Sports Columnist Larry Whiteside Dies

Boston Globe Pioneer, 69, Kept “Black List”

“Long-time Boston Globe baseball columnist Larry Whiteside passed away this morning. He was 69,” Nick Cafardo wrote Friday on his Boston Globe blog.

“One of the first African-American baseball reporters for a major daily newspaper, Whiteside wrote for the Globe sports pages for parts of four decades after stints in Milwaukee and Kansas City. He was instrumental in starting the careers of many African American sports journalists around the country and was a tremendous role model for young reporters he took under his wing.”

Later in the day, Cafardo wrote, “The Boston chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America had approved his nomination for the J.G. Taylor Spink Award (Baseball Hall of Fame) earlier this year. His name will be offered to the national committee, who will choose three finalists for the award at the All-Star game.” Whiteside was a three-time chairman of the chapter.

The Boston Red Sox announced the team would observe a moment of silence for Whiteside before the start of Friday night’s game against the San Francisco Giants.

“I am truly saddened by the news of his passing, as he was an extraordinary person,” said baseball commissioner Bud Selig, who was the Milwaukee Brewers owner when Whiteside covered their first four seasons, the Associated Press reported. “He was one of the finest journalists and finest friends that I have ever encountered. I will certainly miss him.”

“After the Seattle Pilots moved to Milwaukee in 1970 and became the Brewers, Selig offered him a public relations job with the team. Whiteside turned it down to continue covering the sport,” the AP said.

“Larry Whiteside and I literally started in baseball together,”Selig said.

Whiteside was reported in 2001 to be recovering from a stroke. A database lists his last Globe column appearing on Aug. 24, 2000.

“When he was hired by the Globe in 1973, Whiteside was the only black reporter in America covering major league baseball on a daily basis for a major newspaper,” the Associated Press said. “An expert on the Negro Leagues, he also was among the first to pay close attention to baseball in Japan and Australia.”

In his 2002 book, “Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston,” Howard Bryant wrote: “When the Globe would be vigilant in facing race as a question in baseball, it would be Larry Whiteside in the 1960s, Dan Shaughnessy and Michael Madden in the 1980s, and a talented reporter from California named Steve Fainaru in the late ’80s and early ’90s whose names would be out front on the story.”

Last year, when the Associated Press Sports Editors released a survey showing the dismal numbers of African Americans in newspaper sports departments, sports columnist David Squires of the Daily Press in Newport News, Va., recalled that Whiteside was “the founder and caretaker of the ‘black list,’ a single sheet of paper that contained the names of every black sports journalist that this small network met or heard about. The list was shared with sports editors who had job openings.

“More than 20 years ago, a sports editor at Newsday asked me about a name on the list, Leon Carter, then a copy editor in Louisville,” Squires wrote.

“Carter eventually became sports editor at the New York Daily News and later helped co-found” the Sports Journalism Institute with Sandy Bailey Rosenbush, a longtime newspaper editor and a former assistant managing editor at Sports Illustrated. The institute helps train sports journalists of color.

“Yes, the world of sports journalism is that small,” Squires’ column continued. “Carter remains one of just five African-American sports editors.” In January, Patricia Mays was named sports editor of the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif., raising the number to six.

Whiteside “was one of my mentors,” Carter told Journal-isms. “When I was growing up, one of the first people that I met at NABJ,” the National Association of Black Journalists, “was Larry Whiteside, who made sure my name was on the black list and worked closely with me when I was Sports Task Force chairman of NABJ. He stressed the importance of the role that we play in the newsroom and also the role that we need to play for other sports journalists who come behind us,” Carter said.

Whiteside was also behind the Sports Pioneer Awards bestowed at the NABJ convention and he hosted that ceremony for several years, Carter said. “For African American sports journalists like myself, this is a sad day.”

The Sports Task Force officially was started around 1988, but its seed actually was planted several years before when Whiteside began circulating the black list, Ron Thomas, who now heads the Journalism and Sports program at Morehouse College, wrote to task force members on Friday.

