Maynard Institute archives

Interns Lose Slots at Gannett Paper

by richard0525

Indiana Company Steps Up to Take 3 Students

The Gannett Co. newspaper in Montgomery, Ala., was forced to make quick and drastic budget cuts last week, editor Wanda Lloyd told Journal-isms on Monday, leaving three interns suddenly without summer jobs. Similar cuts could be coming at other Gannett properties.

 

 

The displaced interns were instantly picked up by Schurz Communications, a South Bend, Ind., media company that owns 15 dailies and five weeklies. Charles V. Pittman, the company’s senior vice president-newspapers, had just addressed the interns Friday at the Freedom Forum’s Diversity Institute in Nashville, and said he could not let “these young people have their internship pulled out from under them.”

The three students will be going to the Herald Times in Bloomington, Ind. Schurz is taking a total of 13 interns, all of them trained in a joint multimedia program of Black College Wire and the Diversity Institute.

“I would not have done this if I had any other choice,” Lloyd, editor of the Montgomery Advertiser, told Journal-isms. She said that after a recent meeting of Gannett publishers, she was told by her publisher, Scott Brown, that the newspaper would be asked to take a look at possible cuts for the rest of 2007. She was on vacation last week attending a high-school reunion.

“The money for the three interns was not in the budget,” Lloyd said. In order to meet new budget targets, she said, she might have had to cut a full-time staff member. “I had to make that decision very quickly,” she said. “I just didn’t see any other way.”

Brown told Journal-isms he would not discuss what took place. “You’ll have to talk to Wanda about this,” he said.

Gannett announced on Monday that revenue “slid 6 percent in May on continued classified advertising weakness and broadcasting declines,” the Associated Press reported.

“Publishers have been told when there’s pressure on revenue” to bring spending in line, Gannett spokeswoman Tara Connell told Journal-isms. “The messages go out that you’re going to need to be strategic and you need to cut. It becomes a very local decision,” she said. However, Connell pointed out that Gannett just accepted 32 recent college graduates into its new Talent Development Program.

The Montgomery decision came after the Black College Wire interns had already made preparations to go to Alabama, including taking urine tests.

 

 

“I was kind of upset that I’m not going to be close to home,” Faith Hannah, a May honors graduate of Jackson State University and a resident of Carthage, Miss., told Journal-isms. “I’m trying to regroup. I understand that’s how business goes. We just have to take it in stride and keep going.”

Hannah said that instead of a five-hour drive to Montgomery, now she would drive 12 to Bloomington. The other two students whose plans were changed are Traver Riggins of Howard University and Jackie “J.J.” McCorvey Jr. of Tuskegee University.

Robbie Morganfield, director of the Diversity Institute, described Pittman as “a fierce supporter of diversity, an example of one who does it and not talks it.”

“I’m really trying to set an example of how it should be done,” Pittman said. The greatest gains in newspapers are going to come from people of color, Pittman said, “and the industry needs to move in that direction.”

Pittman said that after integration of major league baseball in 1947, “the talent pool got bigger, better and greater. It raised the bar and people are playing better. I like to think that’s analogous to what’s happening in our industry,” he said.

One reason for Pittman’s sports analogy is that he was a tailback on Joe Paterno’s Penn State football team in the 1960s, rushing for 2,236 yards. He and his son, Tony Pittman, have written “Playing for Paterno: One Coach, Two Eras: a Father and Son’s Personal Recollections of Playing for JoPa,” to be released in the fall.

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Larry Whiteside Services Tuesday in Newton, Mass.

Funeral services for Boston Globe sportswriting pioneer Larry Whiteside are scheduled for Tuesday at 11 a.m. in Newton Center, Mass., the Davis Funeral Home announces on its Web site.

“I’ve been asked to speak to represent those whom Larry mentored and I’ve been given the green light not just to give my own personal reflections but to read those of journalists who owe a piece of their progress to Larry,” Globe op-ed columnist Derrick Z. Jackson told Journal-isms.

Jackson said that after the service, all are welcome at the Whiteside home, and that, “If any folks want to come at the last minute and need a place to crash, my home in Cambridge is available.”

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the National Association of Black Journalists scholarship fund on behalf of Larry Whiteside and the NABJ Sports Task Force. NABJ 8701-A Adelphi Road, Adelphi, MD 20783-1716, according to the funeral home.

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Race Comments Continue Over Knoxville Case

The story of the white Knoxville couple who were carjacked, kidnapped, raped and murdered in a case in which three black men and a woman are charged continues to generate controversy.

A front-page story by Howard Witt in the Chicago Tribune asserting there is a “fierce debate over the definition of hate crimes and how the mainstream media choose to cover America’s most discomfiting interracial attacks” was criticized Sunday by the paper’s public editor as “more stereotypical than informative.

