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Would Russert Be Embarrassed?

richard

Gwen Ifill of PBS, discussing Tim Russert Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” was one of the few journalists of color participating in the commentary.

Wake in D.C. Tuesday, Private Rites Wednesday

Amid the nonstop weekend coverage of Tim Russert‘s sudden death at age 58 on Friday, some of his fellow journalists were wondering whether Russert himself might not have thought his colleagues went overboard.

Others saw in the relatively few journalists of color who were part of the flood of tributes a reflection of the lack of diversity in Washington political journalism.

A wake for Russert, NBC’s Washington bureau chief, is planned for Tuesday at St. Albans School in Washington, NBC announced on Sunday, according to the Washington Post. Russert died in the NBC News Washington bureau after suffering a heart attack.

MSNBC will televise a private memorial held at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts on Wednesday at 4 p.m., Mike Allen and Amie Parnes reported for the Politico.

On Tuesday, “The wake will take place from 2 to 9 p.m. in the Cafritz Refectory at the school, at Wisconsin and Massachusetts avenues NW. Visitors are asked to park in the public garage of the Washington National Cathedral Close,” the Post story said.

“A private funeral and memorial service is planned for Wednesday.

“Yesterday on ‘Meet the Press,’ Russert’s anchor chair was empty during an hour-long tribute to the host of the public-affairs program for the past 16 years.

“Tom Brokaw and a half-dozen other guests were seated in front of the ‘Meet the Press’ set and its angular table, left vacant, where Russert had presided last week.”

It didn’t escape most commentators’ notice that Russert died on Father’s Day weekend, and many used the occasion to talk about Russert’s relationship with his own father, “Big Russ,” and his son, Luke. They also provided teachable moments for citizens and fellow journalists alike on the traits that made for a consummate journalist. Yet some observers wondered whether a sense of proportion had been lost.

“If Tim Russert is looking down from Heaven, would he approve of the superstar, blanket coverage he’s getting from the TV networks, particularly his own, NBC?” asked Dave Hughes, who writes dcrtv.com, a Web site about the Washington-area television news business, on Saturday.

“Would he approve of the fact that we learned next-to-nothing yesterday evening about Iraq or the presidential race or those Boy Scouts who died in that tornado in Iowa because his death was the one and only story? I’ve always been a big fan of Tim. I’ve always thought he was a top-notch journalist and one of the very best political interviewers on the tube. But I don’t like how journalists have become super-celebs.”

Denny Wilkins, who teaches journalism at the St. Bonaventure University School of Journalism & Mass Communication, listed other journalists who died this year and wrote on the Web site scholarsandrogues.com:

“Mr. Russert’s life and legacy deserves the outpouring of grief and tribute after his unexpected death at only 58 years old. He was an admirable, competent and compelling interviewer and seeker of truth. But because he wielded an exceptionally large megaphone — the pulpit of ‘Meet The Press’ — he was also a celebrity.

“. . . I did not know Mr. Russert. But I wonder: Would he have been embarrassed that so much air time, print space and Web usage was devoted to chronicling his passing? Would he have asked of gatekeepers: ‘You doing this because I’m newsworthy — or merely a celebrity?’

“. . . Meanwhile, other journalists with talent and determination — but not the ratings or readership reach of Mr. Russert — continue to die doing what the profession has historically done — seek the facts that illuminate truth. So far, 13 have died this year. Since 1992, 685 journalists have died with murder the most frequent cause. They have received far too little recognition for their sacrifice and dedication.”

The diversity of the televised commentariat was among the topics Rob Redding discussed on Saturday with this columnist on Redding’s “Redding News Review.” While there were a few African Americans, it was difficult to find any Latino, Asian American or Native American in the hours of Russert commentary.

Four years ago, a survey by Unity: Journalists of Color found, “Less than 10.5 percent of the reporters, correspondents, columnists, editors and bureau chiefs in the Washington daily newspaper press corps are journalists of color — 60 out of 574.” A follow-up is planned for this summer’s Unity convention.

Participation by journalists of color in this year’s historic campaign, a step on the ladder to the top ranks of political journalism, has left much to be desired, particularly at such outlets as the New York Times, Time magazine, Fox News, the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, Gannett News Service and Politico.

And as demonstrated by a story in Monday’s New York Times by Bill Carter and Jacques Steinberg, journalists of color are not being mentioned as possible replacements for Russert on “Meet the Press.”

