from the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Indianapolis, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin blamed problems with rebuilding the city on a “bureaucratic” state system, which has kept New Orleans from getting relief dollars as quickly as cities in other states.

On Monday, Baton Rouge Mayor Mayor-President Kip Holden said his government is being left out of the loop as federal officials again target the city as a major emergency relief center for this storm season, according to Ed Anderson, reporting today in the Times-Picayune.

However, Holden disagreed with Nagin on the underlying cause. “I don’t want to blame it on racism,” Holden said of the recovery efforts in south Louisiana, “but on people in positions (of authority) who have bogged down the process. It is ineptness, not racism.”

More from the NABJ convention:

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Six Blacks Among 39 Laid Off at Akron Paper

Six African Americans are among the 39 people laid off at the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal, Andale Gross, Newspaper Guild unit chair, told Journal-isms today.

He listed them as pop music critic Malcolm X Abram, movie critic George Thomas, reporter Delano Massey, copy editor Erin Hill, sportswriter Gary Estwick and clerk Telli Gulledge.

“‘It’s a very sad day for the Beacon Journal,’ new publisher Edward R. Moss said Tuesday in announcing 39 layoffs, which he said are necessary to align costs with revenue,” Gloria Irwin reported in today’s Beacon Journal.

“The moves are part of a companywide restructuring that will result in additional job reductions, Moss said.

“It was only the second time in the newspaper’s 167-year history that there have been layoffs in the newsroom.

“In 2001, the newspaper reduced staffing through layoffs and buyouts.

“The Beacon Journal has lost revenue from advertisers that have `cut back significantly and impacted our financial health,’ Moss said. The newspaper is developing a plan to increase revenue, he said.”

“Several journalists of color will be impacted,” editor Debra Adams Simmons told Journal-isms. “Most of the young, talented journalists who have come to work at the Beacon in recent years will lose their jobs.”

Massey said morale in the newsroom was already down from the layoffs in 2001. “This is kind like another kick in the gut,” he told Journal-isms. “I’ll just have to move with the punches. I considered changing careers, but NABJ was somewhat inspirational,” he said, speaking of last week’s Indianapolis convention of the National Association of Black Journalists. “They said you shouldn’t leave. I have quite a few options. I kind of look at it as a blessing in disguise,” said Massey, who is 27.

Hill, 23, said she had already landed a job at the Detroit Free Press. She had arrived at the paper only last Sept. 12, and since the layoffs were made according to seniority, she had already started looking. “NABJ taught me to be a soldier,” she said. “I couldn’t be caught with my pants around my ankles.”

“People are just more shocked than anything,” Hill said. “I don’t think they expected the cuts to be as deep as they are.” But “people are relieved that they know what the future is,” she said.

Gross, a police reporter, said the Guild agreement requires that layoffs be made according to seniority, and a said a list was posted yesterday, before the layoffs were announced, listing employees by length of service. However, he said, the company also had the option of offering buyouts or instituting a hiring freeze to meet the reduced staffing level.

However, Simmons said, “A hiring freeze, at best, would keep costs flat. It would not have reduced costs (certainly not of the magnitude we’re talking about) unless 40 members of the staff left the paper. We don’t have that kind of turnover.

“Buyouts are expensive. The severance language in the guild contract allows for two weeks pay for every year of service. A buyout, to be attractive in the newsroom, would have to have better terms than that. Because the newsroom is only one of the departments, the economics of offering a comparable buyout package to a substantial portion of the staff was not an attractive alternative for the new owner. The goal is to reduce expenses.”

The Beacon Journal story noted that, “Canadian publishing company Black Press Ltd. paid $165 million for the newspaper and its Web site, Ohio.com, in June, after the breakup of parent Knight Ridder Inc. was complete.

“Newsroom layoffs include two artists, eight copy editors, four photographers, 11 reporters, one librarian, three clerks and seven student correspondents. All are members of the Newspaper Guild.”

“In addition, three management-level editors will lose their jobs and a fourth nonunion position will not be filled.

“There could be the need for further reductions’ in the newsroom if revenue does not improve, Moss said.”

