Maynard Institute archives

Morehouse Gets Game

by richard01003

Spike Lee Gift Starts Sports Journalism Program

Spike Lee, New York Knicks fan, film director of “He Got Game” and more than 40 other flicks, and alumnus of Morehouse College, has provided seed money to begin a program in sports journalism at his alma mater, Morehouse spokeswoman Elise Durham told Journal-isms.

Spike Lee (Photo credit: Morehouse College)“The program is a journalism and sports concentration, which will offer the first courses in the spring. The program will operate under the English department for now—as a concentration.

“The hope is to grow the program into a minor and later a major. That is a ways down the road though. For now, we are concentrating on hiring a director for the program,” she said.

Lee’s contribution runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, Durham said. In addition to being an alumnus of the Atlanta school, Lee sits on its board of trustees.

The director’s interest in such a program was first reported by the World Entertainment News Network, which quoted Lee on Monday as saying, “Right now there’s a dearth of representation of African Americans in the sports industry as far as journalism is concerned.

“Seventy-five per cent of the players in the NFL (National Football League) are black, an even higher number of African Americans play basketball, but, if you look in the press box and the magazines and the newsrooms, you don’t have that representation now, so that’s what we want to do.”

Lee could not be reached for comment, but the dearth of journalists of color in newspaper sports departments was documented this summer in a report by the Associated Press Sports Editors.

The primary author of the report, Richard Lapchick, said in the summary, “When 94.7 percent of the sports editors, 86.7 percent of the assistant sports editors, 89.9 percent of our columnists, 87.4 percent of our reporters and 89.7 percent of our copy editors/designers are white, and those same positions are 95, 87, 93, 90 and 87 percent male, we clearly do not have a group that reflects America’s workforce.”

Spring registration at the historically black college began this month. “The goal is to get an inaugural set of 25 students for the spring,” Durham said. “The spring courses will be taught by faculty in the English department. They are existing courses that have been grouped to jumpstart the program.

“Once the director is selected,” that person “will help drive the curriculum.”

Jim Jenks of the Philadelphia Inquirer, president of Associated Press Sports Editors, welcomed the Morehouse initiative. “I think it’s a great first step on the diversity side,” he told Journal-isms. “Anything that can be done to put candidates in front of sports editors and managing editors. . .” He said his association plans to invite the journalist of color organizations to its next convention to help “put jobs to candidates.”

Penn State University established a John Curley Center for Sports Journalism in 2003. “The Center’s undergraduate curricular emphasis includes courses in sports writing, sports broadcasting, sports information and sport and society. . . . The Center emphasizes internships at newspapers, magazines or electronic media and on-campus cocurricular work at the student-run newspaper, The Daily Collegian, the sports information office or campus radio,” according to its Web site.

“Sports journalism is a language all its own,” Jenks said.

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Gunman Arrested After Standoff at Miami Herald

“A 3 Âœ-hour standoff at The Miami Herald building ended without violence this afternoon as Miami police officers arrested a man—dressed in an FBI t-shirt and carrying a weapon that later turned out to be a fake gun—who barricaded himself in the office of the top editor of El Nuevo Herald,” David Ovalle and Martin Merzer reported Friday on the Miami Herald Web site.

“The standoff ended about 2:20 p.m. with the man in custody, police said. No shots were fired, police said.

“Employees identified the man as El Nuevo Herald freelance cartoonist Jose Varela.

“The incident began about 11 a.m., with Varela appearing agitated and demanding to see Humberto Castelló, El Nuevo Herald’s executive editor. Castelló was not in the building at the time.

“. . . Most employees were evacuated from the building, though some staffers remained in the Miami Herald’s newsroom to cover the story.”

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Some Rise to Occasion on Boyd; Others Stumble

The story was repeated in this space Thursday about Gerald M. Boyd, the former managing editor of the New York Times who died on Thanksgiving at age 56, and Douglas Frantz, who was the Times investigations editor. When both worked at the paper, Boyd accused Frantz of publicly humiliating him and handed him a quarter. ‘Call your friend Dean (Baquet at the Los Angeles Times for a new job),’ Boyd said in the account. Frantz made the phone call and is now at the Los Angeles paper.

“We had our differences,” Frantz told Journal-isms Friday, speaking of Boyd, “but he was a wonderful person. I had quit the Times once before, and as I was leaving, Gerald was one of only two people who said, ‘you’ll always be welcome back here.'”