[Update: David Bauder of the Associated Press broke with the pack and included Ifill as a possible replacement in a later story.]

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McClatchy Pledges Diversity Despite Job Slashes

The McClatchy Co. is determined to increase its newsroom diversity percentages despite slashing 1,400 jobs, or 10 percent of its work force, in a move announced on Monday, Howard Weaver, the company’s vice president for news, told Journal-isms.

“Even with the hiring slowdown, we managed to inch up in diversity percentages in newsrooms in 2007. I am determined to do so again in 2008,” Weaver said.

 

Howard Weaver

The newspaper company announced the cutbacks as part of an accelerating drive to cut costs as advertising revenues dwindle, Seth Sutel reported for the Associated Press.

The Miami Herald announced plans to reduce its workforce by 250 full-time employees — 17 percent of its staff, John Dorschner reported on that paper’s Web site.

“The Herald newsroom is expected to lose about 60 positions, including some now vacant. About 40 newsroom personnel are slated to take voluntary buyouts or be laid off.

“Those include 12 newsroom supervisors, five in the International edition, two copy editors, three reporters, four designers and layout specialists, two on the state desk, two critics, two photographers and six in archiving and calendar.

“Archiving, calendar and the International edition will be outsourced to workers in India. The company is also exploring transferring its radio operations to a third-party company, but the services to public radio station WLRN will remain the same.

“All three managing editor positions will be eliminated, and the persons occupying those positions will assume other duties in the newsroom.”

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram will “reduce its work force by 130 people through involuntary layoffs and a voluntary buyout plan,” that paper wrote on its Web site.

“We’ll still have hundreds of journalists at the paper,” Star-Telegram Publisher Gary Wortel said. “That’s more than all the media outlets on our side of the Metroplex combined, and the audience we deliver over a week’s time can’t be matched by anyone.”

At the Kansas City Star, “reductions include about 120 full-time equivalent positions. Reductions will occur in every division, Mark Zieman, The Star’s president and publisher, said this morning in an e-mail to employees,” David Hayes wrote for the Star.

The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer newsroom is expected to lose 22 jobs, that paper’s Rick Rothacker reported.

The Sacramento Bee announced it will eliminate 86 jobs, 46 by layoffs, but its story did not specify how many would come from the newsroom.

At the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer, “As part of the reductions, 16 full-time and part-time newsroom employees will be affected, John Drescher, the newspaper’s executive editor, wrote in [an] e-mail to the newsroom,” Jonathan B. Cox reported on that paper’s Web site.

The AP added, “McClatchy also reported a 15.4 percent decline in advertising revenues in the first five months of the year. McClatchy is the No. 3 U.S. newspaper company with 30 dailies. . .

“The cuts come amid a broad retrenchment in the U.S. newspaper industry as the economic downturn combined with competition for classified advertising from online rivals like Craigslist has resulted in a steep slump in advertising revenues.

“Many other newspaper publishers have also announced job cuts and layoffs in recent months, but McClatchy’s companywide cost-cutting drive marked an unusually broad and deep effort to contain costs.

“McClatchy said in a statement that the job cuts will be made through a combination of voluntary departures, layoffs and attrition. The company said it has not historically used widespread layoffs to control staff size, relying instead on attrition, outsourcing and limited job cuts.

“McClatchy, which is still working to reduce debt from its $4 billion purchase of Knight Ridder in 2006, said it has already reduced head count by 13 percent from the end of 2006 through April of this year.”

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Obama Links Media Mergers to Less Local News

Sen. Barack Obama, standing firmly against further media consolidation, has told Broadcasting & Cable magazine:

“This country’s media ownership rules that both chairman [Michael] Powell and chairman [Kevin] Martin have wanted to dismantle protect us from excessive media concentration. However, even under current rules, the media market is dominated by a handful of firms. The ill effects of consolidation today and continued consolidation are well-documented — less diversity of opinion, less local news coverage, replication of the same stories across multiple outlets, and others. We can do better.”

“In other words, the media is on notice: The potential new sheriff is in town, and he believes there’s plenty of cleaning up to do,” the magazine’s John Eggerton wrote Sunday night.

Obama’s references were to members of the Federal Communications Commission.

Obama was asked where he stood on the proposed merger of XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio, the only two satellite-radio companies.