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Ohio TV Reporter Dies at 25; Injured in Car Accident

[Added Aug. 24:] “A former Indianapolis 500 Festival queen and reporter at the NBC television station in Columbus, Ohio, has died after she developed an infection following a car accident,” the IndyChannel reported Thursday morning.

Lauren Crowner, the queen of the 2002 Indianapolis 500 Festival, worked at WCMH in Columbus since January. She was 25. She died in Mount Carmel West Hospital in Columbus early today, a nursing supervisor said, according to the Associated Press.

“Crowner suffered from severe headaches after a car accident July 31 and then developed an infection because of swelling on her brain, according to a report from WISH in Indianapolis, a sister station of WLFI in Lafayette, where Crowner previously worked. She was also previously an intern at WTHR in Indianapolis,” the IndyChannel report continued.

“. . . Crowner graduated from Indiana University, where she received her journalism degree and minored in Spanish, and was a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.”

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“Tabloid Wars” Series Ends Abruptly

“In a development that must warm the hearts of the New York Post staff, Bravo aired the final two episodes of Tabloid Wars back-to-back at 7PM EST â?? a quick end to what we can now safely call the most overhyped reality show about a tabloid newspaper ever. It appears that the show’s low ratings forced the cable network to move quickly,” Dylan Stableford wrote Tuesday on the Fishbowl NY Web site, describing the six-part “reality” series about the New York Daily News.

“So quick was Bravo’s surprise exit strategy, in fact, that we failed to TiVo the finale, as we had planned to TiVo-blog it this morning.”

A Bravo spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

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Ifill: I Couldn’t Say, “What!” to Cheney’s AIDS Answer

Public television’s Gwen Ifill says she was “surprised and frustrated” when she moderated the 2004 vice presidential debate and neither Vice President Dick Cheney nor his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., knew that African American women were being disproportionately victimized by AIDS.

Ifill says in “Out of Control: AIDS in Black America,” an ABC News documentary airing Thursday, “I was expecting they would have an answer, and that this is a great tragedy. I was surprised and frustrated because of the constrictions of the debates — I couldn’t say, ‘What!’ How can that be, Mr. Vice President? — and I was surprised that the Democrat didn’t have an answer.”

In the Oct. 5, 2004, debate, Ifill, senior correspondent on “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” said to Cheney, “I want to talk to you about AIDS, and not about AIDS in China or Africa, but AIDS right here in this country, where black women between the ages of 25 and 44 are 13 times more likely to die of the disease than their [white] counterparts. What should the government’s role be in helping to end the growth of this epidemic?”

Cheney said he “had not heard those numbers with respect to African-American women” and was not aware there was an epidemic of HIV/AIDS among that population. Edwards said HIV/AIDS prevention in the United States was part of the bigger question on the future of the nation’s health care, as the publication AIDS Policy and Law reported at the time.

The documentary, airing at 10 p.m. Eastern time, is the first national network television news documentary on the AIDS epidemic among African Americans, ABC said, no doubt speaking only of the broadcast networks. Included are conversations between ABC anchor Peter Jennings, who began the project before his death last year, and a group of black gay men, and another discussion with black women, both on the issue of candor about the subject in the black community. Health professionals, leaders such as the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and black church leaders such as Bishop T.D. Jakes are also interviewed.

The “Primetime” show is hosted by ABC’s Terry Moran. Elizabeth Arledge is the producer, Kayce Freed Jennings, Peter Jennings’ widow, is senior producer and Tom Yellin is executive producer.

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Columnists Seize on Young’s Remarks for Wal-Mart

Columnists of color are having their say over former ambassador Andrew Young‘s resignation last week as Wal-Mart spokesman after telling the Los Angeles Sentinel that Wal-Mart “should” displace mom-and-pop stores in the black community because they have been ”selling us stale bread, and bad meat and wilted vegetables.”

”You see those are the people who have been overcharging us,” Young said of the owners of the small stores, ”and they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs.” Young later apologized.

Some columnists agreed with Mary Sanchez in the Kansas City Star, who wrote Tuesday, “Kansas City should question why a succession of Jewish, Italian, Korean, and now Latino-owned businesses operate in predominately black portions of the metropolitan area, with black-owned shops being far too rare. The answers are intertwined with ingrained poverty, racism, redlining of bank loans, and immigrants’ creative entrepreneurialism among a host of other things.”

