Differences Over “Long-Term Direction” Cited
“Rick Rodriguez resigned Thursday as The Bee’s executive editor following a disagreement with the publisher over the paper’s long-term direction,” Dale Kasler reported Friday in the Sacramento (Calif.) Bee.
“Bee Publisher and President Janis Heaphy, addressing a somber newsroom, said ‘we have agreed to part ways’ but praised Rodriguez, 53, as a relentless journalist whose nine-year tenure saw the paper win nearly every major journalism prize, including the Pulitzer Prize.
“Rodriguez served as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and has been one of the nation’s most prominent Latino newsroom executives. Like editors across the country, he also faced increasing financial pressures in recent months — and the accompanying management challenges — as newspaper revenues declined.
“Heaphy and Rodriguez declined to give details about the split, with Heaphy referring only to ‘a disagreement about the future long-term direction of The Bee.’ She said newsroom budgets weren’t the cause.
“‘Those differences are not about resources, they’re not about staffing, they’re not about expenses,’ she said.
“Asked by a newsroom staffer about her vision for The Bee, she said the paper will remain committed to ‘strong public service journalism.’
“Rodriguez said, ‘I may be gone, but that vision will remain.’
“. . . Rodriguez, in a short speech to the newsroom, said ‘it’s been a great run’ and thanked the staff for its work.
“‘You guys have been kicking ass, you’ve been on a roll,’ he said.
“Following his speech, he stood outside the newsroom as an informal receiving line developed. Employees, some of them in tears, hugged him and shook his hand.”
Rodriguez, who’s been with the paper 25 years, will take some time off and then work as a consultant for the parent McClatchy Co., the story said.
Rodriguez was among a very small group of Latino editors of mainstream newspapers. Others include Michael A. Chihak, editor/publisher of the Tucson (Ariz.) Citizen, Dionicio (Don) Flores, executive vice president/editor of the El Paso (Texas) Times, and Carolina Garcia, executive editor of the Monterey County (Calif.) Herald.
“During Rodriguez’s tenure, the paper beefed up its Capitol Bureau and its suburban news coverage, opening bureaus in Elk Grove, Folsom and Roseville,” the Bee story said.
“In recent years, the paper moved more aggressively online.
“As head of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, he championed ‘watchdog journalism’ and took pride in many investigative series at The Bee. The crowning moment of his tenure came earlier this year, when the Bee’s Renée C. Byer won the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography.
“Rodriguez also led the newsroom through journalistic challenges.
“In 2005, Bee columnist Diana Griego Erwin resigned after the paper was unable to verify the existence of 43 sources in her columns.”
A note from Heaphy to the staff also credited Rodriguez for “projects like ‘Chief’s Disease,’ which detailed disability claim abuse in the California Highway Patrol, and ‘Pineros,’ a series on the hardships and inequities facing immigrant forest workers, sparked lasting social, legal and political reform.”
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Ohio U. Names Dormitory After Black Journalist
Ohio University honored its first African American journalism graduate on Friday by dedicating a new residence hall in his name, one of the rare buildings on a majority-white campus named after a black journalist.
Alvin C. Adams, who died in 2004, wrote for the Chicago Defender after his 1959 graduation and later worked for Jet magazine. “He drew some of the most dangerous assignments of that era, covering the civil rights struggles in the Black Belt of Alabama and in the Delta of Mississippi,” John Britton, who worked with Adams at Jet, told Journal-isms.
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Adams covered the rights movement, including the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, and Malcolm X’s 1965 assassination. He interviewed such African American icons as Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Elijah Muhammad, Muhammad Ali and Fannie Lou Hamer.
“After retiring as a full-time reporter, Adams worked in public relations until he moved back to the Athens area in 1998,” a news release said. He co-founded the Multicultural Genealogical Center in Chesterhill, Ohio, which is attempting to document the history of multicultural people in the Ohio River Valley dating to the time of slavery.
A university spokesman said about 250 attended the ceremony, including university president Roderick J. McDavis, who is himself African American, and Adams’ family.
“When I first heard this building was going to be named after Alvin, I was in a state of shock,” said Adams’ widow, Ada, in a university news release. “This is a
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wonderful honor for Alvin and every African American student who has ever attended Ohio University.”
Ada Adams told Journal-isms that students at the university wanted a second building on campus named after an African American; the first honored its initial black graduates. A committee was formed and her husband was picked from among several proposed for the honor.
