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Resistance at Black Enterprise

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CEO Wants Staffers on “Non-Compete” Agreements

Editorial staffers at Black Enterprise magazine are resisting efforts by CEO

 

Earl “Butch” Graves Jr. to “force” them to sign “non-compete” clauses, according to sources close to the publication. The practice is routine in broadcasting but unusual in the magazine world.

Management’s efforts come after a number of departures from the magazine, including that of Tariq Muhammad, director of interactive media for BlackEnterprise.com, who in October was named director of AOL Black Voices, and of Tanisha Sykes, consumer affairs editor, who left to edit personal finance news at Essence magazine.

Andrew P. Wadium, spokesman for the magazine, would not discuss the issue. “As you know, BE is a private family-owned company, and the employment records are confidential,” he said.

Non-editorial employees are said to have agreed to Graves’ request, but editorial staff members are said to be balking, and there has been no resolution, the sources said. Under such clauses, employees are not allowed to work for competing businesses for a specified amount of time after ending their employment at the company.

A quick survey by the Magazine Publishers Association, taken on Friday at Journal-isms’ request, found that of 11 respondents, representing some of the bigger magazine publishers, about a quarter ask new hires to sign a non-compete clause, but about three-quarters said they did not, according to spokeswoman Cristina Dinozo.

One person had this to say about enforcement, Dinozo told Journal-isms:

“Non competes are not easy to enforce, which is why we do not ask for them. Legally, you cannot prohibit an individual from earning a living, so in order to make them work you must pay the person for the period of time you would not want them to compete.”

Asked whether she knew of any companies requiring employees already on the payroll to sign such agreements, she said, “Off the top of our collective MPA heads, the answer is no (a possible exception may be in cases of acquisition or merger when the new employer requests employees of the old or absorbed organization to do so as part of the newly formed company.)”

In the newspaper business, it is common for journalists to move between the New York Post and the New York Daily News, for example, or between the Washington Post and the New York Times. That is also true among many similarly themed magazines.

Among the questions raised by the Black Enterprise request is who would be considered a competitor, since the magazine stands virtually alone in being devoted solely to black business, and why all employees would have to be covered.

In the fall 1997 issue of Employment Practices Today, Debbie Rodman Sandler, a partner in the labor and employment practice group at White and Williams, a Philadelphia-based civil practice law firm, wrote:

 

“The best noncompetes are narrowly tailored to meet the most important needs of the company, judiciously applied only to individuals in sensitive positions, and vigorously invoked when violated. In many cases, merely having the agreements in place will discourage all but the most intent employees from jumping ship.”

She added, “Before a company embarks on a campaign to have employees sign these agreements (also referred to as ‘restrictive covenants’), a few cautionary points need consideration. First and foremost is the fact that the courts in all states don’t like noncompete agreements. They welcome any opportunity to limit or eliminate them. This disfavor is based largely on the desire to allow individuals to earn a living in the field of their choice and an unwillingness to let a corporation coerce its employees.”

In a well-publicized recent print-media case, a state judge in September barred Par Ridder, publisher of the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, from working there for a year. Ridder illegally had taken proprietary information when he left the Star Tribune’s chief rival, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, where he was publisher, the court ruled.

Writing in the Minnesota Employment Law Letter, the firm Felhaber, Larson, Fenlon and Vogt, P.A. said, “This case . . . reinforces how critical it is to get those noncompete agreements signed right when employment begins. Waiting even two days is fatal . . .

“The very best practice is to inform the candidate in the offer letter that employment is contingent on receipt of a signed noncompete before or at the commencement of employment. If the agreement is offered after employment has begun, additional consideration is required. It can take the form of a monetary payment, a pay increase, or any other tangible benefit, but it must be provided and well documented. Finally, be sure that you aggressively protect your confidential information and take steps to address its misuse by current and former employees.”

Muhammad, now at AOL Black Voices, and Sykes, now at Essence, separately told Journal-isms they enjoyed their time at Black Enterprise but would not comment on current developments there.

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Police Arrest Media Theories on Taylor’s Life, Death

The detention for questioning Friday of two teenagers and a man in his 20s in the death of Washington Redskins football star Sean Taylor didn’t prompt a chorus of “I told you so” from sportswriters who had warned against giving Taylor’s killing a “thug life” narrative.

But almost.

 

 

“I just read that police have detained three suspects in sean taylor’s murder,” Jemele Hill, columnist for ESPN.com, wrote to the Sports Task Force of the National Association of Black Journalists.