“Larry virtually disappeared from the sports scene several years ago after he suffered a series of strokes from which he never fully recovered,” wrote Thomas, who covered sports at the San Francisco Examiner. “Yet, and this may be the greatest testament to how much he loved us all, a few years ago he struggled to travel from Boston to D.C. with his wife, Elaine, to receive a Pioneer Award from us at the convention. Iâ??m sure Larry had a bunch of awards, and my guess is that the Pioneer Award meant more to him than any of the rest.

“Today, we lost a champion who also championed us.”

• Associated Press: Larry Whiteside, Boston Globe baseball writer, dies at 69

Whiteside: “All These People Are Testing Me”

Derrick Z. Jackson, op-ed columnist at the Boston Globe and a friend of Larry Whiteside, has this remembrance:

“My first few weeks as a 17-year-old cub sports reporter at the Milwaukee Journal were a difficult time. It was the fall of 1972. I had come across town from the black weeklies. This was a mere four years after the Kerner Commission report blasted the nearly all-white media as being significantly to blame for America’s divided image.

“The door was opened for me by an exuberant assistant managing editor of the Journal, who was my freshman journalism teacher at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. But the door opened to cold comforts. The sports editor at the time was quite unfriendly to me, marking my first story to bits with bloody red ink and the nasty message that I best recall as, ‘You’re not going to make it.’ And that is probably a conservative memory.

“Larry Whiteside made sure I made it. He pulled me aside one day. He opened his desk drawer. He said, ‘Take a look at this.’

“It was filled with horrific hate mail. As if from a Hollywood script, Larry told me he kept the mail to motivate himself. He told me that was why the sports editor wrote such strong stuff on the first draft of my first story. ‘He’s testing you,’ Larry said. ‘He senses how strong you are and wants to see if you’ll crack. Just like all these people are testing me.’

“Larry told me this with water in his eyes. Simultaneously, I was watching pain and the victory over pain. And I now have water in my eyes over writing this memory, nearly 35 years ago.

“At that moment, Larry became my godfather in journalism.”

“Worst Part . . . Was That Everyone Was Watching”

The Boston Globe hired Larry Whiteside in 1973, after Whiteside had covered the Milwaukee Braves for the Milwaukee Journal, Howard Bryant wrote in “Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston.” He became the only African American in the sports department. The first black sportswriter had lasted only a few months in the early 1960s.

“Adjusting wasn’t always smooth, for Whiteside’s arrival signaled a cultural shift at the paper. Unlike the newsroom, there was only Larry Whiteside in a department that [the Globe’s Tom] Mulvoy remembers, still contained pockets of the old-line attitudes. One such person was Clif Keane, a veteran reporter who would cut an odd figure in Boston sports. Keane had a general reputation as a racist, if not in his heart then surely as a product of his generation. He was incorrect in his speech, frequently dropping racial slurs as a matter of habit,” Bryant wrote.

“Like the old custom of bench jockeying on the field, such talk was common in the press box. The arrival of black reporters changed all that. Once, Keane held court in the Globe’s offices and let his feelings about blacks be known into the conversation.

“‘He was over there talking about niggers,’ Whiteside said. ‘I calmly went over and said, “If I ever hear that word out of your mouth again, I’m going to knock the shit out of you.’

“Keane retreated . . .

“The worst part for Larry Whiteside, however, was subduing his anger at the words and sentiments that would be so casually tossed around during games. Men like Keane, men of that generation, made no secret of their dislike of blacks, their belief of [inherent] white superiority. Periodically, as with Keane, Whiteside would burst. Generally, he kept it all in.”

The Globe’s Dave Smith felt Whiteside was in a remarkably difficult position. He couldn’t win, Smith felt. If he wrote hard stories on racism in the game, he would be accused of making excuses for black athletes. If he criticized blacks in print, they would recoil at the only black in the press box attacking them. That made him an ‘Uncle Tom.’

“The worst part of it all, thought Smith, was that everyone was watching. He was the first black reporter of any substance or longevity in the press box, and like the black players on the field twenty years earlier, he knew that he was being scrutinized by his competitors, and most likely his bosses. Whiteside knew this. If he didn’t make it, he believed, it might take another twenty years before another black received the same opportunity.”

