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Spike Lee Wants “Levees” Sequel

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Katrina Victims Take Case to Editors Convention

Spike Lee wants to do a sequel to his acclaimed HBO documentary on Hurricane Katrina, “When the Levees Broke,” that will focus on more of the Gulf Coast region outside of New Orleans, the filmmaker told the American Society of Newspaper Editors on Friday.

“Next month, we’re going back to HBO and discuss how we can continue this,” Lee said after presenting three New Orleans residents who told their stories at the closing luncheon of the editors convention in Washington.

“The Gulf Coast will be a much bigger part. We didn’t forget about you,” he said in responding to a question from Stan Tiner, editor of the Biloxi (Miss.) Sun-Herald, whose paper has crusaded to remind the nation that the Mississippi coast was also devastated by the 2005 hurricane.

Tiner had told the group: “The No. 1 question I have been asked is, ‘are you back to normal?’ We have 80,000 stories in the South Mississippi coastline . . . the story is not over.”

“It was my choice to focus on New Orleans. New Orleans is the Mecca,” Lee said.

The administrators of the George K. Polk Awards announced last month that “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,” won its 2006 documentary honors, to be presented in New York on April 12. The film “celebrated and mourned New Orleans, presenting personal accounts of those directly affected by Hurricane Katrina and evidence of gross governmental neglect and ineptitude surrounding one of the worst natural disasters this country has ever faced,” they said.

In introducing Lee at the luncheon, Jim Amoss, editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, said Lee “did what the very best reporters do” in producing the film, engaging in “tireless fact-checking” and reporting.

Lee turned over most of the talking to the three New Orleans residents he brought with him. Each had been featured in the film.

Caesar Andrews, executive editor of the Detroit Free Press and incoming chairman of ASNE’s Diversity Committee, called their presentation “powerful” and told Journal-isms, “This may be the most direct conversation on race that ASNE has ever had.”

The Katrina victims — Fred J. Johnson, Phyliss Montana LeBlanc and Gralen B. Banks — did not talk primarily about race in their unscripted remarks, which embellished the theme that the treatment they and their neighbors are receiving should not happen in the United States.

But LeBlanc told of crossing a bridge into a neighboring white jurisdiction and being told, “Go back to Africa, nigger.” She said she replied, “come over here, and we’ll walk to Africa together.”

Johnson, of the city’s 7th Ward, said that if black people had perpetrated violence on whites of the kind that he said is being perpetrated on blacks, “it would come to an end” very quickly. “Poverty itself is violence,” he said.

Johnson held up a letter from the state’s Road Home program that said he was eligible for money from the state. But he said a bank refused to grant him a loan based on the letter. “They had apprehensions about when they would get the money,” he said.

LeBlanc told of the toll stress was taking, as she held up a collection of medications she said she had been prescribed — not that she was taking them all, she said. She told of two women who died in succession in the same family. When the second one died, the family had run out of money, and LeBlanc said she appealed to Lee for funds to bury her. Lee responded by overnight mail.

Banks, who like LeBlanc is still living in a FEMA trailer 19 months after the disaster struck, alluded to an early news-media controversy: What to call the victims. “Refugees,” he said, are people without a country. “Let the world know that this is still America and it shouldn’t be happening to us. This is not right,” said Banks, who headed security at the Hyatt Hotel in the city. “You called us refugees,” he said, and “you separated us.”

“Forget about Katrina fatigue,” Lee told the editors. “Five or 10 years from now, are you going to remember that ‘I covered “American Idol,”‘ or what you’re covering here?”

Earlier, the ASNE board voted to hold its 2014 gathering in New Orleans. “The board feels it’s important that ASNE plays a role in the rebuilding of New Orleans as a prominent city. We are happy to return to New Orleans, where we held the 2003 convention,” incoming president Gilbert Bailón said.

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Gilbert Bailón Assumes ASNE Presidency

Gilbert Bailón, editor and publisher of Al Dia, the Spanish-language daily product of the Dallas Morning News, assumed the presidency of the American Society of Newspaper Editors on Friday, saying that ASNE “must help to lead this revolution” in how readers receive information.

