N.Y. Post Owner Reaches Out to Blacks

At N.Y. Media Ceremony, a Mirror Doesn’t Show It All

The infamous Sean Delonas cartoon that caused an uproar in February.

News Corp. to Fund Journalists Event, Start Council

Four months after the New York Post caused an uproar with its cartoon of a chimpanzee that many took to be President Obama, its parent company is sponsoring an event hosted by the New York Association of Black Journalists and creating a "diversity community council" that is to meet with senior company executives twice a year.

The council will include members of the NAACP, 100 Black Men of America, the National Action Network and the National Urban League, Jesse Washington reported
Wednesday for the Associated Press.

Those groups expressed outrage over the Post’s cartoon, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who heads the National Action Network, asked the Federal Communications Commission to review policies allowing Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. to control multiple media outlets in the same market.

The latest actions by News Corp. are the first indications that anything has changed at the Post or the parent company as a result of the controversy.

The sponsorship by News Corp. of the black journalist association’s event has been controversial. As recently as February, the organization turned down the Post’s offer to buy a table at its annual awards dinner.

Now, it has accepted the parent company’s underwriting, at a cost of $10,000, of its "2009 NYABJ Honors Event."

Asked why the organization changed its mind, NYABJ President Gary Anthony Ramsay told Journal-isms, "I believe that News Corp. is contemplating its place in a country where diversity is not something that can be ignored, especially in the wake of recent history."

One member who objected is Roger Witherspoon, who said he was expressing his view as one of the founders of the Association of Black Journalists, "which grew into NABJ three years later, and [as] an original member of NYABJ during my years with the NY Daily News." He wrote members that "allowing NYABJ’s name to be purchased to blackwash the image of the NY Post and News Corp is just wrong." It is also contrary to the intent of the organization’s founders, who believed supporters should adhere to the principles of NABJ, which include fair hiring and fair coverage, he said.¬†

Witherspoon also told Journal-isms via e-mail, "if you look at the makeup of his advisory group, there are no journalists involved. What the hell does the urban league know about journalistic practices?

"the only thing Rupert has committed to with this advisory group is paying for lunch twice a year. that’s a low wage even for a street hooker."

However, another member who works for a News Corp. property told NYABJ members, "I am glad that NYABJ leadership is willing to begin a dialogue that will hopefully redress past wrongs and set News Corp on a productive path going forward."

Fox Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes created the Fox Apprentice program to counter what Fox called dismal
statistics on women and people of color, and has a relationship with the John H. Johnson School of Communications at Howard University. Fox News is another News Corp. property.

Jack Horner, a spokesman for News Corp., said the diversity council initiative "reflects our continued commitment to a diverse workplace, expands our existing community advisory boards and reinforces our desire to understand better the various communities we serve," Washington reported.

"Diversity is critical not only to News Corp.’s business strategy and competitiveness but is key to maintaining the trust and vital relationship we have daily with our hundreds of millions of viewers and readers," Horner said.

The cartoon, by Sean Delonas, appeared as Obama’s stimulus bill moved through Congress and after a violent pet chimp was killed by police in Connecticut.

It depicted the body of a bullet-riddled chimp and two police officers. The caption said: "They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," as Washington explained.

Delonas said at the time that he did not intend for the cartoon to represent Obama.

"News Corp is the parent company of Murdoch’s global array of businesses, ranging from America’s Fox television network to Twentieth Century Fox films, the social networking website MySpace, Harper Collins publishing and newspapers including the
Wall Street Journal, the Sun and the Times," Britain’s Guardian newspaper explained.

Murdoch is 78. He "has always been reluctant to discuss plans for retirement, or to name a formal successor. However, James Murdoch, who chairs BSkyB, is widely considered to be the front-runner.

"Murdoch’s daughter, Elisabeth, runs her own television production company, Shine. His older son, Lachlan, quit executive duties at News Corp in order to return to his native Australia four years ago, although he remains on the company’s board of directors," the Guardian said.

