“Media Frenzy” Over Obama

“Meet the Press” Answer Is News, But What Next?

“Hinting about his White House ambitions has fueled a media frenzy in the weeks leading up to the book’s release,” Lynn Sweet wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times Monday, referring to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and his new book, “The Audacity of Hope.”

“Obama has been saying he will defer any decision until after the November elections—but never, until Sunday, conceded he was thinking about a run.”

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” moderator Tim Russert asked Obama if it was “fair to say” he was “thinking” about a 2008 White House bid.

“It’s fair, yes,” Obama replied.

Headlines followed. As Sweet pointed out, “A few days ago, Sen. Barack Obama seemed to promise Oprah she would get the news first, as if a decision to make a run for president comes all at once. It does not.”

And just last Thursday, on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” King said to Obama, “So, we can say, senator, then, that one of the things you’re thinking about might be the top rung, among many?

Obama replied, “Well, there’s a famous saying that every United States senator wakes up in the morning, looks in the mirror and looks at a future president, so . . .

“KING: And you’re one of them.

“OBAMA: You know it’s one of the congenital defects of serving in the United States Senate.”

King’s exchange got nothing like the response to Russert’s question. What made the difference? “He was asked a direct question by a tough interviewer and he gave an honest answer,” Tommy Vietor, Obama’s spokesman, told Journal-isms.

Obama strategist David Axelrod told Sweet that Obama went further with Russert than with other interviewers on the question because of the “context” in which he asked it.

“The context was that Obama had less wiggle room because Russert replayed the tape and asked specifically about his earlier comments,” Axelrod was quoted as saying.

“Tim Russert’s ability to effectively frame that line of the questioning underscores the importance of serious public affairs discussion not only during the political season, but each and every week,” said NBC spokeswoman Barbara Levin.

The answer galvanized some. “Already slipping, my skepticism about a Barack Obama presidential bid in 2008 fell away completely Sunday morning,” columnist Deborah Mathis wrote Monday on BlackAmericaWeb.com. “As far as I’m concerned, the operative question now is no longer ‘Should he run?’ but rather ‘Why shouldn’t he?'”

BET.com devoted a page to the only African American senator.

In Newsday, however, columnist Les Payne warned Sunday, “Obama should beware of his media embrace as the right stuff for the nation’s ‘first black president.’ It is a slick joke America finds a need to play on itself every decade or so.”

On National Public Radio’s “News & Notes,” roundtable panelist Callie Crossley recalled that the telegenic Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., received similar media treatment early in his own quest for the presidency, but didn’t last the distance because he lacked experience.

In a notable confluence, last week’s Time cover story, “Why Barack Obama Could Be the Next President,” by Joe Klein, was followed this week by a Newsweek cover featuring another African American politician, Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tenn., and the line, “Not Your Daddy’s Democrats.”

Ford could become the first black Southern senator since Reconstruction, but contributing editor Ellis Cose cautioned, “As black candidates reaching out to largely white constituencies have discovered in the past, when it comes to measuring political popularity there are lies, damned lies—and polls, on which they rest their fate at their peril.”

And on Monday afternoon, Obama was asked again about his presidential ambitions by New Yorker editor David Remnick at the American Magazine Conference. “Throughout the interview, Obama expressed doubt about his willingness to put his family through the scrutiny of a presidential race,” according to FishBowl NY editor Dylan Stableford.

“My wife would be leading the bandwagon for me to be running for president . . . if I was married to someone else,” Obama said.

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Source Ordered to Pay $14.5 Million to Ex-Editor

A federal jury in Manhattan ruled Monday that The Source magazine and its two former principals must pay $14.5 million “to a former top editor who described a raunched-out workplace where executives watched porn, smoked pot and called female employees “b——,” Jose Martinez reported Tuesday in the New York Daily News.

“‘I feel like I’ve been vindicated,’ said Kimberly Osorio, who was canned last year. ‘Whether it’s hip hop, rock ‘n’ roll or the post office, there’s still laws a company needs to abide by.’

“The jury took just four hours to find that Osorio was fired in retaliation for complaining about sexual shenanigans at the magazine.

“It also found that co-owner Raymond (Benzino) Scott defamed her during a radio interview when he accused the single mom of bed-hopping with hip-hop honchos.

“Osorio, 32, was formally appointed the magazine’s first female editor in chief in November 2003. At a salary of $130,000, she presided over a best-selling issue that had Jay-Z on the cover before being fired in February 2005.”

David Mays and Scott were terminated from their positions as CEO and president respectively in 2006. The two have since produced Hip Hop Weekly, a celebrity news and lifestyle magazine.

