Seismic Shift Gives Plenty to Report

Viewing Historic Midterm Through Diversity’s Lens

The midterm elections Tuesday gave journalists a seismic shift in Congress to report; at a few papers, columnists of color met tight deadlines to get their commentary into the next day’s paper, and Wednesday’s replacement of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld gave the election story even longer legs.

Viewers flipping channels among the networks found some stark contrasts in diversity: On CNN, former Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla., and Marcus Mabry of Newsweek, both African Americans, were part of a panel that was onscreen most of the evening, along with CNN senior political correspondent Candy Crowley, a white woman.

From shortly after 2 a.m. until 5 a.m., Brian Stelter reported on his TV Newser site, Fredericka Whitfield, a black woman, and Rick Sanchez, a Latino, anchored in Atlanta.

But on Fox News Channel, one saw a lineup of white men in suits, with the exception of black journalist Juan Williams.

“History was all over the screen, except on the anchor desks and panels of experts, where every news division, even CNN, seemed to have sent out an inter-office memo that said, ‘stag,'” Alessandra Stanley wrote Wednesday in the New York Times.

“And that was perhaps the biggest contribution Katie Couric, the CBS anchor, made on election night: she stood out as one anchor not wearing a necktie.”

For the most part, Latino, Asian American and Native American journalists also were scarce.

The biggest news of the night was the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives and the possibility that the Senate would follow, but with African Americans running for U.S. Senate seats in Maryland and Tennessee, and for the governorships of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, many anticipated history of a different sort.

Masssachusetts made history on Tuesday.

Deval Patrick’s win in Massachusetts was greeted with a “History!” headline in the Boston Herald.

Under the words, “An inspiring example,” the black-oriented weekly Bay State Banner editorialized, “It is now time for all African Americans to take a more positive view of their opportunities. The obsession with being a victim of bigotry is incompatible with the attitude of a winner.”

The Boston Globe’s Adrienne P. Samuels wrote a story headlined, “Black supporters express joy, caution amid Patrick triumph” and the Globe’s Michael Levenson wrote that the “Democrat gracefully navigated racial divide.”

Minnesota Legislator Keith Ellison, who became the first Muslim elected to Congress and the first African American sent to Congress from Minnesota, was interviewed Wednesday on Pacifica’s “Democracy, Now!”

The passage in Michigan of a proposal to ban affirmative action at public colleges and governments was headlined, “Affirmative action ban OK’d”: Michigan 3rd state to nix preferential treatment” in the Detroit Free Press, mixing the concept of “affirmative action” with that of “preferential treatment.”

In 1995, the National Association of Black Journalists warned against equating the two terms, citing the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, which said in 1981, “Only if today’s society were operating fairly toward minorities and women would measures that take race, sex and national origin into account be ‘preferential treatment.'”

An analysis in the Memphis Commercial Appeal downplayed race as a factor in Democratic Rep. Harold Ford Jr.’s loss to former Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker, a Republican. The story by Richard Locker quoted Corker’s campaign chairman, Tom Ingram, who “said the campaign immediately shifted its message away from shouting ‘liberal, liberal, liberal’ at Ford to drawing a sharp contrast between their life experiences—Corker as a product of Tennessee who built a business from scratch and Ford as a resident of ‘D.C.’ and the heir to a family political machine in faraway Memphis.”

In Maryland, the Baltimore Sun noted that “Women, minorities and self-styled political moderates voted strongly Democratic yesterday.” Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who tried to attract fellow African Americans to the Republican ticket, was unable to win over enough to prevail for the U.S. Senate seat, the story explained.

The Web site indianz.com, noting the shift in the House, said, “The changes bring a big shakeup to the committees with jurisdiction over tribal matters. Some of Indian Country’s most friendliest faces will no longer be in Washington.”

The nonprofit William C. Velásquez Institute published exit-poll results from surveys of Latino voters in eight states. The polling showed deep dissatisfaction with Bush administration policies.

In a few newspapers, columnists of color wrote deadline analyses for the next day’s paper. Stan Simpson told Hartford Courant readers that while Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., running as an independent, bested Democratic nominee Ned Lamont,” Lamont, “without question, gave challengers across the country hope that with lots of money, a pointed message and indefatigable support, they could challenge the status quo.”

Mary Mitchell explained in the Chicago Sun-Times, “In the end, most African-American voters couldn’t do it. They couldn’t give the Republican candidate for Cook County president, Tony Peraica, their vote.”

New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez focused on Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., who is in line to become chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. His fellow columnist, Errol Louis, zeroed in on Gov.-elect Eliot Spitzer and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, both Democrats.

