Final Stories, Pies and Tears in Albuquerque
In the newsroom of the Albuquerque (N.M.) Tribune on Friday, the staff put out the second of three commemorative newspapers; a former managing editor, remembering the paper’s “Pie Fridays,” brought in $400 worth of pies; and Photo Editor Mark Holm spent much of his day talking to a prospective new employer.
Saturday is the Albuquerque Tribune’s last day, and after the presses roll about 9 a.m., a farewell breakfast for the 38 newsroom employees, their families and some community members is planned in the newsroom.
“I don’t really think” the impact will hit “until Monday morning, when the alarm clock doesn’t have to go off and we realize there is no Tribune,” Joline Gutierrez Krueger, a courts reporter and columnist, told Journal-isms. Krueger is a 1988 graduate of the Maynard Institute’s Editing Program for Minority Journalists, and one of about eight journalists of color at the paper.
Others are Phill Casaus, the editor; Michael J. Gallegos, photographer; Michael Garcia, sports editor; Willie Jefferson Jr., copy editor and page designer; Paul Maldonado, copy editor; Natalie Ramirez, page designer; and Tamara N. Shope, reporter.
According to the annual census of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Tribune’s staff was 16.3 percent journalists of color, compared with 23.5 percent for the rival Albuquerque Journal.
“I’m proud of the diversity we had in the newsroom. I’m sorry I couldn’t have made it more diverse,” Casaus told Journal-isms. “It’s hard to hire diversity if you can’t hire.” Still, “It was [getting] the feel of the town that made the reporter. I have many Anglo reporters who I have no problem sending deep into the Hispanic community.”
The Tribune’s demise wasn’t a total surprise. As the Albuquerque Journal noted, the E.W. Scripps Co. announced in August it would sell or discontinue publication, saying it had determined the Albuquerque market couldn’t support an afternoon newspaper. It advertised for a buyer.
The Trib’s daily circulation in January was about 9,600, Casaus said in the Journal story. In 1988, the newspaper sold about 42,000 copies a day.
“We believed we would close within two months” of the August announcement, Krueger said. “We were like, ‘How long can this go on?'” With the decision on the paper’s closing, “We finally know. We can work with that.” She accepted a job at the Albuquerque Journal, also covering courts.
“I’ve been here 20 ½ years,” she said. “The idea of going to the paper I fought so hard to beat was hard, but I decided I wasn’t ready to give up journalism and walk away” from Albuquerque. “It’ll be, for a while, like living in a parallel universe.”
Casaus said he doesn’t know what he will do next. “I told our guys, ‘go look, I want you to find things,’ and lost about eight or nine staffers between August and December. But he said as the leader of the paper, he couldn’t spend time looking for a job himself.
When Scripps ultimately made its announcement, it was time to plan for those final editions. Saturday’s was to feature a 12-page photo section and a 12-page commemorative section. Friday’s had a look back at the paper’s 1994 Pulitzer Prize-winning series, “The Plutonium Experiment,” reporting that the government had injected citizens with plutonium.
About a week after the farewell breakfast, Casaus said, the staff will convene somewhere in the neighborhood for a more traditional newspaper goodbye. It’s safe to say there’ll be a toast or two.
Jim Belshaw, Albuquerque Journal: Tribune Had a Great Run and Will Be Missed
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Young Latinos Favored Clinton Just Like Older Ones
Latino men and women ages 17 to 29 voted heavily for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama on Super Tuesday, 62 percent to 37 percent, in contrast to their counterparts among non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks, according to an analysis of exit polls by the Pew Hispanic Center.
“Young Latinos voted just like older Latinos,” Susan Minushkin, deputy director of the center, told Journal-isms. The finding contradicts speculation that has shown younger Latinos more willing to vote for Obama than older ones. She said other surveys usually lack a large enough sample of Latinos to be meaningful.
[In the Potomac Primaries a week later on Feb. 12, however, “Mr. Obama won 54 percent of Virginia’s Hispanic vote and 45 percent in Maryland, a marked rise from the 32 percent of Hispanics he got in California and the 26 percent in Nevada, according to exit polls by CNN and MSNBC,” S.A. Miller and Brian DeBose reported in the Washington Times.]
