A Complicated “First”

Bob Reid Thought He Broke Ground at Miami Herald

Bob T. Reid was more than a little interested to read that the Miami Herald had honored Thirlee Smith Jr. as its first black reporter last week. For years, he thought he held that distinction, and that’s what it says in Reid’s official biography as a past president of the National Association of Black Journalists.

“I read your piece today with some interest because my own tenure at the Herald preceded Mr. Smith’s,” Reid wrote to Journal-isms.

“I worked at the Herald from ’66, when I started as a Sports Clerk until early ’68, when I left to join WTVJ as a Reporter/Cameraman (I always believed I was the first black reporter at WTVJ as well, but I could be wrong about that too). During my last year at the Herald, I worked the police beat four days a week and did general assignment reporting for the News Desk on the the fifth day. Quite frankly, I’m surprised the Herald seems to have no record of my tenure; or maybe it’s just an unfortunate oversight. A search of the Herald archives will turn up a number of my bylines under my given name of Bobby Reid.

“Perhaps the most ironic thing about the fact that my tenure at the Herald seems to have been erased from the books is that I did not experience any of the blatant racism that Mr. Smith seems to have endured. Maybe my role in integrating the news room is not recognized because I was officially considered a Cub Reporter.”

And therein may lie the distinction.

Bobby Titus Reid was written about in the Herald as much as he wrote for it, according to clippings from the Herald in 1966 and 1967.

“The lanky son of a Negro sharecropper Friday was elected student government president at Miami-Dade Junior College, one of the nation’s largest community colleges,” read one story from March 26, 1966. From April 1967 was a story about the 19-year-old sophomore, described as a journalism major and “a part time employe of The Herald’s sports department” as well as a reporter for the college newspaper, The Falcon Times. When Reid graduated in May 1967, he was described as “a fledgling reporter at The Herald” and a student leader who “happens to be a Negro.” He warranted a sidebar, “The Hard Way to Success,” to the main graduation story.

“By anybody’s standards, he was the first black writer, but he wasn’t considered a full-time writer,” retired Herald reporter Bea L. Hines told Journal-isms. “I love Bobby. He’s a nice guy and very smart,” she said. Hines joined the paper the same year Reid did, as a file clerk.

But the paper made its distinctions clear under the bylines, Hines said. Staffers were called “Herald staff writer,” and others were simply called “Herald writer.”

Regardless, Reid went on to a successful journalism career, holding such positions as network bureau chief for NBC News in Atlanta and executive vice president and general manager of the Discovery Health Network. Today he is executive vice president and network general manager of the Africa Channel, founded in 2005.

“Why we honored him goes beyond the fact that he was the first black reporter here,” said World Editor John Yearwood, speaking of Smith. It was “because of the contribution he gave to the organization and the coverage he did at the time and the personal price he had to pay.

“We’ll probably get more” people coming forward, Yearwood continued, declaring that a good thing. “We’ll have a record of all the people who worked at the Herald and who contributed to the success of the Herald.”

“I’ll accept this judgment and change my resume and bio to reflect this revised version of history,” Reid said.

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54 Said to Seek Buyouts at Chicago Tribune

“By a May 14 deadline, 54 Chicago Tribune newsroom employees had offered to take early retirement in response to a job cut plan at the paper, sources say,” Gregory Meyer reported Monday in Crain’s Chicago Business.

But at least three African American columnists won’t be among them.

Nationally syndicated op-ed columnist Clarence Page, sports columnist Fred Mitchell and local columnist Dawn Turner Trice told Journal-isms they had not applied.

According to Meyer, “Volunteers include such recognizable bylines as City Hall reporter Gary Washburn and columnist Charles M. Madigan. Last month, Tribune managers said they would cut 100 jobs, or a little more than 3% of the Chicago publishing group’s 2,900 workers, in response to faltering revenue. Employees expect to hear the outcome of their applications by month’s end.”

Trice, who has been at the paper since 1988, said, “I mostly love what I do. I’ve got a couple of book contracts and a movie deal with my first novel,” 1997’s “Only Twice I’ve Wished for Heaven.” She said she was helping to write the screenplay. Trice said she had tried to work on projects while on leave, but found that doing both the projects and her day job work well together. “The yin and the yang. I love both. When I cease to love both, that’s when something else will happen,” she said.

Mitchell, 58, said he had been at the paper 33 years and was the only journalist of color in the Tribune Sports department. “I’d rather work, and hopefully this won’t happen every couple of months,” he said of the buyout offer. “It’s disturbing that our industry has come to this.” [Updated May 22]

• Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle: Chronicle to cut 25% of jobs in newsroom

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Another Iraqi Journalist Kidnapped, Killed

“An Iraqi newspaper reporter was kidnapped while leaving a relative’s house in Baghdad and found dead several hours later, his newspaper reported Monday,” the Associated Press reported.

