Saga Sucks Oxygen from Case of Missing Woman
“I’m livid,” Miami Herald reporter David Ovalle wrote Friday on his Miami Herald blog.
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“I agreed to conduct a last-minute interview with MSNBC about the case of missing Stepha Henry, the 22-year-old college grad who went missing May 29 from Miami-Dade. I rushed to MSNBC’s studio but a few minutes before the interview, I was told that it was off — Paris Hilton coverage was more important.
“Turns out, I’m not the only one. Miami-Dade police lead spokeswoman Linda O’Brien was canceled by MSNBC the hour before me. She tells me:
“‘I am upset because MSNBC called me and asked me to go to their studio in Broward County, 30 miles away from my office. I was there for a total of 45 minutes, was already seated and had the mic ready for the interview. As I waiting to be interviewed, I was listening to the Paris Hilton coverage to include discussion to the effect if anybody had seen or knew the whereabouts of her Chihuahua.
“‘Then they tell me they have to cut the piece, cut my interview because they’re doing constant coverage of Paris Hilton. I’m appalled that a missing woman cannot get even 60 seconds of air time because the priorities of MSNBC was to have footage of the front gates of Paris Hilton’s house. They asked me to come to the interview and I’m going out of my way to do every interview to keep in the public eye that Stepha Henry, a bright beautiful woman, is missing and we need help in this case.”
“I’m through with cable TV news. It’s a joke.
“For her part, O’Brien tells me she will be on NBC’s ‘Today Show’ at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow with reporter Kerry Sanders. Part of the story will focus on TV media coverage of this missing black woman.”
The Saturday “Today” show did indeed do a segment on Henry. But as with other missing women of color, Henry’s case has received relatively little national attention, especially compared to the soap opera of the arrest and release of Hilton.
Jeremy Gaines, a spokesman for MSNBC, said Tuesday of the Henry disappearance, “We covered the story extensively over the weekend and on Monday. On Friday we changed our coverage plan due to breaking news.”
As Yamiche Alcindor explained in the Herald on Thursday, Henry, 22, was last seen partying at Peppers Cafe in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., at 1 a.m. May 29.
“Henry, a recent graduate of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, flew down from New York for Memorial Day weekend to celebrate her sister’s 16th birthday. The Henry sisters had been staying with their aunt and cousin in Miami Gardens for the weekend and planned to fly home May 29.
“The night before she disappeared, Henry told her family she was getting a ride to Peppers from a friend. Her sister stayed home.
“A videotape taken by a promotional group at Peppers shows Henry at the club.
“But she never made it home.
“Calls placed to Henry’s cell phone went straight to her voice mail. The petite woman was last seen wearing a black dress with a white tank top underneath and brown heels. She was carrying a brown clutch purse. Henry, who has long bronze hair, is 5’2” and 110 pounds.”
- Bob Herbert, New York Times: School to Prison Pipeline
- Shanna Flowers, Roanoke (Va.) Times: Girls gone wild are no role models
- Douglas C. Lyons, South Florida Sun-Sentinel: Her get-out-jail card trumps my race card
- Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: Sweet ‘street’ justice for Paris
- Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: America’s Most Flaunted
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Suspension Sought for “Spearchucker” Columnist
The Baltimore Sun sports columnist who used the word “spearchucker” to describe an NBA team — which the newspaper changed after the first edition — “needs to be suspended for a period of time to let the rest of the staff know this kind of writing will not be tolerated, even if you don’t know the meaning of the term,” Charles Robinson III, president of the Association of Black Media Workers of Baltimore, told Journal-isms on Tuesday.
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“Suspension sends the proper message to unpoison the newsroom,” said Robinson, who is running unopposed for a seat on the National Association of Black Journalists board of directors.
As reported on Friday, columnist Childs Walker, writing June 2 about Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James in the NBA playoffs, 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, who is 30, later apologized to readers for his ignorance of the term’s negative connotations and told Journal-isms he thought knowledge of the term’s racist history was generational.
Robinson said he wrote Sun Editor Tim Franklin after reading the Journal-isms account on Saturday. “It concerns us that such a reference was not caught by an editor prior to publication. It also concerns us that the writer was ignorant, by his own admission, of the racial offensiveness of the term,” wrote Robinson, correspondent and associate producer for Maryland Public Television.