 

 

Bailón, 48, who mixed Spanish phrases into his presentation, noted that he was the first ASNE president from a Spanish-language newspaper, and added, “I know we will have a president whose main background is online journalism.”

Newspapers must show “we are lively and vibrant and willing to change,” and he said the same is true of ASNE. “We have more eyeballs reading our product than ever before,” he said, but the challenge lies in convincing advertisers of that.

His comments followed an earlier speech by outgoing president David Zeeck of the Tacoma (Wash.) News Tribune, who encouraged editors to look at the strengths newspapers “can carry forward as we invent a new digital journalism.”

Those include print and online dominance in local markets, which Zeeck said will continue. “We’ll keep that dominance for a long time. We have the advantage . . . of more boots on the ground. Those boots give us the advantage of covering important news that no one else covers, and of presenting a high barrier to market entry for any competitor,” Zeeck said.

Bailón also said at the ASNE closing luncheon that he wanted to draw more online and international members, and that “ASNE will be at the table” with Unity: Journalists of Color for its convention in Chicago in 2008.

Bailón is also a board member of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.

Six members were elected to the ASNE board of directors, according to the ASNE Reporter, the convention newspaper: Stan Tiner of the Biloxi (Miss.) Sun-Herald, David Boardman, executive editor of the Seattle Times; Susan Goldberg, executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News, Ken Paulson, editor of USA Today and usatoday.com, Carolina Garcia, executive editor of the Monterey County (Calif.) Herald, and Ellen Foley, editor of the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison.

Other candidates were Neil Brown, St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times; Jeff Cohen, Houston Chronicle; David Goodwin, Cox Ohio Publishing, Dayton, Ohio; Glenn Proctor, Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch; Bob Rivard, San Antonio Express-News; and Ken Tingley, The Post-Star, Glens Falls, N.Y.

Goodwin had advocated for newspapers what he called “the Robert C. Maynard Rule,” similar to what the National Football League requires: that minority candidates be interviewed for NFL coaching jobs.

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AsianWeek Quietly Demotes Its Editor-in-Chief

Samson Wong, the editor-in-chief of AsianWeek newspaper whose removal was demanded by critics after the weekly published its now-infamous essay “Why I Hate Blacks” by Kenneth Eng, is listed in the masthead of the publication’s March 30 issue as “senior editorial consultant.” No one holds the editor-in-chief title.

“We asked AsianWeek to hold the editor responsible for publishing the piece accountable,” Gen Fujioka, program director at the Asian Law Caucus, said in a letter to signers of a petition protesting the Eng column, posted on the Don’tspeakfor.us Web site of the coalition that came together over the column.

“Though the community still needs to hear directly from AsianWeek, we hope this indicates a step towards healing the hurt caused both to African Americans and also the vast majority of Asian Americans who abhor the racism expressed by the previous article.”

The Eng piece caused an outcry after it was published in AsianWeek’s Feb. 23 issue. The newspaper announced Feb. 28 that it had “terminated” Eng, a freelance contributor, and called publication of his opinion piece “an insensitive and callous mistake that should never have been made by our publication.”

On March 1, Ted Fang, an owner and editor-at-large of the weekly, told Journal-isms, “Heads will roll as necessary,” but said it was the publication as a whole that took responsibility.

Ted Fang’s brother, James Fang, president of the company and also an owner, told Journal-isms on March 9 that it would be problematic to fire anyone over the incident. “It’s not like the Washington Post. It’s me and my brother and three other people. We understand that we were wrong, but were disappointed that 27 years of advocacy for Asian Americans was eclipsed by one very serious lapse of editorial judgment.”

But the same day, Aaron Peskin, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, told Journal-isms, “If anyone in San Francisco government had done this, they’d be held to account.” Wong “has not been held accountable in any way.”

The March 30 issue offered no elaboration on the change in Wong’s title.

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Jackson Denounces Black Caucus Deal With Fox

“Fox News, rebounding from a presidential debate squabble with Democrats, has a new deal with an old debate partner. The cable news network will co-sponsor primary debates for each party’s presidential field this fall in association with the Congressional Black Caucus Political Education and Leadership Institute,” the Associated Press reported on Friday.

