Lagging on Station Ownership

Study: Consolidations Squeeze Out People of Color

Despite gains that people of color have made in other industries, their ownership of broadcast stations remains woefully low, according to a new study.

Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission “is once again — despite widespread public opposition — poised to eliminate longstanding limits on media ownership,” which “could have a tremendous negative impact, especially on broadcast outlets owned by women and minorities,” said the study, “Out of the Picture: Minority & Female TV Station Ownership in the United States.”

The report, conducted by a nonprofit group called Free Press, based in Northampton, Mass., was released last week and praised in a conference call by FCC Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, and representatives of National Council of La Raza, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Rainbow/PUSH, the Minority Media Telecommunications Council and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

“Now, as the FCC begins another round of a procedure to determine regulations governing our nation’s broadcast ownership rules, the results of this study become alarmingly important,” NAHJ said in a statement.

“NAHJ urges the FCC to consider the results of this study and the unsettling numbers it contains when deciding who can own the media in this dynamically-changing country where a third of the population are people of color.”

Some of the findings:

• “Women comprise 51 percent of the entire U.S. population, but own a total of only 67 stations, or 4.97 percent of all stations.
• “Minorities comprise 33 percent of the entire U.S. population, but own a total of only 44 stations, or 3.26 percent of all stations.
• “Hispanics or Latinos comprise 14 percent of the entire U.S. population, but only own a total of 15 stations, or 1.11 percent of all stations.
• “Blacks or African Americans comprise 13 percent of the entire U.S. population but only own a total of 18 stations, or 1.3 percent of all stations.
• “Asians comprise 4 percent of the entire U.S. population but only own a total of 6 stations, or 0.44 percent of all stations.
• “Non-Hispanic White owners controlled 1,033 stations, or 76.6 percent of the all stations.
• “There has been no improvement in the level of minority broadcast television ownership since 1998, even as the total universe of stations has increased by approximately 12 percent.
• “At the same time, there has been a marked decrease in the total number of black or African-American owned stations â?? dropping nearly 30 percent since 1998.
• “Pro-consolidation policies enacted by the FCC in the late 1990s had a significant impact on minority ownership, indirectly or directly contributing to the loss of 40 percent of the stations that were minority-owned in 1998.
• “Over 10 percent of the nation’s Hispanic or Latino TV homes are in the New York City market, where there are no Latino-owned stations.
• “Over 12 percent of the nation’s African-American TV homes are in the New York City and Los Angeles markets, where there are no African American-owned stations. Nor do African- Americans own stations in cities with large black populations like Atlanta and New Orleans.”

It continued: “Historically, women and minorities have been under-represented in broadcast ownership due to a host of factors â?? including the unfortunate fact that some of these licenses were originally awarded decades ago when the nation lived under a segregationist regime. The FCC, beginning with its 1978 Statement of Policy on Minority Ownership of Broadcasting Facilities, has repeatedly pledged to remedy this sorry history,” but has not.

The FCC is holding its first public hearing on media ownership issues in Los Angeles on Oct. 3.

Lest people think that the Internet and other new media make television less important, Nielsen Media Research reported last week that the average amount of time that U.S. households had a television set on each day during the 2005-06 TV season increased by three minutes from the year before, to a record eight hours and 14 minutes. The average amount of television watched by an individual was also up by three minutes, to a record four hours and 35 minutes per day.

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“Boondocks” Strip Apparently Ending After 6 Years

“Although Aaron McGruder has made no statement about retiring or resuming The Boondocks for print newspapers, Universal Press Syndicate is announcing that newspapers should not count on it coming back in the foreseeable future,” the cartoonist’s syndicate said in an announcement Monday.

“Numerous attempts by the syndicate to pin McGruder down on a date that the strip would be coming back were unsuccessful, says Lee Salem, president of Universal Press Syndicate.

The announcement provides an opening for strips by other young African American cartoonists, such as Darrin Bell and Cory Thomas, Alan Shearer, editorial director and general manager of the writers group, told Journal-ims on Tuesday. Bell’s “Candorville” has about 50 clients, and Thomas’ “Watch Your Head” has about 20, he said. Both strips were offered as substitutes for “The Boondocks” while it was on sabbatical. “We just need editors to stop the reruns [of “The Boondocks”] and give a new guy a chance,” Shearer said.

Universal Press is introducing “Maintaining,” a strip by a young biracial cartoonist, Nate Creekmore, in January, said spokeswoman Kathie Kerr.

But Kerr said, “There is no direct replacement for ‘The Boondocks.’ I think editors are going to put their editorial hats on and say, ‘let’s look at the merit of the strip no matter what it is,'” without regard to the ethnicity of the characters.