“These days many of your reporters and editors probably have varied backgrounds, may be well read, well schooled and mentally astute, but may lack some of the intangibles that would have thrown up a red flag in using a term like ‘spearchucker.'”
“I disagree with your suggestion that Childs has ‘poisoned the well of open, honest and balanced reporting in the newsroom and out,'” Franklin replied. “In fact, Baltimore NAACP President Marvin ‘Doc’ Cheatham called my assistant managing editor for sports, Tim Wheatley, last Tuesday to commend the handling of the situation.
“Management and the Diversity Committee at The Sun have been— and will continue to be — vigilant and pro-active about not alienating our diverse readers,” Franklin said, noting that among other steps, the Sun’s Diversity Committee “is about to complete its second content audit of The Sun. This audit is designed to help measure how we’re doing reflecting the diversity of our readership in our news pages. Our plan is to conduct a series of educational seminars this summer with the staff to discuss the findings of the content audit. We also will address how we can prevent another incident like the one last week.”
The use of “spearchucker” prompted a lively discussion on a black talk-radio show a day before the Sun’s correction and apology were issued.
“Listeners were outraged,” the producer of WOLB-AM’s “The Larry Young Show,” who said he goes only by the name Ajaya, told Journal-isms. He said the discussion took up a large portion of Young’s four-hour show on June 4 and was designed not to attack the Sun, but to be educational.
Although the column was changed after the first edition, that edition reached outlying areas of the Sun circulation area, such as Howard County, Md., home of a friend of Bob Wade, the former University of Maryland basketball coach. The friend called Wade, who lives in Baltimore County, and asked if he had seen the reference. Wade said it wasn’t in his paper, and called around. Wade, who is now supervisor of athletics for the Baltimore city schools, also contacted Wheatley, the Sun sports editor, that Monday to express his concern, he told Journal-isms. Wheatley called back and offered his apology, Wade said.
Meanwhile, Ajaya said, WOLB heard about the reference and decided to make it a topic on Young’s morning talk show. “We put it to the listeners to get calls about how they felt,” he said. The show’s hosts added to the discussion an incident this month in Fresno, Calif., in which adults in blackface poked fun at slavery during a June 1 celebration for Riverdale Christian Academy, a small private Christian school.
The Sun’s correction appeared the next day, but not without some comments by African American staffers about what they considered the paper’s slow response. “Morale was pretty bad” at the paper anyway, as the paper just saw the departure of a number of staffers who took buyouts, one writer told Journal-isms. “Some were saying, ‘how could things have sunk so low?”
- White Writer Differs With Fulwood on “Spearchucker” (May 15, 2006)
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Cristina Azocar to Lead Native American Journalists
Cristina Azocar, the director of the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism and an assistant professor of journalism at San Francisco State University, was elected Sunday as president of the Native American Journalists Association by the board of directors, NAJA announced.
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The board also announced it had hired Jeff Harjo (Seminole), editor of the Kickapoo Traveling Times, as NAJA executive director. Harjo succeeds Interim Executive Director Kim Baca (Navajo/Santa Clara Pueblo), who will leave the organization when NAJA moves to Norman, Okla., at the end of July.
Azocar (Upper Mattaponi), 38, has been NAJA’s secretary and treasurer. She said she wants to be sure the 600-member organization, the smallest in Unity: Journalists of Color, has a “big voice” at the convention in Chicago in 2008, as Chicago has one of the oldest urban Indian communities.
She also said NAJA could lead in helping organizations looking to serve their ethnic communities and use ethnic media, “as we are the original ethnic group in this country.”
Azocar wrote the 2007 edition of “The Reading Red Report” on coverage of Native Americans, released Friday at the Native American Journalists Association convention in Denver.
She has directed the San Francisco State program for five years. Its Web site says, “We develop programs and conduct research aimed at recruiting, retaining and revitalizing journalists and journalism educators. We seek to make journalism more inclusive from the classroom to the newsroom.”
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Kimbrough-Robinson, Sweets Leave Denver Post
Carla Kimbrough-Robinson, associate editor for staff development, was one of five newsroom employees cut at the Denver Post on Monday, the Rocky Mountain News reported on Tuesday. Ellen Sweets, a veteran journalist who was a food writer at the paper, took a buyout.