In another finding, “Hispanics were more likely than whites to say that race was an important factor in deciding their vote — 28% of Hispanics said this compared with 13% of whites. However, Hispanics who said that race was important voted for Clinton by about the same percentage (64%) as did Hispanics who said race was not important (63%).
“By contrast, whites who said race was important were more likely to vote for Clinton than were other whites. And blacks who said race was important (29% of all black voters) were more likely to vote for Obama than were other blacks — 87% did, compared with 80% of blacks who said race was not important.”
The significance? “I don’t know what that means,” Minushkin said. “I wanted to make the point to be careful here” in drawing conclusions about how Latinos take race into account in their presidential choices.
The Pew study was released on Thursday, the day Clinton and Obama faced off in Austin, Texas, in a televised debate co-sponsored by CNN, Univision Communications Inc. and the Texas Democratic Party. Univision anchor Jorge Ramos was one of the panelists and the event was re-telecast in Spanish on his network.
Ramos asked Clinton whether she would be willing to sit down with Raul Castro, “or whoever leads the Cuban dictatorship when you take office at least just once, to get a measure of the man?” The question highlighted the split between the two candidates over whether a president should meet with foreign leaders with whom the United States has strong differences.
The Univision anchor also asked whether there was a downside to the United States becoming a bilingual nation, and whether each would consider stopping federal raids by immigration enforcement officials until comprehensive immigration reform can be passed.
Clinton and Obama each gave their positions on immigration reform, and both urged that Americans become bilingual.
Manuel De La Rosa, a reporter for KIII-TV in Corpus Christi, Texas, and vice president/broadcast of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, told Jackie Jones of BlackAmericaWeb.com “he thought Obama really connected, particularly in South Texas, when he talked about military veterans in the Rio Grande Valley not having adequate access to a Veterans Administration hospital in their area. The nearest one, De La Rosa said, is 250 miles away,” Jones wrote.
” ‘It’s a really big issue in the Valley. There have been walks, marches and protests, and (Obama) was really genuine in saying that he just learned about the issue, but he scored a lot of points with people in the Valley, and when he mentioned us in the debate, people said that he really was listening to the concerns of people in that community,’ De La Rosa said.”
David Crary, Associated Press: Many Blacks Worry About Obama’s Safety
Jack Douglas Jr., Fort Worth Star-Telegram: Secret Service defends security at Obama rally in Dallas
Sam Fulwood, theRoot.com: Less Merlot, More Meatloaf: What Obama needs to win Ohio
Arnold Garcia Jr., Austin (Texas) American-Statesman: Clinton’s fire wall is curling smoke
Carlos Guerra, San Antonio Express-News: It’s strange how politics has a way of doing the unexpected
Karla FC Holloway, Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer: The false defining line of race
Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com: A week of petty though typical attacks on Obama produced nothing
Carlos Guerra, San Antonio Express-News: Even longtime political observers haven’t seen anything like Obama
Earl Ofari Hutchinson, syndicated: Think Age Will Be Obama’s Ultimate Trump Card Against John McCain? Think Again
Gordon Jackson, Dallas Examiner: Citizens fear ‘They’re gonna kill him!’
Nick Jimenez, Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times: Now it’s Barack’s turn to come calling
Michael Luo, Jo Becker and Patrick Healy, New York Times: Donors Worried by Clinton Campaign Spending
Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times: Young Texans ready to vote, ‘be a part of change’
Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times: Michelle: I’ve always been proud of U.S.
Ruben Navarrette, San Diego Union-Tribune: Clinton’s problem with Latinos
Barack Obama, Dallas Morning News: I will repair our relationship with Mexico
Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post: There’s the Beef
Ken Rodriguez, San Antonio Express-News: Hardberger avoids catching primary fever sweeping Alamo City
Ken Rodriguez, San Antonio Express-News: Jaime Castillo: Crowd’s diversity at Obama rally silently makes a bold statement
Roger Simon, Politico.com: Jackson to Dems: Play nice
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Times Editor “Surprised” by McCain Story Reaction
After a media and political firestorm ignited by a story Thursday about Sen. John McCain‘s ties to a lobbyist, New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said in an online chat, “I was surprised by the volume of the reaction (including more than 2,400 reader comments posted on our Web site).
