Mizell Stewart, shown in the Akron Beacon Journal newsoom with Mark Turner, executive news editor, says he wants to be a publisher some day. (Credit: Phil Masturzo/Akron Beacon Journal)
Knight Ridder Veteran Heads for Scripps-Howard
Mizell Stewart III, who led the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal newsroom as managing editor, announced Friday he is leaving the paper to become editor of the Scripps-Howard paper in Evansville, Ind.
The Knight Ridder veteran took over as newsroom leader after the paper’s editor, Debra Adams Simmons, was laid off in November in the wake of the sale of the former Knight Ridder paper to David Black, a Canadian newspaper company owner.
“This is entirely my decision,” Stewart, 42, told Journal-isms. “The publisher has been very supportive of the Journal and wanted me to stay.” But, he said, “I want to be a publisher some day. I had hoped that would be a possibility with Knight Ridder,” which went out of business last year. “I wanted to be part of a newspaper company where that opportunity might be available to me.”
For the first half of 2006, when James Crutchfield was publisher, Adams Simmons was editor and Stewart was managing editor, the paper’s top three positions were filled by African Americans. Crutchfield stepped down in July, after the paper was sold.
Stewart was named editor of the Evansville (Ind.) Courier & Press, which has a circulation of 65,900 daily and 89,900 on Sunday, contrasted with the Beacon Journal’s 2006 circulation of 134,300 daily and 173,700 Sunday.
“When I was in Tallahassee,” as editor of the Tallahassee Democrat, “I fell in love with community markets,” Stewart said, “and just the ability as an editor to be close to the community. Most people who look like us don’t want to work in community markets,” he said, but “the midsize newspapers are the ones that are weathering the storm in terms of changing the business model of newspapers.”
When the McClatchy Co. chose which Knight Ridder properties to keep after buying that company last year, it spurned papers such as the Beacon Journal, which were in older markets but lacked sufficient growth potential, it said.
The Evansville paper has a number of niche products outside of the core newspaper, Stewart said, which he said is how newspapers must survive these days. The newsroom staff produces the glossy magazines Evansville Business Journal, eWoman, and HGTV Ideas, he said, in addition to the paper’s Web presence.
Stewart, a Cleveland native, came to the Beacon Journal in 1994 as assistant city editor, became public affairs editor supervising government and politics, then became metro editor and assistant managing editor for local news before leaving in 2000 to become managing editor of the Tallahassee Democrat, where he became editor and vice president in May 2003.
After the Florida paper was sold to the Gannett Co. in 2005, Stewart remained with Knight Ridder, helping the Biloxi Sun-Herald in Mississippi publish after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. The Knight Ridder team shared a Pulitzer prize for its efforts. Stewart also trained newsroom managers for the company and was journalist-in-residence for a week at Ohio University before rejoining the Beacon Journal as managing editor 16 months ago.
Deputy Managing Editor Bruce Winges, a 25-year veteran of the newspaper, was named to succeed Stewart as the paperâ??s top news executive, with the titles of vice president and editor.
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Veteran Journalists Taking L.A. Times Buyout
Economics editor Bill Sing, real-estate reporter Gayle Pollard-Terry, sports columnist J.A. Adande, business reporter Evelyn Keiko Iritani and longtime columnist Al Martinez are among 57 news employees at the Los Angeles Times who will be leaving the paper, according to those journalists and news reports.
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“Some highly talented people are leaving the staff and I hate to see them go,” Editor Jim O’Shea told the staff in a memo. “No one enjoys going through something like this, least of all me. This is a time of wrenching change at our paper and in our industry. I wish those leaving all the best. I pledge to do anything I can to help them with their futures.
“We must move on and convert our staff into a vibrant multi-media organization that breaks news on the web and explains and analyzes it in our newspaper.”
The paper announced on April 23 “that it would offer voluntary buyouts in hopes of cutting its staff of 2,775 by as many as 150 employees — seven months after two of the paper’s top executives spoke out against such cuts,” as James Rainey reported then.
“The plan would pay Times employees who volunteer to leave the equivalent of two weeks’ salary for every year they have been at the paper. The departing employees could receive a maximum of 52 weeks’ pay and benefits.
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Sing, 49, a 28-year veteran of the paper and co-founder of the Asian American Journalists Association, told Journal-isms that one of the reasons he applied to take the buyout was to explore “some new possibilities that might involve doing my own thing.” He said it would be “a career change” outside of journalism.
He said Iritani, who shared a Pulitzer Prize with the Times staff in 2004 for “its engrossing examination of the tactics that have made Wal-Mart the largest company in the world with cascading effects across American towns and developing countries,” was also taking the buyout.