As for Adams Hall, which opened Sept. 2 and houses more than 350 students in 180 rooms, “It is beautiful. Gigantic. A castle. State of the art,” Ada Adams said.
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FCC Seeks Fines in Armstrong Williams Scandal
“The government on Thursday proposed fines totaling $76,000 against two broadcast companies for failing to tell viewers that programs featuring columnist Armstrong Williams were sponsored by the Education Department,” John Dunbar reported for the Associated Press.
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“In 2003, Williams signed a contract with the department for $240,000 to promote the No Child Left Behind Act. Williams did not reveal the existence of the contract even as he expressed his support for it on the air.
“The revelation about Williams led to widespread criticism by lawmakers who said the payments to Armstrong and other contractors amounted to covert propaganda and were an improper use of taxpayer dollars.”
Williams is a syndicated conservative columnist, broadcast commentator and entrepreneur. He owned a public relations firm when the scandal broke in 2005.
“The Federal Communications Commission says the stations violated sponsorship identification rules by not revealing Williams’ financial
relationship,” the story continued.
“According to an FCC document filed Thursday, Sonshine Family Television Inc., licensee of WBPH-TV in Bethlehem, Pa., is liable for a fine of $40,000 for airing five episodes of ‘The Right Side with Armstrong Williams.’
“The shows aired on 10 occasions in the first half of 2004 and included Williams speaking about the education law.
“Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. of Baltimore was hit with a proposed fine of $36,000 for airing an episode of ‘America’s Black Forum’ in September of 2004, which also included Williams talking about the legislation.”
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Murdoch Happy With Launch of Business Network
“Rupert Murdoch said his recently-launched Fox Business Network cable channel is off to a good start and joked that its rival, top
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business news cable network CNBC, was ‘half-dead,'” Reuters reported Thursday from the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.
“Some two years in the making, Fox Business launched in 30 million homes on Monday featuring a program lineup that seeks to make business news palatable to the average viewer.”
Journalists of color involved with the new network include Brian Jones, senior vice president of operations, who had been vice president of news for Fox News Channel; Charles Payne, one of about three “contributors,” a spokeswoman said; Rebecca Gomez, one of about 10 anchors; and Shibani Joshi, one of about eight or nine reporters. The spokeswoman said the network is still hiring.
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Two “Jena Six” Defendants Present BET Award
“Two of the teens enmeshed in the nationally known ‘Jena Six’ case helped present the most anticipated award during Black Entertainment Television’s Hip Hop Awards show broadcast Thursday night,” Abbey Brown reported in the Alexandria (La.) Town Talk.
“Carwin Jones and Bryant Purvis were introduced by Katt Williams, a comedian and the awards show’s host, as two of the students involved in a case of ‘systematic racism.’
“‘By no means are we condoning a six-on-one beat-down,’ Williams said during his introduction of the teens, one of whom is still facing attempted murder charges in connection with the attack on white student Justin Barker. ‘. . . But the injustice perpetrated on these young men is straight criminal.'”
“As Jones and Purvis walked onto the stage at the Atlanta Civic Center, where the awards show was filmed on Saturday, they were greeted by a standing ovation.
“‘They don’t look so tough, do they?’ Williams joked as the teens stepped up to the podium.
“Some have been critical of the appearance, saying the teens— accused of knocking Barker unconscious and then stomping and kicking on him until another student intervened — shouldn’t be made out to be celebrities. Barker was treated at a local emergency room for close to three hours and then released.
“‘If anything, they should be humbled and go home and not be trying to get celebrity status off a tragedy,’ one person wrote on a BET blog post.
“Another wrote on the blog, titled ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ featuring a picture of Jones and Purvis on the red carpet,’ . . . this is what I was protesting for! So that later you could show up at the BET awards and style and profile?’
“But Tina Jones, Purvis’ mom, said BET contacted the Jena Six families to come to the awards show ‘to get away for a relaxing weekend.'”
BET spokeswomen did not return calls from Journal-isms seeking comment.
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Suspect in Chauncey Bailey Case Pleads Not Guilty
“The 20-year-old Your Black Muslim Bakery handyman who originally confessed to police that he was the gunman in the Aug. 2 daylight slaying of an Oakland journalist entered a not guilty plea Thursday in an Oakland courtroom,” Chris Metinko wrote on Friday in the Oakland Tribune.
“Devaughndre Broussard told police a day after the shooting that he was the gunman in the killing of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, according to police notes and tape recordings taken during an interview.”
