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Journal-isms Sept. 2

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ESPN Featuring Producers From Ice Cube to Morgan Freeman

ESPN is assembling an array of filmmakers – including John Singleton, Morgan Freeman, Ice Cube, Spike Lee, Barry Levinson and Albert Maysles – to produce 30 documentaries in celebration of the sports network’s 30th anniversary, according to ESPN executive Keith Clinkscales.

The documentaries, all slightly less than 90 minutes and for telecast on ESPN, begin airing in October and continue through 2011, said Clinkscales, ESPN’s senior vice president, content development and enterprises.

The Web site allhiphop.com reported that hip-hop star-turned Hollywood-producer Ice Cube created a documentary about the Los Angeles Raiders titled "Straight Outta L.A."

"The documentary will explore the origins of the Raiders from their time as an Oakland-based team, until 1982, when owner Al Davis won a court decision allowing the team to move to Los Angeles," Nolan Strong reported on Tuesday.

‘The music, lyrics and images that I created with N.W.A as a solo artist and as an actor helped turn the Raiders into something more than a football team,’ Ice Cube said. ‘It’s been 21 years since we released Straight Outta Compton, but to this day, kids all over the world buy Raiders gear, imitate the ‘Gangster Rap’ style and try to connect with the South Central L.A. vibe that we brought to the masses.’

Filmmakers were invited "to give their passionate take on sports," Clinkscales told Journal-isms. ESPN received 150 pitches, he said.

Freeman plans a film on the 1995 World Cup rugby tournament in South Africa, credited with endearing Nelson Mandela to white South Africans.

"To gasps of astonishment and delight from the overwhelmingly white, male crowd – who remembered the ANC’s campaign against the mostly white South African squad – Mandela strode onto the field to wish the Springboks luck – wearing a green-and-yellow team jersey," the Associated Press wrote at the time.

"In an instant, 63,000 voices were shouting, ‘Nelson, Nelson’ in the most overwhelming display of white solidarity for a black in the nation’s history. Players said afterward that Mandela’s gesture made the difference in the match."

Not all of the other producers have firmed up their subject matter, Clinckscales said, but included is Mike Tyson’s 1996 knockout of Bruce Seldon in Las Vegas on the night that rapper Tupac Shakur was killed, and a 1980 match between Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes, which ended Ali’s attempt to win a fourth world heavyweight boxing championship.

Wilkinson to Create Narrative J-Program at Boston U.

Isabel Wilkinson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her work at the New York Times, is heading to Boston University to begin something that Communication College Dean Thomas Fiedler says "is going to be transformational for our journalism program."

"A lot of journalism programs are shifting emphasis toward the technology," said Fiedler, formerly executive editor at the Miami Herald, "with a multi-platform curriculum. There’s a danger in that. If everyone is going left, we want to — not so much go right," but make sure that students know that "the essence of good journalism is good storytelling, and the heart of good storytelling is good writing."

Thus, Wilkinson, who will initially hold the rank of visiting professor, will be charged with "creating an area of distinction her. . . narrative long-form journalism."

Wilkinson was most recently the James M. Cox, Jr. Professor of Journalism at Emory University. She won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing and tracked the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to northern cities in the first half of the 20th century for a book, The Great Migration, to be published by Random House in the fall of 2010.

"As you probably know, I’ve spoken many times about narrative nonfiction at Poynter, at NABJ and at the Nieman Foundation, and taught at Princeton and Emory universities, while completing my book, so this is a natural progression for me. I’m excited about the prospects of creating a narrative nonfiction program at a big university in the country’s intellectual capital," Wilkinson told Journal-isms.

Wilkinson’s presence will significantly increase the diversity of the journalism program. Fiedler said that two years ago the college had no African American faculty. Student enrollment is 3 1/2 percent African American, he said. Last year, he hired Cheryl Ann Lambert, a public relations specialist, and this year has hired veteran journalist Michelle Johnson from Emerson College and Wilkinson, all African Americans.

In hiring them, "we have elevated the status of our faculty," he said.

Slate Says Story About Rapper’s PhD Was Bogus

"It was the feel-good story of the summer," Ben Sheffner wrote¬†Wednesday for Slate magazine. "According to the New York Daily News, Roxanne Shant?©, a 1980s female hip-hop pioneer famous for the 1984 underground hit ‘Roxanne’s Revenge,’ had finally gotten her own revenge on Warner Music, the record label she accused of ‘cheating with the contracts, stealing and telling lies,’ to avoid paying her what she was owed.

"How? After valiantly fighting, reported Daily News freelancer Walter Dawkins, Shant?© had convinced Warner to honor a contractual agreement to ‘fund her education for life." Warner ended up paying more than $200,000, Dawkins reported, to finance Shant?©’s education, which Shant?© said included an undergraduate degree from Marymount Manhattan College and a Ph.D. in psychology from Cornell.

"And now, said the Daily News, ‘Dr. Roxanne Shant?©’ has "launched an unconventional therapy practice focusing on urban African-Americans,’ in which she ‘incorporates hip-hop music into her sessions, encouraging her clients to unleash their inner MC and shout out exactly what’s on their mind.’