• NABJ Sports Task Force remembrance

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Schwarzenegger: Youth Should Learn English

“Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s remarks that immigrants should avoid Spanish-language media if they want to learn English quickly left some Hispanic journalists still shaking their heads Thursday,” Sudhin Thanawala reported Thursday for the Associated Press.

“‘You’ve got to turn off the Spanish television set’ and stay away from Spanish-language television, books and newspapers, the Republican governor had said Wednesday night at a convention of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in San Jose. ‘You’re just forced to speak English, and that just makes you learn the language faster.’

“Schwarzenegger, who immigrated to the U.S. from Austria, was responding to a question about how Hispanic students can improve academic performance. The audience included many journalists who work for Spanish-language media outlets.

“‘I know this sounds odd, and this is the politically incorrect thing to say, and I’m going to get myself in trouble,’ he said. ‘But I know that when I came to this country, I very rarely spoke German to anyone.’

“Some members of the audience said they were surprised by Schwarzenegger’s comments.

“‘I’m sitting shaking my head not believing that someone would be so naive and out of it that he would say something like that,’ said Alex Nogales, president and CEO of the National Hispanic Media Coalition. Nogales said immigrants need Spanish-language media to stay informed and ‘function in this society.’

“Pilar Marrero, the political editor for the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion, chuckled at the governor’s comments, saying many Hispanics didn’t have time to learn English.

“‘They’re too busy working,’ she said.

Rafael Olmeda, NAHJ president, said, “Most people I’ve spoken to walked away believing that he was trying to say that we must learn English to succeed in American society.” He said most NAHJ members would agree with that.

• Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times: Gov. aims for healing, hits a snag with Latino journalists
• Kevin Yamamura, Sacramento Bee: ‘Drastic’ advice for Latinos

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NAHJ Raises Dues to $75 as It Copes with Deficit

“This should be a time of celebration for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, as it marks its 25th birthday. But talk of the news industry’s economic woes pervaded conference rooms and hotel lobbies at the organization’s annual convention in San Jose,” Victoria Hayslett wrote in the Latino Reporter, the convention newspaper.

“Adding to the gloom at a membership meeting Thursday was talk of a $44,272 budget deficit. Much of the meeting centered on the group’s finances and scholarships, the need for more multimedia training, the 25th anniversary and journalism advocacy issues such as diversity and media consolidation.

“Board members earlier in the week voted to increase membership fees.”

As explained earlier this year, when the shortfall was believed to be only $20,000, “The operating deficit â?? which followed years of healthy revenue â?? was blamed on overspending for scholarships, as well as an accounting error.

“‘We have to try to meet our projections. We have to budget conservatively,’ Iván Román, NAHJ’s executive director, told The Latino Reporter after a membership meeting attended by about 20 people, roughly 1 percent of its membership.

“Román said part of the shortfall is due to a simple accounting issue.

“The $25,000 NAHJ contributed to a local group to help host the 2005 convention in Fort Worth was expected to be included on NAHJ’s books that year. Instead, the expense appeared in the 2006 fiscal year.

“In addition, NAHJ awarded $20,000 more in scholarships than it had planned — which accounts for the rest of the deficit, Román said.

“‘I miscalculated how much we’d give out,’ Román said. ‘I underestimated the money we’d give out in scholarships.’

“NAHJ’s fee increases were a subject of discussion inside and outside the convention at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center.

“NAHJ President Rafael Olmeda said fees have not increased for 10 years. He said the higher fees â?? $75 for regular, academic and associate members, and $35 for students â?? are comparable with other professional journalism groups.” He told Journal-isms the dues were raised only after other financial measures had been taken.

Current dues are $55 for regular, academic and associate members, $25 for students, $110 for non-media individuals and $1,100 for corporate members, according to the NAHJ Web site.

[Manuel De La Rosa, vice president of broadcast, told Journal-isms on June 18: “If you look at our current rates, it’s very cheap compare to other professional groups like NABJ and RTNDA,” referring to the National Association of Black Journalists and the Radio-Television News Directors Association. “We raised our rates for that reason, not because of the budgetary problems. Moreso, we will not make a lot of money off the membership rate increase. We have fixed our budget shortfall and recovered the money well before we voted on this membership fee getting raised.”]