The story is the latest piece from the Chauncey Bailey Project, the investigative unit supported by several journalism organizations that plans to continue and expand on the reporting Bailey was pursuing when he was gunned down.
Under terms of the project, the Tribune story can also be run by the Contra Costa (Calif.) Times, the San Jose Mercury News, New America Media, the Maynard Institute and the Bay Area’s KTVU and KPIX television, KQED and KGO radio, said Bob Butler, the National Association of Black Journalists’ representative in the project.
- Chip Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle: It’s time for Dellums to get real on fighting crime
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A Mexican in China — a “Model Minority”?
“In China I felt especially safe because someone else did all the dirty work. All the Mexicans and Mexican Americans I met were educated and bilingual. Could we be the new ‘model minority’ — in China of all places?” Miguel A. Diaz, a graduate of the Department of Political Science at UC Berkeley, wrote Thursday for New America Media.
“It’s not that the Chinese are more ‘enlightened’ than Americans concerning race and culture — they have plenty of issues with other Asian cultures. What made my life in China so enjoyable was their mistaken belief that all Westerners were wealthy. I suppose that, to them, I was just another exotic big-nose with lots of money. I was reminded of this when I recounted to Hispanics in Los Angeles that Mexicans don’t do the dirty work in China.
“. . . I have returned to the United States since. And quite frankly, I don’t want to be here anymore. For one, it’s turning increasingly undemocratic: ‘You’re either with us or you’re against us.’
“Mainly, though, I have come to loathe how this country looks at me and makes me feel — feelings I thought I had permanently laid to rest returned from the grave as soon as I got off the plane at LAX.
“I am no longer confused for Italian or French. No, here I am just Mexican. And to be Mexican in the United States comes with serious consequences. I am poor. I don’t speak English. I’m ugly. I’m illegal!”
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Kotb on Breast Cancer: “We’re All in It Together”
“Our colleague Hoda Kotb has been suffering from breast cancer, and today, for the first time, she talks about her battle in the hope that she may help other people,” Meredith Vieira announced Thursday on NBC-TV’s “Today” show. “When you know Hoda, you know that this is not something— she’s not somebody who gets up on a soap box. But after talking to a lot of other people who said to her, ‘Gee, maybe if you speak out it would make a difference,’ she somewhat reluctantly sat down with Ann . . .,'” referring to co-anchor Ann Curry.
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“Two events convinced Kotb to go public with her experience with breast cancer,” Jen Brown wrote on the MSNBC Web site. “The first was meeting a stranger on a plane who told her, ‘Don’t hog your journey.’
“‘And when he said that, my eyes just opened wide,’ Kotb said. ‘He told me that I could keep everything for myself or I could use it to help people. So right then and there I told myself that when it’s time, I’m going to do it.'”
“A second event confirmed her decision.
“In May Kotb was heading to Central Park for her daily run when she happened upon hundreds of women, some who had undergone surgery, some holding pictures of people who had lost their battle, all wearing pink, walking together to raise money and awareness for breast cancer research.
“Tears started falling down Kotb’s face.
“‘I was totally connected and nobody knew,’ Kotb said. ‘They were all connected to each other. They didn’t know I was connected. And I felt like I was standing on the sidelines, and I thought, ‘Why am I standing on the sidelines?’ Like, get in the game . . . The game is to help survivors, too. We’re all in it together.'”
- Boston Channel: ABC’s Roberts, Laura Bush Raising Breast Cancer Awareness
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Short Takes
- Ernest Withers, the 85-year-old activist and photographer who died Monday, will be buried in Memphis Saturday, the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported. Funeral services will be at noon Saturday at Pentecostal Temple Institutional Church of God in Christ followed by a procession from the church to Memphis’ famed Beale Street. [Oct. 21 update: Nearly 1,000 attended, the newspaper reported.]
- “Black viewers are basically watching the same top-rated TV programs as white viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research data, which is somewhat of a departure of a few years ago, when there was more of a difference in show selection among the two ethnic groups,” John Consoli reported for Media Week. “Based on data from the 2006-07 season, the three most watched shows by both black and white viewers, in order, were Fox’s ‘American Idol’ Wednesday edition, ‘American Idol’ Tuesday edition and ABC’s ‘Dancing With the Stars.'” The survey was part of a larger Nielsen project, “The African-American Consumer: Is the cultural divide breaking down?”