Arianna Huffington, center, with daughter Christina and MSNBC
President Phil Griffin at Mirror Awards. (Credit: MediaBistro)

At N.Y. Media Ceremony, a Mirror Doesn’t Show It All

They held up a mirror to the media industry on Tuesday, and there were hardly any people of color in it.

The occasion was a presentation of the third annual Mirror Awards by the Newhouse School at Syracuse University, held at lunch in a handsome town house off Central Park West in Manhattan.

The awards "recognize excellence in media industry reporting by honoring reporters, editors and teams of writers who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public’s benefit," the booklet said.

At most, the 250 guests at the luncheon included a handful of people of color, sprinkled among the boldface names to whom this column often links in reports from the New York media fraternity. Authors such as Ken Auletta and Seth Mnookin, Web sites and magazines such as Media Bistro, Broadcasting & Cable, Editor & Publisher, Columbia Journalism Review and the New Yorker. Book editors and former network news television honchos.

Lorraine Branham, the Newhouse dean who invited Journal-isms to the affair, agreed that something was lacking. "My perception is the same as yours — that people of color are not well-represented among those who cover the media," she said later via e-mail.

"My initial thought is this: It is just one more barrier waiting to be broken, just as the barriers to foreign reporting, white house reporting, feature writing, column writing, etc. were eventually breached when minority journalists set their sights on those positions. Though I do worry that layoffs and buyouts have ravaged the ranks of journalists of color, leaving fewer to even compete for what is becoming an increasingly prominent beat about one of the most important stories of the decade. However, many of the writers who entered this contest were freelance writers and so-called independent journalists, not staff writers. So it might also be that this is not a subject that is of great interest to independent journalists of color."

The winners were Mnookin, awarded for "Bloomberg Without Bloomberg" in Vanity Fair, best single article in traditional media; David Kamp, "Requiem for a Micro-celebrity" in Vanity Fair, best single article in digital media; David Carr of the New York Times, best commentary in traditional media; Clive Thompson of Wired.com, "How Twitter Creates a Social Sixth Sense," best commentary in digital media; Ian Parker for "The Bright Side" in the New Yorker, best profile in traditional media, and David Barstow of the New York Times, "Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand," and "One Man’s Military-Industrial-Media Complex," best in-depth piece, traditional media.

The top honoree — for lifetime achievement — was Arianna Huffington, creator of the Huffington Post, praised by veteran journalist Bill Moyers (in absentia) and author Nora Ephron but criticized by others because the Web site employs only five paid journalists and lets unpaid bloggers fill much of the rest.

Noting the criticism, Huffington recalled that she had been given a Webby award the previous night, and that each winner was limited to five words. Her choice: "I did not kill newspapers (pause) OK?" She went on to reassert that the mainstream media had missed the biggest stories of our time — the run-up to the Iraq war and the economic meltdown. She said that "the important thing is not what do to save newspapers, but how we save journalists."

"Ubiquity is the new exclusivity," she said, chiding "those who still think they can hide behind walled gardens. If it’s about news and opinion," she said, "the truth is, share it, let people use it and charge for advertising."

She and others have hailed a new paradigm of spreading information and letting citizens rule. The question is, where does diversity fit in? None of the Huffington Post’s five journalists is of color. Unlike newspapers, Web creators have expressed no commitment to try to look like America. Who’s looking to see that that’s happening?

Meanwhile, which watchdogs are going to keep the mainstream media accountable on diversity?

Huffington spoke on a day when Virginia State Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, on the strength of a Washington Post endorsement, came seemingly out of nowhere to decisively defeat former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and a former Virginia state delegate, Brian Moran, in the Virginia Democratic gubernatorial primary.

Champion citizen blogs if you like, but which of them can claim that kind of influence?

Most journalists of color are used to being in a distinct minority in professional situations such as the Mirror Awards gathering.

But the low numbers represented something more significant than an imbalanced social event. Important eyes aren’t where the story is.¬†

"As a media writer, you feel like you cover something silly," Carr said in accepting his award. "But suddenly, the story’s come to us."

