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Blacks, Latinos Not Rushing to Couric

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Viewers of Color Give Edge to ABC in First Week

Blacks and Latinos did not join the bandwagon driving viewers to Katie Couric’s historic debut on the “CBS Evening News,” according to Nielsen ratings made available to Journal-isms.

While Couric took the CBS newscast to its highest numbers overall since 2001, blacks stuck with ABC’s “World News with Charles Gibson” during the first week of Couric’s broadcast, the figures show.

 

 

Latinos also preferred ABC among the broadcast networks, though it seems likely that even more were watching Univision’s news program, “Noticiero Univision,” on cable. Univision did not make its figures available.

Couric’s Sept. 5 debut as the first woman to be solo anchor of a weeknight newscast on a broadcast network was accompanied by a tidal wave of publicity and hype.

As Gail Shister wrote Sept. 12 in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Couric’s debut week as solo anchor of CBS Evening News was a monster smash, even though her numbers dropped every day. Long a Nielsen cellar-dweller, Evening News won last week’s network-news race with an average of 10.2 million total viewers — its first blue ribbon since June ’01.”

Couric’s ratings numbers have been touted in near-daily news releases from CBS publicists, many mentioning gains the program made among certain demographic groups. CBS research guru David Poltrack noted in Shister’s column, for example, that under Couric, the show had a 55 percent increase in 18-to-49- year-old viewers that advertisers pay a premium to reach. Pre-Couric, the median age of Evening News viewers was over 60, said Poltrack, executive vice president and chief research officer of CBS Corp.

But the landscape turns out to be different with blacks and Hispanics.

The Nielsen figures for Sept. 5 to 8, Couric’s first week, show that ABC was tops with black viewers, scoring a 3.10 rating, representing 1,102,000 people. CBS was second with 1,072,000 African Americans, a 3.01 rating, and NBC third with a 1.96 rating, or 697,000 black viewers, according to figures provided by Nielsen.

Among Hispanics, ABC garnered a .99 rating, or 396,000 viewers; CBS had .82, or 329,000 viewers; and NBC .45, or 180,000 people. Asian American and Native American ratings were not available.

In the overall ratings, CBS was on top, with a 3.59 rating, or 10,164,000 viewers, followed by NBC, with a 2.52 rating, representing 7,144,000 people, and ABC, with 2.43, or 6,896,000 viewers. (NBC broadcast the NFL season-opener on Sept. 7, so that day was excluded from the average.)

The figures for blacks are consistent with preferences before Couric arrived.

In the year’s third quarter, from June 26 to Sept. 8, ABC’s “World News Tonight” ranked first among blacks with a 3.33 rating, or 1,180,000 viewers, followed by the “CBS Evening News” with 2.68, or 950,000 viewers, and “NBC Nightly News,” with 2.20, or 780,000 viewers. The order was the same among the key 25-54 age group, according to Nielsen figures provided Journal-isms by ABC.

Barbara Ciara, anchor and managing editor at WTKR-TV in Norfolk, Va., and vice president/broadcast of the National Association of Black Journalists, told Journal-isms that as both a woman and someone who works at a CBS affiliate, she was hoping that Couric would succeed. It takes time for viewers to change loyalties, Ciara said; people like “going to the old shoe that’s comfortable and not the four-inch heel.”

Ciara also said the content of the newscasts was important when viewers make their choices.

The Couric show had no pieces by journalists of color on its first broadcast. “Based on what I saw tonight….white male correspondents, white male pundits and white male commentators should be celebrating,” veteran broadcaster Tom Jacobs wrote to Journal-isms that night; “middle age women and people of color…….oh well…………so much for the ‘new’ CBS News!”

CBS spokeswoman Sandra M. Genelius replied, “do you judge a program by one broadcast?”

On the second night, Couric introduced Sonia Nazario, a projects reporter for the Los Angeles Times who is Latina, to do an essay, and on the third night, correspondent Byron Pitts, who is African American, reported from Jacksonville, N.C.

According to columnist Lawrence Aaron, writing Friday in the Record of Hackensack, N.J., there is a more fundamental problem:

“You won’t see me applauding Katie Couric’s ascension to the CBS anchor throne, even though it’s being treated like some great innovation in news programming. It is not,” he began.

“Certainly in broadcasting history she goes down as the first woman to solo anchor the network nightly news. But it’s mostly cosmetic. No real substantive change there. The first week, the newly anointed CBS anchor was mostly wearing the same kind of blazer as her male counterparts, but with skirts and pearls rather than slacks and neckties.

“After nearly a year of blather and hype, Couric’s staking her claim to the legacy of Edward R. Murrow was an anticlimactic reminder that the network evening news is a closed club. While it represents a coup for professional women in broadcasting, network TV evening news anchor jobs are almost exclusively white.”