“The story should have probed deeper and given more context to the issues,” wrote Timothy J. McNulty. “While the connection between race and crime is a complex subject for any writer, readers expect a special report in the newspaper to be special and its presentation precise.”

A white supremacist leader’s Web site targets syndicated Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr., who had written, “. . . Black crime against whites is underreported? On what planet? Study after study and expert after expert tell a completely different story.”

The Web site, run by white supremacist Bill White, also known as William A. White, a leader of the American National Socialist Workers’ Party, publishes Pitts’ home address and phone number and urges followers to contact Pitts. Its article is headlined, “Nigger Says Black On White Racial Crime Should Not Be Reported,” as radio host and former Washington Times reporter Rob Redding Jr. reported on his Web site.

In 2005, White similarly attacked Toledo Blade reporter Clyde Hughes, who told Journal-isms, “His characterization of my brief phone interview with him for a story I wrote before the march (in which he hung up on me after I pressed him on details about his organization) is a complete falsehood.”

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Cleveland, San Antonio Revel in Battle for NBA Title

There were no apologies in Cleveland or San Antonio for the reams of copy papers in both cities gave to the battle between their teams for the NBA championship.

 

 

“The Spurs, quite simply, sell papers and what we are selling is history,” Bob Richter, public editor of the San Antonio Express-News, told readers on Sunday. “You can’t put a price on that. So save these commemorative copies. Pull them out someday when fortune has turned against the men in silver and black, as it inevitably will, and tell your grandkids about the turn-of-the-century dynasty we had here in sunny old San Antonio.”

Richter quoted Managing Editor Brett Thacker, “What this team means to this city is incalculable.

“In the eyes of many people, the drive to a championship helps define San Antonio and amplifies our sense of community.”

In Cleveland, public editor Ted Diadiun wrote Sunday, “Most readers soaked up the coverage every day and soared along on the euphoria of a Cavs season that achieved almost magical heights — before it ended, too soon, Thursday night.

“But a vocal minority let it be known that they thought the coverage was way over the top and that sports coverage, even coverage of a championship team, belongs on the sports pages and not on Page One. There are lots more important things going on in the world, they would argue.

“Well, was the coverage over the top?

“Of course it was. And why not? When you have a story like this, you shoot everything that moves.

“A newspaper — and a city — gets few enough chances to go bonkers over an event that combines a major news story with a rousing good time.”

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FBI Investigated Ga. Governor in 1946 Lynching

“Newly released files from the lynching of two black couples more than 60 years ago contain a disturbing revelation: The FBI investigated suspicions that a three-term governor of Georgia sanctioned the murders to sway rural white voters during a tough election campaign,” Greg Bluestein wrote Friday for the Associated Press.

“The 3,725 pages obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act do not make conclusions about the still-unsolved killings at Moore’s Ford Bridge. But they raise the possibility that Eugene Talmadge’s politics may have been a factor when a white mob dragged the four from a car, tied them to a tree and opened fire.”

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Latino Columnist Agrees with Schwarzenegger

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s remarks that immigrants should avoid Spanish-language media if they want to learn English quickly won praise from columnist Marcos Bretón, writing Sunday in the Sacramento Bee.

Schwarzenegger spoke before the National Association of Hispanic Journalists last week in San Jose.

“Assimilation in America doesn’t have to mean turning your back on your culture. The question is: Why aren’t more Latinos focused on the Latino dropout rate in America — highest of any group— instead of fruitless pursuits such as nitpicking Schwarzenegger’s word selection?” Bretón wrote.

“Sacramento is [rife] with proof the governor is right on this issue: Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez. Sacramento Police Chief Albert Nájera. Sacramento State President Alexander Gonzalez. They all prove assimilation is not a dirty word.”

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Plain Dealer Ripped for Series Prompted by “Thugs”

“If any one incident so far this year has given the Plain Dealer a story to sink its teeth into, that incident has to be the Damon Wells-Arthur Buford shooting,” Afi-Odelia E. Scruggs wrote last week in Cleveland’s alternative Free Times.

“The episode has all the elements of a morality play: Damon Wells was a law-abiding citizen accosted by two young toughs who threatened to rob him. He pulled out a gun and shot, killing Arthur Buford, who was unarmed. Then vandalism forced Wells from the Mt. Pleasant home where he lived with his girlfriend and her mother.

“‘We’ve never seen anything like the Damon Wells case,’ Metro editor Chris Quinn wrote in an e-mail, titled ‘thugs and more,’ that was distributed to most of the reporting and editing staff last week.