At a White House news conference at which President Bush announced he was replacing Rumsfeld, Michael Fletcher of the Washington Post got in a question about the District of Columbia, which lacks a vote in Congress.

“There’s a bill that could come before the lame-duck session of Congress, that would extend voting rights to the District of Columbia, in Congress, and also give an extra seat to Utah. You’ve been passionate about democracy in Iraq. Why not here in D.C., and would you support this bill?” Fletcher asked.

“I haven’t—it’s the first I’ve heard of it,” Bush replied, promising to look into it.

• Kimberly Atkins blog, Boston Herald.
• Kerra L. Bolton, Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times: Voters can combat money’s influence by holding candidates accountable
• Stanley Crouch, New York Daily News: How the elephant got stuck in the mud
• Ellis Cose, Newsweek: The Color of Change; Why are we still debating whether race should be a factor in college
• Eric Deggans, blog, St. Petersburg Times: And the Winner Is…Not Network TV Election Coverage
• Bonna de la Cruz and Clay Carey, Nashville Tennessean: Corker captures Frist Senate seat
• Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting: Midterms and the Media: Was the press fair to voters?
• Paul J. Gough, Hollywood Reporter: Election Night went down to the wire
• Brent Jones, Baltimore Sun: ‘I … got to stick by my party’
• Brian Lewis, Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader: Bad candidates are all relative to these editors
• Courtland Milloy, Washington Post: Fenty Needs Magical Powers To Conjure Up Success
• Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The Manichaean Candidate
• Ken Rodriguez, San Antonio Express-News: Bell got closer to Perry than any imagined, but at what cost?
• Richard Ruelas, Arizona Republic: Anti-migrant laws to fade
• Adrienne Washington, Washington Times: Suburban D.C. shows itself as a political force

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Changes Swirl at L.A., Chicago and Philly Papers

“Philanthropist Eli Broad and prominent businessman Ron Burkle have stepped up their interest in the Tribune Co. and offered to buy the entire outfit, not just the Los Angeles Times,” as Crain’s Chicago Business reported on Wednesday.

At the L.A. Times, where Editor Dean Baquet was forced out on Tuesday, many on the staff said the news of Baquet’s departure “caught them off guard and threw the paper into turmoil, coming on election night, one of the busiest and most complicated times for news organizations,” Katharine Q. Seelye wrote in the New York Times.

“People are crushed,” Alice Short, a deputy metropolitan editor, was quoted as saying. “People really believed in Dean and that as long as he was in that front office, we were going to be O.K.”

The L.A. Times reported, “managers in The Times’ newsroom said that Tribune Publishing President Scott C. Smith had made it clear he would be back in the new year asking for cuts equivalent to what he suggested last year—perhaps more than 100 editorial positions.”

Across the country, at the Philadelphia Inquirer, William Marimow, formerly editor of the Baltimore Sun and vice president of news at National Public Radio, is returning to the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he worked decades ago, that paper announced on Wednesday. Marimow replaces Amanda Bennett, who had been assigned the job under the paper’s former owner, Knight Ridder Inc., in 2003.

“Marimow warned of ‘painful’ staff cuts and narrower horizons at a paper that has prided itself on its national and foreign coverage as well as in-depth local reporting,” the paper said.

George de Lama

Neither Baquet nor Marimow earned much of a reputation for diversity, but the personnel changes resulted in a promotion for George de Lama, who is to be managing editor for news at the Chicago Tribune. The new post makes him one of the highest-ranking Latinos at a big-city newspaper.

De Lama and James Warren, who becomes managing editor for features, were deputy managing editors under James O’Shea, who replaces Baquet at the L.A. Times, the Tribune reported.

“Before assuming this position in July 2001, de Lama served for six years as associate managing editor for foreign and national news. He played a leading role in nine years of discussions with the Cuban government that resulted in Tribune Company opening a news bureau in Havana, the first American newspaper office in Cuba in 35 years,” his bio says.

De Lama, the son of Cuban immigrants, began his career at the Tribune as a summer intern, rising through the ranks from metro reporter to national and foreign correspondent. He has also served as chief of correspondents, national and foreign editor, Wednesday’s story said.

Crain’s said of the possibility of a Tribune Co. sale: “Broad and Burkle have been publicly expressing their interest in buying the Los Angeles Times since this summer, when Tribune executives began facing intense pressure from investors to revive the company’s slumping stock price. At the time, Tribune Co. was not entertaining purchase offers and executives at the Chicago company said they had not received any formal overtures from Messrs. Broad or Burkle.

“Since then, Tribune executives have put the company up for sale, but reports indicated that offers from several private equity firms were below expectations. Tribune representatives reportedly began calling up individual investors to see if they were still interested in buying parts of media company.”