The judgment was entered against the current owners of the Source as well as Scott and Mays individually, Michelle Leroux, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, told Journal-isms. Black Enterprise/Greenwich Street Corporate Partners LP is a preferred shareholder, creditor and an investor in Source Enterprises, current publisher of the Source. [Added Oct. 24]

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N.Y. Times Picks a Star of Katrina Coverage

Trymaine Lee of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, part of the paper’s reporting team that won two Pulitzer Prizes this year and co-winner of the National Association of Black Journalists’ Emerging Journalist of the Year Award, has successfully been wooed away by the New York Times.

Lee starts Dec. 18 in the Times’ Brooklyn Bureau. The wooing began in a chat with Times Managing Editor Jill Abramson. “We met casually while she was visiting New Orleans,” Lee told Journal-isms.

“We had a great conversation about New Orleans before and after the storm, my personal Hurricane Katrina experience and being on a Pulitzer Prize winning news team.

“Then she told me she was going to look at ALL of my clips. She wasn’t lying. A few months later I got a call from Nancy Sharkey, another recruiter, saying how much they enjoyed my work over the last year. It’s crazy. On my first visit to NY, I met with about 12 or 13 different editors. It was an exhaustive all day process from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. But each one of them had a three inch packet of my clips. That was a bit nerve wracking. I never had a chance to give them what I would’ve thought they would like. They had it all,” he said by e-mail.

Though the New Jersey native had been in New Orleans only a little over a year, he said the decision to leave wasn’t easy. “I really feel attached to New Orleans, this community and the Times-Picayune,” he said. “And I’m still suffering from survivors guilt. I mean, I did my job during the storm and I did what I could to let the stories of our people and all New Orleanians ring true in all of my stories. But still, it’s hard to grasp how something so tragic can boost a career. I’ll live with it knowing that I did some good during my time in New Orleans. But for real, it is going to be hard to switch gears.

“For more than a year on an almost daily basis, I spoke with people whose lives had been ripped from beneath their feet. I rapped with people who lost loved ones, people whose emotions are running high and whose hope is running low. Even those folks with good stable jobs are one shove from going over the edge. And nobody but people right here in this time and in this place truly understand what its like to survive through all of this.

“I’d talk with them and sometimes they’d cry, especially the older [women], and I’d be fighting my hardest not to cry with them. It’s just wild how outside of this region life is functioning normally. And now that I’m on my way back to civilization, I think I know What it Means to Miss New Orleans.”

• Jarvis DeBerry, New Orleans Times-Picayune: To a visitor, our destruction still a shock

 

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Essence Makes Deal to Return to New Orleans

“After being blown to Houston by Hurricane Katrina, the Essence Music Festival will return to New Orleans for the next three years under a new deal struck Monday that includes more marketing money from the state for the nation’s pre-eminent celebration of contemporary urban music,” Rebecca Mowbray reported Tuesday in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

“In reaching a deal with magazine publisher Essence Communications Inc., which owns the festival, the New Orleans tourism industry beat out Houston, which tried to keep the festival after hosting it in 2006. The festival was moved to Houston after it wasn’t clear that the Superdome and Ernest N. Morial Convention Center would have been ready in time to stage the annual Fourth of July weekend event.

“The deal that they struck keeps Essence in New Orleans through 2009. . . Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who led the negotiations to bring Essence back on behalf of the New Orleans tourism industry, “said having Essence move to Houston last summer underscored just how valuable the event was . . . Essence delivers an economic impact of between $100 million and $132 million, $6 million in state and local taxes, and is responsible for 75 percent to 80 percent of the hotel bookings” over the July 4 weekend, Mowbray wrote.

In July, the Houston Chronicle reported that Essence was unhappy with Houston. “It was a difficult city to navigate and that can’t be ignored,” Michelle Ebanks, president of Essence Communications Inc., was quoted as saying then. “The end result was a general lack of systems to manage the sprawl. Houston underestimated the enormity and significance of this event.” [Added Oct. 24]

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Coleman Joins Ladder to Lead Newspaper Editors

“Milton Coleman, deputy managing editor of The Washington Post, was elected treasurer-designate of the American Society of Newspaper Editors on Oct. 18, during the group’s fall board meeting in Tacoma, Wash. Coleman will become treasurer of the group in March 2007 at the annual convention and will rise through the officer ranks each year until reaching the ASNE presidency in April 2010,” the society announced Monday.

Coleman has chaired ASNE’s Diversity Committee and, at the Post, has headed initiatives to reach out to Latinos, learning Spanish. “Milton is living the future of news every day at work. That makes him the perfect choice to lead America’s newsroom leaders,” said ASNE President David A. Zeeck, executive editor of the News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash.