- “Tanya Rivero has been named anchor and correspondent for ABC News’
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- digital network, ABC News Now, based in New York,” the network announced. “Ms. Rivero was a reporter and substitute anchor for WCBS-TV, the CBS affiliate in New York.”
- On Monday morning, Lori Wilson, co-anchor at WCAU-TV in Philadelphia, “had the live audience and co-host Bill Henley laughing when she read a story about KissThisGuy.com, about misheard song-lyrics, and said someone had mistaken Whitney Houston’s ‘Saving All My Love for You,’ as ‘Shaving Off My Muff for You,'” Dan Gross reported Thursday in the Philadelphia Daily News. “It was clear from her reaction that Wilson wasn’t familiar with the word she’d just used. . . Henley told her on Monday’s show it was because she’s ‘from Indiana and had a sheltered life.'”
- “Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin’s proposal to conclude the agency’s review of media-ownership rules and issue new rules by year’s end is under fire from two senators as well as public-interest groups,” Ira Teinowitz wrote for AdAge.com. The Black Leadership Forum wrote the FCC arguing that a variety of proposals from Martin would “damage” the business models of minority programmers, John Eggerton wrote for Broadcasting & Cable. The Women’s Media Center also weighed in.
- Gonzalo Guillén, for seven years a reporter for Miami’s El Nuevo Herald, is on the lam. His wife and son are in hiding. Colombian President Ã?lvaro Uribe publicly belittled the reporter. Strangers repeatedly threatened to murder him, Chuck Strouse wrote Thursday in Miami New Times. “Venezuela and Cuba got most of the ink and opprobrium at last weekend’s meeting of Latin American journalists in Miami. . . . But it’s even more difficult to report the truth in Colombia, which will receive $756 million in U.S. foreign aid this year.”
- Megan Williams, the West Virginia woman who said last month she was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and tortured by six people, was interviewed by the Final Call, newspaper of the Nation of Islam. The perpetrators “need to be put away and never get out again. They should never again see daylight,” she said.
- The satirical “¡Ask a Mexican!” column, which “began as a lark, a
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- total journalistic goof, in the pages of the alternative OC Weekly three years ago has unexpectedly catapulted the career of Gustavo Arellano,” Sam McManis wrote Friday in the Sacramento Bee. The column by Arellano, 28, now appears in 28 papers and reaches an estimated 1.8 million readers.
- Angela Wright, the woman who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment but was never called to testify at his Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991, today is Angela Wright Shannon, director of internal communications for Mecklenburg County, N.C., working with public relations and planning special events, Mary C. Curtis wrote Friday in the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer. “She worked for me in the 1990s when she was the fashion writer for The Charlotte Observer and I was features editor. I attended her 1995 wedding, when she took her husband’s last name. She told me then that she was ready for the change,” Curtis wrote.
- “The last few months have been heady ones for black bloggers.” Richard Fausset wrote in a Column One feature Thursday in the Los Angeles Times. “Their numbers, while impossible to count accurately, appear to be growing as African Americans catch up with the general population in terms of Internet usage. This year, the Black Weblog Awards — a 3-year-old, independent contest run by an Atlanta-based blogger — received more than 7,000 entries, up from 3,000 in 2005. In that same time, the percentage of black adults with a home broadband connection nearly tripled to 40%, according to a July report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.”
- Reda Helal, “a senior editor at Egypt’s leading daily, the Arabic-language Al-Ahram, seems no closer to returning home than he did on the sweltering summer day of August 11, 2003. That afternoon, Helal was said to have headed home from a routine day at Al-Ahram. And then he simply vanished. No one has heard from him since, and there are few clues as to his fate,” the Committee to Protect Journalists reminded readers on Wednesday.
- Yahoo misled Congress regarding information the Internet company gave to Chinese authorities about the journalist Shi Tao, Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said Tuesday. CNN reported that Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, asked Yahoo Inc. officials to testify about the company’s role in a case that sent Chinese newspaper writer and editor Shi to prison on a 10-year sentence.
- “The publisher of a private newspaper in southern Nigeria, arrested last week by men suspected by local journalists to be agents of the State Security Service, was charged with sedition on Tuesday over a story critical of a local state governor, according to news reports,” the Committee to Protect Journalists reported. “Jerome Imeime of southern Akwa Ibom state’s private weekly Events is the first Nigerian journalist since June 2006 to be charged with sedition in connection with coverage critical of political leadership, according to CPJ research.”