“‘That shooting crystalized (sic) for many much that is wrong with the city. It captured the attention of people throughout Northeast Ohio, and it sparked all sorts of imaginative thinking in the newsroom. Over the past few weeks, columnists and reporters have launched on stories to examine issues raised by the case, and many others proposed wide-ranging projects for the paper to undertake,'” Quinn said.

“The coverage includes nine stories that will start this month and run through the fall. Plain Dealer reporters will infiltrate and examine every aspect of life in the neighborhood around 134th and Kinsman, where the shooting took place. But Quinn’s challenging project overlooks one important issue: How can a newspaper where blacks make up only 10.4 percent of the newsroom speak to and for a community that is 75 percent black?” Scruggs said.

“If the furor over the newspaper’s coverage to date is any indication, the Plain Dealer’s major obstacle isn’t just going to be getting at the stories; it’s going to be establishing credibility and trust with people whom the newspaper has overlooked for years.”

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Should Lewis Hamilton’s Race Be Mentioned?

Ed Hinton, a white columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, asked last week, “Should we or shouldn’t we mention that Lewis Hamilton is black? Is this a milestone, or a point we should be long past?”

 

 

It was a topic debated over the last few days on the e-mail list of the National Association of Black Journalists.

“The American response to Hamilton’s success in Formula One has been all over the charts, especially since his first win last Sunday in the Canadian Grand Prix, which propelled him into sole possession of first place in the world championship standings,” Hinton wrote.

“Now the 22-year-old Briton has arrived in Indianapolis for Sunday’s U.S. Grand Prix, and the only thing that’s kept him from being the hottest racing story in the country this week is Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s joining Hendrick Motorsports to team with Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson.

“On one hand, e-mails accuse me of ‘playing the race card’ and not letting Hamilton soar purely on his driving merits. On the other, bloggers complain that U.S. media have not paid nearly enough attention to the significance of Hamilton’s ethnicity.”

Offline, Blair S. Walker commented, “I wrote a Hamilton feature in the June edition of Road & Track magazine, and noted that he was black in the second paragraph of my 1,200-word piece. End of story! We haven’t become a colorblind society yet, so why should we as black journalists pretend that’s the case?”

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Short Takes

  • Sherman Williams, assistant managing editor for photography at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, has been named assistant managing editor/visual journalism. “He will lead all of our visual journalism departments, including news design, graphics, feature design and photography. He will work at continually improving our visual journalism and design, and at leading our growing multimedia efforts on the web,” Editor Martin Kaiser and Managing Editor George Stanley told staffers.
  • “Several people joined local Black ministers and community leaders to protest comedian D.L. Hughley’s Juneteenth show at Bass Hall in Fort Worth Saturday,” Dallas’ KTVT-TV reported. “The controversy surrounds Hughley’s recent appearance on the ‘Jay Leno Show.’ The comedian said Imus was wrong to call the women of the Rutgers basketball team ‘hos,’ but he did say they were some of the ‘ugliest, nappy head women’ he had ever seen.”
  • The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette began a series on young black men this month, “Invisible Men.” It appealed to readers for “stories of young black men who struggle with being a school dropout, unemployed or disconnected from family. Let us also know about the young black male who has succeeded against the odds to enter college, start a business, maintain a positive presence as a young father or who was mentored by an individual or program you’d like to brag about.” The first articles were by Ervin Dyer.
  • “Dylan Hernandez will be joining us from the San Jose Mercury News within the next few weeks,” Los Angeles Times Sports Editor Randy Harvey wrote to the staff. “Dylan will be helping for the remainder of this season with our baseball coverage, both Dodgers and Angels, and then will take over the Dodgers beat full time in November. Fluent in Spanish and Japanese, he has language skills that are especially beneficial in a baseball clubhouse.”
  • Black journalists were on the covers of two Sunday newspaper sections. At USA Weekend, CNBC correspondent Sharon Epperson, author of “The Big Payoff,” a book on personal finance, was on the cover. The front of the New York Times Book Review was devoted to a review by Orlando Patterson of “Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas” by Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher of the Washington Post.
  • January Payne, who wrote about race-related health issues for the Washington Post, has been named editor of Managed Care Week, which specializes in providing news, data and strategic information about the evolving business of health care.
  • Rez Biz magazine publisher George Joe, a full-time graduate student, won two journalism excellence awards from the Native American Journalists Association and last month received the top graduate student award from Northern Arizona University.
  • Ethiopia’s High Court “convicted four editors and three publishers of now-defunct weeklies of anti-state charges linked to their coverage of the government’s handling of disputed parliamentary elections in 2005, according to local journalists,” the Committee to Protect Journalists reported on June 11. “Two of the editors were convicted of charges carrying life imprisonment or death.”

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