64 Take Cleveland Plain Dealer Buyout

5 Journalists of Color Accept “Very Generous” Offer

Five journalists of color are among 64 newsroom employees accepting a buyout offer at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Editor Doug Clifton told Journal-isms Wednesday.

Clifton listed the journalists of color as Roger Brown, sports columnist; Eustacio Humphrey, photographer; Roy Graham, copy editor; Richard Peery, obituary writer and columnist; and Haki Crisden, page designer. All are black journalists and Humphrey is a black Latino.

Clifton said the diversity in the newsroom might actually increase because of the exit of so many white journalists; journalists of color might represent a larger percentage of those remaining in the newsroom.

In all, as Teresa Dixon Murray reported in Wednesday’s editions, “The Plain Dealer’s newsroom will be reduced by about 17 percent through a voluntary buyout program announced two months ago.

“Of the newsroom’s 372 employees, 64 accepted the company’s offer to leave voluntarily in exchange for a severance package. Those who are at least 50 years old and have at least 20 years of service will receive 2 1/2 years’ pay and health care coverage. Others leaving voluntarily are getting two weeks’ pay and health care for every year of service.

“The Plain Dealer’s offer was made to all of its 1,450 workers. President and Publisher Terrance C.Z. Egger declined Tuesday to say how many of the 1,080 employees in other departments—such as circulation, advertising and accounting—have volunteered to leave. The Plain Dealer’s parent, Advance Publications Inc., is privately owned,” Murray wrote.

Although Advance Publications is privately owned and not subject to Wall Street pressures as are other companies that have offered buyouts and undertaken layoffs, it still found itself having to reduce costs, although no reduction targets were set. “We’re just facing strong economic pressures,” Clifton said. “It’s not an issue of trying to squeeze exorbitant profits.”

Advance’s newspapers include the Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., the Oregonian in Portland and the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Clifton said the “very, very generous” buyout offer was too much for many to resist, especially if they planned to leave anyway. For example, he said, Peery is past retirement age, Humphrey had already lined up a job at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where he could pursue his snowboarding avocation; and Crisden planned to marry a woman from Australia and move there.

Some 21 reporting positions across the newsroom will be affected by the buyouts, he said. Whether replacements will be hired depends on where the needs are, he said: “We’re just sorting it all now.”

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• Joe Strupp, Editor & Publisher: Controversial ‘Boston Globe’ Contract Proposal Heading for Defeat

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Pioneer TV Anchor Is Suspect in Armed Robbery

One of the first African American TV anchors in Meridian, Miss., if not the first, who later went on to become the city’s equal opportunity officer, has been charged with armed robbery after a credit union was held up on Friday.

Donald Cecil Cross, 59, of Meridian, was arrested later in the day, Meridian police said. News reports said he confessed to the crime.

Cross was a reporter and anchor at WTOK-TV in Meridian in the 1970s, leaving about 1981, General Manager Tim Walker told Journal-isms. “He was very good. He did a great job,” said Walker, 46, a Meridian native. “I remember him as a staple of the station.” He was the most prominent African American at the station during that period, Walker said.

Cross went on to report for history-making WLBT-TV in Jackson, Miss., from 1985 to 1988, and for the NBC affiliate in Meridian. WLBT had made history in 1970, when the Federal Communications Commission gave a biracial nonprofit organization control of the station, taking it from a life insurance company. The outlet had systematically ignored news and programming about African Americans, complainants said.

Cross was the city’s equal opportunity officer from Aug. 1, 1988, to March 23, 2005, a Meridian spokeswoman said. Meridian police described Cross as retired, but the city spokeswoman said that the term was often used loosely. She said she was not permitted to disclose anyone’s retirement status.

On Friday morning, according to police and news reports, a suspect wearing a “curly-type” wig and a long coat displayed a handgun and demanded cash from a teller at Muna Federal Credit Union on Highway 19 North in Meridian.

The suspect fled in a white vehicle, but a witness noted the car’s tag number. The car was spotted about 4 p.m. and Cross was arrested, Sgt. J.C. Lewis told Journal-isms.

He was charged with armed robbery and posted a $25,000 bond later that day. The case will go to the grand jury in March, Lewis said.