“oh well, i guess there goes the theory that sean taylor had it coming or that this was a payback hit. it seems someone close to him bragged about how rich taylor was and those people came to pay taylor a visit.

“will some of us in the media be able to sleep at night because our demonization of this man cant be complete?”

Her posting was signed, “dripping with sarcasm…”

[On Friday night, police said four suspected burglars were responsible for the slaying, and that “We have confessions,” the Miami Herald reported on Saturday, writing, “The arrests countered rampant media speculation that Taylor’s past — an earlier brush with the law and old neighborhood friends — contributed to his death.”]

Omar Kelly of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, who had written a front-page commentary about Taylor, whose family he had befriended, told colleagues Friday, “I’m sure a lot of people will feel a bit guilty about the way they portrayed him— acting as if he called this brutal murder on himself— because he didn’t know the guys in Ft. Myers who targeted him. I personally couldn’t care if he knew the individuals who decided to rob him. NO ONE deserves what Sean got.

“My hope is that this will allow us to take a good look at race and the images we put out there about people. Not just black people, but people. Sometimes I’m ashamed of my profession, and this happens to be one of those weeks because we assassinated the character of a man all because we needed to fill airtime and sell papers. Then we wonder why we’re viewed as being on the same level as lawyers.”

Even before the detention of the suspects, readers and some journalists were sounding an alarm. “We’ve done some failing on this Taylor story,” Dan Le Batard wrote Thursday in the Miami Herald. “What happened to him and his family is cruel and unfair. That’s it. It isn’t endemic of a people or a region or a school. It is just unspeakably cruel and unspeakably unfair. I don’t know how anyone could lack so much compassion that they would somehow blame a city or school or culture to this awfulness, as if a city or school or culture could possibly deserve something that brings this kind of sobbing and wailing.

“And yet that’s what Time Magazine and MSNBC and FOX and CNN and ESPN have wanted to discuss in recent days because the machine must stay fed, and it matters less and less what kind of garbage we throw into its insatiable maw and try to pass off as nutrition.”

On the Web site of the Washington City Paper, Dave McKenna wrote, “A huge huddle of Redskins fans have been taking out their grief over Sean Taylor’s death on Len Shapiro for his Tuesday washingtonpost.com column headlined, ‘Taylor’s Death Is Tragic but Not Surprising.’ Shapiro says he’s gotten hundreds of emails since the article appeared.

“The outcry, which has a hater/non-hater ratio of about 100-to-1, has caused Shapiro some second thoughts.”

 

 

Two pieces seemed to have most moved black journalists. A David Aldridge column on Thursday in the Philadelphia Inquirer combined several thoughts. One was that, “As black men, we cannot allow ourselves to be defined by anyone — by the media or by ourselves — and accept the premise that one beginning means only one possible ending.”

A second point was that too many black men are dying; “We can continue to throw our hands up and blame others or we can stop this genocide and deal with the recriminations later.”

Though he, too, linked Taylor’s past to the killing, Jason Whitlock of the Kansas City Star and FoxSports.com prompted a discussion of both personal responsibility and the effects of racism with his Wednesday column linking Taylor’s death to the mentality of the hip-hop culture.

“In all likelihood, the Black Klan and its mentality buried Sean Taylor, and any black man or boy reading this could be next,” Whitlock wrote.

“Now, i don’t think it’s fair to label Taylor as a certain way and jump to conclusions when you really don’t know the man, but the bigger picture points were legitimate,” one writer told the Sports Task Force.

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Imus Supporters, Critics Await Monday Show

 

Don Imus has 21 stations lined up for the Monday debut of the new “Imus in the Morning” radio show, in addition to originating New York station WABC, programming director Phil Boyce told Journal-isms on Friay.

Both Imus supporters and detractors were preparing themselves for the occasion.

Boyce said he could not disclose who the affiliates were, who the first guests would be, or how much advertising had been sold, though he said the show was not completely sold out. Seats for the first WABC broadcast, staged at Town Hall in New York as a $100-a-ticket benefit for the Imus Ranch for Kids With Cancer, are “just about sold out,” he said.

“I think he will have some scores to settle,” Boyce told the New York Post’s Page Six column on Thursday, speaking of Imus.