“I am waiting for final resolution by the regulatory agencies and would want to ensure that the merger does not give the new firm excessive market power or unduly limit the choices consumers have for satellite-radio content,” he said.

But on Sunday, the FCC’s Martin said he was satisfied that the $3.8 billion merger was in the public’s interest. However, two of the other four commissioners are ardent foes of allowing big media companies to get bigger and a third has been sympathetic to the broadcast industry, which opposes the satellite radio deal, John Dunbar reported for the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, the Columbia Journalism Review’s Zachary Roth gave kudos to the Wall Street Journal on Friday “for being among the first to identify an interesting new development in the TV news media’s coverage of the campaign this year.”

The Journal wrote on Friday: “Television news organizations, facing unprecedented scrutiny, have often expressed contrition for poorly chosen words during this election season.

“Just this week, the paper reports, Fox News has twice had to respond to critics who were offended by on-air statements about Barack Obama and his wife. First, anchor E.D. Hill offered a ‘clarification’ after labeling a celebratory greeting between the Obamas a ‘terrorist fist jab.’ Then, a Fox executive admitted in a statement that the producer who approved on-screen text that called the candidate’s wife ‘Obama’s Baby Mama’ had used ‘poor judgment.’

“The Journal adds that people appearing on Fox, CNN, and MSNBC have all apologized for confusing ‘Obama’ and ‘Osama’ this year, and that NBC’s Andrea Mitchell this week apologized for calling southwest Virginia ‘redneck country.’

“It’s hard to know just what to make of this new phenomenon . . . For now, it seems worth noting something that the Journal pointedly doesn’t: with the exception of Mitchell’s nonpartisan slur, all of the other examples take Democrats as their victims. I can’t think of a single example from this election season of a network admitting to making offensive comments about a Republican.”

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Kurtz to Pitts: “Is This What All the Brothers Do?”

The “dap” — sometimes known as a “fist pump” — that Barack Obama exchanged with his wife, Michelle, on the night Obama sealed the Democratic presidential nomination, was the subject of a conversation on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” media show, hosted by Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz.

 

“All right. I got one more piece of tape and I’m going to save this question for you, Byron,” Kurtz said to CBS correspondent Byron Pitts on the June 8 show. “This is a lot of media chatter about something that Barack Obama did with his wife at his speech in Minnesota. Let’s watch.

MAGGIE RODRIGUEZ, CBS NEWS: All right, everybody, give me a little pound-pound. A simple fist pump between Barack Obama and his wife Michelle.

CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC: It was a fist pump of victory and of course of love.

BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS: She just gave him a little knuckle, which is —- that’s the ultimate congratulation is a little knuckle.

BRIAN WILLIAMS, NBC: Your wife came up on stage with you last night, and in an otherwise private moment, attempted to give her husband a fist pound.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Byron, I’m not cool enough to grasp this, so tell me, is this what all the brothers do?

PITTS: Neither I am. Neither am I. In fact, I had to ask a young intern in our office the name of that, what they did. It’s not called the fist pump or the — what did they call it, a little knuckle. Actually, the kids call it giving the person dap. So Barack Obama gave his wife a little dap.

I think it was a nice moment. And it sort of symbolized that he’s different, that they do different things, that perhaps he represents a different generation. There is a generation of Americans, not just black — white, Latino — who are, you know, that’s how they greet each other, and that is casual, that’s cool. And I thought it was just a nice image, and reflected a way that this is a new time. That perhaps I think sometimes we in the news media don’t fully appreciate perhaps where Barack Obama has taken the nation or the kinds of people he has attracted.

GLORIA BORGER: I think it shows they have young kids, because kids do this.

PITTS: Oh, yeah. Exactly.

BORGER: My kids do.

KURTZ: Not since Al Gore gave Tipper that kiss has so much been said about something so small.

All right, Byron Pitts, Gloria Borger, Jake Tapper.

TAPPER: Word.

KURTZ: Thanks for joining us.

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Neal Scarbrough Leaves Startup Sports Site

Neal Scarbrough, who has been one of the highest ranking African Americans in the online news world, has parted ways with Sportnet, the Internet startup where Scarbrough was named senior vice president and editor-in-chief in November.

 

Neal Scarbrough

“I do have a couple of other things cooking. I’ve got to keep my eyes open for the right situation,” Scarbrough, 46, told Journal-isms. He said he was among eight who are leaving.