Four editors were eligible for the treasurer’s slot and were present for the vote, as required of potential candidates: Stan Tiner of the Biloxi (Miss.) Sun-Herald, Julia Wallace of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sharon Rosenhause of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Coleman, according to ASNE spokeswoman Suzanne Martin. Coleman won overwhelmingly on the first ballot, she said.

Coleman would follow other journalists of color who have or will hold the top position: William Hilliard and Peter Bhatia of the Portland Oregonian, Karla Garrett Harshaw of Cox Community Newspapers, Rick Rodriguez of the Sacramento Bee and Gilbert Bailon of Al Dia in Dallas, who is currently vice president.

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Jemele Hill Leaving Orlando Sentinel for ESPN

Jemele Hill, who as sports columnist for the Orlando Sentinel is believed to be the only African American woman writing a sports column for a mainstream daily, has accepted a job writing for ESPN.com and ESPN: The Magazine, Hill told Journal-isms Monday.

“Newspapers will always be my first love; that’s what I got in this business to do,” said Hill, 30. But “ESPN is really setting the standard for sports in a lot of ways” and “the audience is going to be so much greater.” Hill said she would be writing twice a week for the Page 2 column on ESPN.com and doing columns for 12 issues of ESPN: The Magazine, which publishes 26 issues a year. Hill will be ESPN.com’s first full-time black woman columnist.

She said she was recruited by Keith Clinkscales, the former publisher of Vibe magazine and CEO of the late Vanguarde Media who became senior vice president and general manager of ESPN Publishing in September 2005. Hill expects to start after Thanksgiving.

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Gay Journalists Urge “All Facts” Be Aired on Scandal

“It’s time for clarity” in the scandal over the sexual overtures to male congressional pages by disgraced Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association said in a statement posted Friday as an op-ed piece.

“It’s important to remember that this scandal has at its center an alleged predator, not a ‘homosexual pedophile,’ as Foley has already been described by some commentators,” the statement said.

“This and other behavior mentioned above are not isolated to gays and lesbians; indeed, when Florida school teacher Debra LaFave was reported to have had a sexual relationship with a teenage student, she was not called a ‘heterosexual pedophile.’ Many journalists have correctly and accurately reported the Foley case as being about the actions of an alleged predator, not about sexual orientation. That distinction is important to remember in the face of often-strident comment from media pundits or the ‘blogosphere.’

“In examining past scandals involving inappropriate behavior toward congressional pages, news outlets have been correct to pinpoint the late Rep. Gerry Studds, who in July 1983 was censured for a relationship with a male page; unfortunately, not all news outlets mentioned that Rep. Daniel Crane was censured at the same time for a relationship with a female page. Good journalism dictates that all facts be presented in order to present the most accurate and fair information to the public.” [Added Oct. 24]

• Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald: Surrender your identity at gate to GOP’s big tent
• Rose Russell, Toledo Blade: What will the Democrats learn from the GOP’s hubris?

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350 Attend N.Y. Hearing on Diversity, Media Mergers

“Malin Falu, morning cohost on WADO (1280 AM)” in New York, “said her years in media had been ‘bittersweet.’ In her youth, she said, black Latina women ‘were never the doctor or the lawyer’ in media, and today the growing diversity of the country is still not reflected in a media mostly controlled by white-owned companies,” David Hinckley wrote Monday in the New York Daily News.

“It’s been painful and depressing to me,” Falu said, according to Hinckley. “It’s important that media monopolies be stopped.”

Hinckley was reporting on a public hearing at New York’s Hunter College Thursday on media consolidation and diversity issues. The two Democrats on the Federal Communications Commission, Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, attended.

“Juan Gonzalez, a panelist and columnist at The News, noted projections that by 2050, half the U.S. population will be ‘minorities,’ and that without media diversity, this could lead to ‘a de facto apartheid system, where a white minority’ controls information flow to everyone else,” Hinckley reported.

About 350 people attended the hearing, organized by the National Hispanic Media Coalition, National Association of Hispanic Journalists and other groups, and timed to coincide with the release of NAHJ’s annual “Network Brownout Report,” Kristal Brent Zook noted in the Nation magazine. “Members of the Tri-State Like It Is Support Coalition, a New Jersey-based group working to support ‘Like It Is,’ the long-running news and information show” on WABC-TV “hosted by Gil Noble, also made a strong showing,” Zook wrote.

