Asian American Editors in N.Y. Daily News Drama
Dean Chang, bounced suddenly from his job as Metro editor at the New York Daily News, wants to make one thing clear: He does not think ethnicity played any role in the decision to oust him.
He also said he disagrees with an inference in an account Friday by Keith J. Kelly in the arch-rival New York Post that Chang’s departure comes as the result of a clash with another Asian American at the paper, Executive Editor David Ng, who holds the newsroom’s No. 3 job.
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“The move to dump Chang — who had been clashing with Executive Editor David Ng in recent weeks, was particularly upsetting to News staffers,” Kelly wrote.
“In fact, many rank-and-file staffers were aghast that Ng hadn’t suffered, because he had apparently blown a chance to break the story about Yankees superstar Alex Rodriguez cavorting around Toronto with another woman,” the story said.
“It couldn’t be further from the truth. I didn’t have anything that could be construed as a clash with David in the last three weeks, let alone three months,” Chang, 41, told Journal-isms.
Kelly’s story began: “Daily News Editor-in-Chief Martin Dunn yesterday shook up his newsroom, bouncing two longtime editors and bringing back two former editors in a sweeping reorganization that he clearly hopes will reverse the circulation skid of the Mort Zuckerman-owned daily.
“The move to oust Metropolitan Editor Dean Chang, a 17-year veteran, and National Editor Mark Mooney, another veteran, particularly rankled newsroom staffers.
“. . . ‘It’s safe to say everyone was angry and upset,’ another insider said of Chang,” Kelly wrote. “This is a class guy, a well-respected guy and a talented guy with three young kids who was just treated very shabbily.’
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Ng, who arrived a year ago from the Newark Star-Ledger, did not respond to a request for comment.
A bio for the 2006 Bravo channel reality series “Tabloid Wars,” in which cameras followed News reporters on their assignments, said of Chang:
He “joined The New York Daily News in 1990 at the age of 24. After seven years as a reporter, Chang was sweet-talked into becoming an editor by Pete Hamill, then the editor of The New York Daily News. Three months later, Pete was gone, and Chang was stuck on the desk. In his nine years on the City Desk, Chang has worked his way up from Deputy Metro Editor for criminal justice, supervising police and court coverage, to City Editor and now Metro Editor, a position he’s held for three years — a lifetime, compared to the last six Metro Editors.”
Chang would not speculate publicly about Dunn’s reasons for dumping him. Under the headline “Snooze’s Dunn May Be News,” Kelly wrote Wednesday that, “Dunn’s current contract expires at the end of the year, and talks about a new contract have not even begun. Nobody is expecting that they will.”
“I am very proud of the work that I’ve done as city editor for three years, and then metro editor for four years,” Chang told Journal-isms, “and I don’t dispute that Martin is entitled to make any decision he wants and to have in place any editor that he wants. I just am surprised that given what I’ve done for the paper, and given my standing in the journalism community, that he didn’t see fit to find something I could do that was beneficial to the paper.”
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IRE Honors Three-Year Project on Latino Gangs
“Nuestra Familia, Our Family,” a project by the Berkeley, Calif.-based Center for Investigative Reporting that looked at Latino gangs, won the Investigative Reporters and Editors’ highest award, the IRE gold medal, in this year’s competition.
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“This stunning documentary provides an unprecedented look inside the world of Latino gangs, largely through the experiences of a man in Salinas, Calif., who raised his son to become a gang member,” the judges said, citing Oriana Zill de Granados, Julia Reynolds and George Sanchez.
“Journalists put in more than three years of hard work, building relationships and trust with gang members, obtaining grand-jury transcripts and poring over leaked FBI internal reports. They provide shockingly raw scenes of the Nuestra Familia gang in action, intricately detailing how it grew from a political movement among Mexican-American farm workers into a violent force that rules both the streets of California agricultural cities and the halls of the California prison system. Most significantly, ‘Nuestra Familia’ brings home the sorrow of the agricultural community of Salinas, whose mothers desperately hope to break the cycle of gang violence before their sonsâ?? sons are imprisoned or murdered.”
Among other winners, Fred Schulte and June Arney of the Baltimore Sun were honored in the large-newspaper category for “On Shaky Ground.”
“When a family of Vietnamese immigrants lost their home over a small unpaid debt related to obscure, colonial-era law, reporters at The Sun began to investigate. Soon, they uncovered lawyers and ruthless landlords who were systematically acquiring so-called ‘ground rent’ rights and using small debts to force hundreds of people out of their homes all over their city,” the judges said.
In the top 20 television market category, Jeff Burnside, Scott Zamost, Felix Castro, Ed Garcia, Pedro Cancio and Maria Carpio of WTVJ-Miami won for “Citizenship for Sale.”
