A McClatchy Managing Editor Joins Buyout Exodus
As news outlets stepped up notices of buyouts and layoffs, the National Association of Black Journalists on Thursday issued “an open letter to the entire industry” asserting that “NABJ will hold you accountable if you do not consider diversity in your hiring and, particularly, firing practices.
“Diversity has too often been the first casualty in the assault on journalism,” it said.
|
|
Separately, Tonnya Kennedy Kohn, managing editor of the State in Columbia, S.C., told Journal-isms on Thursday that she is taking a buyout and intends to go to the University of South Carolina Law School in the fall. Thursday is her last day at the paper.
Kennedy Kohn, 42, has been managing editor for five years, and is among 11 journalists leaving the McClatchy-owned paper. The newspaper offered buyout packages to the newsroom.
The NABJ statement listed recent staff cutbacks around the country and cited an estimate from the American Society of Newspaper Editors saying that although the percentage of journalists of color at newspapers has increased, their actual number declined by nearly 300 last year. NABJ said, “Black journalists at NABJ are determined to let every new generation of news management know that minority hiring; promotion and retention are not disposable concepts. No, diversity is a constant whose value never diminishes.
“Discrimination in hiring, race-based promotion decisions, racially motivated firings and layoffs are reprehensible practices.
“The historic nature of this year’s presidential election bears witness to that.
“If ever the country needed the insights and expertise of black journalists it is now. The industry needs to make sure black journalists give you their informed perspective not only with the presidential election, but also on issues like housing, predatory lending, the impact of the economic collapse in our communities, the Iraq War, the abandonment of cities, the war on poverty and even the culture of music, relationships, family and education.
“Diversity is not a luxury or a fad. It is a necessity for telling balanced news stories about America and for putting a fresh story perspective before the readers through the lens of minority journalists. While papers and news organizations are weighing their strategies for layoffs, they must respect the many arguments that have been made to encourage staffing papers with educated and insightful journalists of color.
“Also, young minority journalists losing jobs seems to be in a dead heat with veterans also being pushed out. The generation that led the fight for integrated news staffs is being eliminated through forced early retirement and buyouts, instead of being retained as valued sages. Many of them may be at least savvy and energetic enough to make a transition into public relations, academia, freelancing or even starting their own businesses. But that institutional knowledge that is leaving the newsroom will be difficult if not impossible to replace.
“NABJ is committed to doing its part to help, because we all know that after all the changes are made the future is going to be about readers and audience development. Currently, 42 percent of the children now in public schools are minorities and 40 percent of all Americans under the age of 18 are minorities — mostly black and Latino.”
It goes on to list NABJ’s own efforts to prepare its members for the new environment.
- Timothy Egan, New York Times: Save the Press
FEEDBACK: Feel free to send an e-mail about this column.
Philly’s Long Named VP, to Oversee Consolidations
Sandra Long, a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists who became managing editor/operations at the Philadelphia Inquirer last summer, on Thursday was promoted to vice president of newsroom operations for both the Inquirer and its sister paper, the tabloid Philadelphia Daily News.
|
|
|
Sandra Long |
“Sandra will be responsible for all aspects of the recently announced consolidation of the photography department, copy desk, editorial assistants, and photo toning functions, resulting in operating efficiencies for both newsrooms,” Publisher Mark J. Frisby announced. “Sandra will report to me directly.”
“The proposal to merge functions from the two newsrooms shows the severity of the newspaper industry downturn is making negotiable what was once sacrosanct,” Deborah Yao reported Thursday in the Associated Press.
First under scrutiny are the photo departments. The two papers may share photographers, Henry J. Holcomb, president of The Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia, said, and the company is thinking about not renewing its lease on a fleet of cars photographers use, Yao wrote.
“Management is also looking at merging copy desk and other functions. Holcomb said there’s work to do: The two newspapers aren’t even on the same computer system.”
“Sandra is a proven newsroom leader who is enormously talented,” Frisby said. “She has been the main liaison between the newsroom and business departments for over 10 years and she has developed excellent working relationships with all divisions throughout Philadelphia Newspapers.”
FEEDBACK: Feel free to send an e-mail about this column.
|
|
|
|
Ed Bradley One of Ebony’s “25 Coolest Brothers”
The late Ed Bradley, one of the only television journalists who could pull off wearing an earring or perhaps conducting the ultimate interview with Lena Horne, has been chosen one of Ebony magazine’s “25 Coolest Brothers of All Time.” The achievement is all the more remarkable because Ebony, listing its selections in its August issue, chose only five who were not athletes or entertainers.