Frantz was one of several people who recalled Boyd favorably on Friday, some of them submitting remembrances to this column. Elsewhere, some news organizations stumbled. On CNN.com, for example, the story of Boyd’s death was headlined, “Scandal-tainted black editor dies” and then, “Scandal-tainted New York Times editor dies.” Moreover, according to Gawker.com, its story confused Boyd with his nemesis, disgraced reporter Jayson Blair, ending with, “Blair is survived by his wife and 10-year-old son, Zachary.”

Other media outlets seemed to define Boyd by the fallout from the scandal that forced his resignation, the fabrications of Blair. “I have to say that this morning, my wife and I were none too pleased with the headline in the Chicago Tribune that ran atop the AP obit,” Bennie Currie wrote to the e-mail list of the National Association of Black Journalists. “It described Gerald as the editor who had been ousted over the Blair scandal. He was more than that. Far more, and that overline could have and should have reflected the respect he deserves.”

Other thoughts on Boyd:

  • George E. Curry, editor-in-chief, National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service:

I’ve known Gerald his entire professional career. I was a reporter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch when he graduated from the University of Missouri and joined our staff, we lived across the street from each other in St. Louis, and we spent many nights playing Dirty Hearts. With Gerald, you didn’t play cards—the loser had to drink hard liquor, usually while Gerald laughed at the poor critter. We played on a touch football team together; I played quarterback and Gerald was a lineman. If anyone came close to tackling me, Gerald would be in his face, threatening to dismember the offending player. He was a loyal friend on and off the football field.

In 1976, Gerald was a driving force behind the establishment of the Greater St. Louis Association of Black Journalists. Gerald, the organization’s first president, and I agreed that he would concentrate on building the organization and I would concentrate on directing a journalism workshop for Black high school students.

I’ll never forget the day that Gerald and I came up with the structure for what would later become known as the St. Louis Minority Journalism Workshop. We talked about it over lunch at the Original, a soul food restaurant on the North Side.

Gerald mentioned that he had a former journalism professor, Robert Knight, who would help us get a grant from the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund. After lunch, I parked my 1972 Volvo on the side of City Hall, where Gerald was assigned, and we continued to discuss what we wanted in a seven-week workshop. We decided we wanted students to learn to write on deadline, we wanted public officials, including Congressman Bill Clay, to participate in student press conferences and in the end, we wanted the students to take part in producing a final product, either a newspaper, TV broadcast or radio program.

Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of the workshop, which has been copied in New York, Washington, Dallas, Louisville, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Memphis and many other cities around the nation. Although I was the founding director of the workshop, Gerald was a full partner, helping me plot everything from how the workshop would operate to how we were going to get food for the students.

Gerald was extremely proud of the professional journalists who got their start in the St. Louis workshop. Among them: Ann Scales, features editor and former White House correspondent for the Boston Globe; Marcia Davis, an editor for the Style section of the Washington Post; Mark Russell, managing editor of the Orlando Sentinel and former reporter for the Wall Street Journal; Ben Holman, executive editor of the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer; Russ Mitchell, anchor/correspondent for CBS News; Andre Jackson, business editor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Margena Christian, features editor, Jet magazine; Stephanie Reid, reporter, Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Leslie Allen, assistant business editor, the Detroit Free Press; Bennie Currie, former reporter for the Associated Press, Celeste Garrett, former reporter/editor the Chicago Tribune; Alvin Reid, city editor, the St. Louis American, and too many others to list here.

When I was named NABJ’s Journalist of the Year in 2003, my award was supposed to be presented to me by Cheryl Smith, the person who nominated me for the award. But Gerald pleaded for the opportunity to present the award to me, and Cheryl, sensing how important this was to him, graciously allowed Gerald to replace her. Gerald spoke in glowing terms about our friendship and our work in St. Louis. As you know, the Dallas convention came on the heels of the Jayson Blair fiasco that cost Gerald his job as managing editor of the New York Times. Weaker people would duck the public during a period of personal crisis. But Gerald has never been one to abandon his friends. And it meant a lot to me that despite all that he was going through, Gerald wanted to be there for me.

That’s the real Gerald Michael Boyd. Gerald was a first-rate journalist and one could not have asked for a better friend. It’s sad that every obituary will invariably link his professional career to the disgraceful actions of Jayson Blair.

Gerald deserves to be celebrated for his sterling accomplishments and those accomplishments alone. Jayson Blair caused Gerald enough headaches in life and it is regrettable that Gerald can’t go to his grave in peace without the buzzard of Jayson Blair circling in the background.