The announcement that Baquet would leave at the end of this week, Joe Strupp reported in Editor & Publisher, “drew surprise and anger by many in the industry.” Alex Jones, director of the Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy, said, ‘it is a very unhappy moment for news.'”

• Rem Reider, American Journalism Review: The Departure of Dean Baquet

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Phyllis T. Garland, Retired Journalism Prof, Dies at 71

Phyllis T. Garland, pioneering journalist and recently retired professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, died Wednesday, her former Columbia faculty colleague E.R. Shipp told friends. Garland, 71, had been battling cancer.

Photo credit: civilrightsandthepress.syr.edu Phyl Garland

“In May 2004, Garland wrapped up 31 years of teaching at the J-school. She was the only black, tenured full-time professor at the school, and in 1981, Garland was the first woman of any race to become tenured at the school,” Shipp reported in the December 1997 edition of the J-school’s Black Alumni News. Upon her retirement, the trustees of Columbia University named Garland professor emerita.

The woman known to readers as Phyl Garland wrote for the Pittsburgh Courier and Ebony magazine. She was the daughter of the late Percy Garland and Hazel Garland, who was editor in chief of the Courier from 1974 to 1977. Hazel Garland had been with the Courier since 1943 in a variety of jobs, including columnist, consultant and writer, when the paper was the most widely circulated black paper in the nation. Hazel Garland started out as a stringer for the paper who the newspaper would train on Saturdays, Phyl Garland told Journal-isms in 2004.

Her bio also lists her as having been consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts; administrator, National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia; freelance writer and contributing editor of Stereo Review; author of “The Sound of Soul” (1969); distinguished scholar of the United Negro College Fund; writer of the documentary film “Adam Clayton Powell” (1989), and from 1971 to 1973, acting chair of the Black Studies Department at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

In a January column, Shipp quoted Garland as saying there was a time when “lifting as we climb” was the mantra. Now, she said, “people are climbing, but they’re not lifting or trying to.”

“‘We’re doing less with more,’ Garland says,” Shipp wrote. “‘Black people treasured their cultural and educational institutions, and the only support available was from black people.’ Now, not only is there more selfishness and greed, she says, but ‘a contempt for intellect, no respect for art.'”

A private funeral will be held in her native Pennsylvania, Shipp said. A memorial service is planned for Columbia University at a later date.

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Short Takes

• “Three Gannett Inc. newspapers and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel want the government to disclose who got federal aid and how much after four hurricanes battered Florida in 2004. A federal judge denied the request in November. The case now will be heard in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta,” Jeff Cull reported Sunday in the Fort Myers (Fla.) News-Press.
• Colbert King, deputy editorial page editor at the Washington Post, plans to retire on Dec. 31 but will continue to write his column, King told Journal-isms. In 2003 he won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary for what judges called his “against-the-grain columns that speak to people in power with ferocity and wisdom,” as Harry Jaffe wrote today in the Washingtonian. King, 67, has been at the paper 16 years and is the only African American on its editorial board.
• In South Africa, “Those newspapers that bravely spoke out in the last few years against government policy and inactivity on HIV/AIDS—and withstood the pressure to fall into line on this matter—deserve a pat on the back,” Anton Harber wrote Wednesday for Business Day.
• A “controversial statue of Fidel Castro by sculptor Daniel Edwards on Wednesday was finally disposed of, courtesy of Univision Radio’s La Kalle 98.3 FM, which organized a special event with local DJs, and members of the Cuban community in Miami to dump Castro, literally, in a garbage truck,” Laura Martinez reported Wednesday in Marketing y Medios. “The Connecticut sculptor who enraged many by crafting a bust of Castro was invited to Miami by La Kalle, where he listened to the community’s concerns via call-ins and personal statements during the El Traketeo morning show. After a week of listening to the testimonials, he agreed to give it to the local community for them to dispose.”
• “The Federal Communications Commission reversed course on two indecency cases late Monday, saying in one it wouldn’t challenge bad language during a network news interview with an entertainer,” Ira Teinowitz reported Tuesday in TV Week. “The FCC ruled that the use of the word ‘bullshitter’ on CBS’s ‘The Early Show’ wasn’t indecent because it occurred during a news segment—even though that interview was with a contestant on the network’s reality show ‘Survivor: Vanuatu.'”

The Sudanese government is engaged in an increasingly blatant effort to muzzle and intimidate Sudan’s independent press, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday. “While international media attention has been focused on Darfur, the Sudanese authorities in Khartoum have been stepping up their harassment of Sudanese journalists and newspapers,” said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.