“Definitely a Setback” at San Francisco Chronicle

3 Journalists of Color Among Management Layoffs

Staff members at the San Francisco Chronicle are bracing for departures at the rank-and-file level after 14 managers— including three journalists of color — left in cutbacks over the past few days.

The newsroom’s Diversity Steering Committee sent a sharply worded note to Editor Phil Bronstein saying, “We hope this disregard for the diversity of newsroom management is not an indication of how The Chronicle intends to conduct the rest of its staff reduction.” It has not heard back.

The laid-off managers include Leslie Guevarra, deputy managing editor in charge of the copy desks who was the Chronicle’s highest-ranking female journalist of color; David Tong, assistant business editor, and Gary Fong, director of graphics technology.

“It’s going to be a very grim place in the next several days,” Narda Zacchino, the paper’s deputy editor, who monitors diversity efforts, told Journal-isms.

Zacchino said 50 percent of recent hires had been people of color. “It’s sad when anybody loses a job, but for people who care about diversity, the fact that we’re losing three people of color makes it incumbent to keep diversity in the forefront of our hiring and recruiting efforts that occur in the future,” she said.

“It’s definitely a setback.”

The Chronicle reported 16.7 percent journalists of color in the latest census by the American Society of Newspaper Editors; 10.2 percent of them Asian American.

With the departure last week of Jason B. Johnson for San Antonio, where he told Journal-isms he plans to freelance and do multimedia work, Leslie Fulbright noted that she will be the Chronicle’s only African American reporter. Johnson had been with the paper 10 years.

“The Bay Area is supposed to be one of the most diverse areas that we have,” Rene Astudillo, executive director of the Asian American Journalists Association, told Journal-isms, noting that reports were circulating that the San Jose Mercury News, also in the Bay Area, would pare its staff again. That paper claimed 32.2 percent journalists of color in the ASNE census.

Bronstein told the staff on Tuesday, “There are no more departures of managers planned. In the very near future, we will begin discussions about voluntary buyouts to Guild members.”

Michael Cabanatuan, a transportation reporter who is a member of the Diversity Steering Committee and president of the Northern California Media Workers Guild, said management had said there would be a reduction of 80 people because of budget shortfalls. If it comes to layoffs, he said, up to 25 percent of the staff can be designated as exempt because of their competencies. Contribution to diversity should be made one of the criteria, he said.

Guevarra was singled out by many as a particular loss for the Chronicle. “She’s a veteran member,” Astudillo said.

“Widely known in diversity circles,” Zacchino added.

Guevarra “started in San Francisco newspapering in 1982 at the Examiner, where she was a great reporter,” Bronstein said in his note. “She has been equally skilled at the Chronicle as a night city editor, assistant city editor, head of newsroom H.R. and as DME overseeing the Copy Desks. She has been very active in a variety of journalism organizations. Her willingness to step into any situation and make it work, her sense of calm in difficult circumstances all have made Leslie very valuable here in whatever role she has played.” he said.

“I really don’t feel like commenting,” Guevarra told Journal-isms. “These are exceedingly difficult times for the industry and the people in it. I’m just marshaling my thoughts and (will) move on.”

• Assistance for those who are leaving

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Orlando Graphics Editor Leaving Newspapers

The Orlando Sentinel, Baltimore Sun and Star Tribune of Minneapolis are among other newspapers trimming their staffs, and for Reginald Myers, graphics editor at the Orlando Sentinel, the loss of his job means “I don’t plan on going back in newspapers.”

Myers, 42, came to the Sentinel just 10 months ago from the Boston Globe, “and being laid off, I really don’t want to get in that situation again,” he told Journal-isms.

The layoff was actually “a blessing at the same time,” Myers continued. “I’m a musician and also build bass guitars.” This will be “a way of going in that direction. The plan is to stay in Orlando.” Myers has been in the newspaper business 22 years, having also worked at the Tacoma (Wash.) News Tribune.

The Sentinel announced a newsroom reorganization plan on May 1 that will eliminate about two dozen jobs as it restructures to place greater emphasis on the Internet, the paper reported then.

Enterprise Editor Gail Rayos, another journalist of color, also no longer works at the paper, staffers said.

Forty-one employees at the Baltimore Sun accepted a company buyout offer and a spokeswoman said Monday that layoffs were possible, the Associated Press reported.