“The attack on Ali Khalil, 22, occurred Sunday in Baiyaa, an increasingly volatile neighborhood in Baghdad, according to the Azzaman newspaper,” where Khalil worked. “The newspaper, which did not give more details of the attack, was printed with a long black bar across its front page in mourning for Khalil.”

“The attack came three days after two Iraqi journalists working for ABC news were ambushed and killed on their way home from work.”

• Monroe Anderson, Chicago Sun-Times: Bring troops home now

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Cleveland Readers Cry “Reverse Racism”

“University of Tennessee student Channon Christian, 21, and her 23-year-old boyfriend, Christopher Newsom, were last seen by friends Jan. 6 in Knoxville as they left for a dinner date,” public editor Ted Diadiun related Sunday in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

“Newsom’s burned body was found the next day near a railroad track. Christian was found the day after that, stuffed in a trash can. Both had been raped repeatedly. Five people have been arrested for the crimes and await trial.

“More than a dozen e-mails have been sent to several Plain Dealer editors describing torture and mutilation in horrific detail and asking why this and other newspapers have not printed anything about this awful crime. Most of the e-mails carried accusations of ‘reverse racism’ — the victims were both white, the alleged attackers were all black — saying that if the races had been reversed, this would have been a huge national story.”

But Diadiun concluded, “it is wrongheaded and divisive to make race the central issue here. It takes more than the fact that the victims and villains were of different races to make this a racial issue. The Knoxville police chief said his investigators had found no evidence to indicate that the crime was race-based. Even Christian’s parents have said they do not believe it was a racial attack.

“Regrettably, rapes and murders are committed around the country every day. While this one was horrible for the victims and their families, the early reports about the attack were not different enough to make editors think that it was a story our readers needed to read. And the details that have been on the blogs that would have made it a national story either haven’t been confirmed or have been denied by law enforcement officials.

Diadiun went on to cite other high-profile murder cases. “. . . If your argument is that race was behind the news decisions in the Knoxville case, let’s remember that all the above victims were white,” he said. Just for comparison, the 2003 Cleveland kidnap/murder of Shakira Johnson, an 11-year-old black girl, was every bit as sad a tale as any of those above, but her story never spread beyond Northeast Ohio.”

Conservative Sees Liberal Glee in Falwell Death

“It’s a rough day for the idea that conservative talk shows are the home of ‘hate radio’ if you were tuning in the day after Jerry Falwell passed away. Liberal talk shows are blazing with Falwell hate,” Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the Media Research Center, wrote Wednesday in his National Review blog.

“In the first minutes of Tuesday’s ‘Stephanie Miller Show,’ callers were saying things like ‘I hope his soul is writhing in Hell, and may Dick Cheney join him next week.’ Another wished Falwell would be soon joined in Hell by ‘Pat Robertson and Bill O’Reilly.’ Miller jokingly suggested she shouldn’t have opened the phones. But later in the hour, a self-described ‘militant homosexual’ called to crack wise that he was eating ‘pagan babies’ in celebration of Falwell’s death, and Miller suggested they tasted better when they were fried. She thought it would be funny if a conservative tuned in at that moment: ‘Right-wingers, this is satire,’ she oozed. But it’s not pretty.”

• Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: The rise and fall of Jerry Falwell
• Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Falwell was GOP’s prophet of intolerance

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Public Editor Says Paper Went Too Far on Vick

“Michael Vick and the Atlanta Falcons brass are saying very little about allegations that the team’s star quarterback may be involved with dogfighting,” public editor Angela Tuck of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote on Saturday.

“The stories — which are circulating widely in the media — are not baseless but they do include more rumor and speculation than I’m comfortable with.

“Ever since Virginia police raided a property owned by Vick and found 70 dogs and evidence of dogfighting, reporters questioned Vick’s involvement. They are right to do so. This is the latest in a string of questionable incidents Vick has found himself at the center of. Dogfighting is a felony in Virginia and authorities are meeting next week to review evidence in the case.

“But two reports this newspaper carried in print and online this week gave me pause. The first appeared on ajc.com Sunday and quoted former Falcons teammate Ray Buchanan as having told Fox Sports analyst Chris Landry that Vick was deeply involved in dogfighting. Landry made the comments on a Tampa radio program two days earlier, and they quickly took on a life of their own. Given this information was second hand, and AJC reporters weren’t able to reach Buchanan himself, we shouldn’t have reported it.”

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Columnists Finding Fodder in Clarence Thomas Book

African American columnists are beginning to find fodder in “Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas,” by African American Washington Post journalists Kevin Merida, an associate editor, and Michael Fletcher, who covers the White House.

“The strange case of Justice Clarence Thomas would be laughable if his mind-set did not mirror the dilemma faced by many blacks who long to be free of the burdens of race and color,” Stebbins Jefferson said in the Palm Beach (Fla.) Post.

Before the book was published, Clarence Page wrote about Thomas in his Chicago Tribune column, and as previously reported, George E. Curry, the editor of the late Emerge magazine, recalled the 1993 cover showing Thomas wearing an Aunt Jemima-style handkerchief.