Iritani, 51, told Journal-isms, “It’s not easy to leave a newspaper that has been such a great home for 12 years, and allowed me to work with some of the country’s best journalists. But I’ve been thinking about exploring life outside daily newspaper journalism, and this seemed like a good opportunity to do so.”
Adande, 36, said, “I have a couple of things in the works. Looks promising. But nothing’s finalized,” and that he would continue as a panelist on ESPN’s “Around the Horn” for the time being.
A Southern California native, Adande joined the paper in 1997 after covering professional basketball for the Washington Post and working at the Chicago Sun-Times.
“Columnist Al Martinez has been with the Los Angeles Times more than 30 years and, despite being exiled to the back of the features section several years ago, is one of the paper’s most recognized bylines,” Kevin Roderick wrote in LA Observed on Thursday.
“He revealed in an angry farewell email to his Times colleagues this evening that the editors told him to take the buyout or else. His hurt missive concludes that ‘I think I deserved a better way of ending such a long and honorable career.'”
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Pollard-Terry, a former Times editorial writer who has been at the paper 23 years, said on Friday, “I’m happy and sad. I’m so happy to start a new chapter in my life . . . but I’m crushed to leave the news business. I’m exploring jobs in public information, in the nonprofit world. What’s sad is among my close girlfriends my age — mid 50s and older — only two or three are left in the newspaper business, and that goes for television, too. Everybody else is doing public relations or media relations— all the people with whom we didn’t cooperate. We’re now those people.”
She told Journal-isms she applied for the buyout because “It just feels like it’s time. I’ve been worried about being laid off now for five years. I’m tired of living on the edge. I’ve never been laid off, and in 35 years in the business, never left a job without having another one.” Her husband, sportswriter Mike Terry, remains at the paper. Therefore, Pollard-Terry said, “we’re not portable.”
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Orlando, Hartford Papers Offering Buyouts
The Orlando Sentinel and the Hartford Courant, Tribune Co. papers like the Los Angeles Times, are also offering buyouts.
The Connecticut newspaper launched a buyout offer on Thursday, seeking to eliminate 10 of the paper’s 252 newsroom positions, according to an internal memo obtained by Editor & Publisher.
The memo states that 81 news staffers at the Courant will be eligible for the offer, but only 10 are being sought. Editor/Vice President Cliff Teutsch, who sent the memo, wrote, “People will have until June 14 to decide whether to apply for the buyout. If not enough people accept the offer, it is likely we will have some layoffs. If we need to do layoffs, they may come from any group, not just those who were offered the voluntary buyout.”
The Sentinel announced a newsroom reorganization plan on May 1 that will eliminate about two dozen jobs as it restructures the newsgathering operation to place greater emphasis on the Internet,” that paper reported then.
“The paper will offer the voluntary separation packages to full-time workers in certain areas of the newsroom who have at least 10 years of service.” Editor Charlotte Hall “said she hopes the voluntary program, along with a handful of open positions, will allow the paper to keep involuntary terminations to a minimum,” the story said.
Asked whether the effect on diversity would be taken into account, Hall told Journal-isms on Thursday that the layoffs will proceed “strictly by seniority.”
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CNN Hires a Star from the New York Times
Lola Ogunnaike, who became a star New York Times reporter by covering pop culture, is joining CNN’s “American Morning” news program starting Tuesday, CNN announced on Thursday.
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“When you have an amazing organization like CNN reaching out to you, you can’t turn them down,” Ogunnaike told Journal-isms on Friday. “It feels like it was five years ago, when the Times reached out to me when I was at the Daily News. People keep reaching out, giving me offers that I can’t refuse, so I don’t refuse them.”
“Lola’s one of the great interviewers I’ve ever worked with, which I think is going to help ease her transition to TV,” Times culture editor Sam Sifton told Journal-isms.
“She has a rare ability to set subjects—particularly star subjects—at ease, and she gets great quotes as a result. She’s going to be a big star.”
Ogunnaike, 31, born to Nigerian parents and married to a Nigerian husband, already had parlayed her New York Times career into buzz-creating television appearances, having been on “American Morning,” CNN’s “Showbiz Tonight,” MTV, VH1, NBC’s “Today” show, BET and ABC’s “The View.”
In an appearance on “The View” last Oct. 16, “she came across as remarkably poised and telegenic, especially for someone who works at a newspaper, where reporters are not generally renowned for their charming and personable natures,” Scott Collins wrote in the Los Angeles Times. But the appearance created buzz also because Ogunnaike was suspended from the Times “for a couple of days,” Ogunnaike confirmed on Friday to Journal-isms, over “a colossal misunderstanding” about whether the Times knew she would be appearing.
She said that incident is now “water under the bridge,” but that the suspension turned out to be a boon. “I spent a lot of time for those few days speaking to a number of television people about my future in that industry, so it ended up a blessing in disguise,” she said.