Jesse Jackson immediately denounced the planned presidential debate partnership, called for the decision to be reversed and urged presidential candidates not to attend a Fox debate, according to a news release from ColorOfChange.org, black activists who have opposed an alliance with Fox.

Jackson said in the release, “I am disappointed by the Congressional Black Caucus Institute’s partnership with FOX, and strongly encourage them to reverse that decision. Why would presidential candidates, or an organization that is supposed to advocate for Black Americans, ever give a stamp of legitimacy to a network that continually marginalizes Black leaders and the Black community? FOX moderating a presidential debate on issues of importance to Black Americans is literally letting the Fox guard the henhouse — FOX should be rejected.”

The AP story continued, “The Democratic debate is scheduled for Sept. 23 at Detroit’s Fox Theater. The CBC Institute and Fox have not set a date and place for a planned Republican debate. The institute and Fox News teamed up to host two Democratic debates in 2003.

“Black Caucus officials made it clear that the size of the Fox News audience was more important than disputes over ideology.

“‘The CBC Institute is committed to presenting the presidential candidates to the broadest audience possible,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chairman of the institute, said in a statement.

ColorofChange.org said it was launching an online petition “demanding the CBC end their partnership with Fox, and asking presidential candidates to reject the Fox debate.”

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Uncle Ben Character Promoted to Company Chair

Uncle Ben, the symbol for more than 60 years of a line of rices, has gone from chef to chairman of the company, Stuart Elliott told readers of the New York Times on Friday.

 

 

“The challenges confronting Mars,” the food conglomerate that owns the rice brand, “in reviving a character as racially fraught as Uncle Ben were evidenced in the reactions of experts to a redesigned Web site (unclebens.com), which went live this week,” Elliott wrote.

“‘This is an interesting idea, but for me it still has a very high cringe factor,’ said Luke Visconti, partner at Diversity Inc. Media in Newark, which publishes a magazine and Web site devoted to diversity in the workplace.

“‘There’s a lot of baggage associated with the image,’ Mr. Visconti said, which the makeover ‘is glossing over.'”

The Times illustrated its story with a photo of the old Aunt Jemima, and a history lesson:

“Before the civil rights movement took hold, marketers of food and household products often used racial and ethnic stereotypes in creating brand characters and mascots.

“In addition to Uncle Ben, there was Aunt Jemima, who sold pancake mix in ads that sometimes had her exclaiming, ‘Tempt yo’ appetite;’ a grinning black chef named Rastus, who represented Cream of Wheat hot cereal; the Gold Dust Twins, a pair of black urchins who peddled a soap powder for Lever Brothers; the Frito Bandito, who spoke in an exaggerated Mexican accent; and characters selling powdered drink mixes for Pillsbury under names like Injun Orange and Chinese Cherry — the latter baring buck teeth.”

Following up on the story, Andrew Clark wrote in London’s Guardian newspaper, “A London-based spokeswoman said she knew of no plans to extend the makeover to the UK market.”

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Dean Baquet Called Print’s New “Shining Star”

“It’s easy to conclude that Dean Baquet, the former Los Angeles Times editor, has become print journalism’s reigning shining star,” Jon Friedman wrote Friday in his Marketwatch.com column.

“In these gloom-and-doom times, Baquet radiates optimism and a can-do spirit. Plus, he isn’t afraid to speak his mind and take a stand. He is the newspaper biz’s Man of the Moment. Consider what took place at the Newhouse-School-sponsored breakfast Thursday in New York, in conjunction with the New Yorker and Conde Nast.

“. . . An older gentleman made his way to the makeshift stage and eagerly shook his hand. “I just wanted to meet you,” said S.I. Newhouse himself, the all-father of the Newhouse family’s Conde Nast empire. In the media business, patriarchs don’t come any bigger than Mr. Newhouse. . . . this was Baquet’s show.”

Baquet is now the New York Times Washington bureau chief.

