Programs Artfully Deflect Potential Bias Claims
The blow sustained this week by the urban journalism program run by the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund and its partners is unlikely to be duplicated widely, according to representatives of similar programs, because most of the others have defined themselves so that they cannot be accused of discriminating against whites.
Some have admitted at least a few white applicants for years, even as they continued their stated mission of training journalists of color.
But others have not, fearing their purpose would be diluted.
As reported on Wednesday, the anti-affirmative action group the Center for Individual Rights won an agreement from the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, Virginia Commonwealth University and Media General Inc., parent company of the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, to make their urban journalism programs “race-neutral” and settle out of court with a complaining white student.
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Emily Smith, 16, said she was accepted last spring to the Urban Journalism Workshop at Virginia Commonwealth, but one week later was rejected after program sponsors learned she was white. None of the principals admitted any wrongdoing, but the university agreed to pay $25,000 to Smith and her attorneys and admit her to the program next summer.
In language that resulted from the agreement, the official description of the High School Journalism Workshops on the Dow Jones Web site now reads:
“In years past, these programs were entitled ‘High School Journalism Workshops for Minorities.’ This criterion has changed. There will be no preferential treatment for, or discrimination against, any applicant on the basis of race or ethnicity this year or in the future. All applicants, regardless of race, ethnicity, or other protected trait are welcome to apply and will be considered for participation without reference to their race, ethnicity or other protected trait.”
In 2004, another anti-affirmative action group, the Center for Equal Opportunity, threatened legal action and persuaded the E.W. Scripps Co. and the Rocky Mountain News to change the purpose of the Scripps Academy for Hispanic Journalists, a training program at the News that became the Scripps Academy for Hispanic Journalism.
Among the established programs that have changed policies and admitted whites are the Associated Press’ AP Editorial Internship program and the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. The Freedom Forum and the Sports Journalism Institute say their diversity programs are open to all, and the Kaiser Family Foundation, which offers the Kaiser Media Internships in Health Reporting, says it is re-examining the language it uses.
What is now the Maynard Institute created the Summer Program for Minority Journalists, the successor to the earlier Michele Clark program at Columbia University, at the University of California at Berkeley in 1976. It continued until 1989, training journalists of color only.
However, in 1985, when the then-Institute for Journalism Education opened its Management Training Center at Northwestern University, admitting people from the business side of newspapers, that program was opened to white men and women. Same with the Editing Program for Minority Journalists, begun in 1990. White reporters participated in producing copy for the journalists of color to edit.
“The idea was that we felt to have the content that more accurately reflected the real diversity of the community, with the number of journalists of color, that wasn’t enough,” Steve Montiel, then president of the institute, told Journal-isms. “We had white journalists who were trained to edit for multiracial audiences, and also [were given] the opportunity to learn about editing in a group that was majority journalists of color.
“We had seen that there was a strength, definitely an advantage, for the whites to be in the minority,” Montiel said. “Things get talked about and thought about in a different way,” said Montiel, who now directs the Institute for Justice and Journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication.
As the country became more conservative, the legal climate changed. 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.
The AP Editorial Internship program began in 1984, available to minorities only, according to spokeswoman Linda M. Wagner. But in 2002, it became open to all applicants regardless of race or ethnic origin. “There were 12 minority interns in 1984; this year there are 14 minorities among the 24 editorial interns,” Wagner said.
Similarly, at the Sports Journalism Institute, “the majority of the people are folks of color, but we have had whites in the program,’ co-director Leon Carter told Journal-isms. “Most of them have been white women, but we have had white males in the program. We try to promote multiculturalism. Men, women, Asian Americans, whites — everyone learns from everyone,” said Carter, who is sports editor of the New York Daily News.
The Freedom Forum runs some of the better-known journalism diversity initiatives, including the Chips Quinn Scholars Program, described as “giving opportunity, training and voice to young journalists of color.” College students work at daily newspapers. It also runs the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, “which trains mid-career people of color for professional positions in daily newspaper newsrooms”; and the American Indian Journalism Institute, which is “training the next generation of Native reporters, photographers and editors.”
The Freedom Forum programs are all designed to bring more equity to newsrooms, Jack Marsh, the Freedom Forum’s vice president for diversity programs, told Journal-isms. “The position we take is our programs are open to all groups and they’re not exclusive to minorities,” he said.
