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Journal-isms 8/17

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Readers Angered by Cartoons on Obama, Health Care

"Here’s what angered many Express-News readers last week," Bob Richter, public editor at the San Antonio Express-News, wrote on Sunday. "Two editorial cartoons, five days apart, against a backdrop of an overheated national health-care debate, one cartoon likening President Obama’s foes to rednecks, the other depicting Obama as a thug with a bloody baseball bat in his hand, leaning over a battered man wearing an ‘I Disagree with Obama’ T-shirt.

"The former, which seemed to say if you’re against Obama, you’re a Confederate sympathizer, sparked the biggest outcry.

”I am highly offended,’ wrote Dana Rice of New Braunfels, calling the Aug. 8 David Horsey cartoon, ‘the epitome of insult to us who are not liberals.’

"Charles Slaughter spoke for many with: ‘How incendiary was that? It wasn’t funny and . . . the concept of going back to a Confederate United States was so extremely racist it just made me sick to my stomach.’

"Coincidentally, racism was a charge leveled by another reader, but at a Rick McKee cartoon published Wednesday.

”I could not believe my eyes when I saw . . . President Obama as a black street thug beating up on a white guy,’ wrote Shirley Davis. ‘What has happened to the collective common sense of the Express-News staff? Did it occur to any of you that this particular cartoon would fuel the fires of racism?"

Obama Said to Limit Cooperation on Profiles

"When Valerie Jarrett was profiled in the NY Times magazine last month, I noted that it was the third White House-related cover story of 2009, and kept with the magazine’s increased access since the Bush team left office," Michael Calderone wrote¬†Saturday for Politico.

"For that piece, Robert Draper spent four months reporting on ‘Obama’s BFF,’ a process that included interviewing Jarrett, Emanuel, Axelrod, and even the president. The piece provided a window into the West Wing, but after being published, apparently caused a bit of drama there, according to a deeply-reported Times piece¬†on Emanuel.

"In a story online Saturday, reporters Peter Baker and Jeff Zeleny spoke with ‘roughly 60 people in the White House, on Capitol Hill and around Washington’ about Emanuel – and yet, there was one integral person missing.

"But when a New York Times Magazine profile of Ms. Jarrett last month explored the old scratchiness [between her and Emanuel], White House officials said the normally calm Mr. Obama erupted with anger. An informal edict went out: no more cooperating with staff profiles. As a result, Mr. Emanuel declined a formal interview for this article."

  

From left, Brian Bull of the Native American Journalists Association; Ivan Roman of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists; Michelle Johnson, who has also worked with the student projects; Onica N. Makwakwa of Unity, and Mitchell. (Credit: Brian Bull)

Unity Honors Doug Mitchell’s Work with Students

Unity: Journalists of Color Saturday honored Doug Mitchell, who has trained scores of young journalists of color to enter broadcasting, at the Asian American Journalists Association convention in Boston. Mitchell, project manager for ext Generation Radio, was laid off last year after 20 years at National Public Radio, but continued working with students at each of the journalist of color conventions this summer. 

Janet Cho Wins Asian Journalists Contest by 1 Vote

Janet H. Cho, a business reporter for the Plain Dealer in Cleveland, won re-election as secretary of the Asian American Journalists Association by one vote in an election that concluded at the AAJA convention in Boston on Saturday.

Convention registration reached 680, according to Maya Blackmun, interim executive director, told Journal-isms, although she said the figure was not final.

Cho defeated Paul Cheung, deputy multimedia presentation editor with the Miami Herald, 165 to 164. Cheung is not contesting the results, Blackmun said.

"In the face of so much industry turmoil, I for one have never been more convinced of how much we need AAJA," Cho said in a candidate’s statement. As our economy sputters along, as corporate greed and corruption run rampant, as a strange new virus threatens global health, our roles as reporters, watchdog journalists, and trusted sources of information have never been more crucial.