The Universal Press release on “The Boondocks” said, â??’It was obvious that Aaron would not be able to meet his original six-month target of returning The Boondocks to newspapers,’ says Salem. ‘His Sunday strips needed to be in by mid-September to meet newspapersâ?? deadlines of publishing The Boondocks by the end of October. We had to consider the newspapers currently running The Boondocks reruns and expecting its return. It was unfair to keep them guessing any longer.’ Salem added that questions from editors looking for answers on The Boondocksâ?? return have been coming in daily for weeks,” the statement continued.

In the Washington Post on Tuesday, Laura Sessions Stepp wrote, “Apparently, the mind behind young black radicals Huey and Riley Freeman has gone Hollywood, or at least has further hopes of doing so, and has decided he can’t devote himself to the grind of a daily strip. His late-night animated show, ‘The Boondocks,’ on the Cartoon Network was recently renewed for another season, the first-season DVD is out, and a film is reportedly in the works.

“Perhaps for McGruder, whose broad and sometimes outrageous characterizations forced readers to confront racial stereotypes and caused cartoon editors to blanch, the future of the funny papers is in pixels rather than picas.

“The cartoonist, 31, did not respond to a request for comment yesterday. A message on his voicemail indicated he was taking some time to ‘restore his creative juices.’

“The heavies at Universal are clearly not happy with the way McGruder handled the situation, although they worded their news release carefully.”

McGruder did not respond to an inquiry from Journal-isms placed through his agent last week. “The Boondocks” began syndication with Universal Press Syndicate in April 1999 and quickly grew to have a client list of about 300 daily and Sunday and online, the syndicate said.

McGruder’s big break came at the 1997 convention of the National Association of Black Journalists, where he met a Universal Press Syndicate editor, the Chicago Tribune wrote in 1999. He had been rejected by other syndicates that said they loved the strip but couldn’t use it. In the dedication to a book-length collection of “Boondocks” strips, McGruder jointly thanked NABJ, Lonnae O’Neal Parker of the Washington Post, former NABJ executive director JoAnne Lyons Wooten, Garry Howard of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “and the Black media who helped spread the word.” [Added Sept. 26]

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Native Cartoonist to Debut in Santa Fe Newspaper

“Native humor with a hint of social commentary will hit doorsteps in the Southwest next month when The Santa Fe New Mexican adds Ricardo CatÚ, reznet’s former student cartoonist, to its funny pages,” Mary Hudetz wrote for reznet, a project for Native student journalists.

“‘Without Reservations’ will be part of the paper’s cartoon lineup Monday through Saturday and will start on a trial basis, said Bernadette Garcia, the paper’s community news and comics page editor.

“Publication of the first installment of ‘Without Reservations’ in the New Mexican is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 2 and would make CatÚ one of few Native Americans, if not the only one, appearing in a daily newspaper as a regular cartoonist. Few, if any, cartoons in other daily papers deal primarily with Native issues,” Hudetz wrote.

CatÚ, 42, graduated last April from Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., and is a 2005 graduate of the Freedom Forum’s American Indian Journalism Institute at the University of South Dakota.

He told Journal-isms he started cartooning only three years ago, after having worked in jobs ranging from blackjack dealer to substitute teacher and security guard. While selling pencil drawings at an arts and crafts show in Los Angeles, he started drawing a cartoon, and a man in the next booth offered him first $20, then $40 for it.

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Injured Immigrants Cheated out of Workers’ Comp

“From field hands to garment workers to poultry processors to construction crews, injuries abound in industries that rely on an estimated 7 million undocumented workers, often to do dirty and dangerous jobs. Yet those who are undocumented are frequently cheated out of benefits that American workers have taken for granted for nearly a century, a McClatchy Newspapers investigation has found,” Liz Chandler wrote in a story that ran Sept. 15 in the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer and is still being picked up by other McClatchy newspapers.

“Federal labor officials haven’t studied whether undocumented workers are wrongfully being denied compensation. But the exploitation is rampant, according to interviews with scores of illegal workers, employers, workers’ comp lawyers, health care providers and workplace experts, and a review of lawsuits and workers’ comp claims.

“In one national study, university researchers surveyed 2,660 day laborers, most of them working illegally. One in five said he’d suffered a work injury. Among those who were hurt in the last year, 54 percent said they didn’t receive the medical care they needed, and only 6 percent got workers’ comp benefits.

“Employers in at least 20 states, arguing that their employees shouldn’t receive injury benefits because they’re illegal immigrants, have fought and lost in courts and review boards.”

