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Seniority, Not Diversity Will Be Watchword in Philly Layoffs

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Seniority, Not Diversity Will Be Watchword in Philly Layoffs

Seniority, not diversity, will be the prime consideration when the Philadelphia Media Network reduces the newsrooms of the Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com by 37 positions, both the company and the Newspaper Guild told Journal-isms on Friday.

The declarations brought to mind the tumult created in 2007, when the Inquirer’s then-parent company laid off up to 71 newsroom employees, or about 17 percent of the editorial staff.

The National Association of Black Journalists, and then the Asian American Journalists Association and on Saturday, Unity: Journalists of Color, protested the disproportionate numbers of journalists of color on the layoff list; black journalists were twice as likely to be there. Management and the Guild each blamed the other for that outcome.

Then, after renewed negotiations between management and the Guild, at least nine newsroom employees on the Inquirer’s layoff list — including two African American journalists — were reported coming back to work.

On Wednesday, Mike Armstrong reported for the Inquirer, “In a cost-cutting move, the parent company of The Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com said it will reduce the number of newsroom positions by 37 — through buyouts, it hopes — by the end of March.

“On Wednesday afternoon, management of Philadelphia Media Network Inc. (PMN) informed Newspaper Guild Local 10, which represents editorial, advertising and circulation employees, that it needed to cut costs because of challenging industry conditions.”

Asked whether diversity would be taken into consideration in making layoffs, the Guild and management agreed.

“Our last contract cites that the employer must review it’s diversity hiring practices but there is no language regarding protecting diversity in the event of any layoffs,” Dan Gross, president of the the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia/CWA Local 38010,” said in an email. “Those are done by seniority.”

Mark Block, vice president for external relations at the Philadelphia Media Network, said, ““Our contract with the Guild requires layoffs in seniority order — length of service. We are not permitted to take into account any demographic factors or job performance.”

Employees said privately it was too early to tell where cuts would be made. Staffers have until Feb. 29 to apply for a buyout. “Based on response to the voluntary program, the company might then resort to layoffs of Guild members to reach its goal of eliminating 37 positions by March 31,” the Inquirer story said.

“Diversity was lost a long time ago,” another said.

Separately, “Nearly 300 newsroom employees of Philadelphia Media Network Inc. signed a public statement Friday calling on the current and any future owners of the media company to protect the integrity of their reporting,” Armstrong reported.

“. . . The three-paragraph statement addresses both the ramifications of a possible change in ownership for Philadelphia Media Network (PMN) and employees’ “dismay” over how coverage of the sale process had been ‘compromised and censored’ by management.”

“Greg Osberg, PMN chief executive officer and publisher, responded with his own statement, expressing support for the journalists’ ‘clear message,’ but disagreeing that censorship had occurred.”

 

Anthony Shadid, Dead at 43, Also Remembered as Arab American

Anthony Shadid, the New York Times Mideast correspondent who died at age 43 Thursday in Syria after an asthma attack, was hailed by journalists Friday as “one of the best journalists of his age,” in the words of David Kenner, associate editor at Foreign Policy magazine.

But Shadid was the grandson of Lebanese immigrant, and as such was also the object of pride among Arab journalists.

In a story headlined, “Tributes flow for deceased Lebanese-American journalist Anthony Shadid,” the Beirut-based Al-Akhbar quoted high-profile Egyptian blogger Issandr el-Amrani, or The Arabist, calling Shadid “the Godfather of Arab-American journalism.”

In a comment from an official of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the leading civil rights group for Arab-Americans, quoted in the Detroit Free Press, Shadid’s ethnicity was mentioned before his profession.

” ‘It’s a huge loss, not just for Arab-Americans, but for journalists,’ said Abed Ayoub, of Dearborn, the national director of ADC. ‘He embodied what journalists should be,'” Niraj Warikoo reported.

Sami Moubayed, a university professor, historian, and editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Damascus, Syria, wrote on the Huffington Post:

“I looked up to Tony — as any aspiring journalist would, when I first met him in 2003. I was new in my career, and he was on his way to winning his first Pulitzer. He had everything that we lacked as Arab journalists covering the Middle East. He did not have to humor anybody and was unafraid to say the truth. He couldn’t care less if government authorities hated him — the most they could do was revoke his visa, or expel him from the country in 24 hours. He didn’t have the “I Can’t Write That Complex.” He wrote what he saw and felt, with no restrictions. Tony sympathized with ordinary people of the Middle East, admired their struggles, and since December 2010, was overwhelmingly supportive of the Arab Spring that ripped through the Arab World.