The television stations that employed Cross in Jackson and Meridian carried stories on his arrest, as did the Meridian Star.

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BET’s News V.P., Spokesman Leaving

“Two important members of our senior executive staff—Nina Henderson-Moore, Executive Vice President of News & Public Affairs; and Michael Lewellen, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications—are leaving the BET Networks family,” CEO Debra Lee wrote to staff members on Tuesday.

“Nina has been a solid, strategic contributor to our leadership team. Her seven-year career with BET was stellar. She led the BET News team to excellence, and managed the creation of our BET Pictures division in Hollywood. Nina’s personal commitment to BET was demonstrated even through serious medical challenges during her tenure at the BET Networks. Under Nina, BET News became a dynamic, multiplatform information source for our viewers.

“Since 1999, Michael has guided our Corporate Communications function through some of BET’s most pivotal, historic and, on occasion, publicly-challenging times. He has served BET with professionalism as our chief communications executive and spokesperson with the media. Michael has been a valuable asset to BET and the other Viacom brands, and to the cable industry.

“The next chapters in life for both Nina and Michael will no doubt yield the same success they have experienced at BET,” Lee wrote.

Neither Henderson Moore, who is the wife of Denver Post editor Greg Moore, nor Lewellen could be reached for comment Wednesday.

It often fell to Lewellen to try to put the best face on the network’s decisions after withering criticism.

Last September, after the Hurricane Katrina tragedy, Aaron McGruder’s “Boondocks” comic strip showed “Michael Llewelyn” denying that BET undercovered the storm. “Within hours of the hurricane, we played several hours of videos from Master P and Juvenile,” the spokesman said in the strip.

The real Lewellen told Journal-isms: “I guess after 23 years in communications and media, I may have finally arrived. I just wish Aaron had spelled my last name correctly.”

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Columnist Mary Mitchell Defends Her Free Meal

“Usually I pass up the invitations for a free lunch. But I couldn’t resist the invitation from Charlie Trotter to have dinner at his restaurant,” Mary Mitchell wrote Tuesday in her Chicago Sun-Times column.

“For one thing, the invite was part of a surprise gift from the world-famous chef that he sent along with a box of goodies in recognition of my 2006 National Association of Black Journalists’ award of commentary.” She praised the restaurant meal.

An item about the lunch ended up on the Romenesko Web page at the Poynter Institute Wednesday under the headline, “NABJ contest winner gets a free dinner from Charlie Trotter.” The inference some took was that an ethical violation had taken place.

Mitchell rejected any such criticism. “It was a gift. I don’t cover food. I don’t cover chefs. I don’t write about the North Side and I didn’t review it,” she told Journal-isms. “That would mean no one can send me a gift. I don’t cover that industry. I don’t see a problem. He’s not a source,” she said.

Editorial Page Editor Steve Huntley told Journal-isms the paper’s ethics rules come from the editor, but that “I trust Mary’s ethical standards to the absolute. I have the highest faith and trust in her ethical standards.”

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Sun-Times Picks Latino as America’s 300 Millionth

The Chicago Sun-Times Wednesday picked Alyzandra Marcella Ruiz, “5 pounds, 13 ounces of promise and possibility” and born in Chicago, as the nation’s 300 millionth resident.

“The truth is that counting people is as much an art as a science, and the Census Bureau will never know whether the actual 300 millionth American was born last week or will be born tomorrow, or perhaps arrive at O’Hare this evening or wade across the Rio Grande River this afternoon,” read the story by Lori Rackl, which took up almost all the tabloid’s front page.

“We like to think it’s Alyzandra, daughter of Luis Ruiz, 31, and Janet Noel, 32, who live in Printers Row.”

The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times on Tuesday created “a fictional 300-millionth American, making up specifics about his life and how it might unfold based on actual statistics. . . . He is a Hispanic male. He will be born at 7:46 a.m. today in Los Angeles County, where birth rates are high, especially among Hispanic women. His mother is a 26-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen. She works as a manager at a hotel. His father, 30, works construction,” Susan Aschoff wrote.