“I was surprised by how lopsided the opinion was against our decision, with readers who described themselves as independents and Democrats joining Republicans in defending Mr. McCain from what they saw as a cheap shot.”
The Times also said more than 3,700 questions were sent via e-mail to the newspaper on Thursday night and Friday.
“And, frankly,” Keller continued, “I was a little surprised by how few readers saw what was, to us, the larger point of the story. Perhaps here, at the outset of this conversation, is a good point to state as clearly as possible our purpose in publishing.
“. . . The point of this ‘Long Run’ installment was that, according to people who know him well, this man who prizes his honor above all things and who appreciates the importance of appearances also has a history of being sometimes careless about the appearance of impropriety, about his reputation. The story cites several examples, and quotes friends and admirers talking of this apparent contradiction in his character. That is why some members of his staff were so alarmed by the appearance of his relationship with Ms. Iseman,” a reference to lobbyist Vicki Iseman, who is 40. McCain is 71. “And that, it seemed (and still seems) to us, was something our readers would want to know about a man who aspires to be president.
“Clearly, many of you did not agree.”
As Clint Hendler of the Columbia Journalism Review pointed out, among the projects championed by McCain was a minority-ownership tax incentive program. Iseman had several clients who favored that step.
In a purported story-behind-the-story, Gabriel Sherman of the New Republic reported on Thursday how the story was developed under Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet, who was the National Association of Black Journalists’ 2007 Journalist of the Year.
Sherman wrote, “The publication of the article capped three months of intense internal deliberations at the Times over whether to publish the negative piece and its most explosive charge about the affair. It pitted the reporters investigating the story, who believed they had nailed it, against executive editor Bill Keller, who believed they hadn’t. It likely cost the paper one investigative reporter, who decided to leave in frustration. And the Times ended up publishing a piece in which the institutional tensions about just what the story should be are palpable.”
In one of many published opinions about the story, Frank James of the Chicago Tribune Washington bureau wrote on the paper’s “The Swamp” blog, “I happen to be in the camp that believes it’s unfair journalistically for a media organization to plant the thought in readers’ heads that a married man may have had a romantic relationship with a woman based on the suspicions of unnamed sources.
“I would even have problems if the sources were named[.] What if those sources are wrong? How do you undo the damage? How do you unring the bell?”
The Washington Post, which had also been working on the McCain story, ran front-page stories of its own on Thursday and Friday. The latter was headlined, “The Anti-Lobbyist, Advised by Lobbyists.”
Howard Kurtz, Washington Post: N.Y. Times Gets Flak From All Sides on Explosive Story
Megan Garber, Columbia Journalism Review: Five Questions for Bill Keller
Rem Rieder, American Journalism Review: The Senator and the Lobbyist
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William Worthy, Forgotten by Many, Honored
William Worthy reported from Communist China, the Shah’s Iran, and Cuba in the early days of Fidel Castro.
Now suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, he has been forgotten by many. But on Friday, the Nieman Foundation honored this member of the Nieman fellowship class of 1957 with a special Louis M. Lyons Award, named after the Harvard journalism program’s longtime curator.
“Bill Worthy was a correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American who slipped into China in 1956 in defiance of a U.S. travel ban. The government took away his passport, but over the years, Bill managed to get into Cuba, North Vietnam, and Cambodia to report for his newspaper and network news organizations,” curator Bob Giles told Nieman fellows. “His ‘illegal’ trip to Cuba inspired a song called ‘The Ballad of William Worthy,’ ” by Phil Ochs.
In the Boston Globe on Friday, columnist Adrian Walker said he visited Worthy, who is now 86, in an assisted-living facility in Hyde Park, Mass. “Worthy combined activism and journalism in a way that would be more difficult today. . . . How he came to be destitute is, at this point, something of a mystery,” Walker wrote.
“An appeal by Councilor Chuck Turner has led to the involvement of the city’s Law Department, which is working to save Worthy’s family home from creditors. There is a trove of Worthy’s papers in the home. Dorothy Joyce, a spokeswoman for Mayor Thomas M. Menino, said yesterday that the city hopes that some of Worthy’s papers will be placed at the Boston Public Library.
“With its relentless emphasis on the here and now, journalism doesn’t do an especially good job of remembering its history. But William Worthy is part of it, reclaimed just in time.”
