Maynard Institute archives

Journalism Diversity Program Takes a Hit

by richard0488

Urban Workshops Become “Race-Neutral”

A group that actively works against affirmative action programs has succeeded in changing the purpose of urban journalism programs designed to increase the number of journalists of color, the operators of the programs announced on Wednesday.

 

 

The decision by the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, Virginia Commonwealth University and Media General Inc., parent company of the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, to make the urban journalism program “race-neutral” and settle out of court with a complaining white student was met with dismay in initial reactions from African American journalists.

“What’s especially ironic, is that she is from Virginia, a state that risked lawsuits to keep women of any color out of its flagship universities,” Afi Scruggs, former Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist, wrote to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

“This is a low profile in courage by Dow Jones,” Kenneth J. Cooper, a freelance writer and former national editor at the Boston Globe, told the National Association of Black Journalists’ e-mail list. “This legal group and similar ones have intimidated many institutions, including colleges that offered ‘minority scholarships.’ I once asked a leader of a similar legal group, ‘What if colleges designated the scholarships for descendants of slaves?’ He paused, then asked, ‘What would be the purpose?’ I replied, ‘to eliminate the lingering effects of an unjust system.’ He had nothing to say after that. I made this suggestion to a ranking official at one university, but nothing came of it. Later, a conservative legal group scared that university into broadening the scholarships to include whites.

“I would like to see some institutions and civil rights lawyers test the ‘descendants of slaves’ designation in the federal courts. It would put this latter-day professed ‘color-blindness’ into a historical context, one that would make conservative white lawyers and judges squirm, at the least. Or expose the depth of their denial. Or make them do the right thing, for a change.”

As Steve Szkotak reported Wednesday for the Associated Press, the Center for Individual Rights “filed the class-action lawsuit in September on behalf of Emily Smith, 16. She said she was accepted last spring to the Urban Journalism Workshop at Virginia Commonwealth University, but one week later was rejected after program sponsors learned she was white.

“The settlement requires VCU and other programs sponsored by Dow Jones to select students ‘without regard to race.’ The programs also agree to publicly acknowledge they will offer no preferential treatment or discriminate against any prospect ‘on the basis of race or ethnicity.’

“Neither VCU, Dow Jones nor any of the principals admitted any wrongdoing. VCU agreed to pay $25,000 to Emily and her attorneys and admit her to the program next summer.

“. . . Terence Pell, president of the nonprofit Center for Individual Rights, said the challenge was based on U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have established that colleges cannot operate programs that exclude members of any ethnicity or race. The public interest law firm litigates ‘reverse discrimination’ cases and similar actions.

“‘It’s OK to target underrepresented people. You just can’t do this based on race,’ Pell said in an interview.”

 

 

On the NABJ listserve, Eugene Kane, columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, said, “I’m even prouder than usual to be a graduate of the 1981 Robert Maynard Institute’s Summer Program for Minority Journalists — the forerunner of Dow Jones, METpro and all the other minority journalism training programs.

“The Summer Program was unabashedly founded to promote minority journalists who didn’t have access to working for the nation’s newspapers the same way their white counterparts did.

“Without the Summer Program, many of us would have never been hired for our first jobs in newsrooms. Why? Because most editors back then — just like now — would insist ‘we can’t find anyone qualified.’

“My prediction, without these types of minority journalism programs, many newsrooms will go back to that tired lament.

“We can’t find anyone qualified.

 

 

“This is such a shame.”

Another columnist, Ernest Hooper of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, said, separately from the NABJ list:

“As someone who was personally inspired to become a journalist through participation in the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund program at Florida A&M . . . I want to be quoted. I attended two separate sessions, one for Print and one for Broadcasting, at FAMU in the Summer of ’81. It was arguably the best summer of my life.

“Opponents of affirmative action likely will see this as a victory, but the hate for preference programs stems in part from improper application. I’m thoroughly convinced reality doesn’t match the number of white males purporting to be victims of affirmative action.

“Why? Simple logic. Too often, people implement affirmative action programs by designating specific positions for minorities. Back in the ’90s, a major paper in this state declared it would hire an African American to cover the pro sports team in its town. Every white applicant was told, ‘Hey, your stuff is great, but we have to hire a minority.’

“What’s wrong with that? Well, they lied to all but one applicant. Only one of the white guys would have gotten the job if it had not been set aside for an African American. The rest still would have been shut out, and the hiring manager would have had to tell the truth: your clips aren’t good enough, you don’t have enough experience, you’re not quite what we have in mind. If the position had been open to all, they wouldn’t have been able to use the minority designation as a crutch. But fair and honest assessments were abandoned. ‘Just tell the guy his skin color is the wrong shade so he’ll leave loving the paper and hating black people.’ HA-HA. Very funny.”