Eight of the chosen cool ones have their own separate covers, the first time Ebony has used the increasingly common technique of producing different covers for the same month’s issue.
The 25 are, in no particular order:
Barack Obama, Don Cheadle, Billy Dee Williams, Sidney Poitier, Quincy Jones.
Lenny Kravitz, Jimi Hendrix, Richard Roundtree, Denzel Washington, Sammy Davis Jr.
Bob Marley, Ed Bradley, Tupac Shakur, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Gordon Parks.
Muhammad Ali, Miles Davis, Walt Frazier, Shawn (Jay-Z) Carter, Samuel L. Jackson.
Malcolm X, Snoop Dogg, Prince, Michael Jordan, Marvin Gaye.
Bradley, arguably the most visible black journalist of his generation and
|
|
|
Ed Bradley |
among the most recognizable television journalists of any race, died of leukemia in 2006 at age 65.
At the funeral for the “60 Minutes” correspondent, which was televised on C-Span and attended by more than 2,000 people, Bradley’s singer friend Jimmy Buffett sang “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?” accompanied on piano by famed New Orleans producer Allen Toussaint; trumpeter Wynton Marsalis played Duke Ellington’s “Black and Tan Fantasy”; rhythm ‘n’ blues singer Irma Thomas, also from the Big Easy, performed “Holy, Holy, Holy” to an organ accompaniment, and Aaron and Art Neville, two of the famed Neville Brothers, contributed “Amazing Grace.” A New Orleans jazz band concluded the service playing as they marched down the aisle, as one of three photos on the altar showed Bradley singing “60 Minute Man” with the Nevilles. Former president Bill Clinton, who was then considered cool, was among those who spoke.
An Ebony spokeswoman said not all distributors would have each of the eight covers.
FEEDBACK: Feel free to send an e-mail about this column.
Justice Department Urged to Investigate Hate Mail
The Justice Department on Friday was asked to investigate “a series of disturbing letters and notes written in a consistently personal, racist, and violent tone to Michelle Ferrier, a columnist with the Daytona Beach News-Journal in Florida and managing editor of MyTopiaCafe, a Web site sponsored by the News-Journal,” according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
“Ferrier received a total of seven letters and one larger envelope — each one addressed to her at the News-Journal office building — between October 5, 2005, and July 17, 2007, according to copies of the posted correspondence that Ferrier provided to CPJ. Each letter or envelope contained either handwritten letters or handwritten notations marked on photocopies of her columns or other newspaper or magazine articles. The handwriting on each piece of correspondence indicates they came from the same individual,” Joel Simon Executive Director of CPJ, wrote to Mark Kappelhoff, chief of the Civil Rights Division.
Ferrier mentioned the letters June 7 at a panel discussion, “Standing Up Against Hate Speech,” at the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis on June 7. Kappelhoff urged her to contact the Civil Rights Division, CPJ said.
CPJ’s letter to Kappelhoff said, “The fourth letter, postmarked from mid-Florida on July 11, 2006, reads, ‘Before this world is over there will be a race war[.] Why do [sic] think so many people are stalking [sic] up on guns?’ The same letter goes on, ‘How do you get a nigger out of a tree? Cut the rope!’
“Ferrier quit her job on the night desk at the News-Journal in August 2006 after receiving the above letter. ‘I was afraid,’ she told CPJ. She worked part-time assignments from her home over the next nine months before returning to work full-time again at the News-Journal in May 2007, this time in a daytime position in which she felt reasonably safe coming to work.”
FEEDBACK: Feel free to send an e-mail about this column.
Joe Davidson to Write Column on Federal Workforce
Joe Davidson, a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists who joined the Washington Post in 2005, was named author of the paper’s “Federal Diary” column on Thursday. For 65 years, the column has covered issues of interest to the workforce of the city’s biggest employer: the federal government.
|
|
|
Joe Davidson |
A note to the Post staff said of Davidson, 59, “At the Wall Street Journal, he covered a variety of government agencies and political campaigns and he was also a correspondent in Johannesburg. Before that, he worked in Philadelphia as chief of the City Hall bureau for the Bulletin.
“More recently, Joe has been an editor on Metro, where he significantly improved the District Extra and later the Religion Page. He also oversaw coverage of D.C. education, one of the city’s biggest stories, and the pope’s historic trip to Washington. And he helped bolster religion coverage for the Web by collaborating with the On Faith blog. Joe is also a founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists and was a charter Ethics Fellow at the Poynter Institute.”
The previous Federal Diary columnist, Stephen Barr, was one of about 100 Post employees who took a buyout.