“This riveting investigation revealed an illegal scheme that exploited the hopes and fears of unsuspecting immigrants. The operation, run by a South Florida man, purported to sell citizenship in the Pembina Little Shell Band Indian Tribe of North Dakota. Victims were told they would have the right to work legally in the United States if they paid $1,500. It was a sham, of course. The WTVJ investigation shut down the bogus operation and led to federal and state investigations,” the judges said.
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Sports Columnist Apologizes for “Spearchuckers”
Baltimore Sun sports columnist Childs Walker apologized to readers and to others in the newsroom this week for likening NBA players to “spearchuckers” in his column, saying he did not know the term had offensive racial connotations.
Seventy-five percent of NBA players are African Americans, according to the latest NBA “Racial and Gender Report Card” from Richard Lapchick.
“I just wanted to let everyone know that there will be a note from me in the paper tomorrow apologizing for a line in my story on Saturday,” Walker wrote to the Sun staff on Monday. “In the piece, I compared LeBron James against the Pistons to a ‘tank rumbling through spearchuckers.'”
“I did so without knowing that ‘spearchuckers’ has long been used as a racial epithet in this country. I only meant to suggest that LeBron was a much more advanced, powerful player than those trying to defend him.
“My mistake was recognized by the desk but only after the first edition was printed, so it did appear in some papers.
“I’m embarrassed by my ignorance of the term and apologize for using it. I just wanted you all to hear it from me.”
The Saturday column, “Shooting Gallery,” mentioning the Cleveland Cavalier star’s performance against the Detroit Pistons in the NBA playoffs, was changed after the first edition. The Sun ran a brief correction on Tuesday, and Walker added a note of apology to his own column the same day, similar to the note he sent to the newsroom.
He originally wrote: “There aren’t many true prodigies, and the chance to catch one coming to full bloom is rarer still. But LeBron James did just that, hitting shot after shot in one of the great pIayoff performances in memory. At times, he rumbled through a good Pistons defense like a tank through spearchuckers.” It was changed to, “At times, he rumbled through a good Pistons defense right to the basket.”
Walker, 30, who started as a local news reporter at the Sun in 2001 and began a column about fantasy sports in 2005, grew up in Baltimore. He attended the Gilman School for boys there and went on to Emory University in Atlanta. Walker told Journal-isms that he interacted with African Americans when growing up, but the term never came up.
“I’m not sure how to account for never seeing the term,” he said. “I’ve studied civil rights history extensively so it’s not that I haven’t encountered the language of prejudice. I will say that I’ve spoken to many people about the term in the last week and that many — black and white — who are about my age were unfamiliar with its history. Older people had almost universally heard it used as a slur. My father, for example, said he remembered it being bandied around the time of the riots in the late 1960s. I guess it speaks to the vastness of the American vernacular and the possibility of stumbling into language that means one thing to one person and something more sinister to someone else.”
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Rank-and-File Offered Buyouts at S.F. Chronicle
The process of offering buyouts to rank-and-file newsroom employees at the San Francisco Chronicle began Friday in the newspaper’s attempt to reduce the newsroom staff by about 80 people amid financial concerns, Michael Cabanatuan, president of the Northern California Media Workers Guild, told Journal-isms.
He said 12 or 13 employees were escorted to the human resources department and offered two weeks’ pay for every year of service, in addition to a continuation of medical benefits for a maximum of one year. The employees were accompanied by the appropriate deputy managing editor. A Guild representative was present if requested, he said.
Cabanatuan also said the employees were told there would be layoffs if not enough people took the buyouts. He said people of color were among those who accepted the offer, but did not want to name them since they can change their minds.
The offers follow exits by 14 managers, including three journalists of color.
- News & Record lays off 41 workers (News & Record, Greensboro, N.C.)
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Despite Cliches, Study Says Indians Taken Seriously
A content analysis of newspapers with circulation areas with high percentages of Native Americans found that “The best stories came from the more local newspapers such as the Tulsa (Okla.) World, San Antonio Express-News and Albuquerque (N.M.) Journal.
“As Native Americans gain political power, newspapers seem to be taking them more seriously,” concluded the 2007 edition of “The Reading Red Report,” released Friday at the Native American Journalists Association convention in Denver, where Interim Executive Director Kim Baca said about 200 have gathered.
However, the study, written by Cristina L. Azocar, director of the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism at San Francisco State University, also found objectionable headlines and stories that “often appear as cliches and stereotypes where reporters still miss the nuances of Native American culture and life whether local or national papers.
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“Headline writers may think they are being clever when they use the term reservation, but often it is used incorrectly and has no relationship to the story,” the study said. “Three instances of this occurred in this sample. The Tulsa World reported on Mato Nanji, the lead singer of the band Indigenous. The headline ‘Without reservation’ had nothing to do with the story. A Phoenix New Times story on the Native American Basketball Invitational ran with the headline ‘Without Reservations.’ ‘No Reservations’ was the headline for what otherwise was an excellent book review of David Treuerâ??s ‘Native American Fiction: A Userâ??s Manual.’