  • Sidmel Estes-Sumpter, 1991-93 president, National Association of Black Journalists:

Gerald was such a nice man to me whenever he was around. He was supportive of me as president, and what I also admired about him was how he supported Robin so much in her career. I remember visiting him at the Times with Tom Morgan, who was giving me a behind the scenes tour of the newspaper. Tom, Gerald and Paul [Delaney] were all “the men of the Times,” and I was always honored to be in their presence. My love goes out to Robin, Zachary and all those who are being touched by the loss of another one of our brothers.

  • Don Terry, Chicago Tribune:

Gerald Boyd was my boss and my friend during my 12 years at The New York Times. I guess I was lucky. I never knew the irascible side of Gerald Boyd I’ve read about. I knew the funny Boyd, the smart Boyd, the let’s-kick-butt Boyd.

I knew the Boyd who was crazy about his wife Robin and don’t even get him started about how deeply in love he was with his son Zachary. You’d be there awhile.

It’s true, few people I knew at the paper would ever think of Gerald as the mentoring type. He wouldn’t do you any special favors to clear your path through all the lions and tigers and bears at the Times, but he would make damn sure the beasts treated you fairly.

In the Times obit Friday morning, Gerald is quoted as saying, “. . . I’ve spent my life trying to be a good journalist. But what matters to me more is whether I’ve been a good man and a decent man.”

Gerald, my brother, don’t even get me started.

  • Richard Torres, New York-based writer/journalist:

The social scene for the New York media being the whirling blur that it often is, I’m not exactly sure when I met Gerald Boyd, but I recall it as being quick and pleasant. It’s the second—and as it turned out the last—time we bumped into each other that’s memorable to me.

At the time, I wrote the “Sonidos Latinos” column for Newsday and was waiting for a friend at Ollie’s Noodle Shop in Times Square one night when Boyd walked in.

He was picking up an outgoing order, and judging from the smiles and nods he was getting from the wait staff, it was obvious he was a regular. Boyd had recently been named managing editor for the Times and the media grapevine—more insidious, by the way, than any supermarket tabloid—said he had been having a rough go of things. Upon reflection, I’m sure it was those gossipy whispers that compelled me to go over to the take-out counter to speak to him.

I introduced myself as a Newsday columnist and pointed out that we had met once before, but damn if I could remember when. He smiled and responded that he remembered my name and face but couldn’t recall the event either. “But I’ve seen the byline,” he told me. “You’ve done good work.” Beaming, I thanked him for the compliment and told him the reason I stopped him was that I just had to thank him for being a pioneer at the Times and how important and inspirational he was to a journalist of color such as myself.

Then as an aside, I mentioned how tough it must be for him in those offices. Before I could say another word, he looked me in the eye and in a quiet voice said: “You have no idea.” The forcefulness with which he said those words stunned me, and that must have shown because he quickly gripped my left elbow with his right hand and thanked me for the compliment. He then grabbed the bag of food at the counter, gave me a smile and a nod and wished me good luck. I did the same and then, with a wave, he left the restaurant.

I never saw him again in person, but oh, how I winced as I watched this fine newspaperman’s reputation get sullied in the Jayson Blair mess. What a shame that was, because during a time when modern media is happily moored in a sea of mediocrity while waves of mendacity are continually eroding the shores of truth, Gerald Boyd was a boat against the current. He stood for something. He stood for journalism at its finest. He was a pioneer and he should not be forgotten.

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Ed Bradley’s Will Bestows $6.5 Million

“In death, legendary ’60 Minutes’ newsman Ed Bradley showed the same loyalty to his loved ones that he displayed to them in life,” Austin Fenner and Thomas Zambito reported Thursday in the New York Daily News. “Bradley bestowed $6.5 million in gifts upon his family and several close friends he met along the road that led him from a modest upbringing in Philadelphia to the heights of TV journalism.

“Bradley, 65, who died earlier this month from complications related to leukemia, gave the largest portion of his estate, $5 million, to his beloved wife, Patricia Blanchet, court records show.”

Bradley’s godson Cordell Whitlock, now a television reporter in St. Louis, received $250,000.

“. . . Among the others given money through Bradley’s will were New York literary agent Marie Dutton Brown, a friend from Bradley’s days as a sixth-grade math teacher in Philadelphia, who received $250,000.

“Former journalist Priscilla Higham was promised $150,000. Higham lives in South Africa, where she founded African Solutions for African Problems, a nonprofit group that works with orphaned kids and supports projects that provide clean water to the area,” the story said.