In March, CNN announced a new team for “American Morning,” with John Roberts, a veteran CBS correspondent, and Kiran Chetry, a hire from rival Fox News, as anchors. They took over for Soledad O’Brien and Miles O’Brien (no relation), who hosted the program together for three years. “Their pairing failed to lift the ratings for the second-place cable morning show, which is now weathering a strong challenge from MSNBC’s ‘Imus in the Morning,’ Matea Gold wrote in the Los Angeles Times, a week before host Don Imus was dropped over offensive remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team.
“In the first quarter of this year, ‘American Morning’ fell 6% to an average of 372,000 viewers, about half the audience of ‘Fox & Friends,’ the top-rated cable morning show. Meanwhile, the simulcast of Imus’ radio program averaged 361,000 viewers, a boost of 39% over the same period last year,” Gold wrote.
Ogunnaike told Journal-isms, “I want to bring what I do at the Times to CNN — pop culture, entertainment, trends, fashion — I want to bring all of that to the CNN audience. I bet there is a huge overlap” in the Times’ and CNN’s audiences. She said she expected to continue to write, as a freelancer.
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War Dwarfs Other Topics in Early ’07 Media Coverage
“The war in Iraq has dwarfed all other topics in the American news media in the early months of 2007 â?? taking up more than three times the space devoted to the next most popular subject. But only a portion of this has focused on the state of things in Iraq itself, and even less about the plight of Iraqis and the internal affairs of their country,” according to a new study of the American news media.
The first quarterly report of the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, a weekly content analysis of a broad cross-section of national news media, shows that, “The majority of the war coverage, 55%, has been about the political debate back in Washington. Less than a third, 31%, has been focused on events in Iraq itself. And about half that coverage has been about American soldiers there.
“The three cable news channels have been distinct from one another in the news they choose to cover,” the report said. “Fox News has devoted less time to the war in Iraq, for instance, and attached itself a good deal more to the death of Anna Nicole Smith. CNN was more of a mix, standing out primarily for a greater focus on immigration. MSNBC’s mix of stories suggests an inside-the-Beltway agenda.”
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- Brian Montopoli, CBS News Public Eye: Pictures Of Murdered ABC Journalists Removed
New Regime Lets Go Chicago Defender Reporter
Lou Ransom, named executive editor of the Chicago Defender in March, has fired reporter Demetrius Patterson. Patterson was hired by the previous editor, Roland S. Martin, who accused Ransom over the airwaves of childish, petty behavior.
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“They told me that they wanted to bring in their own people. It’s like everyone who Roland brought in they are getting rid of,” Patterson, who began work at the Defender on Jan. 3, 2006, told Journal-isms.
Martin, who has since joined CNN, told the Defender’s owners in December he would not renew his contract. He was replaced on an interim basis in January by Glenn Reedus, who had headed a public relations firm and is now managing editor under Ransom.
Ransom was the managing editor of the New Pittsburgh Courier and is a veteran journalist who has worked in both the black and mainstream press.
Ransom told Journal-isms this week, “I’m not ready to discuss any changes.” Patterson was fired the same day Ransom hired Kathy Chaney, who now becomes the Defender’s only news reporter. Chaney worked for the Hyde Park Herald & Lakefront Outlook, an award-winning Chicago community paper, and before that for Reuters. She told Journal-isms she had been freelancing for the Defender for about a year and a half.
On Tuesday, Martin cited Ransom as an example of “negative people” in a segment of his WVON-AM radio show. He said Ransom refused to submit Defender stories written under Martin’s editorship for the annual Messenger Awards contest of the National Newspaper Publishers Association. The contest comes with a cash award, and Martin said he was going to donate any winnings to NABJ-Chicago, the Chicago chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists.
Ransom said, “I have no response. I did not hear any remarks. I don’t listen to talk radio.”
Patterson’s 2001 firing from the Gannett Co.’s Journal News in suburban New York has been linked to stories he wrote there detailing charges that General Motors sabotaged its African American auto dealers. His story was recounted in November 2005 on ABC-TV’s “Nightline.”
“Since they told me to hit the door on Monday, word has gotten out and all kinds of people from political to other media outlets have called to lend their support and say what a mistake they believe the Defender made,” Patterson told Journal-isms. “They are also asking for my resume and trying to find a fit for me in their organizations.”
He also said staff members continue to worry that the owners of the historic paper, the most prominent African American daily, plan to make it twice-weekly or weekly.
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Advocacy Role of Spanish-Language Media Debated
“Unlike their mainstream-media counterparts, Spanish-language TV anchors, print reporters and radio personalities take up issues affecting Latinos, going beyond traditional newsgathering to influence the news itself,” Laura Martinez Ruiz-Velasco wrote Monday in Advertising Age, in a story headlined, “How Spanish-Language Media Lend Clout to the Hispanic Vote.”