• Amanda Ernst, MediaBistro: With Future Of Media Uncertain, Mirror Awards Honor Journalists Covering Media

Black-Oriented Search Engine Closing Down

The first-ever search engine catering specifically to African American interests, RushmoreDrive.com, is closing on Friday, according to Markus Robinson, reporting Tuesday for the Web site blackweb20.com.

RushmoreDrive launched with much fanfare in April 2008 and was backed by media mogul Barry Diller, CEO of IAC.¬† The company’s then-head of human resources, Johnny Taylor, went to Diller with the idea of launching a Web business aimed at the black community.

Taylor and IAC subsidiary Black Web Enterprises "arrived at the idea of a black-oriented search engine after conducting focus groups with African-Americans across the country," according to a clickz.com story at the time. "We discovered that the number one activity blacks did online was search for information, while numbers two and three were searching for jobs or searching for and consuming news," Taylor said. "’So we decided to create a product that was first a search engine that delivers more relevant results [for the black community], but could also be a resource for jobs and news.’"

An IAC spokeswoman said the closing of RushmoreDrive.com will affect 17 employees," Robinson reported. The spokeswoman said the company had exhausted possibilities for a sale.

"RushmoreDrive is the latest Web property that IAC is shedding this year. It sold comedy site 23/6 and campground reservation site ReserveAmerica in January, Rachel Metzel reported Wednesday for the Associated Press.

In a story she filed for Current TV in December, Laura Ling follows several young California inmates out of prison and into the often losing battle to keep from going back in. (Video)

Ling, Lee Took Different Roads to Plight in N. Korea

"The roads that led two Current TV employees, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, to be sentenced this week to a North Korean labor camp were in some regards as different as their lives here in California," Jesse McKinley wrote Wednesday for the New York Times.

"Ms. Ling, who grew up in a Sacramento suburb and has a well-known journalist sister [Lisa Ling], was earning a reputation at the San Francisco-based news channel as a fearless globe-trotting journalist. She reported stories in hotspots like Sri Lanka and Myanmar and witnessed the type of bloodshed such gritty work often entails.

"Ms. Lee, on the other hand, moved as an adult to the United States from South Korea and usually worked in Los Angeles behind the scenes as an editor. She was taking her first trip on an overseas assignment for the company when she was arrested, according to a Current TV employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the company’s policy of not commenting on the situation.

"The two women now face the same fate, having been sentenced Monday to 12 years of hard labor after a North Korean court found them guilty of illegally entering the country. The harsh sentences have prompted the Obama administration to call for the women’s release on humanitarian grounds, but administration officials say the women may be used as a negotiating ploy by North Korea in the continuing international fallout from the country’s nuclear test two weeks ago.

"The women’s families have been mostly quiet since the sentencing, reportedly concerned that their comments could harden North Korean resolve or complicate the diplomatic efforts to win their release."

• Committee to Protect Journalists: Saberi voices support for colleagues held in North Korea
• Editorial, Los Angeles Times: Pawns of Pyongyang
• John M. Glionna and Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times: North Korean labor camps a ghastly prospect for U.S. journalists
• Judy Lin, Associated Press: Families appeal for clemency for 2 held in NKorea

Auto Writer Brown Takes Washington Post Buyout

"Dear readers:" Washington Post automobile writer Warren Brown began his column on Sunday.

"After 33 years at The Washington Post, I am taking the company’s latest, and possibly its last buyout offer. That means I’ll be signing off from duty as a full-time Washington Post staff writer, which will result in the probable end of the ‘Car Culture’ column on these pages.

"But the ‘On Wheels’ product review column will continue under my byline under special contract. Also likely to continue on that basis is the "Real Wheels" online conversation on every Friday morning at 11.

"Under the current schedule, the effective date of my retirement is July 1. That gives me one more month to raise hell in this space. I’ll begin by arguing against the often inane analyses of the challenges facing the domestic automobile industry, sometimes served up on the editorial and opposite-editorial pages of this otherwise fine journal."

Brown, the foremost African American auto writer at a mainstream newspaper, went on to acknowledge GM’s bad old days, when it and its competitors "were fat and arrogant, turning out motorized rubbish."