That might explain why Hispanics opt out of the late-night contest between ABC’s “Nightline,” NBC’s “Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and CBS’s “Late Show With David Letterman.”

As reported in July, ratings for the second quarter of the year, March 27 to June 25, showed “Nightline” with a rating among Hispanics of 0.6, or 110,000 Hispanic viewers, compared with 0.8, or 130,000, for Leno on NBC, and 0.4, or 60,000 Hispanic viewers for Letterman.

But 1,428,000 people were watching “Noticias Univision – Ultima Hora,” the news show on Univision.

[Added Sept. 21: Still, it’s unlikely that Latinos who don’t speak Spanish are watching Spanish-language Univision.

[Manuel De La Rosa, reporter for KRGV-TV in Weslaco, Texas, who is vice president/broadcast of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, said he believed the Hispanic numbers for the broadcast networks were low because “they don’t give me a reason to want to watch. They don’t address Hispanic working families — they cover immigration, which is a negative,” but “there are not enough Hispanic experts on the air . . . They need to have Hispanics in a different light. Those newscasts don’t appeal to us.”]

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The Complex Worldviews of Journalists of Color

A new portrait of American journalists finds that journalists of color are “more likely than majority journalists to see as important analyzing complex problems, developing intellectual and cultural interests of the community, seeing journalists as adversaries of public officials and business, and including news of the widest possible interest.”

The characterization comes from “The American Journalist in the 21st Century: U.S. News People at the Dawn of a New Millennium,” which updates a similar 1992 profile of the profession. It is written by faculty of the Indiana University School of Journalism and published this week in book form by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates of Mahwah, N.J..

The section on the attitudes of journalists of color is based on interviews conducted in 2002 by the Indiana University Survey Research Center with 137 Hispanic, 108 Asian American, 55 African American and 36 Native American journalists. Overall, 1,149 U.S. journalists participated in a telephone survey, supplemented by separate samples of 315 journalists of color and online journalists.

The survey explored the journalists’ background, education, interest in continuing education, family life, age, work experience, income, management experience, editorial influence, job dimensions, job satisfaction, commitment to journalism, perceptions of their roles, and ethical standards, and found significant differences among the different journalist-of-color groups.

For example, “the ‘typical’ African American journalist was female, Protestant, a college-degree holder, either married or single and living with a partner, a Democrat earning a median salary of $53,333 a year, a member of at least one journalistic organization, and an employee of a large (an average of 153 news people), group-owned organization.”

But “the ‘typical Hispanic journalist was male, the holder of a bachelor’s degree, married or living with a partner, someone with more than 10 years of experience, a median salary of $49,167, Catholic, a member of a journalistic organization, and an employee of a large (an average of 185 news people), group-owned organization.”

“The ‘typical’ Asian American journalist was also female, the holder of at least a bachelor’s degree and more likely than any other group to hold a graduate degree, not affiliated with any religion, married or living with a partner, a Democrat, someone with fewer than 10 years of journalistic experience, a median salary of $52,300, a member of at least one journalistic organization, and an employee of a very large (an average of 308 news people), group-owned organization.”

“The ‘typical’ Native American journalist was a male, married or living with a partner, a bit older and with more years in the profession than the other minority groups but also with a lower median salary ($37,300), not a member of a mainline religion but a member of a journalistic organization, and a worker in a small (an average of 65 news people) organization that was not owned by a larger corporation.”

In its conclusions for the chapter, the authors — David H. Weaver, Randal A. Beam, Bonnie J. Brownlee, Paul S. Voakes and G. Cleveland Wilhoit — note that the percentage of journalists of color in U.S. newsrooms, 9.5 percent, is well below not only that of people of color in the general population, 30.9 percent, but below the percentage of color with college degrees, 24 percent.

While “a hopeful sign is that minorities were being hired at a faster rate than in earlier decades . . . One challenge has been a retrenchment in newspaper newsrooms,” they wrote. “The growth of earlier days simply no longer is occurring. Another is the lack of a significant pipeline of young minority journalists coming out of journalism schools. A third is the finding that minority journalists, especially African American journalists, voice unhappiness with opportunities for advancement and are notably more likely than others to say they intend to leave the news media in the next five years.”

Nearly a third of black journalists said they would like to be working somewhere else in five years, much larger than the other journalists of color, although 30 percent of black journalists said they were “very satisfied” with their jobs.

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L. A. Times Staffers Back Bosses’ Stand on Cuts

“A petition supporting Los Angeles Times Editor Dean Baquet and Publisher Jeff Johnson for their stand against potential cuts by the Tribune Company began circulating Tuesday, according to newsroom staffers. Hundreds had signed the document that was to be sent to the corporate headquarters in Chicago before Thursday’s planned board meeting,” Joe Strupp reported late Tuesday in Editor & Publisher.