"The story was endlessly blogged and tweeted, heralded as an example of a heroic triumph by a girl from the projects over her evil record label. . . .

"One problem: Virtually everything about the Daily News’ heartwarming ‘projects-to-Ph.D.’ story appears to be false."

Dawkins, who formerly wrote for the Record in Hackensack, N.J., did not respond to a request for comment.

Jennifer Mauer, a spokeswoman for the Daily News, told Journal-isms that it was the paper’s understanding that the information had been checked. "We’re still researching it," she said. "We’re still looking into it."

Ex-Rocky Employees Earning Less but Optimistic

Six months after the Rocky Mountain News published¬†its final print edition on Feb. 27, John Temple, the editor and publisher, undertook an unscientific follow-up study of the 230 or so people who were on the Denver paper’s editorial staff.

"I received 141 responses from about 200 eligible staff and 28 responses from 30 eligible managers," he wrote on Tuesday. Among his findings:

"I’m surprised by how many people have found jobs in journalism," Temple concluded. "But clearly, the thing that sticks out most is that people are making less than they made at the Rocky. In many cases, I was told, a lot less. . . . That said, I must say I was impressed by how many people were looking ahead with optimism, building new businesses and lives."

Sun’s David Steele to Write for AOL Fanhouse

Sports columnist David Steele, who was laid off from the Baltimore Sun in April while he was covering a Baltimore Orioles game, has landed at AOL Fanhouse "as an enterprise/takeout/investigative writer and reporter. David will also be writing a ton of college basketball with Midnight Madness quickly approaching," Scott Ridge, executive editor at AOL Sports, told employees on Wednesday.

"He’ll be working from Baltimore (ACC, Atlantic 10, MEAC, Patriot, Colonial and Big East country)."

Steele, 44, was among 61 newsroom employees, nearly a third, laid off in April. He said then he was thinking about writing more books, having enjoyed co-writing "Silent Gesture: The Autobiography of Tommie Smith" in 2007. It told the story one of the two victorious sprinters who raised a black-gloved fist at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

Jury Awards $10 Million Over Dead Reporter’s Story

A Florida jury hearing a libel suit against the St. Petersburg Times found against the newspaper’s parent company and awarded Dr. Harold L. Kennedy, former chief of medicine at Bay Pines VA Medical Center, more than $10 million in damages, Jamal Thalji reported¬†for the Times on Saturday.

The lawsuit was filed over three articles in December 2003 by Paul de la Garza, a staff writer who died after a heart attack in 2006 at age 44.

"We are very disappointed by the verdict," said Times Executive Editor and Vice President Neil Brown. "We believe our reporting and editing of these stories met the highest journalistic and ethical standards.

"The Times will appeal the jury’s decision.”

"Though de la Garza died in 2006, the newspaper sought to use his reporting notes as evidence in its defense. But a judge excluded them from the trial," Thalji said.

NPR Ombudsman Faults Coverage of Kennedy Death

"There was no doubt that Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts had died if anyone listened to NPR in the days after his death late on Aug. 25 from brain cancer. Between Aug. 26 and 30, NPR ran 53 stories," Alicia Shepard, the ombudsman for National Public Radio, wrote on Wednesday.

"Media saturation on the Kennedy story was not unique to NPR. A report released Tuesday by the Project on Excellence in Journalism noted that Kennedy’s death was the No.1 story last week. ‘Indeed, his passing generated more coverage than that of any other political or celebrity since the PEJ News Coverage Index began in January 2007,’ said the report.

". . . Kennedy may have been a great legislator. He may have been a wonderful uncle, a terrific father, a faithful friend and rejoiced in his second marriage, but there were warts too. He got kicked out of Harvard for cheating. He was known in his younger years for womanizing and drinking too much. In 1991, he was carousing with his son, Patrick and nephew, William Kennedy Smith in Palm Beach. Later that night, a woman accused Smith of raping her. Smith was tried and later acquitted.

"Not everyone loved Teddy Kennedy. He was a complex man with a family history that defies belief when all the tragedies are strung together. To accurately portray any man or woman, it is just as important to fully include what is unpleasant or unflattering — especially since those events for Kennedy went a long way toward shaping who Teddy Kennedy was when he died."

Media Matters Calls Out CNN on Lou Dobbs Plans

"On September 15 and 16, Dobbs is scheduled to broadcast his radio show from Capitol Hill as a leading voice of the annual ‘Hold Their Feet to the Fire’ legislative advocacy conference and rally sponsored by the rabidly anti-immigrant organization Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)," according¬†to the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America.

"Founded by a man with a history of espousing racist beliefs and who remains on its board, FAIR is labeled as a ‘hate group’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Dobbs’ participation ‚Äî and, through him, CNN’s ‚Äî will bestow mainstream legitimacy on the rally and on FAIR, something FAIR recognizes and is bragging about to its members.

"As Media Matters has highlighted repeatedly, Dobbs represents an ongoing threat to CNN’s credibility as a serious news organization, in no small part because of his one-sided and error-prone coverage of immigration issues and his continued use of his CNN show to lend prominence to hatemongering groups like FAIR."

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