None accepting the buyout were people of color, Sam Davis, assistant managing editor, told Journal-isms.

On Tuesday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune released a list of newsroom employees who will be leaving, most through a voluntary buyout program. The list included Delma Francis, a features reporter, and Greg Patterson, business editor/reporter, both African American.

The popular gossip columnist C.J., previously listed as one of four local columnists who could be reassigned, was not mentioned. She told Journal-isms on June 8, “they haven’t decided yet” on any reassignment. She has written the column for 19 years.

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People of Color Own Only 7.7% of Radio Stations

The average local radio market has 16 white male-owned radio stations — but just one female-owned station and two-minority owned stations, according to “Off the Dial: How Media Consolidation Diminishes Diversity on the Radio,” a report issued Tuesday by Free Press, a media advocacy group.

“Women own just 6 percent of all full-power radio stations, even though they comprise 51 percent of the population. People of color own just 7.7 percent of stations but make up 33 percent of the population,” the report said.

“As the FCC considers eliminating longstanding media ownership limits, ‘Off the Dial’ exposes how these changes could hasten the disappearance of the few female- and minority-controlled stations on the radio. On a national teleconference today, FCC Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps blasted the agency’s pro-consolidation policies for pushing out female and minority owners,” Free Press said on Tuesday.

“Latinos own less than 3 percent of U.S. radio stations but make up 15 percent of the population,” said Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, in a release from the Free Press.

“All day, all night, all white, clearly does not represent the diversity of American culture,” said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.

• Kristal Brent Zook, Women’s Media Center: Chicago Radio Station Owner at the Crossroads

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Ken Burns Protesters Look at PBS Management

“After a high-profile campaign to get PBS to flesh out a World War II documentary that ignored Hispanics’ contribution, activists are opening another front, seeking more representation in the management and on the boards of taxpayer-supported public broadcasting entities,” Dinesh Kumar wrote Tuesday for the subscription-only Communications Daily.

“The American GI Forum — which struck a deal with Ken Burns on incorporating Hispanic experiences into his documentary ‘The War’— said that pact doesn’t ‘let PBS off the hook’ on diversifying its staff and top managers. Had Hispanics been in senior management at PBS, Burns’s gaffe might have been caught early in the film’s 6-year production, the groups said.

“Minority employment fell slightly at public TV stations [in] 2005-2006 but rose slightly in public radio, said an annual Telecom Act-mandated CPB report to Congress. Minorities made up 20.4% of public radio’s work force in 2006 compared with 19.2% the year before. At public TV, minority employment fell from 18.8% to 18.7%. At national entities CPB, PBS and NPR minority employment rose 9.5% in 2006 among officials and managers but fell 7% among all staff, the report said.”

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Journalists in Film Deals with Spike, Denzel

Spike Lee will pay tribute to black U.S. soldiers who fought during World War II with a new film based on a novel by James McBride, the author, musician and former newspaper and magazine writer who teaches journalism at New York University, Lee told the Italian daily La Repubblica, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, Washington Post reporter Wil Haygood has completed a first draft of a script based on the life of Sammy Davis Jr., Pat H. Broeske reported Sunday in the New York Times. Actor Denzel Washington brought Haygood’s book, “In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr.,” to producer Brian Grazer, and Washington is expected to direct the movie, Broeske wrote.

Her story said Washington’s is one of four films planned on the vaudeville-reared Davis, who died in 1990 and was known as a singing, acting, dancing member of Frank Sinatra’s “Rat Pack.”

What generated attention in Haygood’s book, the Times wrote, “was the contention that Mr. Davis really wanted to be white.

“That claim has infuriated Davis’s African-American widow, Altovise Davis. . . . Mrs. Davis also takes umbrage with the Haygood book because it did not have the blessing of the Davis estate, of which she is sole owner. ‘How can someone claim to tell Sammyâ??s story if they didnâ??t even know him?'”

Davis’ widow is championing a biopic of her own based on “Yes, I Can,” an earlier biography of Davis.

“People who write about Abe Lincoln didn’t know him; people who write about Thomas Jefferson didn’t know him,” Haygood told Journal-isms on June 8. “It’s the duty of the biographer and the social historian to assess, analyze and synthesize an iconic figure’s role . . . and you must do that removed from the emotional hooks of the family bonds, as respectful as those might be or will always be.”