Similarly, the New York Times operates a student journalism institute for college journalists of color, including one that debuted last month in partnership with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
The Dow Jones situation “does not affect us at all,” director Don Hecker, of the Times, told Journal-isms. “We use different criteria.” The program at historically black Dillard University in New Orleans is conducted in collaboration with the Black College Communication Association, an organization of faculty and other student newspaper advisers at historically black colleges and universities, “as a service to its members and an opportunity for its students at HBCUs.” Just as membership in the National Association of Hispanic Journalists is open to all races, so are those schools.
At the Kaiser Family Foundation, which offers “an intensive 12-week summer internship for young minority journalists interested in specializing in health reporting,” Penny Duckham, executive director of the Kaiser Media Fellowships Program, spoke of the Dow Jones settlement as “a sad day. As far as I’m concerned, our program is needed as much if not more than before,” she told Journal-isms.
“We are looking for reporters who will do a good job reporting on public health needs in urban areas who don’t have the best care. We’re looking for people who are bilingual, bicultural and familiar with Detroit, Milwaukee, Fort Lauderdale and Long Island.” So far, 141 young journalists have been through the program.
Even Kaiser has had a white participant over the years. The choice of internships is left to the news organizations, Duckham said. A few years ago, one of the participating news organizations offered an internship to a white student. Kaiser told the student she was welcome to come, but that the program was intended for people of color. The student accepted anyway. “She did go ahead with the program and did quite a good job,” Duckham said.
Kaiser will look carefully at the wording it uses, but “we’re not going to change the spirit of the program,” she said.
Despite the artfulness that will have to be employed by some of these programs, many of their graduates remain anxious.
“I think it’s a sad situation, having been the beneficiary of a minority journalism program myself,” January W. Payne, a 26-year-old health reporter at the Washington Post, told Journal-isms. “I came to the Post through the Kaiser Family Foundation’s summer health reporting internship program for minorities — and it’s safe to say that I wouldn’t be where I am today without that program.”
Michelle Johnson is a journalism veteran who is trying to attact an urban workshop to Emerson College in Boston, where she teaches. “I’m a grad of the Dow Jones copy editing program. Like everybody else, I have to say that it was instrumental in getting me into the biz,” Johnson said. “That’s why I’ve volunteered for so many years with the high school workshop here (14 of the 15 years). I’m concerned at this point that the school will be less attracted to the program if it’s open to just anyone,” she told Journal-isms.
In the publication Inside Higher Ed, Cristina Azocar, director of the Center for the Integration and Improvement of Journalism, at San Francisco State University, “said that her summer program has always been open to low- income white students, as well as minority students, but she fears that under the new rules, too many slots will go to those who donâ??t need the program,” Scott Jaschik reported on Thursday.
Without vigilance, such programs can lose their value as a diversity tool. Last year’s summer internship class at “NBC Nightly News” had no students of color, a disclosure that embarrassed NBC. It prompted anchor Brian Williams to pledge that “going forward, racial diversity will now also be a factor in our unpaid summer internship program, because our newsrooms have to better reflect our society.”
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Mallory Moves Up as Atlanta Paper Restructures
“The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will cut its circulation area by dozens of counties, offer buyouts to 80 newsroom employees and spend $30 million to upgrade a printing plant as part of a multifaceted revamp of the paper’s operations,” Scott Leith reported in the Atlanta paper on Thursday.
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“The AJC, which has one of the largest online operations among regional newspapers, plans to shift more resources to focus on digital news.”
In the process, James Mallory, managing editor for operations and initiatives, “will be promoted to Senior Managing Editor and Vice President/News,” editor Julia Wallace told the staff. “He will be responsible for newsroom staffing issues and will represent the newsroom at the newspaper officers’ steering committee, working with the other Vice Presidents (production, marketing, etc.) on long- and short-term issues. James has been here 18 years, working his way up from reporter. He knows the people and place well and has a straightforward, fair, solution-oriented approach that will serve all of us well in this new job. In addition to the expansion of his existing duties, James will be in charge when I’m away.”
On the organization chart, Mallory will outrank four managing editors: Mike Lup for news and information, Hank Klibanoff for enterprise, Robin Henry for digital and Bert Roughton for print.
Overall, the changes are sweeping. “As part of the change, the paper will trim its circulation territory to 73 counties, centered on metro Atlanta. The pullback will take effect April 1 and means the print version of the AJC will no longer be available in Alabama, South Carolina, Florida and many parts of Georgia,” Leith’s story said.
In addition, Wallace told the staff, “We are extending a voluntary separation program offer to about 80 employees who are 55 years of age or older and have 10 years of Cox pension vesting service. The offer is completely voluntary. We don’t expect everyone to take the offer, but we will not limit the number who can accept.”