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Asian Journalists Ask Media to Spurn Cartoon

The Asian American Journalists Association is asking that news organizations not use editorial cartoonist Mike Lester’s Oct. 24 cartoon, “North Korea ‘sorry’ for testing nukes,” and that they remove it from their Web sites.

“The cartoon, a caricature of Kim Jong Il, was accompanied with a caption quote from the North Korean leader that featured a mock-Asian accent,” AAJA said. “We at the Asian American Journalists Association find the use of this distorted speech derogatory and demeaning of all people of Asian descent.

“It perpetuates the stereotype that Asians are ‘others’ and worthy of ridicule—the use of those butchered words is the equivalent of buck teeth, slanted eyes and all those other hurtful images and words that need to be buried.”

Lester, who draws for the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune, could not be reached for comment, but Brian Davis, who makes Lester’s cartoons available to media organizations via the Cagle Cartoons, Inc. Web site, said “We’re not going to remove the cartoon, because that would be an infringement of free speech and his artistic creation. If they have an issue with the cartoon, they should take it up with the artist.”

Davis said no one is forcing news organizations to run the cartoon and that the protest comes too late, because most cartoons are run within a few days of being made available.

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Simpson Says Profit, Not Confession, Was at Work

“O. J. Simpson told The Associated Press that he had participated in the ill-fated ‘If I Did It’ book and interview project for one reason: personal profit. He acknowledged that any financial gain would have been ‘blood money,'” AP reported on Wednesday.

“‘This was an opportunity for my kids to get their financial legacy,’ Mr. Simpson said in interviews this week with The A.P. after the book deal was abandoned by its publisher,” the story said.

In a blog entry headlined, “O.J. Says ‘[If] I Did It’ was Never Meant to Be a Confessional,” television critic Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times reported that Simpson said much the same in a conference call “in which Simpson took questions from a complimentary, worshipful array of callers.”

On Thursday, Simpson’s former sister-in-law, Denise Brown, accused News Corp. of trying to buy her family’s silence for “millions of dollars” in an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show, the Associated Press reported .

“A spokesman for News Corp., owner of Fox Broadcasting and publisher HarperCollins, confirmed that the company had conversations with representatives of Nicole Brown Simpson’s and Ron Goldman’s families over the past week and that the families were offered all profits from the planned Simpson book and television show, but he denied that it was hush money,” the story said.

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It Wasn’t a Black Man Who Heckled Richards

“Hey, funnyman: You nailed the wrong guy,” Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts wrote Wednesday in the Washington Post’s “Reliable Source” gossip column.

“That’s what Darryl Pitts would like to tell Michael Richards, the ‘Seinfeld’ star who spewed racist slurs at an African American man after his stand-up gig at a Los Angeles comedy club was interrupted last Friday.

“The irony of the insult, according to audience member Pitts: It wasn’t the black guy who interrupted him. The black man sat next to the alleged heckler. Pitts told our colleague Darryl Fears the two were in a group of roughly 10 people who ambled into the Laugh Factory during Richards’s routine. The comic ordered them to shut up, then asked, ‘What are you talking about?””

Meanwhile, some commentators, such as Stanley Crouch and Earl Ofari Hutchinson, wondered when black people who use the racial epithet as a “term of endearment” will face censure from other blacks.

And the NAACP, according to John Eggerton, writing Wednesday in Broadcasting & Cable, pointed a finger at the media over the Richards episode: “The NAACP believes that racism is taught. Media, particularly television, has proven to be a powerful teacher,” the group said. “The NAACP recognizes that when it comes to forming ideas and establishing norms, nothing is more influential than the images and concepts delivered into our lives on a daily basis by radio, television, film and the Internet,” Eggerton quoted the group as saying.

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McGruder Says “Boondocks” Might Return Online

Aaron McGruder, creator of “The Boondocks” comic strip, continues to discuss his use of the “N” word in the television version of the strip, which went on hiatus from newspapers in March, according to Amber Mobley, writing Tuesday in the St. Petersburg Times.

“McGruder said if the comic returns, it will probably be online,” she wrote, reporting on a talk McGruder gave at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

“I got sick of the strip and sick of politics,” McGruder said, explaining his decision not to continue the newspaper strip.

“‘It was Bush, Bush, Bush. Okay, he’s dumb, we get it,’ he said about the comic’s relentless criticism of the president.”

Universal Press Syndicate announced in September that newspapers should not count on “The Boondocks” coming back in the foreseeable future, but McGruder had made no statement about retiring or resuming the strip at that time. The syndicate said that in the absence of any statement by McGruder, it was unfair to keep newspapers guessing any longer.