McBride, a distinguished writer in residence at NYU and a former staff writer at the Boston Globe, People magazine and Washington Post, among other outlets, wrote “Miracle at St. Anna” in 2003. It is the tale of a group of soldiers from the 92nd, all-black Buffalo Division fighting against Nazi occupation in Tuscany, and the friendship between one of the soldiers and a six-year-old Italian orphan, as Reuters described it.

Lee said, “I recently met a black veteran who fought at Iwo Jima and he told me how hurt he was that he could not find a single African-American in Clint Eastwood’s two films,” referring to last year’s “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima,” director Eastwood’s twin films about the bloody 1945 battle of Iwo Jima, Reuters said.

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Marti Buscaglia Named Publisher of O.C. Register

Marti Buscaglia, publisher of the Duluth (Minn.) News Tribune, will leave her job at the end of the month to become publisher of the Orange County Register in California, both papers announced on Wednesday. The appointment makes the Register one of the largest English-language dailies with a Hispanic publisher, if not the largest.

The Register has a daily circulation of 300,000; the News Tribune’s average is about 41,000 weekdays and 65,000 Sundays, the Duluth paper said.

Buscaglia oversaw the transition of the newspaper from ownership by Knight Ridder Inc. of San Jose, Calif., to Forum Communications Corp. of Fargo, N.D., last year, the Duluth paper noted. The Register is owned by Freedom Communications Inc. of Irvine, Calif.

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Kenard Gibbs of Vibe Joins Johnson Publishing

“Kenard Gibbs, former president of Quincy Jones‘ brainchild— VIBE magazine— has been appointed group publisher of EBONY and JET magazines and president of the newly formed EBONY/JET Entertainment Group,” Johnson Publishing Co. announced on Wednesday.

“As group publisher, Gibbs will oversee the advertising sales, event sponsorship, marketing, research, digital sales and production departments for EBONY and JET magazines.

“Gibbs will also oversee the newly formed EBONY/JET Entertainment Group, a subsidiary of its parent company, Johnson Publishing Company, Inc. (JPC). This will include the creation of branded entertainment content through developing original and/or acquiring content to be distributed through theatrical, broadcast, cable and digital platforms including Video On Demand (VOD) and mobile.”

Gibbs left Vibe last summer after it was acquired by the Wicks Group of Companies, a private-equity firm.

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Conyers Denounces Fox Over Mistaken ID

“Mistakes were made: That’s a phrase used often. Today’s a prime example. Or yesterday. Hell, both,” according to Anne Schroeder’s “Shenanigans” blog Tuesday on the Politico Web site.

“Fox News, upon talking about the indictment of Rep. William Jefferson, showed b-roll of an entirely different representative, John Conyers (D-MI). Today the Fox News anchor on whose show the mistaken b-roll aired, Martha MacCallum, apologized. . . .

“Conyers camp released a statement denouncing Fox. Meanwhile, FNC DC Bureau chief Brian Wilson called and emailed Conyers camp to issue an apology this morning, noting that it was the mistake of a very junior member of FNC’s library in New York. Conyers camp, according to a source, didn’t get back until later in the day and stated they felt the on-air apology could have gone farther.

“It didn’t become an issue until [Conyers’ camp] realized [it] could maximize press on this since it involved Fox News,” says a FNC insider. Wilson’s email to Conyers communications guy Jonathan Godfrey is as follows: ‘An on air correction and apology will be made this afternoon — at about the same moment in the broadcast day that the original mistake was made. We are deeply sorry — and, in fact, mortified — at the mistake . . .'”

The DiversityInc. Web site headlined its story, “Do They All Look Alike? FOX News Shows Wrong Black Congressman Indicted.”

• Jim Wooten blog, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Fox apologizes, apologizes, apolo . . . [Added June 7]

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Hometown Paper Calls for Jefferson to Step Down

“U.S. Rep. William Jefferson promised ‘an honorable explanation’ for the $90,000 federal agents found almost two years ago in the freezer of his Capitol Hill townhouse, but he has much more to explain now,” the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Jefferson’s hometown paper, editorialized on Tuesday. “A federal grand jury indicted him Monday on 16 counts of racketeering, soliciting bribes, money laundering and obstruction of justice.