“. . . Several Times employees who spoke to E&P were fearful that Baquet and Johnson may be in jeopardy of losing their jobs after their comments last week against likely cutbacks. Others said the mood at the paper was dismal as concerns about even further cutbacks grew, with many saying the paper would lose a valuable part of its resources if more people are lost.

“‘We’re somewhere between much ado about nothing and freaking out,’ said Jim Newton, a Times bureau chief and 22-year employee. ‘People are looking toward this meeting in Chicago with some apprehension.’

“The concerns come a week after Baquet and Johnson were quoted in a Times story criticizing recent talk of further cuts during a meeting with Tribune officials. ‘I am not averse to making cuts,’ Baquet said in the story. “But you can go too far, and I don’t plan to do that. I just have a difference of opinion with the owners of Tribune about what the size of the staff should be. To make substantial reductions would significantly damage the quality of the paper.’ Added Johnson, ‘newspapers can’t cut their way into the future. We have to carefully balance economic realities with serving our readers.’

“Since then, speculation has risen that Tribune officials may implement the cuts anyway, or possibly [remove] Baquet or Johnson. As Thursday’s board meeting looms, the speculation has sparked talk of everything from a sale of the paper to Baquet’s resignation.”

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McGruder Leaves “Boondocks” Papers Wondering

“‘The Boondocks’ creator Aaron McGruder began a six-month leave of absence in late March. Reports at the time indicated that he would resume his popular and controversial comic in October,” Dave Astor wrote today in Editor & Publisher.

“But Universal Press Syndicate, when contacted by E&P last week and again today, didn’t yet know McGruder’s exact plans.

“‘We have not heard a definitive start date or no start date from Aaron, as of right now,’ said Kathie Kerr, Universal’s assistant vice president/communications. ‘Obviously we’re concerned about getting our newspaper clients a decisive answer… . We owe a great deal of thanks to ‘The Boondocks’ newspaper editors for their patience.'”

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T-Shirt: “Fiery Latino Pundits Available at NAHJ!”

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s racial comments — for which he apologized — have become fair game for commentary. She’s “Puerto Rican, or, the same thing, Cuban, I mean they are all very hot. They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it,” he said.

Bessy Reyna wrote Friday in the Hartford Courant, “For a while now I have been trying to understand why, despite large numbers of Latinos in the general population, we are so invisible on a national level. When was the last time you saw a Latino as a regular or guest commentator on a Sunday TV talk show or as a syndicated columnist appearing in a major newspaper?

“When it comes to TV news shows, there are a few anchors including Soledad O’Brien of ‘American Morning’ at CNN, Natalie Morales of the ‘Today’ show on NBC, and Elizabeth Vargas, who was at ‘ABC Evening News’ for a short while. Yet, the only Latino journalist interviewing policy-makers is Ray Suarez of the ‘News Hour With James Lehrer‘ on PBS. Essayist Richard Rodriguez, who also appears in that show, is the one Latino voice connecting the cultural and political dots for the rest of us.

“Given the number of Latinos who are members of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, there should be plenty of candidates for TV producers to choose from. I am sure many of them are equally capable of speaking loudly, shouting at other panelists and interrupting them in mid-sentence. Frankly, our feistiness should have catapulted us to the top of the pundit world.

“I am considering designing a T-shirt that says ‘Fiery Latino pundits available at NAHJ!’ That might work. Who knows, I might even get invited to participate in some local community TV show on cable.”

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Madison Ave. Firm Settles With Rights Commission

“Four Omnicom Group-owned agencies have reached a settlement with the New York City Commission on Human Rights, bringing the largest ad-agency holding company in line with rivals that earlier this month struck deals to publicly set goals for hiring minority staff and then report on their progress,” Matthew Creamer reported today in Advertising Age.

“The agreement with Omnicom will likely head off the threat of potentially embarrassing hearings set for next week.

“Instead of striking a deal with the commission, Omnicom brokered one with New York City Councilman Larry Seabrook. It pledged more than $1 million for a program that includes the creation of advertising, marketing and media curriculum at the historically black Medgar Evers College. That program is still in the works, despite today’s news.

“Today’s press release from Omnicom featured a glowing quote from Al Sharpton, president-founder of the National Action Network: ‘This is an historic day in advancing our efforts to increase diversity in the advertising industry. I applaud John Wren,” Omnicom president-CEO, “and his companies for their continued efforts and for now setting the highest standard in the industry. Omnicom’s commitment of people and financial support show why it is the market leader in the advertising world, they think and act big.'”

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