“A sports column in the San Antonio Express News mocks the very serious issue of the use of Indian mascots. The writer went so far as to use stereotypical language ‘. . . big chiefs in Indianapolis’ and mocked Chief Sitting Bull.
“Two instances of the term ‘chanting’ appeared when the correct term is singing. The San Antonio Express [N]ews profiled a Cherokee death row inmate in the common ‘Indian as mystical creature theme’: With thunder banging overhead, the state of Texas executed Richard Hinojosa . . .while the inmate [chanted] a Native American prayer, invoked heaven . . . Hinojosa began chanting, over and over, â??Hey-Yah, Yahweh, Hey-Yahâ?? with the slow rhythm of a Native American drumbeat.”
“The New York Times also committed the ‘mystical creature with chanting’ theme: ‘. . . During a news conference that opened with the chanting of ancient American Indian prayers.’ If the reporter had asked about the opening, she would have learned that the chanting was either a prayer in a Native language or a song. What otherwise could have been an important story on the unusually high rate of substance abuse by Native Americans becomes overshadowed by the lack of understanding.”
The newspapers studied were: The Albuquerque Journal; Anchorage Daily News; Arizona Capitol Times, a weekly in Tucson; Oklahoma City Journal Record, another weekly; Los Angeles Times; New York Times; Phoenix New Times; San Antonio Express News; San Diego Union Tribune and Tulsa World.
Report’s “Quick Tips” for Covering Indian Country
The “Reading Red” report offered these “quick tips for covering Indian Country”:
- Get past the casino and alcohol stories.
- Get to know the Native community, become a familiar face.
- Subscribe to at least one national Native newspaper.
- Develop a source list that includes tribal college presidents, professors and community elders.
- Make Native issues a regular news beat.
- Consider your reporting role important to Native communities.
- Find out the political and legal status of the Indian nation before starting the interview.
- Ceremonies and cultural objects are rarely photographed. Talk to the person in charge for proper protocols.
- One Native person doesn’t speak for all community members.
- Native people belong to sovereign nations, meaning they have their own distinct governments (laws, political structure, law enforcement procedures, etc.).
- Tribal politics permeate many reservations, but it shouldn’t prevent an accurate story from being told.
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Group Targets EEO Language in Job Announcements
An anti-affirmative action group that went after a program aimed at training Latino journalists is now targeting such familiar job-announcement language as, “Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.”
“Proponents of including such language say that it sends a message to potential applicants who are not white men that they are wanted â?? even if a department is made up largely of white men,” Scott Jaschik wrote Thursday in Inside Higher Ed.
“But critics of affirmative action have been challenging such language as discriminatory. As soon as a college names some groups as being desirable, the college is effectively rigging a search, they say. The issue has come to a head with a series of letters sent by affirmative action critics to the EEOC and by a debate about the American Economic Association’s policy â?? since reversed â?? of refusing to post such job announcements,” he wrote, referring to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
“An EEOC letter last year suggested that such job announcements were legal. . . . The new letter, written in April and just posted by the EEOC on its Web site, takes a different approach, responding to an inquiry from Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, which opposes affirmative action.
“‘We commented that job advertisements typically should not indicate a preference based on race, sex, or ethnicity. We noted that there are circumstances under which focused recruiting is used in order to eliminate barriers to employment opportunity and attract a more diverse applicant pool. We also noted that the legality of a particular practice cannot be assessed outside the context of particular facts that have been fully investigated,’ the letter said.”
It was Clegg and the Center for Equal Opportunity, chaired by Ronald Reagan administration official Linda Chavez, who three years ago forced the E.W. Scripps Co. and the Rocky Mountain News to change the purpose of a program designed “to help early-career Hispanic journalists develop the skills they need to succeed in daily newspaper careers.”
The Denver program, which had been called the “Scripps Academy for Hispanic Journalists,” became the “Scripps Academy for Hispanic Journalism, a training program at the Rocky Mountain News.” In explaining the change and the pressure he received from Clegg, News Editor and Publisher John Temple wrote, “Admission will be made without regard to an applicant’s race, color, national origin, religion, etc.”
Clegg was a deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
Jaschik wrote that “EEOC officials cautioned against reading too much into the letters, which are written in response to specific questions,” but added, “Clegg said that while he would have preferred to see the EEOC go further, he found the latest letter to be ‘significant’ and to indicate that the agency was sending a message to colleges that ‘most of the time, you shouldn’t be doing this.'”
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June 15 Deadline for Nominating J-Educator
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.