Site icon journal-isms.com

McClatchy’s Pruitt, Called Diversity-Friendly, to Lead AP

richard

McClatchy’s Pruitt, Called Diversity-Friendly, to Lead AP

In Trayvon Martin Coverage, Explain “Racial Tensions”

USA Today Sports Staff Told to Reapply for Jobs

L.A. Times Layoffs Leave One Black Copy Editor

Karen Lincoln Michel Named Executive Editor in La.

Oprah’s OWN Lays Off 30 Employees

FCC Makes Room for Wave of Community Radio Stations

Internship Coordinator Checked Facebook to Ensure Diversity

Investigative Project “Up and Running” in Haiti

Short Takes

McClatchy’s Pruitt, Called Diversity-Friendly, to Lead AP

Gary Pruitt, chairman, president and CEO of The McClatchy Co., on Wednesday was named president and CEO of the Associated Press, the AP announced. Under Pruitt, 54, McClatchy was viewed as a diversity-friendly company. He joins AP in July. .

When McClatchy acquired Knight Ridder Co. in 2006, Orage Quarles, publisher of McClatchy’s News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., told Journal-isms, “I can’t think of a company that’s more committed to diversity than our company,” Quarles said. He added that six of the company’s 12 publishers were women. “It starts at the top with the CEO,” he said, speaking of Pruitt.

Under Tom Curley, whom Pruitt succeeds, the news cooperative retrenched on diversity, signified most vividly by the suspension of the AP’s 26-year-old internship program, which was ultimately restored last month. However, the day after AP restored the internship program, the company laid off Robert Naylor Jr., a diversity advocate within the AP who was director of career development/news and had been with AP for more than 24 years.

William Dean Singleton, outgoing chairman of the AP Board of Directors and chairman of MediaNews Group Inc, said in a news release, “In Gary, we have chosen a seasoned and worthy successor to Tom Curley to continue AP’s transition to a digital news company. “Gary has deep experience in the changing world of the news industry, an acute business sense and an overriding understanding of and commitment to AP’s news mission. His background as a First Amendment lawyer is a hand-in-glove fit with AP’s long leadership role in fighting for open government and freedom of information. And, he knows AP well.”

Pruitt has served on the AP Board of Directors for nine years, including a period as vice chairman. AP describes itself as “the essential global news network” and “the largest and most trusted source of independent news and information.”

In Trayvon Martin Coverage, Explain “Racial Tensions”

“There are a lot of questions in the Trayvon Martin case that may take journalists days and weeks to help answer. But there are steps they can take immediately to make their reporting clearer and less biased,” Mallary Jean Tenore wrote Wednesday for the Poynter Institute.

“Much of the coverage has featured coded language that leaves readers with confusion rather than clarity and impressions rather than facts. News organizations, for instance, have reported that the Department of Justice said its community relations service will meet with officials, civil rights leaders and authorities in Sanford, Fla., this week to ‘calm racial tensions’ nearly a month after the 17-year-old African American was shot.

“But I haven’t seen much detail about what this tension entails. The phrase ‘racial tensions’ does little to inform people unless we substantiate it with facts and evidence.

Tenore went on to quote Dori J. Maynard, president of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, and list “what journalists could report on to better explain what they mean by ‘racial tensions’.” They included the demographics of Sanford, Fla., where the shooting took place, how to identify the assailant, George Zimmerman, by race, whether to describe criminals as wearing a hooded sweatshirt and whether to show photographs of Martin wearing one,

USA Today Sports Staff Told to Reapply for Jobs

Employees in USA Today’s Sports Department, which includes about 10 people of color, have had to reapply for their jobs as the department undergoes a reorganization.

Among the jobs listed on careerbuilder.com, of which USA Today’s parent company, Gannett, owns a 53 percent interest, are managing editor, USA Today Sports Media Group; assistant managing editor, Sports Weekly and assistant managing editor, sports verticals.

“Like many other businesses, we have a reorganization going on,” USA Today spokeswoman Heidi Zimmerman told Journal-isms on Tuesday. “However, I can’t comment on personnel issues.”

Jim Hopkins, who publishes the independent Gannett Blog, reported March 5 that Tom Beusse, president of the new USA Today Sports Media Group, “announced a USAT sports department reorganization that put his own digital team firmly in charge. In doing so, he swept aside existing managers with decades of print experience at the paper, which marks its 30th anniversary this year. Critics pounced.

“ ‘When you start a staff meeting by telling us the next 10 minutes are more important than the past 30 years,’ said Anonymous@1:43, ‘it makes me think you’ll step over anyone to get ahead.’ ”

L.A. Times Layoffs Leave One Black Copy Editor

“The involuntary layoffs in the Los Angeles Times newsroom that began last night are rolling through the ranks today, falling hardest on the features floor downstairs from the main newsroom,” Kevin Roderick reported Tuesday for LAObserved. “As many as 20 people may be out, sources there say.

“Included is half of the newsroom’s African American copy editors. ‘I’m saddened that with my departure the number of African American copy editors here goes down to one,'” the departing staffer says in a farewell email.”

Karen Lincoln Michel Named Executive Editor in La.

Karen Lincoln Michel, assistant managing editor of the Green Bay Press-Gazette and a past president of Unity: Journalists of Color, Inc., and the Native American Journalists Association, has been named executive editor of the Lafayette (La.) Daily Advertiser,” Richard Ryman reported Tuesday in the Press-Gazette.