On National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” on Monday, demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institute was asked why the 300 million number mattered to him. “Well, first of all it’s a big number and I think it emphasizes the way we’re getting here. We’re going back to our immigrant roots in a way in the sense that it’s immigration and the children of immigrants who are causing a lot of the growth right now, which is a change from a lot of the past,” he said.

Also on Monday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution profiled Robert Ken Woo Jr., a fourth-generation Chinese American who was celebrated by Life magazine in 1967 as the 200 millionth American.

• Al Tompkins, Poynter Institute: Thursday Edition: The 300-Million Mark

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Asian Journalists Say Just Call It Racist

“A headline and a sentence in a Sept. 20 article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune highlights the importance of recognizing racist remarks against Asian Americans and accurately reporting them as such,” the Asian American Journalists Association said Wednesday.

“The story about a hotly contested congressional race centered on Mike Osskopp, a campaign staffer for candidate John Kline, seen screaming about ‘another Jap car’ as he chided those arriving to attend a campaign event of Coleen Rowley, Kline’s opponent.”

The association criticized the story’s characterization of the insult as a “racial term” and a word “considered a disparaging term.”

“Altogether, the word choices in the headline and the story, . . . reflect the reality that the word “J-p” has been and continues to be a racist insult,” the organization said.

“AAJA appreciates the acknowledgement by David Peters, the Star Tribune’s world/nation editor, that the word choice of ‘racial remark’ in the headline was off the mark.”

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Columnist Returns After Low Pay at Black College

Two years ago, Bill Maxwell resigned from the St. Petersburg Times as editorial writer and columnist to fulfill a promise to himself to work at a historically black college or university. It would be his way “of ‘giving back’ to an institution that made higher education possible for me and a way to help current and future black students,” he told readers. He went to Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Maxwell is back at the St. Pete Times a year earlier than expected, he told Journal-isms on Wednesday. “I’m back here because certain things did not align and Tuscaloosa wasn’t someplace I liked that well,” he said.

Specifically, he was earning $33,000 when he started at Stillman, and $35,000 two years later. Maxwell said he had a daughter in college and had learned to be “really, really creative” in making ends meet. He finally decided the job was not viable financially.

Although he resumed working in St. Petersburg in August, reintroducing himself to readers on Aug. 13, Maxwell still teaches an online class in magazine feature writing at Stillman. He contributes editorials to the St. Pete paper, writes a column for the Sunday edition, and turns out two columns a week for the Gainesville (Fla.) Sun, which started life as a “black” newspaper published by the New York Times Co., then was renamed a “community” paper.

Maxwell said he was still hated by racist whites and disliked by blacks who have a “’60s mentality.” His columns follow the self-help rules outlined by Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam in his “Message to the Blackman in America,” he said.