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Native Show’s Host Putting His Troubles Behind

“After a two-and-a-half-year hiatus, Harlan McKosato is back on the air as host of the national radio show ‘Native America Calling,'” Eric Billingsley wrote Friday in the Albuquerque (N.M.) Journal.

“His return is significant because it follows a crisis that led the Sac and Fox tribal member and Albuquerque resident to resign in April 2004,” the story continued.

“. . . In late 2003, McKosato was arrested in Albuquerque on charges of domestic violence — a case that was eventually dismissed, according to court documents. A few weeks later, he was arrested for DWI. Both issues were published in the Albuquerque Journal and other newspapers and discussed on the radio show.

“For the first-time DWI conviction, he served close to two months at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Albuquerque, which included a monthlong alcohol treatment program, according to court documents and detention center officials. He was placed on probation for one year.

“During his hiatus, he also went through a divorce. McKosato left the show, saying he had no intention of returning.

“‘I decided I had to take something out of the equation because my life was so unsettled and chaotic,’ says McKosato, now 40. ‘I needed to reel things back in.’

“During his time away, McKosato focused on raising his son, who is now 5 years old, connecting with family, receiving counseling and dabbling in other media ventures. The difficult experiences, he says, have inspired him to take ‘Native America Calling’ to the next level.”

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Detroit Graphic Artist Gaylesha Simmons Dies at 31

“There was no mistaking a masterpiece created by Gaylesha Simmons,” Mark Hicks wrote Thursday in the Detroit News.

 

 

“The longtime graphic artist at The Detroit News maintained a signature style when producing vivid illustrations. For a recent My Weekend feature about ‘man-cations,’ she compiled several photographs to create a composite male vacationer wearing oversized red sunglasses that reflected real-life images of the sun and golfing.

“For a piece on comedian Dave Chappelle, she crafted a caricature with an enlarged gleaming head bearing a burning dollar bill. And, for an article on Super Bowl XL, she depicted a large snow globe filled with Detroit trademarks such as Better Made potato chips.

“‘Her color combinations, attention to detail, accuracy . . . She was the true definition of an artist,’ said Aaron Hightower, a News graphic artist.

“Ms. Simmons, who had muscular dystrophy, died from respiratory failure Tuesday, March 27, 2007, at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. She was 31.”

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Clinton Apologizes to Chinese-Language Press

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., apologized to three Chinese-language newspapers for her campaign’s refusal to allow them into a fundraiser because they were “foreign press,” Samson Wong reported Friday in AsianWeek.

Separately, Clinton gave an interview to the black-owned Los Angeles Sentinel, saying she understands the “difficult decision” facing African Americans who also see in Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., a historic choice for the presidency.

Three Chinese-language newspapers accepted Clinton’s apology, Wong wrote in the San Francisco weekly. “I want to reiterate my deep regret and the regret of my campaign over the misunderstanding that occurred last month over press credentials,” said Clinton. “We are working out all of our problems and making sure that people will have access to me and to my events.”

“Whatever the initial problems were, they owned up to it and moved forward,” said Sandy Close, executive director of New American Media. “It got on their radar.” AsianWeek applauded Clinton’s action in an editorial.

Speaking of the black community and Obama to the Los Angeles Sentinel, Clinton said, “It will be a difficult choice, but I’m hoping I can earn their vote.” “However, she doesn’t believe the Black community ‘owes her,’ Stephanie Frederic wrote in the black newspaper’s March 22-28 edition.

“I’ve been blessed. I’ve been able to participate in many of the good things and stand against some of the bad ones in the last decade. But I don’t think in politics you can ever assume that anybody owes you anything. We’re all free people and we have a right to make [up] our minds about who we vote for based on any factor whatsoever,” Clinton said.

“She is hoping, however, that African Americans remember the Clinton record on civil rights. ‘But what I hope is that people will see in me someone who has been in these struggles for a long time who has worked particularly to provide opportunities for our children, who has spent time both as a public servant and public official trying to create better conditions for people to live their lives and live out their dreams,'” the story continued.

Meanwhile, Jesse Jackson told Deanna Bellandi of the Associated Press on Thursday that he was backing Obama.

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