But then Brown said, "I liken that sorry period in the history of the domestic automobile industry to an equally distressing era in American journalism when news organizations were producing sensationalized rubbish ‚Äî ‘yellow journalism’ ‚Äî the kind that did little to shine light on the truth, or to explore the profound divisions that continue to separate the national body into warring parts.

"We journalists, especially those of us in the liberal media, revel in the belief that we’ve gotten past all of that. We routinely applaud what we see as our progress and superior common sense ‚Äî although many of the institutions that employ us are struggling as hard as GM to stay in business in a rapidly changing and frequently befuddling market.

"Indeed, the widening landscape of unemployment in the news industry in many ways is beginning to resemble the scene in the domestic automobile business.

"Yet, while we peer over journalism’s economic precipice, all many of our editorial writers can see is ‘a history of bad management’ among domestic automobile companies. Is there no ‘bad management’ in the news business that they would care to write or talk about?"

In 2002, Brown and his co-worker, Martha McNeil Hamilton, related their biographies in a story of how Hamilton, who is white, gave Brown, who is black, her kidney. The book was called "Black and White and Red All Over."

Vickie Burns Changes Titles at New York’s WNBC

Vickie Burns has changed titles at NBC’s owned-and-operated New York station.

She was named vice president of news and content at WNBC in March 2008. On Friday, she was named "vice president of content and audience development for NBC Local Media New York."

"In this role, Burns is responsible for developing and implementing strategy to build audiences across all of the station’s media platforms, including WNBC, NY Nonstop, nbcnewyork.com, taxis and other out-of-home platforms at NBC Local Media New York," the WNBC-TV Web site says.

The subscription-only NewsBlues Web site saw signs that Burns was on the way out. "NBC has slashed WNBC’s budget to the bone, stripped away veteran talent, while asking staff to produce more content across more platforms. The station’s traditional newscast ranks 4th at 6 p.m. and 3rd at 11 p.m. NY Nonstop," a digital channel launched in March, "is a joke. The station website is a mishmash of fluff, self-promotion, cross-promotion, and weird news bits," it said.

Burns is one of the few African American women in a top management role at a major station. She has been vice president of news at NBC-owned WRC-TV in Washington and news director at NBC-owned WMAQ in Chicago.