“Consider a pro-immigration rally [this month] in downtown Los Angeles, where police dispersed the crowd of thousands by hitting marchers with batons and shooting rubber bullets. Among the injured was Telemundo evening-news anchor Pedro Sevcec, who was knocked to the ground by police.
“We went from covering the news to being part of the news,” Jorge Hidalgo, executive vice president-news and sports at NBC Universal-owned Telemundo, was quoted as saying. “The network quickly filled the airwaves with firsthand accounts of the commotion, and dozens of outraged Hispanic journalists nationwide joined in. The incident prompted Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to cut short a trip to Latin America and replace the officer in charge with a Latino police veteran,” the story continued.
“. . . Others, though, caution about the potential dangers of advocacy journalism. ‘Spanish-language media is the first point of contact for most Latinos new to the voting process,’ said Leslie Sanchez, a Republican strategist and founder of Hispanic-communications-research firm Impacto Group in Washington. If journalists become commentators rather than objective purveyors of news, ‘the danger is that they’re prejudicing to their own bias,’ she said.”
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Short Takes
- Kenneth Eng, author of the infamous “Why I Hate Blacks” essay in AsianWeek in February, is being held in jail in New York without bail, the Village Voice reported on Tuesday, adding, “the court agreed to a request by his attorney for Eng to undergo a mental examination.” Police said that on April 30, Eng had allegedly threatened to kill a neighbor and her mother. He is scheduled to return to court on June 13.
- Oregon Public Broadcasting has agreed to distribute a controversial documentary, “Islam vs. Islamists: Voices From the Muslim Center,” after PBS said the show was incomplete and would not distribute it as delivered, John Eggerton reported Wednesday for Broadcasting & Cable.
- Michel Martin said the “three pillars” that support her new show on National Public Radio, “Tell Me More,” are a diversity of voices, exposure for women in positions of authority and an examination of what the nation’s changing demographics mean for America, Jackie Jones reported Thursday on BlackAmericaWeb.com. St. Petersburg Times critic Eric Deggans said in the story, “other than correspondent Juan Williams, I can’t think of another high-profile minority male at NPR since Tavis [Smiley], Ed Gordon and Ray Suarez left. I think the next year will be an important one for NPR and diversity. I hope they learn how to make their own organization as diverse as the world they cover.”
- Veteran journalist Javier Castano has been appointed editor in chief of Hoy New York, the free Spanish-language newspaper said Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. “Castano, 46, has worked as a reporter at El Tiempo, the Colombian newspaper, and in New York at El Diario and El Daily News. In 1999, he was hired as news director of Hoy New York,” the story said.
- “The Swamp,” a Washington bureau blog started on Chicagotribune.com by the Chicago Tribune bureau’s Frank James, was among the winners of Editor and Publisher’s 2007 EPpy Awards for interactive media. “The Swamp” was “best media-affiliated news blog.”
- Celine Avila, anchorwoman and reporter at KVIA-TV in El Paso, Texas, was jailed Tuesday on charges of driving with an invalid license and failure to maintain financial responsibility (sixth offense), or not having auto insurance, El Paso County Jail records show, the El Paso Times reported on Thursday. “It was a matter I had thought had been handled through an attorney. As soon as I realized it had not, I took care of it immediately,” Avila said in a statement e-mailed to the El Paso Times.
- Chicago’s “Fox-owned WFLD-Channel 32 has reached out to its sister station in Houston to replace morning news diva Tamron Hall,” Robert Feder reported on Friday in the Chicago Sun-Times. “Jan Jeffcoat, who has been morning news anchor at KRIV-TV since 2004, will join Mike Barz on Channel 32’s ‘Fox News in the Morning,’ starting June 25.
- “Now Keyshawn Johnson wants the damn microphone,” Ben Grossman wrote Thursday in Broadcasting & Cable. “ESPN has signed the outspoken wide receiver to become a studio analyst for its NFL coverage, including both the Sunday NFL Countdown and Monday NFL Countdown shows. Johnson, who once wrote a book called ‘Just Give me The Damn Ball!” retired as a player on Wednesday in conjunction with the announcement.”
- Mireille Anne Grangenois and Steven A. Holmes were married May 26 at the bridegroomâ??s cottage in Shady Side, Md., the New York Times reported. Holmes, 57, is a deputy national editor for the Washington Post. Grangenois, 51, a former journalist and newspaper advertising executive who has worked at the Gannett Co., Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News and Baltimore Sun, works in the Washington offices of Burson-Marsteller as managing director in the United States for multicultural advertising, marketing, branding and public relations. [Added May 27.]