“The congressman is entitled to his day in court. But the Louisianians who live in his district are entitled to something as well: a representative who can devote full time and energy to their many pressing concerns.

“Rep. Jefferson is not that person, and for that reason, he should step down.”

Columnist Lolis Eric Elie, while not calling for Jefferson to resign, wrote of his fellow Louisianans, “Though no one has alleged that he was sharing kickbacks with us, we are certainly being judged just as Jefferson is being judged. If he is convicted, we will be convicted as well.

“. . . If Jefferson is convicted, it seems to me he owes all of us a share of the $90,000 the feds say they found in his freezer.”

In an interview on National Public Radio’s “News & Notes,” Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, another New Orleanian, said, “I personally hope that he would do what’s best for his family and his constituents and put his legal case before everything else and allow someone else to step up and represent that district.”

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CNN’s Lemon to Fill In for Departed Satinder Bindra

CNN daytime anchor Don Lemon will fill in temporarily on the India beat covered since 1999 by Satinder Bindra, who has left the network, CNN spokeswoman Christa Robinson told Journal-isms on Wednesday.

Bindra’s whereabouts or reasons for leaving CNN could not be learned. “I can confirm that he left a few weeks ago,” Robinson said. “We have no further comment. We don’t comment on personnel issues.” Later, she said, “we are going to be having an announcement on this in the coming weeks,” speaking of Bindra’s replacement.

According to his bio, Bindra, a senior international correspondent, “has covered every major story in the region, and has also traveled extensively on other international assignments. He reported from Baghdad on the capture of Saddam Hussein; from the Taliban bastion of Kunduz; Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks; from Kargil during the conflict between India and Pakistan; and from refugee camps during the war in Kosovo in 1997.

“In the past five years, Bindra has filed stories and reported live events from the length and breadth of India: spearheading CNN’s coverage of the [Indian] General Elections 2004, former Indian Prime Minister [Atal Bihari] Vajpayee’s visit to Washington, a devastating earthquake in 2001, and riots in Western India (2002).”

Lemon joined CNN in September after serving as a co-anchor for the 5 p.m. newscast at WMAQ-TV, an NBC station, in Chicago.

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Debates Said Not to Reach Core Black Issues

“The war in Iraq and the issue of immigration took center stage during the second 2008 presidential debate in New Hampshire Sunday night,” Amber English of the New York Amsterdam News wrote Wednesday for the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service.

“These are issues that African-Americans care about, political observers say, but, what about the low quality education in city schools, the violent crime rates that are up for the second year in a row, the unemployment rate among African-Americans that consistently doubles that of Whites and the mandatory minimum sentences that keeps Blacks crowding prisons across the nation?”

• Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe: A debate goes nuclear
• Hollywood Reporter: Democratic debate polls well for CNN
• Joseph C. Phillips, BlackAmericaWeb.com: Democratic Candidate John Edwards, the Boy Who Would Be King, is Instead a Hypocrite