“Tony learned Arabic as an adult, but claimed that he always bonded with the Lebanese emigrant community in Oklahoma, where he grew up. He spent most of his professional life covering the region, first with the Associated Press, and then with the Boston Globe and the Washington Post, for which he famously won Pulitzer Prizes in 2004 and 2010. Those awards never affected his ego — not the slightest bit. They were actually the least thing he was comfortable discussing, so as not to let other journalists feel that he was, in any way, superior to them.”

Al-Akhbar reported, “Shadid’s sister-in-law told Al-Akhbar that the family had yet to decide whether to bury the esteemed journalist in Lebanon or in the United States.”

Cable Networks Covering Houston Funeral Live

“Several cable networks this Saturday will air live coverage of late pop music icon Whitney Houston’s funeral, the networks announced Thursday,” R. Thomas Umstead reported for Multichannel News.

“BET and Centric’s Live: The Homegoing of Whitney Houston will begin its coverage of the Houston funeral from New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, N.J. at 11:30 a.m. The special will feature commentary from on-air correspondents April Woodard and Lola Oguinake, network executives said.

“Later that evening BET will air a one-hour special, BET Remembers Whitney, in which BET News correspondent Bevy Smith interviews music and television personalities such as Kim Burrell, Kelley Price, Faith Evans, Ledisi, India.Arie, Tisha Martin Campbell and Tichina Arnold as they share memories of Houston.

“CNN’s Piers Morgan, Soledad O’Brien and Don Lemon will anchor CNN and CNN International’s live global coverage of the funeral special, Whitney Houston: Life, Death Music, beginning at 11 a.m., the network said. CNN Digital will also live stream the funeral on the web and via mobile at www.cnn.com/live from 11:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. (ET).

“Fox News Channel will stream the funeral live on its site while the network airs portions of the service live between 11.30 a.m. and 2 p.m. with anchors Uma Pemmaraju and Rick Folbaum, network officials said.”

Tonya Pendleton added Friday for BlackAmericaWeb.com:

“Marvin Winans, a friend of the Houston family and part of the Winans gospel dynasty, will officiate the funeral at the church that she attended as a child. Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder have been selected to sing, Kevin Costner is expected to eulogize Houston, and Ray J., Brandy, Chaka Khan and Cece Winans — the godmother of Houston’s daughter, Bobbi-Kristina Brown — are expected to attend, among others luminaries.

“At 8 p.m. on CNN, Houston will be the subject of a brand-new ‘CNN Presents,’ which will re-air on Sunday at 11 p.m. The three-hour special, hosted by Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Randi Kaye, will include a look at her life and career, the last days of her life and interviews with Kelly Price, Kim Burrell, “Access Hollywood’s” Shaun Robinson, music writer Gerrick Kennedy and Adam Ambrose of Tru Hollywood nightclub, the place where Houston partied in the days before she died.”

TVOne announced Friday that it will air live coverage of the service beginning at noon ET/9 a.m. ET. “TV One’s coverage will be anchored by Jamal Munnerlyn, longtime host of the Access Hollywood-produced entertainment newsmagazine, TV One Access, which aired on TV One for six years. Tvone.tv also plans to stream live coverage of the service.”

In addition, “Houston’s publicist, Kristen Foster, announced Wednesday that The Associated Press will be allowed a camera at Saturday’s funeral in Newark. The AP will stream the service on http://livestream.com/aplive. The event also will be available to broadcasters via satellite.”

AP Cites Nekesa Moody as First on Whitney Houston Story

Nekesa Mumbi Moody, music editor for the Associated Press, was awarded the news cooperative’s Beat of the Week Award for her coverage of Whitney Houston’s death Saturday night, the result of a tip from Houston’s publicist, Kristen Foster.

“. . . no one even came close to Moody,” Jack Stokes, editor of the AP’s internal Connections newsletter, wrote in the publication Thursday. “From TMZ to The New York Times, from MSNBC to Drudge to the Los Angeles Times, AP was credited across the board for an hour. Quite simply, no one else had the story.”

“The beat was so big that other media were asking as to how AP got it,” Stokes continued.

“The answer is journalism basics:

The prize comes with $500.

Not too long ago, security guards at Madison Square Garden did not recognize Jeremy Lin., left (Credit: buzz60.com) (Video)

Do Members of One Marginalized Group Relate to Others?