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Short Takes

• “University of Texas Hispanic Journalists in collaboration with the Latino Leadership Council published their first newspaper Friday to better meet the needs of UT’s Latino community, said Mary Gonzalez, an ethnic studies senior and financial co-director for the Latino Leadership Council,” Suzanne Edwards reported Monday in the Daily Texan, the student newspaper.
• Two commissioners from the Federal Communications Commission are coming to New York Thursday night to attend a “town hall meeting/public hearing” on diversity in media,” David Hinckley wrote Wednesday in the New York Daily News. “The session will begin with a panel discussion that includes Juan Gonzalez of The News, WINS program director Mark Mason, WPIX-TV vice president Betty Ellen Berlamino, Dr. Arlene Davila of New York University, Writer’s Guild executive director Mona Mangan and Alliance for Community Media executive director Anthony Riddle.”
• “Amid an ongoing sexual harassment trial against The Source, the magazine’s ousted co-founders Dave Mays and Raymond ‘Benzino’ Scott have officially resurfaced with their new magazine, Hip-Hop Weekly,” Chris Richburg reported Monday on allHipHop.com.
• Flava Flav’s “Flavor of Love” on VH1 ended the season as the No. 1 show in its timeslot on cable and broadcast among blacks 18-49, Toni Fitzgerald reported Wednesday in Media Life Magazine.
• “Following Air America Radio’s announcement that it had filed for bankruptcy protection after two years comes the surprising news that the liberal network’s co-founders, Anita and Sheldon Drobny are starting up a new left-leaning radio network, Nova M Radio, the company announced Tuesday,” Katy Bachman reported Wednesday for Mediaweek.
• Journalist and author Asra Nomani won the 2006-07 SAJA Reporting Fellowship, the South Asian Journalists Association announced on Tuesday. The fellowship is intended to support Nomani’s reporting project on the building of a women’s mosque in southern India, “Progressive Jihad: A Woman’s Mosque Goes Up in an Indian Village Despite Protests.”
• “Geraldo At Large, the newsmagazine show hosted by Geraldo Rivera on Fox’s New York flagship WNYW, is turning it into [a] four-way race at 6:30 p.m. when the network news shows air,” Katy Bachman wrote on Monday for Mediaweek. “The show is especially competitive among younger viewers, coming in first among 18-34-year-olds on Oct. 10, beating all three network news programs and tripling the ratings of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric on WCBS, CBS’ owned-and-operated station in the market.”
• “A lawsuit filed today claims that personal injury attorney Willie E. Gary and former heavyweight boxing champion Evander Holyfield breached fiduciary duties owed by them to the MBC Gospel Network and to plaintiffs James & Jackson LLC. The suit claims that the two conspired with other members of Gary’s investment group to improperly eliminate the founders of MBC, a.k.a. the ‘Black Family Channel,’ and then committed a series of acts that were designed to enrich themselves at the expense of the network,” according to a news release Tuesday from James & Jackson and Bickel & Brewer.
• BET.com is airing video and displaying photo galleries on the Black Panther Party in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the party’s founding on Oct. 22. In the Bay area, Davey D, the “a Hip Hop historian, journalist, deejay and community activist,” interviewed several former Panthers and posted the audio on his Web site.
• Savoy magazine has named Zondra Hughes as editorial director for its online edition and Bonnita Jones as its managing editor. “Savoy is an online magazine only at this time. This is a great space to be in, at this time,” publisher Hermene Hartman told Journal-isms on Wednesday. She was asked about plans for the print publication’s resurfacing. Hughes, who arrived at the end of August from Ebony magazine, where she was an associate editor, told Journal-isms the site was averaging 3.4 million unique visitors per month.
• The National Black Programming Consortium Wednesday announced the first-round winners in its contest for historically black colleges and universities to develop New Media projects in conjunction with the public television rebroadcast of the civil rights documentary “Eyes on the Prize.” Winners were Spelman College and Delaware State, Hampton, Tennessee State, Albany State, Jackson State and Norfolk State universities. Those chosen receive money and technical assistance.
• The editorial page of the Cincinnati Enquirer slapped poet Nikki Giovanni on Tuesday for a “classless diatribe” in which she denounced police who “shoot young black men in the back” and called black Republican gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Blackwell “a son of a bitch.” Giovanni, a Cincinnati native, was speaking at dedication ceremonies for a $43 million renovation of the city’s Fountain Square.
• “Last week South Dakota was the only state in the Union to celebrate Native American Day as an official state holiday,” Tim Giago wrote Monday in his “Notes from Indian Country” column. However, Giago continued, the “white media has usurped the success of Native American Day, a holiday initiated by Indians, by rewriting history to make it an event initiated by whites.”
• “Organizations such as the National Congress of American Indians, National Tribal Chairman’s Association, National Indian Education Association and other groups should bring leaders or tribal councils together in a conference to find ways to move tribes from a Third World mentality to one of fair and good government,” Dorreen Yellow Bird wrote Wednesday in the Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald. “I am referring to freedom of information on reservations,” she said.
• BET, Radio One, Inner City, Viacom, Post-Newsweek, Emmis, Granite and LIN TV were among 24 companies that weighed in on a Supreme Court brief arguing that racial diversity in K-12 public education is a compelling government interest, John Eggerton reported Monday in Broadcasting & Cable. David Honig of the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council helped to assemble the group.
• Five radio journalists have been killed in as many years in the Brazilian Northeast, making it one of the deadliest areas for journalists in the Americas, Carlos Laura and Sauro Gonzalez Rodriguez of the Committee to Protect Journalists wrote in a special report, “Radio Rage.”