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Short Takes

• Garry D. Howard, assistant managing editor/sports for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, has been elected second vice president of the Associated Press Sports Editors. “He becomes the first African American to hold an elected officer position with APSE,” Amanda Comak wrote Tuesday for APSE. “This month Kansas City Star AME Mike Fannin, who is Hispanic, will be the first minority to lead the organization. The following year, Orlando Sentinel AME Lynn Hoppes, who is Asian American, will serve as president.”
• “Antonio Mora took the fall Tuesday for low ratings at WBBM-Channel 2 by being demoted after more than five years as 10 p.m. news anchor at the CBS-owned station,” Robert Feder reported Wednesday in the Chicago Sun-Times. “Mora, 49, who still has 18 months to go on his contract, will continue to anchor at 6 p.m. with Diann Burns and host his weekly ‘Eye on Chicago’ magazine show. . . . As the market’s first Hispanic news anchor on a network-owned station at 10 p.m., Mora joined Channel 2 in 2002 from ABC’s ‘Good Morning America.'”
• The National Association of Hispanic Journalists will hold “A Conversation with Arnold Schwarzenegger,” California governor, to open the 25th Anniversary NAHJ Convention and Media & Career Expo June 13-16 in San Jose, Calif., the association announced on Wednesday. Schwarzenegger, Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton and others “will tackle hot topics including the fallout from a police clash with journalists at a recent immigration rally in Los Angeles, the rise in violence against Latinos by hate groups, and the splitting of mixed-status families by stepped-up worksite raids and deportations.”
• Ebony magazine plans to engage “in an honest examination of race, language and the culture of disrespect” in its July issue, the magazine announced on Wednesday. “In the pages of this provocative issue, EBONY explores the history of Black culture and negative images and how they have impacted society’s behavior today. How did we get to this place of disrespect, or is it creative expression? And, what do we tell our children about what they see and hear?”
• Executives charged with increasing diversity in front of and behind the cameras at the four major networks say the coming season demonstrates their continued commitment, but instead of celebrating, leaders from the NAACP, in addition to Latino and Asian advocacy groups monitoring the TV industry for years, are disappointed, Greg Braxton wrote Wednesday in the Los Angeles Times. The groups say network television is sending mixed messages on diversity.
• Amilcar Arroyo, publisher of El Mensajero, a Spanish-language newspaper in Hazelton, Pa., had to leave an immigration rally Sunday after a crowd surrounded him and began yelling for him to “get out of the country,” Nichole Dobo reported Tuesday in the Scranton Times-Tribune.
• Milwaukee’s Telemundo network station, WYTU-LP, will launch a weeknight 10 p.m. newscast on July 2 that will include local news, the Milwaukee Business Journal reported on Monday.
• Asked what he thought of today’s CNN, Bernard Shaw, who retired as a CNN anchor in 2001, told John Callaway of Chicago’s WTTW-TV: “I try not to. I’m very, very disappointed with the way the news management at my favorite network has gone. CNN has fine women and men working there. Lou Dobbs, one of the leaders there. Unfortunately, Fox News is the ratings leader . . . on the cable side of the business, and what Fox puts on the air is not news,” Robert Feder reported Tuesday in the Chicago Sun-Times.
• National Public Radio host Robert Siegel explores one man’s pursuit of vindication after nearly 18 years behind bars in “The Exoneration of Larry Peterson,” a two-part documentary airing June 12 and 13 on NPR News’ “All Things Considered.” “In 2005, Larry Peterson of Pemberton Township, N.J., was released after DNA evidence cleared him of a murder he had steadfastly maintained he did not commit. By then, he had served 18 years of a life term,” as the Newark Star-Ledger recounted in an editorial.
• Neil Henry, a finalist for the dean’s job at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, has been nominated by provost George Breslauer to serve for six months as interim dean of the school beginning July 1. The University of California regents must approve the appointment.
• Ali Baghdadi, who went to Sudan in late April “in a fact finding mission as a part of an African-American journalists’ delegation” of 31, interviewed Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and published a story about it Monday on an Iraqi Web site. “The U.S. media hides him from your sight,” Baghdadi wrote of Bashir. “BET (Black Entertainment TV) conducted a one hour exclusive interview with Mr. al-Bashir in his village. . . . Will BET executives allow this rare interview to be aired in the United States?” BET spokeswoman Jeanine Liburd told Journal-isms the interview would be part of a report on Darfur scheduled to air in August.
• “Leaders of the world press meeting in South Africa this week have called on African governments to abolish all laws that restrict press freedom and have pledged to rev up their own campaigns against free expression violations and restrictions on the continent,” according to the International Freedom of Expression Exchange Clearing House in Toronto.
• “The board that oversees the government’s Arabic-language satellite television network is seeking an outside review after recent broadcasts that included inflammatory language referring to Israel or Jews,” the Associated Press reported from Washington on Wednesday. “The overseers of the network, Al Hurra, have acknowledged mistakes, even as they defended the journalistic principle of broadcasting views critical of the United States or its allies.”
• More than 80 media practitioners from around the world met in Oslo, Norway, on Monday and Tuesday addressing the theme, “Primetime Diversity — Journalism in a Troubled World,” facilitated jointly by the Norwegian and Indonesian governments,” Endy M. Bayuni reported in the Jakarta Post.
• The government of Liberia has lifted the ban imposed Feb. 27 on the Independent newspaper after it published a photograph showing President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s then chief of office staff Willis Knuckles having sex with two women, the Center for Media Studies and Peace Building reported on Monday.