“. . . Lincoln Michel, who joined the Press-Gazette in 2005 as its capital bureau chief in Madison and moved to Green Bay in 2008, also will oversee news operations at the Opelousas (La.) Daily World. All are owned by Gannett Co.

“. . . Lincoln Michel began her daily newspaper career as a reporter at the La Crosse Tribune, where she covered a two-year controversy surrounding the Ho-Chunk Nation’s gaming enterprises — coverage for which she won the Wassaja Award, the highest honor given by the Native American Journalists Association.

“Lincoln Michel also worked at The Dallas Morning News, and from 1987 to 2005 was part owner of the twice-monthly News From Indian Country, published in northern Wisconsin.

“She has written extensively about Native American issues as a freelance reporter and was a columnist for The New York Times Syndicate’s former New America News Service.”

 

Oprah’s OWN Lays Off 30 Employees

“Ratings-challenged OWN has let go of 30 employees as part of a restructuring announced Monday,” Lacey Rose reported for the Hollywood Reporter.

“ ‘It is difficult to make tough business decisions that affect people’s lives, but the economics of a start-up cable network just don’t work with the cost structure that was in place,’ said OWN chief executive Oprah Winfrey, who was in the network’s mid-Wilshire offices Monday afternoon. ‘As CEO, I have a responsibility to chart the course for long-term success for the network. To wholly achieve that long-term success, this was a necessary next step.’ ”

Meanwhile, Jon Lafayette reported Wednesday in Broadcasting & Cable, “OWN could saddle Oprah Winfrey and Discovery Communications with a $142.9 million loss this year, according to a report from SNL Kagan.

“Kagan analyst Derek Baine says OWN faces a number of problems. They include bad press that could make advertisers impatient and having to renew carriage deals with cable operators in 2012 and 2013 unless ratings move up quickly.”

FCC Makes Room for Wave of Community Radio Stations

“In a victory for communities nationwide, today the Federal Communications Commission announced that the agency will open the airwaves for community radio,” the Prometheus Radio Project said on Tuesday. “To make room for a new wave of local stations, the FCC will clear a backlog of over six thousand pending applications for FM translators, which are repeater stations that rebroadcast distant radio stations. The decision will allow for the first new urban community radio stations in decades.

“The announcement concludes the first hurdle in implementing the Local Community Radio Act, passed by Congress in 2010 after a decade-long grassroots campaign. The FCC is on track to accept applications for new Low Power FM (LPFM) stations nationwide as early as Fall 2012. Community groups are gearing up, including local groups, to apply for the licenses, which will be available only to locally-based non-profit organizations.”

Internship Coordinator Checked Facebook to Ensure Diversity

“There I was, Facebook stalking again. But I wasn’t chasing after an old boyfriend or trying to see if my niece was having too good a time in Italy. As the internship coordinator for Roll Call (now CQ Roll Call), a newspaper covering Congress on Capitol Hill, I was looking at the faces of candidates for internships,” Debra Bruno wrote Wednesday for the Christian Science Monitor.

“One might ask: Why did I care about what a prospective intern would look like? The answer was that I was told that out of three interns hired each semester at Roll Call, one of them had to be from a racial minority: African-American, Hispanic, Asian, South Asian, Native American. And in some cases, what you can’t tell from a name you can see from a picture.

“Mike Mills, the paper’s editorial director, denies that Roll Call had a policy to ‘tip the scales in favor of any candidate solely to fulfill our our diversity goals,’ but I was given a clear directive otherwise, initiated when I was with Roll Call in 2009 and 2010. It was part of an overall push to improve diversity at the newspaper, which is owned by The Economist Group. The company felt, laudably, that an ethical work environment is one that offers opportunities to those who may not have had them in the past.”

A CQ Roll Call publicist provided this quote from Mills to Betsy Rothstein of FishbowlDC Wednesday: “Ms. Bruno is wrong. Our policy is to strive to bring in as many candidates from diverse backgrounds as possible, not to tip the scale in anyone’s favor. Her allegation does a disservice to the many employees who were hired during her tenure.”

Investigative Project “Up and Running” in Haiti

“When I first started training Haitian journalists in investigative reporting skills in the summer of 2010, I wasn’t sure I could overcome the mountain of obstacles: a culture that didn’t include investigations; newsrooms that were so focused on daily events that verification was as rare as research; widespread lack of information, data and sources or worse, sources who divulged no information or data; and journalists themselves who weren’t even sure what I meant by investigations,” Kathie Klarreich, a Knight International Journalism Fellow, wrote last week for the International Center for Journalists.

“But now — 20 months later — Haiti’s Fund for Investigative Journalism is up and running. Seven investigations fielded by a group of 13 journalists are making waves, and headlines.

“. . . One story notes that over 500 recipients of homes complete with environmentally friendly toilets replaced the commodes by digging pits and installing traditional flush toilets, thereby defeating the protective measures for the capital’s water supply. Why? Because the new home owners, who hadn’t been consulted, found the new toilets required too much ‘maintenance.’

“Another story exposes the truth in the seaside town of Leogane, where some shelter recipients have already received temporary housing from other aid organizations and are turning a profit by renting them out, while other victims are still living in tents.”

“. . . A second round of investigations is slated for this spring.”

Short Takes

Exit mobile version