Shanna Flowers in the Roanoke (Va.) Times said, “Bigoted outbursts seem to be, literally, the rage this summer.” Others wondered why Young was working for Wal-Mart in the first place.

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Radio One Celebrated in D.C., Lamented in Boston

Cathy Hughes, the founder of Radio One, the largest black-owned radio chain, was honored at a star-studded silver anniversary gala last week in Washington, columnist Adrienne Washington reported Tuesday in the Washington Times. But in Boston, many African Americans were lamenting Radio One’s $30 million sale of the area’s only black-owned FM radio station, 97.7 WILD, to a company that immediately switched the format to rock, wrote Adrienne Samuels today in the Boston Globe.

“The gala was like a reunion, attended by 1,000 family folks who could have comprised a living edition of Who’s Who in Black America — everyone from entertainers to elected officials to economic engineers,” Washington wrote.

“‘It was so beautiful to see everyone from all walks of life being so friendly and supportive, and no one was more important than anyone else,’ Ms. Hughes said. However, she noted that Chuck Brown, who pioneered the unique D.C. go-go band style, received the biggest applause. Still, entertainer Beyonce Knowles was properly billed as ‘the show.’ Comedian and political activist Dick Gregory, who is a frequent guest on Radio One’s lineup, marveled at how Ms. Hughes started her company and, despite racism and sexism, she was a success, ‘especially for a black woman who wanted to do something other than someone else’s laundry.'”

In Boston, whose market is just 6.4 percent black, radio listeners were not so effusive. “There are stations that will continue to play urban and hip-hop, but they are stations not considered to be part of the community,” Kelley Chunn, owner of a multicultural PR firm in Boston, said in Samuels’ piece. “They may not co sponsor community-based events, and they’re certainly not owned by African-Americans.”

“`Radio One had an innate responsibility and obligation to this community to come to this market with the community, not on top of the community, and they didn’t do that,’ said Janice Graham of Roslindale, the former chair of the National Council of Black Talk Radio,” Samuels reported.

The deal will result in a significant number of layoffs among 97.7’s staff, said Zemira Z. Jones, vice president of operations at Radio One, according to Jesse Noyes, reporting Tuesday in the Boston Herald. “Jones said WILD-FM has been an ‘underperforming station. ‘`Our goal is to operate in a top performing way,’ he said.”

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2 Innocent Men Win, Ultimately, in War on Terror

“Let it be known that good news occurred in a government building south of downtown Seattle early Tuesday,” columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr. wrote Thursday in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

“Safouh Hamoui learned that America would allow him to stay. He received his lawful permanent residency status, or ‘green card’ . . .

“The wrong thing would have been to deport the one-time Edmonds grocer to his native Syria, where he had been a top military pilot for the country’s late president, Hafez al-Assad.

“Hamoui came to the United States with his family in 1992.

“He overstayed a visitor’s visa and applied for asylum. In Syria, he had been privy to state secrets. He later spoke out against that country’s government.”

Meanwhile, in the New York Times, columnist Bob Herbert wrote Monday, “The problem with the way the United States government dealt with Abdallah Higazy had nothing to do with the fact that he was investigated as a possible participant in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center.

“He was caught in a set of circumstances that was highly suspicious, to say the least. It would have been criminal not to have investigated him.

“On the morning of the attack, Mr. Higazy, the son of a former Egyptian diplomat, was in his room on the 51st floor of the Millenium Hilton Hotel, which was across the street from the twin towers. He fled the hotel, along with all the other guests, after the attack. But a Hilton security guard said he found an aviation radio, which could be used to communicate with airborne pilots, in the safe in Mr. Higazy’s room.

“When Mr. Higazy returned to the hotel three months later to pick up his belongings, he was arrested by the F.B.I. as a material witness and thrown into solitary confinement. Federal investigators were understandably suspicious, but they had no evidence at all that Mr. Higazy was involved in the terror attack.

“And that’s where the government went wrong.

“. . . What the government ignored in Mr. Higazy’s case and in so many other cases linked to the so-called war on terror, is that when it comes to throwing people in jail, a hunch is not enough.”