The Page Six column added, “It is doubtful Imus will ever forgive CBS chief Les Moonves, who fired him, or regular guest Tim Russert, the host of NBC’s ‘Meet the Press,’ who was ‘an invisible man’ while Imus was under attack,” after his April reference to the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed ho’s.”

“Private eye Bo Dietl, who will join Imus in the 8 a.m. hour on Monday, also named Harold Ford Jr. and Al Roker as two Imus regulars who abandoned him in his hour of need. ‘They turned their backs on him so fast,’ Dietl said yesterday. ‘Al Roker had his stomach stapled — he should have had his mouth stapled,'” the Page Six item said.

Los Angeles commentator and activist Earl Ofari Hutchinson announced that, “Los Angeles civil rights leaders will call for a week long Los Angeles and national Imus listen in watch. If Imus makes any racially, or gender demeaning remarks, listeners will be urged to protest to management and advertisers and urge cancellation.”

“Imus was removed from the airwaves once for racially and gender offensive remarks, if there’s a repeat we will urge listeners to demand the show’s cancellation,” according to a statement from Eddie Jones, president of the Los Angeles Civil Rights Association, Willis Edwards, NAACP national board member, and Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable.

In New York, freelance writer Philip Nobile, who has tracked offensive Imus statements for years, told Journal-isms, “I’m going to picket Imus’s debut Monday morning to inject some reality into his comeback.” He said he would be at Town Hall.

In Boston, the Associated Press reported that a group of black community leaders angry with the decision to bring back Imus protested Friday at WTKK-FM’s office.

The Web site FishBowl DC asked Washington media figures who had been Imus guests this year whether they would return. Craig Crawford of Congressional Quarterly, Chris Wallace of Fox News and Chris Matthews of MSNBC said yes, while Ana Marie Cox, Washington Editor of Time.com, said no. Others said they were not sure or did not respond. Howard Fineman of Newsweek also said no: “The company policy is to stick with the decision of last spring, which is that no Newsweek staffer can do the show,” he said.

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Washington Post’s Bacon Hit on Obama Story

 

 

Washington Post reporter Perry Bacon Jr. is defending his front-page story about Barack Obama that Paul McLeary, writing online for the Columbia Journalism Review, said “may be the single worst campaign ’08 piece to appear in any American newspaper so far this election cycle.”

“In the front-page piece, Bacon muses over how the chances of Barack Obama getting elected president might be affected by the fact that he’s not Muslim. Seriously. To build his case, Bacon stumbles artlessly through all manner of rumor, innuendo, and xenophobic smear — never bothering to refute any of it, even though there is plenty of well-documented evidence to knock down much of this stuff,” McLeary wrote.

Bacon explained the story this way in a note to the Post’s ombudsman, briefly excerpted here, with permission:

“I was in Iowa a few weeks ago, attending an event with John Edwards,” Bacon said. “I was talking to a couple of voters afterward and one of them explained to me she could not vote for Obama, because he is a Muslim. I found this odd and for a bit tried to explain why this was not true, but it struck me. I attended an event with Obama a couple of days later, where he was asked about not . . . putting his hand over his heart [during the national anthem]. In his answer, Obama said not only was this rumor not true, but also the one about him being a ‘Muslim plant’ was also not true. I later heard his campaign had a letter in some of his Iowa offices vouching for his faith.

“. . . To be honest, my concern about the story was that we hadn’t gotten that new info in. . .”

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Candidates Pressed on Open Government

 

 

“The American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) and other groups involved in the annual Sunshine Week on Thursday launched an election year Sunshine Campaign to pressure candidates for offices from city council to the presidency to discuss their stands on open government issues,” Editor & Publisher reported on Thursday.

“‘The Sunshine Campaign is designed to spur campaign conversation — and commitment — to open government during the presidential race and continuing on through to city council contests,’ the organization said. ‘Journalists, and anyone else with the opportunity, are encouraged to ask every candidate for public office to explain his or her positions on open government and Freedom of Information (FOI) issues.’

“Sunshine Week will use responses to develop a database of statements, positions, votes, and views on a variety of open government issues.

“Sunshine Week also has sent a questionnaire on a variety of open government issues . . . to the campaign offices of the 16 leading Democratic and Republican candidates. They have been asked to respond by mid-December. Answers will be posted on the Sunshine Week Web site as they are received.”

“Resources such as suggested questions and links to additional material are on the Sunshine Week Web site, www.sunshineweek.org.”

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Short Takes

 

Kiran Chetry

 

 
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