Sixteen journalists signed up for the paper’s voluntary separation plan. The five laid-off employees’ last day will be Friday. “The Post had been seeking 37 people to take the buyout plan, so the cuts will likely continue,” the News wrote.
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“Kimbrough-Robinson handled recruitment — a task that’s of less importance at the paper now than at any time in recent memory, Michael Roberts wrote in his Westword blog. “Indeed, just last month, as documented in this blog, Kimbrough-Robinson sent a note to staffers promoting a June 1 job search seminar whose first line read, ‘Thinking of making a career transition?'”
“I’m going to be very open to the best opportunities out there,” she told Journal-isms on Tuesday. “I’m still interested in the newspaper industry. If I can find the right fit and if someone thinks I’ve got the right set of skills and experiences, I hope there will be a match. If not, I’ll look for some other area, such as academia or human resources.”
According to a bio posted with the Associated Press Managing Editors, Kimbrough-Robinson was regional editor at the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News for nearly five years; held various assignment editor jobs at the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Marietta (Ohio) Times, and the Jackson (Tenn.) Sun; was a reporter and a copy editor at the former Arkansas Gazette and began her reporting career at the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal.
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Sweets came to the Post after having spent 11 years at the Dallas Morning News as a features writer, columnist and food writer, arriving there in 1989. She was 2005 winner of the James Beard Award for the best food section in its circulation category, and for two years worked for Neiman Marcus, running its “Chef’s Catalogue” Web site before joining the Denver paper.
Sweets told Journal-isms that, “for right now, I don’t plan to do anything.” But, she said, she might become involved in such activist groups as the American Civil Liberties Union. “I’m unhappy about a lot of things” after 45 years in the news business, she said. “We’re not as feisty as we once were. We’re managed much more as a corporate entity than as the people’s advocate.
“I think that’s my calling,” she said. “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Food stories don’t solve problems.”
Sweets comes from a journalism family. Her brother, Fred Sweets, has been a photographer and editor at several publications, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Washington Post. Their parents, Nathaniel A. Sweets Sr. and Melba Sweets, once owned the St. Louis American, a black weekly in that city, and Melba Sweets was a columnist there for 50 years.
Meanwhile, blogger Ed Cone wrote that at the Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record, a Landmark publication, where 41 jobs have been eliminated, the layoff list included Monica Chen, “a reporter in the High Point bureau who started just days ago,” and Jonelle Davis, “a fairly new reporter in Rockingham” who had worked at the Chapel Hill (N.C.) News. Editor John Robinson did not return a call seeking comment.
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Columnists Reject Race Charges from Blogosphere
“What happened to Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, a young Knoxville couple out on an ordinary Saturday night date, was undeniably brutal,” Howard Witt wrote in a front-page story Sunday in the Chicago Tribune. “The two were carjacked, kidnapped, raped and finally murdered during an ordeal of unimaginable terror in January.
“But whether the attack was a racial hate crime worthy of national media attention is another question, one that has now ignited a fierce dispute over the definition of hate crimes and how the mainstream media choose to cover America’s most discomfiting interracial attacks.”
Having the issue aired on the Tribune’s front page could be the culmination of a campaign in the blogosphere that accuses the media of playing down this example of black-on-white violence. Columnists and public editors have rejected the accusation.
Three weeks ago in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, public editor Ted Diadiun wrote, “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.” He rejected the criticism, saying, in the words of the headline, “Many horrific crimes don’t make national spotlight.”
On June 3, Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. wrote, ‘Truth is, media ignore horrific crimes all the time. Space is limited and growing more so.
“. . . Black crime against whites is underreported? On what planet? Study after study and expert after expert tell a completely different story.”
On Thursday, Pitts’ column came up on the blog of James Campbell, reader representative for the Houston Chronicle, in connection with a Houston case. “I did read Leonard Pitts Jr.’s column about the young white couple brutally killed in Knoxville. It was a tragedy, no doubt, but I agreed with Pitts’ reasoning,” Campbell told a reader.
In the Chicago Sun-Times, Mary Mitchell wrote on Tuesday, “Black victims have often been killed in horrible ways, and those murders weren’t reported, either.
“Like all senseless murders, even if it’s not classified as a hate crime, it is still a matter of hate.”