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Vanity Fair Issue: “We Are All Africans, Everyone”

Is that George W. Bush saying to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “We are all Africans, everyone”?

It just seems that way. One of the unprecedented 20 different covers for Vanity Fair’s Bono-edited special July Africa issue shows Bush and Tutu in the same frame, with the words between them reading, “We are all Africans, everyone.”

“We put quotes on all of the covers. They weren’t always linked to the subjects,” spokeswoman Beth Kseniak told Journal-isms.

The multiple covers feature Muhammad Ali, Maya Angelou, Warren Buffett, Bush, Don Cheadle, George Clooney, Bill and Melinda Gates, Djimon Hounsou, Iman, Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, Madonna, Barack Obama, Brad Pitt, Queen Rania of Jordan, Condoleezza Rice, Chris Rock, Tutu, Oprah Winfrey and Bono, all shot by Annie Leibovitz.

“The purpose? To show prominent people with one thing in common — Africa,” as the Detroit Free Press reported.

“Over the course of six weeks, Leibovitz flew all over the world to take the pictures.

“In a couple of cases, people are actually together, like Condoleezza Rice and George W. Bush, and Alicia Keys and Iman, but the reality is that with people’s schedules and availability, it was not possible to shoot everyone together,’ says Leibovitz. ‘So these are more photo illustrations than photographs, but the point was to unite people for a common purpose.’

“Vanity Fair will donate $5 to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for every subscription that is purchased online in June.”

Kseniak identified the issue’s African and African American contributors as Binyavanga Wainaina, Harry Belafonte, Aminatta Forna, Parselelo Kantai, Billy Kahora, Joel Kibazo, Quincy Jones, Youssou N’Dour, Chris Rock and George Wayne.

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Amid Zahn Rumors, CNN Says “Nothing Imminent”

Amid speculation that CNN’s Paula Zahn could be losing her prime-time show, CNN spokeswoman Christa Robinson said the network doesn’t engage in speculation and, “There’s nothing imminent,” Scott Leith reported Saturday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“Robinson also declined to comment on reports that CNN will hire anchor Campbell Brown from NBC News. For weeks, there have been reports that Brown will move to CNN, though she remains under contract with NBC.

“If Zahn is shifted, the move could open the way for a replacement by Brown or Lou Dobbs.”

Last December, Zahn explored race relations in Vidor, Texas, and in February, CNN launched an “Uncovering America” initiative that spotlighted intolerance.

“‘Paula Zahn Now’ has been blazing a trail for the past several months with ‘Out in the Open’ debates that have broadened the discussion of discrimination and intolerance in the United States while introducing audiences to an array of interesting new thinkers on this important and divisive subject,” a CNN news release said in February.

Such efforts led the National Association of Black Journalists to vote CNN a “Best Practices” award, to be presented at this summer’s convention. [Added June 17]

• Howard Kurtz, Washington Post: Campbell Brown Heading To CNN?
• Michael Learmonth, Variety: CNN mulls moving Dobbs to 8 p.m.

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Newsroom Job Picture Called Better Than It Seems

“The aggregate picture on newsroom employment is not quite as bad as you would assume reading the worst-case stories that are staples of Romenesko and widely reported elsewhere,” according to Rick Edmonds, writing on the Poynter Institute Web site, home of Jim Romenesko’s column.

“Lost in the saga of the miserable metros is a more hopeful story. Smaller papers and the three big nationals are, by and large, holding staff steady and in some cases even growing slightly.” The three “nationals” are the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today.

“Like a plane landing without crashing, keeping staffing steady doesn’t really qualify as news. But as I read the numbers for individual papers each year (provided on a confidential basis for analysis by ASNE),” the American Society of Newspaper Editors, “there are always plenty of papers staying about even with the previous year or increasing modestly.

“Even among larger papers, there are a handful of usual suspects who have had success with heavy daily zoning and who have kept their newsroom staffs well above average for their circulation. Examples include the Fort Worth, Texas, Star-Telegram, the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago and Poynter’s St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times.

“The robust newsroom staffing numbers at smaller papers are not all that surprising if you assume that the trends in editorial spending roughly track business results. Metros are getting the worst of it both in circulation losses and in rapid erosion of an enormously lucrative classified-advertising base. Smaller newspapers come closer to being the only game in town for a full local-news report and a favorite for both retail and classified advertisers.”