Mallory told Journal-isms, “There are a handful of minority staffers eligible for the program. Our overall professional staff is about 25 percent diverse, though a much lower percentage is eligible for the program. Given that, we do not expect that the program will negatively impact our goals to maintain a diverse staff.”
81-Year Symbol Falls; Two Say It’s About Time
“The University of Illinois will retire its 81-year-old American Indian mascot, Chief Illiniwek, following the last men’s home basketball game of the season on Wednesday,” the Associated Press reported Friday. Two journalists couldn’t be happier.
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“The NCAA in 2005 deemed the buckskin-clad Illiniwek an offensive use of American Indian imagery and barred the university from hosting postseason events,” AP said.
“It’s about time that this 80-year-old racial mascot retired,” Suzan Shown Harjo, activist and columnist for Indian Country Today, told Journal-isms. “His fans claim he is a symbol of a fine tradition. Actually, that tradition is racism. Since 1970, when the University of Oklahoma dropped its mascot, ‘Little Red,’ and became the first American athletic program to eliminate its so-called Native reference, over two-thirds of these ‘Indian’ symbols have ended. At that time, there were over 3,000. Today there are under 1,000. Finally, the University of Illinois is on the right side of the issue and the right side of history.”
The Native American Journalists Association has gone on record opposing such mascots, and Harjo, who is also president of the Morning Star Institute, has taken legal action against the Washington Redskins NFL team over its name.
[Mike Kellogg, president of NAJA, said on Monday, “Good sense finally prevails at the University of Illinois. Chief Illiniwek and the actions before a game did not honor native Americans. No one’s culture or heritage should be reduced to a commodity.” (Added Feb. 19)]
A second journalist, Sabrina Miller of Chicago, told friends via e-mail, “I cannot express how very excited I am about this. It is a just, correct and long overdue action by the Board of Trustees and is proof that in the end, justice always wins. It also is a positive and successful example of multiracial coalition-building among people of color and progressive whites that I don’t think has happened before or since on campus.
“I am a 1992 graduate of the University and am proud to say that I was part of the original group of undergrads and grad students who organized the ‘Dump The Chief’ Movement. I also was an editor and columnist at The Daily Illini (the first and to my knowledge only African-American editorial page editor) and I was the very first person to interview Charlene Teters, the Native American graduate student who was the touchstone for this movement. My interview was picked up by Native American media and, subsequently, ‘mainstream’ media. The ball has been rolling ever since.
“I don’t know what the DI is like now, but I also played an integral role in setting the paper’s ‘anti-Chief’ editorial policy and I’d like to believe that our editorials putting pressure on the administration and the trustees made a difference. It was difficult work for all involved. All of us, but probably none more than Char, were continually harassed and threatened by white students who wanted to maintain their racist but ‘revered’ symbol — and were often met with indifference by some African-American students and other students of color.
“Still, we were never dissuaded and in fact worked harder to successfully gather the support of faculty, administrators, alumnae and community members as well. I happen to be a second-generation alum and I knew that progress was really being made when my own father, who graduated from the University more than 50 years ago and ‘bleeds orange and blue,’ finally internalized that it was long past time for the Chief to go.
“It is, indeed, a proud moment. I am not recounting any of this to ‘toot my own horn.’ I am just providing first-hand testimony as someone who was there from the inception of this movement, and as a living witness speaking truth to power that small groups of committed people really CAN change the world.”
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“Talk About What We Write,” Baquet Urges
Dean Baquet, the former Los Angeles Times editor who is becoming Washington bureau chief for the New York Times, has challenged the assumption that the audience for journalism is in decline.
“I can only speak for the L.A. Times and The New York Times, but more people are reading than ever before. They read online,” Baquet told Karen Brown Dunlap, president of the Poynter Institute.
“Suddenly we have an audience that we didn’t have before,” Baquet continued.
“I think that the whole debate about the decline of newspapers has become a financial debate. About market share. About fear of profit margin decline.
“What’s missing is readership, audience, public service. We reach many more people than ever before, and have a much larger impact. We would have a different conversation if journalists took over this debate.”
When Dunlap asked Baquet, “How would journalists take over the debate?” he replied:
“We are stuck in ‘woe is me’ mind-frame. We should talk about what we write. Start defending ourselves. Remind people of what we do. My focus is that I want to break stories.”
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Diversity Issues Figure in McClatchy Awards
Diversity issues figured in the 15 McClatchy President’s Awards given to journalists at 13 of the company’s news organizations and announced on Tuesday. The awards recognize outstanding work from the second half of 2006.