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Journalist Stamps Saved From Early Obsolescence
An upcoming stamp series from the U.S. Postal Service honoring five American journalists, including Ruben Salazar, the first Mexican-American reporter to have a major voice in mainstream news media, has been rescued from near-instant obsolescence.
Salazar’s “writings in the Los Angeles Times and segments at KMEX-TV on the Chicano movement of the 1960s added richly to the historical record. While in Los Angeles covering a Vietnam War protest Salazar was shot in the head and killed by a tear gas projectile fired by a deputy sheriff,” the Postal Service noted.
The Postal Service announced in October that five reporters— the others are Martha Gellhorn, who covered the Spanish Civil War, John Hersey, who described the bombing of Hiroshima in World War II, Eric Sevareid, a writer for the New York Herald Tribune and later a broadcast journalist for CBS radio, and George Polk, who disappeared during World War II — would be placed on 41-cent stamps this year.
But before the stamps could be issued, the Postal Service announced last week that the price of first-class stamps would rise to 42 cents on May 12, rendering the 41-cent journalist stamps obsolete less than a month after their debut.
Postal Service spokesman Roy Betts told Journal-isms on Friday it was expected that the stamps would be issued at the new rate. They go on sale April 22.
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists is holding its annual scholarship dinner honoring Salazar on March 13. Cuban journalist Manuel Vázquez Portal, one of 23 journalists jailed in Cuba during a crackdown on press freedom five years ago, is to deliver the keynote speech.
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CNN Memo on Cuba Coverage Leaked to Cyberspace
An internal CNN memo circulating on the Internet gives guidance to anchors in reporting on Fidel Castro’s relinquishing of power in Cuba. CNN is the only U.S.-based broadcast network with a bureau in Havana.
Written by Allison Flexner of the international desk, it reads:
“Some points on Castro — for adding to our anchor reads/reporting:
“Please say in our reporting that Castro stepped down in a letter he wrote to Granma (the communist party daily), as opposed to in a letter attributed to Fidel Castro. We have no reason to doubt he wrote his resignation letter, he has penned numerous articles over the past year and a half.
“Please note Fidel did bring social reforms to Cuba — namely free education and universal health care, and racial integration. in addition to being criticized for oppressing human rights and freedom of speech.
“Also the Cuban government blames a lot of Cuba’s economic problems on the US embargo, and while that has caused some difficulties, (far less so than the collapse of the Soviet Union) the bulk of Cuba’s economic problems are due to Cuba’s failed economic polices. Some analysts would say the US embargo was a benefit to Castro politically — something to blame problems on, by what the Cubans call ‘the imperialist,’ meddling in their affairs.
“While despised by some, he is seen as a revolutionary hero, especially with leftist[s] in Latin America, for standing up to the United States.
“Any questions, please call the international desk.”
CNN told Journal-isms, “The exchange of ideas, thoughts and background between colleagues is all part of the journalistic process. We stand by our on-air and on-line coverage of this story.”
Ralph de la Cruz, South Florida Sun-Sentinel: Fidel Castro’s out, but it’s hardly reason to cheer
Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News: Fidel Castro savors final win over rivals
Albor Ruiz, New York Daily News: Cuba looks fresh-faced
Elmer Smith, Philadelphia Daily News: It’s past time: Normalize relations with Cuba now
Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Let’s finally change foolish Cuba policy
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Short Takes
Fox host Bill O’Reilly apologized for saying on the Feb. 19 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, “I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels.” He was referring to Obama’s statement, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.” Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, said she had spoken with Fox News to express her concern. “They were very responsive, based on that conversation I can only assume they prompted Bill to make this statement,” she told NABJ members.
“NBC 10 reporter Monique Braxton just returned
from a weeklong off-air suspension,” Dan Gross wrote Thursday in the Philadelphia Daily News. “Braxton, sources say, had been suspended for making calls and inquiries about the criminal case of Steve DiDonato, of Lower Salford Township, who happens to be the husband of NBC 10 Managing Editor Lisa Spinosa. Last month a judge sentenced DiDonato, 47, to a probation-like program over charges that DiDonato set a fire in January 2006.”