He continued, “Say what you will about the NFL, but I at least think the so-called Rooney Rule is the right approach. Don’t designate positions for minorities, just ensure you interview a diverse pool of candidates for each and every opening.”

In 1978, the American Society of Newspaper Editors set a goal of having the percentage of minorities working in newsrooms nationwide equal to the percentage of minorities in the nation’s population by 2000. When it became obvious that was not going to happen, it extended the goal to 2025. “The benchmark for percentage of minorities working in newsrooms by this year is 18.55. The actual percentage: 13.87,” ASNE said last year.

The Richmond workshop has been held annually, except for one year, since the mid-1980s, according to the Times-Dispatch.

As reported here three years ago, “The E.W. Scripps Co. and the Denver Rocky Mountain News changed the purpose of a program designed ‘to help early-career Hispanic journalists develop the skills they need to succeed in daily newspaper careers’ after getting a call from the general counsel of Linda Chavez’s anti-affirmative action organization, Center for Equal Opportunity.”

In 1997, the Boston Globe said it would admit whites into two tiny, but long-standing internship programs for people of color after a white applicant complained to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that he was told he was ineligible. The Globe also changed the names of the newsroom’s one-year “Minority Development Program” and the business-side’s “Minority Intern Program” to avoid an EEOC ruling, Globe spokesman Rick Gulla said then.

However, other programs have refused to change their focus.

On Feb. 1, for example, the Freedom Forum announced that, “The Freedom Forum is accepting applications until March 31 for the seventh American Indian Journalism Institute, the premier journalism training and summer internship program for Native American college students, June 3-22, 2007.”

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Confirmed: On Cable, Anna Nicole Trumped Iraq

“The sudden death of former Playmate Anna Nicole Smith last week drew more coverage on cable news than Iraq, according to figures released yesterday by the Project for Excellence in Journalism,” Gail Shister reported Wednesday in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“In just two days, Smith’s demise consumed 21 percent of all programming monitored by PEJ on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel for the week — including a mind-boggling 50 percent Thursday (the day she died) and Friday.

“Policy debate over Iraq and the ’08 presidential race came in second and third at 15 percent and 10 percent, respectively, over the week, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index from Feb. 4 to 9.

“‘We were surprised by the breadth of coverage,’ says Mark Jurkowitz, PEJ’s associate director. ‘It seemed like everybody tried to ask, “Why do we care so much about this woman?,” and nobody could provide an answer.’

“Given the mysterious nature of Smith’s death; the ‘take a number’ controversy surrounding who sired her baby daughter; and the bonanza of Benjamins in the balance, cable couldn’t have concocted a better story.

“At CNN, in particular, ‘the entire operation just turned and pivoted on the story,’ in Jurkovitz’s view.”

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Thirlee Smith Dies at 67, Was a First at Miami Herald

“Thirlee Smith Jr., the first black reporter at The Miami Herald and an educator who developed the African-American history curriculum in Miami-Dade schools, died Wednesday of liver and kidney failure, family said. He was 67,” Andrea Robinson reported Tuesday in the Herald.

“Smith’s tenure at the paper came at a volatile time in Miami. The city’s first riot erupted months after he joined the staff, recalled his sister, state Sen. Frederica S. Wilson.

”’He was the only reporter the black people would let into the area,’ Wilson said. `He was very valuable to The Herald.’

” . . . Smith was a member of the first graduating class at Northwestern High School. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history at Fisk University in Nashville. After graduation, he applied for a position at The Herald, but was told the community was ‘not ready’ for a black reporter.

“Undeterred, Smith returned to Fisk and earned a master’s degree in education. Afterward, he began teaching in Washington, D.C. schools.

“He returned to Miami in 1967 to teach in the school system. He also reapplied at The Herald and was hired in 1968.

” . . . Smith didn’t stay long at The Herald. Some staffers didn’t accept Smith as a colleague, said longtime Herald reporter and columnist Bea Hines, who was working in the newspaper library when Smith arrived.

“‘He’d come to me every day and say, “I don’t think I can take this,”‘ Hines said.

“In 1969, he left The Herald and returned to teaching.”

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CNN Announces Yearlong Series on Minority Groups

“CNN kicks off a provocative series of reports on people and issues often ignored by mainstream media, when it launches its ‘Uncovering America’ project later this month, the network announced Tuesday. “The yearlong effort — encompassing newscasts, prime-time programs and documentaries on CNN/U.S. and Headline News, as well as extensive features on CNN.com — will offer gripping in-depth reports on conflicts and controversies affecting minority groups including African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian-Americans and gays.”

Included in the effort is “A special five-part series on ‘Anderson Cooper 360°’ titled ‘Incarcerated in America.’ Produced by Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Shola Lynch, the series looks at the shocking impact of crime and punishment on inner-city communities. ‘Anderson Cooper 360°’ airs each weekday from 10 p.m. to midnight (ET).

Also, “A weeklong series from Monday, Feb. 19, through Friday, Feb. 23, on ‘American Morning’ that includes reports about Michael Oher, a black football star at the University of Mississippi, who was raised by a white family; Chris Gardner, a father dedicated to stopping a cycle of deadbeat dads and the subject of the movie ‘Pursuit of Happyness’; the current and rising stars of politics and entertainment; and a look back at Pepsi Cola’s historic effort to break the color barrier with the hiring of black marketing and sales executives.”

“An unprecedented full day of programming across CNN/U.S. on Wednesday, Feb. 21, built around the theme of ‘Out in the Open,’ in which anchors, reporters, analysts and guests discuss the realities of the racial divide that Americans often discuss privately but rarely acknowledge publicly. ‘Paula Zahn Now’ has been blazing a trail for the past several months with ‘Out in the Open’ debates that have broadened the discussion of discrimination and intolerance in the United States while introducing audiences to an array of interesting new thinkers on this important and divisive subject.”

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“Is He Black?” Storyline on Obama Continues

Sen. Barack Obama’s “critics are at least right when they describe his journey as a departure from the customary stereotype,” New York Times editorial writer Brent Staples wrote Sunday in the New York Times. “But they are fundamentally wrong when they try to argue that the journey described in his affecting 1995 memoir, ‘Dreams From My Father,’ is somehow incompatible with blackness.

“At bottom, the hue and cry over Barack Obama’s identity stems from a failure by black traditionalists to recognize multiracial versions of themselves. Soon enough, perhaps by year’s end, however, the Obama story, which seems so exotic to so many people now, will have found its place among all the other stories of the sprawling black diaspora.”

Meanwhile, on National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation,” columnist Debra Dickerson, who is among those who have called Obama’s “blackness” into question, said she had been misunderstood.

“What I mean by that is not to critique Senator Obama or to critique blacks who did not come through the American experience of slavery. It’s just to say that in this country, black means the people who came here as slaves who were oppressed by white people,” Dickerson said.

“And it is — we have marginalized other voices — the black community has marginalized other voices from the black Diaspora. You know, name a prominent West Indian who is West Indian first. You know, name a prominent Nigerian immigrant or Haitian immigrant, and I think that to lump us all into this one category and to force them — to require them to see the world in the same way that we do is — I think it’s a form of bigotry. And I think the day is not far off when these people are going to make their voices known as members of those communities.”

In any case, she said, “We’re not spending much time [in] the black community on whether or not he is considered black. And I’ve only heard people at the margin say things like, you know, we don’t want these foreigners coming in, or he doesn’t represent the experience.”

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Editor Urges End to Use of “Endearing” Epithet

“Last week some of us were stunned when we heard new Alabama football coach Nick Saban say what some thought was a bad word. Turns out, it may not be all that bad. Saban was quoted (and he said his comments were off the record, but it got out anyway) as calling someone a ‘coonass,’ which sounded pretty inflammatory to me,” Wanda Lloyd, executive editor of the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser, wrote in her editor’s column.

“We immediately went to the Encyclopedia of Cajun Culture and learned the term is a controversial word in Cajun lexicon: ‘To some Cajuns it is regarded as the supreme ethnic slur, meaning “ignorant, backwards Cajun”; to others the term is a badge of pride.’ Still not convinced, I called colleague [Rod] Richardson, managing editor of The Shreveport Times, a Gannett sister newspaper in Louisiana.

“Rod, you’re on the speakerphone with some of our editors,’ I told him before asking his opinion on whether printing the word in the newspaper would be offensive. His response was very clear. ‘In southern Louisiana the term is not a racial slur,’ he told me. ‘Nobody down here would ever call me a coonass.’ Rod is African American.

“‘Would you run the term in your newspaper?’ I asked Rod. ‘Absolutely, all the time,’ was his reply.

“But another term — for sure a racial slur — has been in the news lately,” Lloyd continued, speaking of the familiar racial epithet that begins with “n” and is sometimes defended as a “term of endearment.”

“. . . I blame ‘us’ as much as ‘them’ for allowing this behavior to pass down through the generations. My own young adult daughter’s circle of friendship is multicultural and multiracial. In this month in which we celebrate black history, it is my dream that she will not use the N-word, nor will she tolerate as a friend anyone calling her that word. Somehow, someday this cycle of verbal disrespect has got to stop.”

After comedian Michael Richards’ rant in Hollywood, “the Rev. Jesse Jackson, on whose radio show Richards apologized, said in a press conference about use of the N-word, ‘We want to give our ancestors a present . . . dignity over degradation.’ I believe my ancestors died with dignity. It’s future generations I’m worried about.”

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Short Takes

  • Two black women have been promoted at the Memphis Commercial Appeal: Halimah Abdullah, 31. is the paper’s regional editor/reporter, becoming one of the first female Muslim editors at a daily newspaper in the South, and Peggy McKenzie, 54, named assistant managing editor/features and new products, becomes the paper’s highest ranking female editor.
  • New Los Angeles Times Publisher David Hiller “has identified reaching Latinos as one of the paper’s prime goals, along with overhauling its website and expanding local coverage,” Josh Friedman confirmed in a story Wednesday in the newspaper. “If you’re going to be the leading media voice in L.A., you have got to be effective in reaching the Latino community,” Hiller was quoted as saying.
  • South African journalist Bonga Percy Vilakazi conducted the last interview with singer Gerald Levert before his death last year, the EURWeb.com Web site reported on Tuesday, as it ran excerpts of the interview.
  • “Tiki Barber, a three-time NFL Pro Bowler, has been named a correspondent for NBC News’ TODAY and an analyst for NBC’s ‘Football Night in America,'” NBC announced on Tuesday. “Starting in April, Barber will be a ‘Today’ correspondent — reporting, he suggests, on ‘technology to education to parenting.’ He says his ‘dream has always been to be on the “Today” show’ . . . “Today” host Matt Lauer is ‘the kind of person I want to be,'” Michael Hiestand wrote in USA Today.

 

 
  • “Beyoncé has hit another high note, claiming the coveted cover shot of this year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in a yellow-and-pink bikini,” the Associated Press reported Wednesday. “‘The Dreamgirl As You’ve Never Seen Her,’ a cover headline teases. There’s also a photo spread inside the magazine.” “Ten years ago, Tyra Banks became the first black supermodel to appear alone on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Sports Illustrated said Beyoncé is the first nonmodel/nonathlete to appear as the main subject on the cover of the swimsuit issue, a separate AP story said.

 

  • Black radio is “probably the most central vehicle for communicating with the masses of African Americans,” according to Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill. And within that niche, he continued, Tom Joyner’s syndicated show is “the pre-eminent vehicle,” Felicia R. Lee wrote Tuesday in a New York Times story on Joyner.
  • “According to The Sacramento Bee, KUVS Channel 19 ‘Voz y Voto’ news anchor Pablo Espinoza has left the affiliate Univision station in the Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto area to work for California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles) in the Office of Member Services.” Marketing y Medios reported on Tuesday. “Two weeks ago, his colleague and ‘Voz y Voto’ host Xóchitl Arellano announced she was leaving her reporting duties to join the staff of state Sen. Gilbert Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) to work with the Latino Legislative Caucus, reported The Sacramento Bee. The popular weekly public affairs program is now reportedly without a host.”
  • “A Nigerian government spokesman on Monday accused CNN of paying for and staging a report that showed 24 Filipino hostages being held by masked gunmen in the remote mangrove swamps of southern Nigeria,” CNN reported on Tuesday, referring to a story by Jeff Koinange, CNN’s Africa correspondent. CNN and Koinange flatly denied the charge. All 24 men, who worked aboard a cargo ship, were released on Tuesday, according to their employer.
  • In Kenya, “The High Court yesterday rejected a requirement by the Government that broadcasting houses seek State approval before airing some of their programmes,” Mark Agutu reported Wednesday for the Nation in Nairobi. “The landmark verdict was delivered in a case filed six years ago in the Constitutional Court by Nation Media Group, challenging the directive issued by the minister for Information, Transport and Communication at the time.”
  • “You see these plus-sized, wise-talking women in commercials hawking products such as Pine Sol and on the big screen — sometimes played by male actors dressed in fat suits,” Jenice Armstrong wrote Jan. 25 in the Philadelphia Daily News, her second column on the subject. “A lousy stereotype. Old stereotypes die hard. And no matter how far the advertising and movie industries have come, the image of the overweight, loud-mouthed black woman is one that the bosses just can’t seem to let go of.” She was writing about “Norbit,” “the latest movie to exploit the altogether-too-familiar racial caricature. The movie stars Eddie Murphy, who plays a morbidly obese woman who coerces a nerdy guy, also played by Murphy, into marrying him.”

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