Short Takes

• In Indianapolis, "The familiar face of a local Hispanic television newscast is back on the air, less than six months after the parent of WISH-TV Channel 8 pulled the plug on him," Scott Olson reported Saturday in the Indianapolis Business Journal. "But perhaps even more impressive than the speedy return is the array of loyal advertisers, including one of the city‚Äôs largest public companies, that stuck by the fledgling program. Marco Dominguez returned April 30 to the television airwaves from a makeshift studio within his new office on North Senate Avenue, and by Memorial Day had settled into a finished set there."
• In 2006, Richmond, Va., television news anchor Gwen Williams Dandridge and her husband, Eric, began investing with Walkwood Properties, which offered a 50 percent return in 45 days, Frank Green reported Tuesday for the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch. "The money was supposed to be used to buy property facing foreclosure. Known as Gwen Williams to viewers of WRIC, she testified in federal court yesterday that although they initially made some money, they wound up losing $200,000." The owners of Walkwood are on trial on 36 counts of bank, mail and wire fraud; aiding and abetting bank, mail and wire fraud; money laundering; and engaging in unlawful transactions.
• At CNN, at "and also at HLN (n?© Headline News), where ‘Lou Dobbs Tonight’ repeats each weeknight ‚Äî the nightly slicing and dicing of the 44th president‚Äôs economic policies has done little to beef up Mr. Dobbs‚Äô ratings. Instead, Mr. Dobbs‚Äô audience seems to be in decay," Felix Gillette reported Tuesday for the New York Observer. Joy Behar, a longtime co-host of ‚ÄúThe View,‚Äù is bumping Dobbs from his repeat slot on HLN to host a 9 p.m. talk show, Brian Stelter reported for the New York Times’ Thursday editions.
• In Detroit, "Mark Stern, 63, and brother Gary Stern, 67, said Tuesday they hope to publish within 60 days the first issue of a daily newspaper serving the Detroit area. The Detroit Daily Press is expected to sell for 50 cents daily and $1 on Sundays," Jeff Karoub reported for the Associated Press.
• Terrell Brown, who graduated with honors this year from Virginia Commonwealth University, has been named CBS News correspondent in its News Development Program. That program is designed to develop producers and correspondents from which CBS News, its affiliates and stations can draw talent. Brown’s initial assignments are to be "CBS Evening News Weekend Editions," "The Early Show," CBS Radio and Newspath. While attending school, Brown was the full-time anchor of "the Breaking News Desk," a segment in WWBT-TV‚Äôs weekday morning show, CBS said.
• In New York, WWOR-TV anchor Brenda Blackmon and her daughter Kelly were due at an Alliance for Lupus Research fundraising walk this past Sunday at the New York Jets’ training camp in Florham Park, N.J. "That they are doing anything together is miraculous. Two years ago this week, Kelly, 25, nearly died, her body ravaged by lupus," Richard Huff wrote last week in the New York Daily News.
• Deputy Editor Lorraine Forte will step up to editor in chief of Catalyst Chicago, Linda Lenz, publisher and founder of the education publication told readers on Wednesday. She succeeds Veronica Anderson, who after eight years as editor, has been named a Knight Fellow at Stanford University.
• "I‚Äôve hammered Channel 7 for so long because the station hasn‚Äôt had an on-air African-American reporter since Aaron Baskerville left for a job in Chicago in 2007," Alan Pergament wrote Tuesday in the Buffalo News. "The situation was even more alarming since Channel 7 was owned by Granite Broadcasting, formerly the country‚Äôs largest minority-owned station group until bankruptcy led to an ownership change. So in fairness, I should note that the station has hired Kevin Jolly, an African-American who had been doing local hosting duties during ‘All Things Considered’ on WBFO-AM and formerly worked in Rochester television."
• Detroit reporter and anchor Charles Pugh, formerly of the Fox television affiliate, is hoping to become the city’s first openly gay city council member, Corey Williams reported Tuesday for the Associated Press. "I know there are going to be jabs thrown at me, smear campaigns," Pugh said. "They are going to try to misrepresent me as someone who likes to be around young men. That’s the most ludicrous notion. I’m a mentor. I’m a role model."
• South Africa’s Thembi Ngubane, who was 19 when she was given a tape recorder to make an audio diary of her struggle to live with AIDS, died on Thursday, National Public Radio reported on Friday. "Thembi traveled to the United States in 2006 to present her story at high schools and colleges. She met former President Bill Clinton and then-Sen. Barack Obama," wrote Joe Richman, who presented her story on "Radio Diaries."
• "Roxana Saberi, who was released last month from an Iranian jail, will be awarded the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism at the June 20 convocation of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism," Editor & Publisher reported. "Northwestern said Saberi will not speak at the graduation ceremony, which will not be open to news organizations."
• "An unidentified gunman shot and killed Guatemalan television reporter Marco Antonio Estrada on Saturday night in the eastern city of Chiquimula, the local press reported," according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. "Estrada covered general news, which included organized crime and drug trafficking, for the national television station Tele Diario."
• In the Shabelle region of Somalia, "Two gunmen opened fire on Radio Shabelle Director Mukhtar Mohamed Hirabe . . . and News Editor Ahmed Omar Hashi, shooting Hirabe in the head and killing him, and Hashi in the hand and stomach, according to international news reports, the Committee to Protect Journalists said. "Hirabe, 48, was the third Shabelle journalist killed this year. Somalia is the most dangerous country in Africa to work as a journalist, with five journalists killed this year, according to CPJ research." Two years ago, freelance war reporter and warisboring blogger David Axe wrote a piece for Columbia Journalism Review about the dangers of being a journalist in Somalia. "Hashi fears those who targeted him on Sunday will soon ‘return to finish the job,’ and Axe is collecting money on his blog for Hashi ‘to get a visa and get out of Somalia,’" the journalism review said on Tuesday.