New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin called out New Orleans television station WWL, the station on which he was broadcast live, and said that he and its news director were going to have a “one-on-one.” “Nagin holds WWL partially responsible for personal information about him that has circulated the Internet, with some of his media exposure fueling the efforts of white supremacist groups,” Nick Langewis and David Edwards wrote on the Web site the Raw Story, showing video of Nagin’s remarks. In addition, WWL put in a public records request for a copy of Nagin’s mayoral calendar. After receiving it, the station quoted critics saying he was spending too much time out of town.
PBS’ “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” said it had received more than 5,900 responses when it asked for comment on the Sunday New York Times piece, “Is PBS Still Necessary?” and said the paper’s Web site had received more than 800 when it closed the site Monday evening.
“With a dark complexion and a thick outergarment, I could join the shivering, illustrious ranks of African-American TV reporters in Pittsburgh who seem permanently relegated to the outdoors,” Mike Seate wrote Wednesday in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. His column was headlined, “TV’s black reporters left out in the cold.”
Marco Williams‘ film “Banished,” about the expulsion in the early part of the 20th century of more than 4,000 black residents from their homes, has started airing on public television. It will air 397 times on 285 stations, a PBS spokeswoman told Journal-isms.
Viacom Inc’s BET Networks will launch in the United Kingdom on Feb. 28, to more than 8.8 million digital satellite homes on BSkyB, Reuters reported.
Radio One “said yesterday that its losses grew sharply in the last three months of 2007 during an industrywide slump, and it recorded a $404 million write-down in the value of some of its radio station licenses,” Anita Huslin reported Friday in the Washington Post.
“WCBS reporter Ti Hua Chang has just been hired by WWOR/My9 as their new general assignment reporter,” the mediabistro Web site reported. “With this hire, Ti Hua has become New York’s official free agent local television news allstar: He worked at WCBS as a reporter. He worked at WNBC as a reporter. He worked at ABC News as a producer. He worked at WNYC as a talk show host.”
“The University of Colorado student newspaper’s staff will undergo diversity training and meet other measures outlined Thursday by CU officials in response to a column published earlier this week that said Asian people should be rounded up, ‘hog-tied’ and ‘forced to eat bad sushi,'” Heath Urie reported Friday in the Boulder (Colo.) Daily Camera.
Referring to Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly and to broadcaster and activist Tavis Smiley, media critic Eric Deggans wrote Thursday on his St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times blog, “When they want the authority of journalism, they assume its trappings. But when they want to do something at odds with journalism’s professional values — like indulge conflicts of interest or avoid correcting obvious mistakes —then all of a sudden, they’re not journalists, anymore.”
Will Moses, a reporter with KTBS-TV in Shreveport, La., resigned after being arrested Wednesday night in a vice operation at a local adult novelty and movie theater, according to Shreveport police, John Andrew Prime reported Thursday in the Shreveport Times.
Actor Danny Glover, activist Dick Gregory, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, reporter Juan Gonzalez, author and journalist Jeremy Scahill, performance artist Sarah Jones and actress Susan Sarandon were among those who gathered in New York to help raise money for new digs for Pacifica Radio’s “Democracy Now!” Herb Boyd reported Thursday for theblackworldtoday.com.
In a joint venture with Fox-owned WFLD-Channel 32, the Chicago Urban League plans to produce a weekly magazine show on economic empowerment in Chicago and related community issues, Robert Feder reported Friday in the Chicago Sun-Times.
In South Africa, the chairman of the 2010 World Cup local organizing committee is under fire for telling a black journalist during a media conference to “stop thinking like a kaffir,” a derogatory term used for blacks. Black intellectuals canvassed by the Cape Argus newspaper defended Irvin Khoza‘s use of the word, while also observing that the term is offensive and should not be encouraged, Thabo Mabaso wrote in the Cape Argus on Thursday. The flap was compared to those over some African Americans’ use of the N-word. Khoza, who is black, “has apologised for the outburst, but also insisted that no malice was intended. He said the term was used by many black township residents to describe questionable characters. ‘I know the word also has another meaning, but in the context in which I used it, it refers to dubious character and unreliability,’ he was quoted as saying.”
Also in South Africa, Jacob Zuma, president of the African National Congress, said “I saw nothing wrong” when asked whether he approved of the exclusion of white journalists from an address at the Forum of Black Journalists on Friday, the Cape Argus reported on Friday.