Eric Deggans, media writer for the Tampa Bay (Fla.) Times, reflected Wednesday on two purportedly jocular Twitter postings that landed Jason Whitlock of FoxSports.com and Roland Martin of CNN in trouble with Asian Americans and gay activists, respectively.

“As someone who has written a lot about prejudice in media, I was surprised and intrigued by what happened here. Two African American commentators who have often written about prejudice and race issues themselves, fell into the kind of public mistakes you might expect from people who hadn’t spent any time thinking about these issues at all,” Deggans wrote for the National Sports Journalism Center.

Deggans, who also chairs the Media Monitoring Committee of the National Association of Black Journalists, continued, “A measure of how far we have to go hit me after a visit to the Facebook page maintained by the AAJA’s MediaWatch group, where followers were criticizing a CNN panel discussing [NBA phenom Jeremy] Lin and race issues in which no Asian commentators were featured. He was referring to the Asian American Journalists Association.

“I thought back to how I felt seeing African American issues dissected on some TV shows — I remember a debate on a Sunday politics show about controversy over public use of the word ‘niggardly’ which included no African Americans — and I felt like I was hearing a broken record replay yet again.

“These incidents are humbling reminders that those of us who have spent lots of time thinking about how prejudice affects some marginalized groups, still need to spend effort on how similar problems affect other types of people differently,” Deggans wrote, adding a few recommendations:

“Expand the voices making commentary — Just as sports media outlets worked hard to find more black reporters and commentators to better cover issues and avoid stereotypes, [it’s] time for the pool to expand in other ways, too.

“Where are the Asian voices in sports media, who can help explore what it means to see a breakout player like Lin subvert so many stereotypes about Asian Americans? Hey media executives — if you can’t find them, it’s time to start developing them. Just like you did with African Americans, once upon a time.

“Avoid the wordplay, it just invites trouble . . .”

Black History Month Related to Mexican-American Struggle

As February began, Gary Younge, U.S. correspondent for Britain’s Guardian newspaper, related the observance of Black History Month to the shutdown of the Mexican American studies program in Tucson, Ariz.

Younge wrote, “Black history month, which begins today in the US, gives us all a chance to rescue stories that have been discarded, correct stories that have been mistold and elevate stories that have been downplayed.

“Black history is not a subgenre of history. Nor does it stand apart from other histories. It makes no more or less sense than American history, Jewish history or Tudor history. Nor is it any more or less diverse — black historians don’t agree on everything just because they’re black. Partial, interconnected, necessary, it is simply the world’s history told either about or through the prism of a particular group of people.

“Recent events in Tucson, Arizona pose a direct threat to the very logic on which black history month (not to mention to mention the ‘heritage months’ dedicated to Hispanic, Asian Pacific and Native American histories) now stands.

“The Tucson Unified School District, where 60% of the students are Latino, will today be forced to shut down its Mexican American studies program or lose as much as $14m of funding from Arizona state. A few weeks ago, officials went into schools and ‘confiscated’ seven books from the classrooms deemed to promote ‘ethnic resentment’. Among them were several classics including Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire, and Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 years, by Bill Bigelow.

“. . . One of the most salient lessons of black American history is the effectiveness of solidarity. As in its policing (the state’s stop-and-search laws were copied in more stringent form in other states), so in education: Arizona could set a dangerous precedent that might be used against women’s studies, queer studies and, yes, black history month. In short, these measures seek not to teach history but to preach nationalist mythology, aimed at raising not so much open-minded critical thinkers as blind patriots. We have been here before.”

Meanwhile, in the Huffington Post on Tuesday, Jack Mirkinson introduced readers to Freedom’s Journal, the first black newspaper in American history. “Founded in 1827 in New York City, the first edition of the Journal summed up a great many of the reasons for the continuing, vital existence of the black press.

” ‘We wish to plead our own cause,’ the editors wrote. ‘Too long have others spoken for us. Too long has the publick been deceived by misrepresentations, in things which concern us dearly.’

“Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm served as the top two editors of the Journal, which was founded the same year that slavery was abolished in New York. They were explicit in their desire to counter the steady stream of racist reporting coming out of the city’s other papers. Subscriptions cost $3 a year, and the paper tried to give a comprehensive look at the day’s news.”

All 103 issues of the Freedom’s Journal have been digitized and are available on the Web site of the Wisconsin Historical Society, Mirkinson noted.

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