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Short Takes

  • “Kidnappers have released a tape of two abducted Fox News journalists, who emphasized they were being treated well but asked relatives to press Palestinian officials for their release,” John M. Higgins reported today for Broadcasting & Cable. “Fox correspondent Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig were kidnapped by masked gunmen in Gaza City 10 days ago, but until now no one has claimed credit or issued any demands.” The Rev. Jesse Jackson said he would lead an ecumenical delegation to the Middle East this week to meet with political and religious leaders about troubles in the region, including the kidnapping of the two journalists, the Associated Press reported late Wednesday.
  • Journalists covering the hearing of JonBenet Ramsey murder suspect John Mark Karr in Los Angeles yesterday “had to pay — first $32, then $42 to park at the 210 West Temple parking lot in L.A. . . . Everyday citizens pay 16 bucks to park all day. Satellite trucks pay $500 to park,” Al Tompkins wrote today in his Poynter Institute column. “The spokesman for the parking lot, Dev Trakor, tells me that the Los Angeles County allows the parking lot to charge TWICE what the public pays because media tie up the lot for longer periods of time.”
  • “Voz y Voto,” a Sacramento-based Univision public affairs show airing on 10 stations, “has become something of a must-stop for many of the state’s top lawmakers and political operatives,” Sam McManis wrote Tuesday in the Sacramento Bee. “There is no weekly English-language equivalent to ‘Voz y Voto’ in the state.”
  • “At noon today, Philadelphia got its first major Spanish FM radio station, as 104.5 became ‘Rumba ciento cuatro punto cinco,'” Michael Klein reported today in the Philadelphia Inquirer. “Clear Channel Radio executives said the move – still rare in an East Coast city outside of New York – was a bid to serve the region’s fast-growing Hispanic population, especially those from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.”
  • “During a daylong visit to Baltimore yesterday, Bill Cosby urged fathers to help raise their kids, stressed the importance of education and spoke of the evils of hip-hop,” Brent Jones reported today in the Baltimore Sun. The visit prompted commentary from columnist Gregory Kane. In Milwaukee, Cosby appeared last week wearing his comedian’s hat, but columnist Eugene Kane praised his activism Saturday under the headline, “Let’s make Cosby’s passion our own.”
  • Michelle Fitzhugh-Craig, reporter for the Tri-Valley Herald in California, is the San Mateo County Times’ new assistant city editor, Times Managing Editor Jennifer Aquino announced on Tuesday.
  • “After several years of juggling work between Metro news coverage and Opinion column writing,” Mary Sanchez “now will devote her full time to the Opinion pages as a member of the Editorial Board,” the Kansas City Star announced to staffers. “In addition, Mary will continue to offer a weekly column for syndication through McClatchy-Tribune, specializing in Latin American issues, immigration, race, politics and culture.”
  • “CBS is splitting up the tribes for the 13th installment of its veteran reality series ‘Survivor’ along ethnic lines, with blacks, Asian Americans, Hispanics and Anglos initially competing against each other in ethnicity-specific teams,” Christopher Lisotta wrote today in TV Week.
  • “Africa’s first-ever major blogging conference, The Digital Citizen Indaba (DCI), will take place Sept. 14-15 in Grahamstown, South Africa. The event is hosted by the New Media Lab (a project of the School of Journalism & Media Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa),” Matthew Buckland wrote Thursday on the Poynter Institute Web site.
  • Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times is keeping a blog as she covers Sen. Barack Obama‘s trip to Africa.
  • The access granted Michael Wilbon through his appearances on ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption” “is phenomenal. It opens doors, plain and simply, [that] are not easily opened by a person who exclusively writes a newspaper column,” the Washington Post sports columnist said Monday in an online chat. “The Washington Post, as an i.d., opens as many doors as any newspaper . . . but young athletes don’t read newspapers,” Wilbon said. “Most have no idea I write a column.”
  • Keith L. Alexander bid farewell Tuesday to readers of his “Business Class” column in the Washington Post. “After spending more than five years covering the airline industry and business travel, I am moving on to The Post’s Metro section, where I will be covering social issues and crime beginning this fall,” he wrote.

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