In the second contested race incumbent Doris Truong, copy editor in the Style section of the Washington Post. won election as secretary, with 210 votes to 165 for Frank Witsil, a copy editor with the Detroit Free Press.

Teach Students How to Cover Those Not Like Them

"Maybe it‚Äôs time to acknowledge that ‘one from Column A and two from column B’ efforts to make newsrooms diverse are really just tokenism in drag and won’t inherently change how we cover minority or ethnic communities. Maybe it’s time to put as much effort into the latter as we do the former," Neil Reisner, a self-described middle-aged, middle class, white, Jewish guy who looks like a hippie teaches at Florida International University, wrote¬†Satrurday for the Nieman Watchdog site.

"In my course, we start the by talking about stereotypes and prejudice ‚Äî the ones we all learn at the dinner table, from our grandparents, our friends and the culture around us. We work through exercises that show how we cannot avoid our learned-from-birth stereotypes even when we know we’re supposed to.

"We talk openly about subjects rarely discussed in public, much less in politically correct classrooms. An Anglo student relates how he crosses the street when he sees a black man approaching. African-Americans and Haitians examine why their communities don’t get along, how people from the islands sometimes see African Americans as lazy and unambitious and how African-Americans resent what they see as islanders’ superiority complexes. A conversation about Asian communities spurs a second-generation Chinese woman to blurt out, ‘I’m really bad in math, dammit.’ No topic is off limits. . . .

"We learn how to acknowledge our biases, set them aside and how to see the world through the eyes of people who don’t look, speak, think, eat, behave or believe as we do.

"And then we go out into the world."

Viewers Tune In to "60 Minutes" Interview With Vick

"Michael Vick‚Äôs mea culpa on ’60 Minutes’ last night may or may not have convinced fans that the once-vilified quarterback, who served more than a year in prison stemming from a conviction on dog-fighting charges, deserves a second chance in the NFL," Toni Fitzgerald wrote¬†Monday for Media Life Magazine.

"But many viewers turned out to watch him make his case. ’60 Minutes’ averaged a 2.6 adults 18-49 rating at 7 p.m. last night on CBS, according to Nielsen overnights, up from a 1.5 last week.

‚Äú’Minutes’ averaged 12.1 million total viewers, finishing first for the night on that measure."

  

One More Toke for the "This Week" Panelist

The most baffling statement made on the Sunday talk shows has to be one by Ron Brownstein, the former Los Angeles Times national columnist who now writes for National Journal.

Discussing¬†the weekend’s 40th anniversary of Woodstock on ABC’s "This Week," Brownstein called the event an "artifact of an age of affluence, when the societal worries were about self-expression and individual kind of fulfillment. We have weightier problems now; much more immediate concerns," he said.

Shortly after Brownstein opined to the panel’s amusement, Tom Callinan, editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer, posted on Facebook a drawing of a rifle sent to him by a friend who was, like him, in Vietnam at the time, "I didn’t even know Woodstock happened until I got home 6 months later," Callinan wrote. In the drawing, the words surrounding the rile say, "In 1969 . . . This is the only ‘Woodstock’ I remember."

Guess Brownstein missed him when he canvassed society to determine what it was worried about — not to mention the young people at Woodstock who were eluding the draft and protesting the war.

Woodstock took place a year after riots tore up the cities in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and in the midst of a war that claimed American lives from 1955 to 1975.

As for an age of affluence, let’s just say it didn’t touch everybody. Census figures for 1969 show the median income to have been $8,389 overall, and $5,292 for blacks.

Comic Steve Harvey Gets Reporter’s Job on "GMA"

Steve Harvey, author, comedian, actor and host of "The Steve Harvey Morning Show", has joined ABC’s "Good Morning America," ABC announced¬†on Monday.

"Harvey will bring "GMA" viewers a series of reports on topics ranging from relationships to parenting over the next few months. He will bring his own unique perspective, style and humor to morning television while interacting with viewers around the country via ABCNEWS.com, Skype and live guests in-studio. His first report is scheduled to air Wednesday," a news release said,

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