• Karen Juanita Carrillo, New York Amsterdam News: WLIB VP a no-show at community forum

 

• Franco Ordonez, Charlotte Observer: Conference spotlights minority media coverage: Some say news stories leave impression all blacks are criminals

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Newspapers Rethinking Absence of Accent Marks

“In recent years, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald and other large newspapers have begun to add” accent marks for foreign words and names, “as have smaller papers, but they are usually applied inconsistently and are far more likely to appear in the style section than the news pages,” Laura Wides-Munoz wrote Friday for the Associated Press.

“With the number of Hispanics in the U.S. rising, up more than 18 percent since 2000 according to the U.S. Census, and overall newspaper readership on the decline, many media companies are looking at ways to respond to the shift in demographics—and are rethinking just how tough it is to add the squiggly lines.”

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Less Time for Female Reporters on Couric’s Show

Since Katie Couric’s September arrival as anchor of the “CBS Evening News,” women have received 40 percent fewer assignments than they did under her predecessor, Bob Schieffer, according to an analysis by media watcher Andrew Tyndall, Broadcasting & Cable reported Monday.

“First, some hard, breaking news has been supplanted by features/interviews/commentary. . . .

“Second, the role of the anchor has been emphasized; the role of the correspondent downplayed. . . .

“Whereas Schieffer had his correspondents introduce their own stories, Couric does all the teasing herself. . . .

“The upshot of all these changes is that stories filed by correspondents account for just 69% of Couric’s news hole, compared with 85% under Schieffer. And the brunt of that cutback has been borne almost entirely by CBS’ female correspondents.”

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Angela Chatman Joins Plain Dealer Exodus

Angela Chatman, a 21-year veteran of the Cleveland Plain Dealer who was twice president of the Cleveland chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, took the paper’s buyout offer, Chatman confirmed on Monday.

Chatman was a general assignment reporter who has specialized in housing coverage. She previously worked in the business section and in the home and garden section, where she also covered real estate.

“I plan to try to move on. I want to stay in journalism,” Chatman said.

Chatman brings to six the number of journalists of color who accepted a buyout offer at the paper this month. There were 64 newsroom employees in all, Editor Douglas Clifton has said.

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Short Takes

• Members of the Nation of Islam sharply criticized an article on ailing Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, “The End of an Era? With Farrakhan Ill, the Nation of Islam Prepares for Change,” by Darryl Fears and Hamil R. Harris Sunday in the Washington Post. “I hope it is accurate investigation and truth-seeking that motivates your most recent reporting and not the kind of mischief-making that went on regarding the media and U.S. government regarding The Nation Of Islam, during the era of COINTELPRO,” Cedric Muhammad wrote on the BlackElectorate Web site, in an open “e-letter” reproduced on the official Final Call site. “The poor quality of your article makes it hard for one to tell.”
• “In more than a year on the job,” Reginald Hudlin, BET’s entertainment president, “has tried to make BET a presence in Hollywood. He’s been rewarded with rising ratings, particularly for series that exposed the tough lives of music stars Lil’ Kim and Keyshia Cole,” David Bauder wrote Monday in an Associated Press story on Hudlin’s year in the post.
• Wiley Henry, the new editor and publisher of the Tri-State Defender in Memphis, said his goal is to raise circulation to 30,000, he told Journal-isms on Monday. Henry, 52, who replaced longtime employee Marzie Thomas in June at the black newspaper owned by Real Times, had been publisher of a black business directory and the local Proud magazine. Henry declined to disclose the paper’s current circulation, but said he added a Web site a month ago and plans to host public forums four times a year.

 

• Stony Brook University and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation will pioneer the nationâ??s first university-wide course in news literacy designed to teach students how to judge the reliability and credibility of news, the Long Island, N.Y., university announced Monday. The foundation awarded $1.7 million to Stony Brook for the project, in which the university is committed to teaching the newly developed course to more than 10,000 students over four years. The course is already being taught in Stony Brookâ??s new School of Journalism.

 

• In Ghana, Chief Ebrima Manneh, a reporter on the Daily Observer, a pro-government newspaper, is still languishing in the cells of the National Intelligence Agency, four months after his arrest, the Media Foundation for West Africa reported Wednesday. “Manneh has been held incommunicado since his arrest and subsequent incarceration on 11 July 2006.”
• Next year the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is scheduled to play out in a new video game, the Associated Press reported Monday. The plot puts the player in the shoes of a young journalist who navigates the streets of a city that resembles Jerusalem, seeking out Palestinian and Israeli sources for an assignment. At the start of the mission, the player can choose to be pro-Israeli, pro-Palestinian, or neutral.
• George McElroy, the pioneering black columnist and journalism teacher in Houston who died at age 84 on Oct. 7, was the subject of a tribute Sunday by James Campbell, reader representative at the Houston Chronicle. It was headlined, “Thank you, ‘Mr. Mac’: I was one who you inspired.”