The company said in a statement, “Sportnet recently made a small number of staff changes typical of a start up venture. The company will be announcing new hires in the editorial and publishing departments soon.”

Scarbrough, a former board member of the National Association of Black Journalists, came to the start-up after being laid off as general manager and editor of AOL Sports. Before AOL, he had been ESPN’s vice president and news editor and spent time as the editor in chief of ESPN.com.

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Sports Columnist Plans to Launch Fitness Business

 

Milo Bryant

Milo F. Bryant, who writes a weekly fitness column in addition to his three-times-a-week sports column for the Colorado Springs (Colo.) Gazette, plans to leave daily newspaper work after covering the Beijing Olympics in August and start his own fitness business.

“Dealing with physical fitness, it’s a bigger love for me, a major draw,” Bryant told Journal-isms. “I’ve been in and out of gyms since I was 8 years old” on a military base in Germany.

“I don’t believe newspapers have figured out how to deal with the 24-hour news cycle. I see great people, who I believe are great journalists, getting out of the business.” Today, he said, he writes his sports column, does a blog and edits video. “I’ll be doing the job of a sports columnist and a TV reporter and I’m getting paid the same thing.”

Bryant, 37, started in the newspaper business with an internship in 1993 at the Mesa (Ariz.) Tribune. He was a graduate of the Sports Journalism Institute, a program sponsored by the Freedom Forum and the Associated Press Sports Editors to produce more sports journalists of color.

Speaking from the U.S. Open in San Diego, the city where he plans to move, Bryant said he felt an obligation as a columnist to correct such canards as one voiced by Fisher DeBerry, the legendary former Air Force Academy football coach who said that African American athletes were faster, and so he needed more of them. “Kids hear that and think it’s gospel,” he said. “To me,” the dominance of certain racial groups in particular sports or positions is due to social conditioning, not genetics. “It’s because at some point in the athletes’ lives,” the white youths were told “you’re not as fast as the black kids; we want you to become a linebacker. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Bryant said he receives greater pleasure, though, from working with a 66-year-old with Type-2 diabetes who said his wish was to play a pain-free round of golf. Three months later, with tears on his face, the man was able to do it, he said.

Bryant demonstrates some of his exercises on his blog.

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ESPN Sorry for References in Jemele Hill Column

“An ESPN.com columnist is apologizing — through a statement released by the Web site — for likening cheering for the Boston Celtics [team stats] to Adolf Hitler and nuclear war,” Jessica Heslam reported Tuesday in the Boston Herald.

 

Jemele Hill

“In her original column railing against the Celtics, Jemele Hill wrote, ‘Rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim. It’s like hoping Gorbachev would get to the blinking red button before Reagan.’

“Hill’s piece was posted on ESPN.com late Saturday, and a spokesman for the sports powerhouse said yesterday that the crude comparison was edited out within hours.

“The newly edited version of the piece, ‘Deserving or not, I still hate the Celtics,’ is still online. Hill did not respond to an e-mail for comment yesterday. ESPN.com released a statement.

“‘The column, as originally posted, made some absolutely unacceptable comparisons,’ the statement said. ‘We’ve spoken with Jemele, and she understands that she exercised poor judgment.’

“‘Both Jemele and ESPN.com apologize. Within hours of its posting on Saturday evening, the inappropriate references were removed from the site, and we are thoroughly reviewing the entire situation,’ the statement said.

“When asked how Hill’s remarks made it onto ESPN’s Web site, ESPN spokesman Paul Melvin said there was a ‘breakdown in the system of editorial checks and balances.'” [Added June 17]

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Short Takes

 

Radhika Jones

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Feedback: Sharon Rosenhause’s Bully Pulpit

Sharon Rosenhause’s departure from daily journalism (she announced last week she’ll retire as managing editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel) will be a major loss to diversity efforts.

Shaped by her experience in two multicultural states — California and Florida — Sharon helped carry out a vision of a more diverse newsroom. She certainly exemplified that in the people she hired at the Sun-Sentinel and effectively used her bully pulpit with the American Society of Newspaper Editors to carry the message of diversity to colleagues.

Cheers, Sharon; we’ll miss you.

Mike McQueen
Chief of Bureau
Louisiana/Mississippi
Associated Press
New Orleans
June 16, 2008

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