“In their book, Fletcher and Merida reveal the roots of his faulty logic that causes so many blacks to wish Clarence Thomas . . . would soon end up on history’s scrap heap,” DeWayne Wickham wrote in USA Today, though he said the book “gives a fuller measure of this complicated man” than the Emerge cover stories.

Robin Washington, editorial page editor of the Duluth (Minn.) News-Tribune, was prompted to reflect on his meeting with the first Mrs. Clarence Thomas in 1990.

• Sherrilyn Ifill, BlackProf.com: Thoughts on ‘Supreme Discomfort’
• Eugene Kane, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Authors find Clarence Thomas puzzling

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Nominate Educator Who Has Helped J-Diversity

The National Conference of Editorial Writers annually grants a Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship — actually an award — “in recognition of an educator’s outstanding efforts to encourage minority students in the field of journalism.” The educator should be at the college level. Nominations, which are now being accepted for the 2007 award, should consist of a statement about why you believe your nominee is deserving.

The final selection will be made by the NCEW Foundation board and will be announced in time for this year’s NCEW convention in Kansas City, when the presentation will be made.

Since 2000, an honorarium of $1,000 has been awarded the recipient, to be used to “further work in progress or begin a new project.”

Past winners include James Hawkins of Florida A&M University (1990); Larry Kaggwa of Howard U. (1992); Ben Holman of the U. of Maryland (1996); Linda Jones, Roosevelt U., Chicago (1998); Ramon Chavez, U. of Colorado, Boulder (1999); Erna Smith of San Francisco State (2000); Joseph Selden of Penn State (2001); Cheryl Smith; Paul Quinn College (2002); Rose Richard, Marquette University (2003), Leara D. Rhodes of the University of Georgia (2004), Denny McAuliffe of the University of Montana (2005) and Pearl Stewart of Black College Wire (2006).

Nominations may be e-mailed to Richard Prince, NCEW Diversity Committee chair, rprince(at)maynardije.org, The deadline is June 15.

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Short Takes

• A delegation representing black media outlets, including the Nation of Islam’s Final Call, Philadelphia New Observer, Jackson (Miss.) Advocate, the “Tom Joyner Morning Show,” Black Entertainment Television, TV One, and New York’s KISS-FM, has returned from a fact-finding tour of Sudan concluding, “The truth concerning the atrocities and fighting in Sudan’s Darfur region — an area that is overwhelmingly Muslim and shares a border and tribal heritage with Chad — is more complex than the U.S. media would have you believe,” according to Jehron Muhammad, writing in the Final Call.

• A correction in Saturday’s New York Times reads: “A front-page article yesterday about the role that Barack Obama‘s wife, Michelle, is playing in his presidential campaign rendered incorrectly a word in a quotation from Valerie Jarrett, a friend of the Obamas who commented on their decision that he would run. She said in a telephone interview, ‘Barack and Michelle thought long and hard about this decision before they made it’ — not that they ‘fought’ long and hard.”
• “Disenrollment stories have become national stories in some of the country’s biggest media markets,” Jodi Rave wrote in the Missoulian in Montana. “The New York Times and NBC-4 TV in Los Angeles have reported on disenrolled Cherokee Freedmen in Oklahoma and ousted citizens of the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians in Temecula, Calif.” However, Rave wrote, “many of the news stories fail to provide viewers with historical context.”
• “As usual when you write about race, there were several people who were outraged that blacks were offended and were profanely racist in their objections,” Sacramento Bee public editor Armando Acuna wrote Sunday, describing reactions to his column objecting to the use of the term “shucked and jived.” But Acuna said, “Most of the responses, however, were earnest attempts at discussing and debating the legitimacy of the term.”
• New York Times language maven William Safire examined the phrases “back in the day” and “old school” in his “On Language” column on Sunday.
• On Tuesday, South Florida Sun-Sentinel reporter Gregory Lewis inaugurates an “Old School Blog” on the newspaper’s Web site. “New school is not necessarily cool, folks. And being old school is not old fashioned,” Lewis writes.
• “Radio One on Friday announced that it has entered into an Asset Purchase Agreement to sell all of its radio stations in Dayton, Ohio and five of its six radio stations in Louisville, Kentucky,” Radio Ink reported. Radio One executive VP/CFO Scott Royster told analysts and investors in March that the company intended to unload $100 million-$200 million worth of stations, Radio and Records reported then.
• A musically astute, but unbylined writer at Editor & Publisher reported Sunday that Hillary Clinton was searching for a campaign song, and that the nine official candidates include the Dixie Chicks’ “Ready to Run,” two from U2 (“City of Blinding Lights” and “Beautiful Day”), Smash Mouth’s “I’m a Believer,” the Temptations’ “Get Ready,” and Shania Twain‘s “Rock This Country.” The candidate’s Web site adds “I’ll Take You There” by the Staple Singers, “Right Here, Right Now” by Jesus Jones and “Suddenly I See” by KT Tunstall, and says 100,000 people have voted.