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Short Takes

    • Drew Berry, general manager and vice president of WMAR-TV (Channel 2), will leave the station Dec. 1 to join the faculty of Hampton University in Virginia, David Zurawik reported in the Baltimore Sun on Wednesday. “The 50-year-old executive has been at WMAR since 1997. He was news director and station manager before assuming his current duties in 2000.”
    • “Anchor Susan Kidd, who’s been with the NBC-owned station since 1983 and has anchored its 5 p.m. newscast for the past 18 years, will leave at the end of the year, according to WRC (Channel 4),” John Maynard wrote Tuesday in the Washington Post. “The channel’s parent company, NBC Universal, is carrying out a restructuring plan, dubbed ‘NBC 2.0,’ that involves cutting 700 jobs nationally and trimming $750 million from its budget. ‘I’ve been kicked to the curb,’ Kidd, 56, wrote in a lengthy memo e-mailed yesterday to her colleagues.”
    • John R. Pepper II, co-founder of WDIA-AM in Memphis, the first nationwide radio station with programming targeting a black audience, died on Monday at 91, the Associated Press reported. “Still one of Memphis’ top stations, WDIA-AM was the first in the South with an all-black on-air staff. Clear Channel Broadcasting Inc. now owns the station, which reaches five states. WDIA, which Pepper founded with Bert Ferguson in the 1940s, helped launch the careers of B.B. King and Isaac Hayes, among others, and eased the way for blacks throughout the country to break into broadcasting.”
    • The National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists went on record this week in favor of protecting “the diversity of voices, the free speech rights of all Americans and the future of the Internet by ensuring that any legislation passed supports the principle of fair and open access to the Internet. . . . The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill earlier this year that would strip away the principle of Network Neutrality. U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) is currently spearheading a bill in the Senate that would do the same.”
    • Sheriff’s deputies in Leon County, Fla., believe that Nefertiti Nicole Williams, 20, news editor of the Famuan, newspaper at Florida A&M University, was the victim of a murder-suicide, the Famuan reported. [Updated with Black College Wire story.]
    • “KDKA-TV’s parent company has sued a former station employee, accusing her of stealing proprietary salary information, recording phone conversations without permission and reading privileged e-mails,” Paula Reed Ward wrote Wednesday in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The lawsuit by CBS against Carey Robinson, “a former administrative assistant at the station, seeks a temporary restraining order against the Wilkinsburg woman, as well as the return of all of the data she has collected. . . . Ms. Robinson claims that she was the victim of racial discrimination by the station, and that the station retaliated after she filed a claim with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission last year.”
    • “Nearly two and a half years after becoming co-anchor of Q13 Fox News @ Ten, Christine Chen will make her exit next week, a station representative confirmed on Tuesday,” Melanie McFarland of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote Tuesday on her blog. “Chen’s last night on the anchor desk is scheduled to be Wednesday, Nov. 29.”
    • “WJBK-TV (Fox, Channel 2) news reporter Andrea Isom was in hot water Tuesday morning after having been stopped by Michigan State Police on a Detroit stretch of the Lodge Freeway allegedly driving the wrong way Monday night,” John Smyntek wrote Tuesday in the Detroit Free Press. “She reportedly blew a .16 in a roadside sobriety test; the Michigan standard for driving under the influence is .08.”
    • Roberto Marcos Garcia, 50, chief reporter for the weekly investigative crime magazine Testimonio, based in the Mexican port city of Veracruz, was run over today by unidentified assailants who then shot him at point-blank range with a 9 mm pistol, state authorities said, Miguel Hernandez reported Tuesday for the Associated Press. “‘He never stopped and that is what led him to his death,’ said Testimonio photographer Raul Alfonso Rivera, referring to Garcia’s reputation for investigating anything and everything related to crime.”
    • Rich Garcia, anchor and reporter at KYMA-TV in Yuma, Ariz., has been promoted to news director.
    • “Reporters Without Borders is appalled by a new round-up of journalists by the Eritrean government, in which at least nine employees of state-owned media outlets have been arrested since 12 November 2006 and are being held at undisclosed locations in conditions that are probably extremely harsh,” the group said Wednesday.
  • “The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release of Cuban journalist Oscar Mario González, who had been jailed for 16 months without charge. González was freed unexpectedly on Monday without explanation, his daughter Elena González, who lives in Sweden, told CPJ,” the group said on Tuesday.

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