Chandler told Journal-isms that the Charlotte newspaper has been focusing on illegal immigration all year, “as a lot of the issues a lot of border states are facing are coming to the interior states.” She said she wrote this story while working in the McClatchy Washington bureau, finding that not much had been reported about this aspect of immigration.

• Issac J. Bailey, Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Sun-News: Exploiting immigrants hurts others
• Ruben Navarrette, San Diego Union-Tribune: The dysfunctional GOP plan

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Sylvester Monroe Joins Johnson Publishing Co.

Sylvester Monroe, longtime Time magazine correspondent who left the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in June to become editor of a new Atlanta-based magazine, returned to Chicago. Today was his first day as senior editor of Ebony magazine.

Bryan Monroe, editorial director of Ebony and Jet and no relation to Sylvester Monroe, agreed that the onetime Time correspondent was his first major hire, “after my assistant.” The Atlanta-based magazine, Mecca, did not get off the ground.

“Among my duties will be to build and manage a team of freelance writers for Ebony and Jet,” Sylvester Monroe told Journal-isms via e-mail. “In many ways, it’s what I would have been doing at MECCA, but I’ll be doing it for the most established and venerable African American brand in publishing. That’s pretty exciting, and I am really looking forward to returning home in every sense of the word, home to Chicago where I grew up, home to magazines where I got my start in journalism and home working with African Americans.”

Monroe covered Jesse Jackson‘s trip to the Mideast this month as a freelancer for Ebony and Jet.

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“Are You a Journalist or Are You Hispanic?”

“It’s the same song that I have heard for my 21 years in this business. The refrain: Are you a journalist or are you Hispanic?” Carlos Sanchez, editor of the Waco (Texas) Tribune-Herald, told readers on Sunday.

“Well, after a lot of introspection, I have concluded that being a journalist and Hispanic are not mutually exclusive.

“The entire concept that I have betrayed my people is as patronizing as the treatment traditionally white newspapers have historically given minority communities.

“It suggests that any Hispanic with some authority should gloss over the fact that we are as fallible as any people.

“It suggests that Hispanics are a monolithic-thinking community and that they are incapable of thinking for themselves.

“Worse, it cedes power to the very white institutions that so many of my critics say have constantly oppressed them as Hispanics.”

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Jackson Editor Through With “Mayor Gone Wild”

As Mary Vallis recounted it for readers of Canada’s National Post, “Frank Melton, the brash and eccentric Mayor of Jackson, Miss., may have taken his war on crime a little too seriously.

“After campaigning on an anti-crime platform with the slogan ‘Help is on the way!’ and winning 88% of the vote, the gun-toting Mr. Melton is the target of several criminal investigations because of his hands-on approach to fighting crime.”

Melton has become too much even for the executive editor of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Ronnie Agnew, to keep his own counsel.

“Melton had his chance and blew it through pride and arrogance. He really believed that his in-your-face tactics would rally this city,” Agnew wrote in a Sept. 17 column.

“Instead, Jackson under Melton became more racially polarized, an unintended result of ineffective crime sweeps that seemed to target only one part of town.

“If he continues to fight, he will only prolong the inevitable. That is not to say Melton is guilty of any crime. It does mean that Jackson citizens have finally grown weary of lies, unfulfilled promises and lack of accountability. He’s a mayor gone wild.”

Agnew followed up Sunday with another column.

Vallis’ story gives part of the indictment: “His most controversial stunt happened in late August. The Mayor pulled up at a dilapidated house with a small army of youths and allegedly helped them demolish it with sledgehammers. Mr. Melton claimed the duplex was a crack house, although no drugs were found.

“Because of that incident, prosecutors indicted him for burglary, malicious mischief and causing a minor to commit a felony.

“He faces eight indictments altogether, in part because he allegedly entered a park, a church and a college with a gun (he carries his sidearm almost everywhere and claims he recently took two guns on a commercial flight). If convicted, he faces up to 50 years in prison.”

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More Where Chávez Came From, Columnist Says

“Hugo Chávez‘s tasteless ‘devil’ tirade against President Bush may have drawn the biggest headlines at the UN this week, but the Venezuelan leader is merely the most strident in a new wave of Latin American presidents who today are openly challenging years of U.S. control over their countries,” Juan Gonzalez wrote Friday in the New York Daily News.

That new wave includes Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner, Brazil’s Luis Inacio (Lula) de Silva, Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Uruguay’s Tabaré Vázquez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales.

“‘It’s important to have partners, but not bosses,’ President Morales told me yesterday in an exclusive interview during his first trip to the United States.