Meanwhile, Beverly Williams, a reporter at the Daily Press in Newport News, Va., owned by the Tribune Co., is taking a voluntary buyout that paper offered to employees with at least 10 years of service at the paper or at Tribune Co., in an effort to trim $1 million in expenses.

“I’m pretty excited about it,” Williams told Journal-isms on Friday. “I haven’t yet decided what I want to do, but I’ve got a good 25 weeks or so to figure it out. I’ve been looking at media specialist jobs in the area but haven’t nailed down anything specific yet. My immediate plans are that I’m heading to Nags Head tonight for a week and two days for vacation.”

Williams said she had been at the paper for nearly 13 years. “I started here in late August 1994 as the paper’s courts reporter. I returned to the courts beat — state and federal — in April 2006 after covering education for four years. I also wrote a column called ‘One Good Turn’ about people doing good deeds in the community,” she said.

“It’s been great ride . . . I’ll miss it, but I’m looking forward to a new venture.”

Daily Press Publisher Digby Solomon said in May that the buyout plan would likely cut 19 to 25 people, spread across all departments. Williams said she and Pam Davies, an African American technician in the photo department, were the newsroom staffers of color who took the offer.

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Clinton Found to Have Most Diverse Campaign Staff

Which presidential staffs are the most diverse?

DiversityInc reports in its June issue that those of four candidates — Democrats Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson and John Edwards — “beat the Top 50 workforce representation of people of color.”

Clinton’s campaign staff is 63.5 percent people of color. The same groups comprise 43 percent of Obama’s 14-member senior staff. According to data provided by the candidates, people of color are 38 percent of Edwards’ 21-member team; 23 percent of Sen. Joe Biden’s 13-member team; and 46 percent of Richardson’s 26-member staff.

“DiversityInc vigorously attempted to contact the staffs of Guiliani, Romney and McCain but received no response to repeated requests for confirmation of our research,” the magazine said, speaking of Republicans Rudolph Guiliani, former mayor of New York; Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, and Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

“Based on our findings, two (10 percent) of McCain’s 20 national campaign staff workers are people of color — one black, one Latino. Of the 15 staffers identified for Giuliani, we found no people of color. Romney’s 24-member team includes two people of color.”

• Stanley Crouch, New York Daily News: For GOP success, add eye of Newt
• Dwight Lewis, Nashville Tennessean: Don’t lay bets on Fred’s red pickup of victory just yet
• Roland S. Martin, Creators Syndicate: Obama’s ‘quiet riots’ are for real
• Rochelle Riley, Detroit Free Press: Don’t decry honesty about race
• David Roybal, Albuquerque (N.M.) Journal: Richardson Has More to Offer

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Detroit Mayor’s Nemesis Accused of Impersonation

“Police investigators in California have recommended felony charges against Channel 7 TV reporter Steve Wilson for obtaining Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s personal hotel and billing records by impersonating the mayor, according to a seven-page copy of the investigator’s report obtained by The Detroit News,” David Josar reported in the News on Friday.

“The report by Carlsbad Police Sgt. Don DeTar states employees at the luxury La Costa Hotel and Spa said a person identifying himself as Kilpatrick contacted them on May 7 and requested copies of Kilpatrick’s hotel bill and of a check used to pay for a visit there last August.

“Investigators traced the fax and telephone numbers back to Wilson.

“Wilson used the faxed hotel bill and copy of a check as the basis for a series of news reports starting May 8 that outlined how the Kilpatrick Civic Fund, a nonprofit created by the mayor in 1999, paid the resort $8,605.03 for two rooms from Aug 12-19 used by Kilpatrick, his wife and sons while the mayor, according to fund officials, was there fundraising for the group.

“Wilson on Thursday said he did nothing wrong. ‘I have done nothing illegal or unethical,’ he said, suggesting perhaps the hotel staff simply assumed they were talking to the mayor.

“In May, Kilpatrick’s chief of staff, Christine Beatty, said the mayor was pursuing criminal charges against Wilson . . . Kilpatrick and Wilson have gotten into numerous conflicts over the past three years.”