“One award went to two newspapers for a collaborative effort. The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer worked together in producing ‘The Ghosts of 1898,’ an unvarnished history of white supremacists’ successful overthrow of an elected multiracial government in Wilmington, N.C. The papers also examined their own complicity in the events and included editorials apologizing for the role they played,” the company announced.
“The Miami Herald was recognized for ‘House of Lies,’ an investigation that led to numerous firings within the local public housing agency and the arrest of a prominent local developer; and ‘Children of the Americas,’ a haunting portrait of children trapped by neglect and poverty across Latin America.
“The Anchorage Daily News won for an impressive, yearlong print and online report examining the changing demographic face of the city”; the Fresno (Calif.) Bee was honored for a magazine commemorating Fresno County’s sesquicentennial that did an “excellent job weaving in all parts of the community and at the same time focusing on themes special to Fresno: agriculture, waves of immigration, the railroad and more.”
At the Miami Herald, several journalists of color were involved, said World Editor John Yearwood. More than a half-dozen participated in the “Children of the Americas” series: reporters Nancy San Martin and Alejandra Labanca; editor Juan Tamayo; photographer Carl Juste and videographer Ricardo Lopez. Supervisors were Luis Rios, who heads the visual journalism department, and Yearwood. San Martin, a foreign correspondent and member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, conceived the project.
The “House of Lies” investigation was led by Manny Garcia, who heads the Herald’s Metro section, and Mike Sallah, investigations editor.
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Short Takes
- Hari Sreenivasan, co-anchor of ABC’s “World News Now” and “America This Morning,” is joining CBS as a correspondent, based in Dallas. He starts March 12, the Associated Press reports. The move makes him “one of the handful of South Asian network-level correspondents,” said the South Asian Journalists Association, which interviewed him briefly.
- Perry Bacon Jr., who was covering the presidential campaign for Time Magazine, is joining the political staff of the Washington Post, Post editors announced Thursday. “Perry brings an impressive knowledge of politics to the staff, a good eye, and a great sense of how to get at a story. He also has a reputation for getting just about anybody to talk,” Susan Glasser and Bill Hamilton said in their announcement.
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- “You might want to save that next issue of Vogue. ‘Dreamgirls’ star Jennifer Hudson is on the cover,” Samantha Thompson Smith wrote Friday in the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer. “Sure, it’s noteworthy because she’s only the third African-American woman on the cover in the magazine’s 115-year-history. But look again. This is Vogue, the fashion magazine with unprecedented power to sway fashion trends and where skinny girls — the size 0s or 2s without round hips, big butts, or God forbid, voluminous cleavage — historically have been considered the most beautiful.”
- Some of the more memorable moments in which retired ABC News anchor Carole Simpson felt compelled to speak up include a 1995 Apollo Theater meeting between Minister Louis Farrakhan and the late Betty Shabazz, according to a “living black history” profile of Simpson by Monica Lewis on BlackAmericaWeb.com. Jet magazine wrote of the event, “After a 30-year rift between the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and the widow of Malcolm X, Dr. Betty Shabazz, the two symbolically ended their feud by shaking hands.” “Everybody in the newsroom was asking what the big deal was, and I was like, ‘Do you understand what this is? This is really important,'” said Simpson, who was equally as vocal in the early stages of the Clarence Thomas U.S. Supreme Court hearings,” the story said.
- With the blessing of Patricia Blanchet, widow of “60 Minutes” correspondent Ed Bradley, the New York Association of Black Journalists’ Lifetime Achievement Award for Broadcast Journalism is now the Ed Bradley Award for Lifetime Achievement in Broadcast Journalism, the New York chapter announced. Bradley received the NYABJ Lifetime Achievement award himself in 1995.
- Some 125 to 150 student journalists registered for the ninth annual Historically Black College and University National Newspaper Conference in Talahassee, Fla., hosted by Florida A&M University, Nicole Bardo-Colon reported in the Tallahassee Democrat on Friday. Conferees previewed a critical documentary on the current state of hip-hop, “Beyond Beats and Rhymes,” which airs Thursday on PBS.
- Before martial law was declared in Guinea on Wednesday, soldiers arrested two employees of a radio station and raided two stations and demanded that they stop broadcasting. Currently no private radio stations are broadcasting in the country, either because they have been shut down or are afraid of military attacks, according to the International Federation of Journalists.
- “The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the recent detention of two Sudanese editors and the temporary closure of their newspaper after they interviewed religious militants last week,” the group said on Wednesday.