“. . . Today, a new breed of Latin American leaders will be bullied no more. Chávez may be the loudest and the rudest, but he is not alone.”

• Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News: Chavez’s oil gift, part II
• Roland S. Martin, Creators Syndicate: Chavez Represents Anti-American Sentiment 21st Century Style
• Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: Why the Firebrands Get Heard

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Voter ID Measures Get Scant Columnist Support

Last week, the Republican-dominated House of Representatives passed a measure requiring voters to show government-issued photo IDs to vote in federal elections by 2008.

The idea is finding little support among columnists of color, on either the federal or state level.

Republicans’ “focus on blocking the ballot box seems especially harsh â?? and hypocritical â?? at the very time that President Bush has claimed that spreading democratic ideals is the centerpiece of American foreign policy,” Cynthia Tucker wrote Sunday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Nick Jimenez, editorial page editor of the Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times, wrote Sunday, “The notion that someone should have to prove beyond a voting card that they have the right to vote has a mean-spirited history.”

At the Palm Beach (Fla.) Post, Elisa Cramer wrote on Friday, “These lawmakers proudly, loudly and untruthfully claim that they are protecting voters from fraud. In reality, they are trying to stop scores of people from voting.”

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Each Month, at Least 3 Journalists Are Killed

“Five hundred and eighty journalists have been killed for their work over the past 15 years, many on the orders of government and military officials, a new investigation by the Committee to Protect Journalists has found,” the Committee to Protect Journalists reported last week.

“CPJ’s analysis of journalist deaths worldwide â??- the most extensive study of its kind ever undertaken â??- shows that journalists have been killed in direct relation to their work at a rate of more than three per month. Most are local beat reporters, editors, and photojournalists. Seven out of 10 were murdered.”

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Short Takes

• What would a slave returning to today’s world say to a young black man imprisoned in connection with the shooting of five Duquesne University basketball players? “Our chains were on the outside. Your chains are on the inside, mostly coiled up there,” pointing to the young man’s head, according to a scenario drawn for readers by columnist Tony Norman, writing Friday in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
• “Talk show queen Oprah Winfrey was launching her own channel, Oprah and Friends, on Monday morning on XM Satellite Radio, with shows hosted by her and a collection of popular personalities from her television show, including her best friend, Gayle King, fitness expert Bob Greene and renowned poet Maya Angelou,” the Associated Press reported. “The station will broadcast 24 hours a day, with highlights of the shows replayed every weekend.”
• New York Times columnist Bob Herbert joined calls Monday for Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, held by the United States without charges in Iraq for more than five months, to be brought to trial or released. The AP went public last week with this plea last week, and its CEO and president, Tom Curley, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post on Saturday repeating it, as Editor & Publisher reported today. Hussein allegedly had close ties to insurgents, which the AP questions strongly.
• “Come January, Dallas-Ft. Worth viewers will see Maria Arita, anchor of the 4 p.m. news on CBS-owned KTVT, reporting the day’s events on another station in town. Under a new deal, KTVT will produce several daily 90-second Spanish-language news updates for Azteca America affiliate KODF,” Allison Romano reported today in Broadcasting & Cable.
• “The Idaho Press-Tribune in Nampa will launch a 10,000-copy free-distribution weekly Spanish-language paper on Oct. 6,” Editor & Publisher reported today. “La Prensa Libre will be distributed Fridays at grocery stores, restaurants and other high-traffic areas, the Press-Tribune said in an article by David Woolsey.”
• Tanisha Blakely, AOL Black Voices lifestyles manager, has joined New York magazine as online project manager, where she will be in charge of various technological developments, a New York spokeswoman told Journal-isms today.
• Barry Saunders, columnist for the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer, fulfilled a lifelong dream and worked as a garbage collector, he told readers on Friday. “After working from 6:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. — a half-shift this day, it turned out — I’ve got a message for city leaders: Pay the dudes what you owe them! . . . There is nothing unskilled” about the way one of his co-workers did his job, Saunders wrote. “The seven-year vet was equally adept at driving while sitting or standing, and, when signaled, could activate with his foot the lever that raised and lowered the tubs on the sides of the truck to empty recyclable refuse into the truck’s bed.”
• “For me, looking at her was enough to dream that someone like me could one day be governor,” Macarena Hernández wrote Friday in the Dallas Morning News, in a tribute to Ann Richards, the former Texas governor who died Sept. 13 at age 73. Others who wrote about Richards included Arnold Garcia in the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman, Bob Ray Sanders in the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram, and Merlene Davis in the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader.