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Sept. 23 Journal-isms

richard

 

Reznet Founder Plans Return to Big-City Journalism

Denny McAuliffe, who created and directs the Reznet News training program for young Native American journalists, said Wednesday he is leaving the University of Montana-based project to return to the Washington Post, where he worked for 16 years.

"never in a million years did i think this would happen," McAuliffe said via e-mail.

He wrote to colleagues, "it comes at a perfect time for us – we’re now empty nesters and, with luck, we’ll be back East in time for the births of our twin grandchildren in N.C.

"And though I’ve loved teaching, mentoring, editing and working with everyone involved with Reznet, the American Indian Journalism Institute and the University of Montana journalism school, it’ll be great to get back in the newsroom and once again work for the great paper I love and have missed since leaving nearly 11 years ago."

The Post said it had offered McAuliffe the job of overnight news editor and was waiting for all the t’s to be crossed and i’s to be dotted before the hiring becomes official.

McAullife, an Osage tribal member who is also a member of the editorial advisory board of its tribal paper, the Osage News, has been at the University of Montana since 1999.

For his work on reznet, McAuliffe won the University of Montana’s 2006-07 Nancy Borgmann Diversity Award and the 2005 Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship from the National Conference of Editorial Writers, presented annually to a journalism educator who has done the most to increase diversity.

Peggy Kuhr, dean of the School of Journalism at Montana, said the school planned to fill the Reznet position on an interim basis and conduct a national search. The winning candidate will have to have journalistic credibility, a proving fundraising record and be familiar with Native American issues in journalism. The salary will be competitive, she said. While the position is considered part of the faculty, sometimes McAuliffe taught and sometimes not, she said.

"This is the kind of thing that the president of the university on down has supported. It’s the kind of opportunity to take the project to the next level," she said, citing the school’s new Native American history center, opening in the next year, as an added attraction.

[video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I64-Uj4TPg&feature=player_embedded] Jerry Mitchell says he may take periodic breaks from the Clarion-Ledger to devote more time to his work on "cold cases" from the civil rights era.

Reporter on Civil Rights Crimes Wins "Genius Grant"

Jerry Mitchell of the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, who since 1989 has dedicated a great portion of his reporting to the unsolved crimes of the civil rights movement, on Tuesday was named one of 24 recipients of a MacArthur "genius grant."

Each is to receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

"Mitchell said he may take periodic breaks from The Clarion-Ledger to devote more time to the work, although he said he will publish the findings in the pages of the paper that has employed him since 1986. The award is paid in quarterly installments over five years, beginning in 2010," the paper reported.

"Mitchell, 50, has spent the past two decades reporting on unpunished violence during the civil rights movement in Mississippi and the South, beginning with the 1963 killing of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Mitchell’s investigation ended in the 1994 conviction of Evers’ assassin, Byron De La Beckwith.

"’It never would have happened without Jerry,’ Evers’ widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams, said."

Another journalist, Lynsey Addario of Turkey, is among the recipients. Her "powerful images are visual testimony to the most pressing conflicts and humanitarian crises of the 21st century. . . . Her most recent project involves photographing survivors of gender-based violence in the Congo and is part of a traveling exhibition intended to increase awareness of the ongoing human rights abuses taking place there," the foundation said.

 

Miami Herald’s Robles Knows How to Quickly Repack Bags

When we last reported on Frances Robles, Miami Herald foreign correspondent, she told Journal-isms had been at the airport, having just left the National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where she was program chair, when she got a message on her BlackBerry from World Editor John Yearwood, immediate past treasurer of the National Association of Black Journalists.

There had been a coup in Honduras and she needed to get there, he said. It was June 28.

This week, ousted President Manuel Zelaya sneaked back into his country and turned up Monday at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, and for Robles, the situation nearly repeated itself.

She "had been home mere minutes from another overseas assignment when i asked her to repack her bags ‚Äî this time for honduras," Yearwood told Journal-isms via e-mail. "(she was scheduled to leave the following day to cover latin america and caribbean leaders, including zelaya, as they addressed the [U.N.] general assembly in ny.) she couldn’t get on an afternoon flight to tegucigalpa because they were all oversold. it turned out the flight was later canceled after honduran authorities closed the airports and sealed land borders. she booked the first flight the following morning, whch was also canceled. she then caught a flight to managua, nicaragua and drove for five hours to tegucigalpa. she arrived just before deadline and was able to co-byline a story with Jim Wyss in Miami, who was pulling together string as [Robles] drove in. she’s amazing!"

Peter Hart of Fairness & Accuracy in Media, the progressive media watch group, was critical of news coverage, writing on Tuesday, "press accounts still manage to mangle the story behind his ouster, relying on those who supported the coup to explain what happened."

Joe Palmer, left, narrator for the Detroit Free Press Christ Child House multimedia project, with Kathleen Galligan, lead photographer, and Brian Kaufman, lead videographer and producer. (Credit: Detroit Free Press)

Security Guard Helps Detroit Paper Win an Emmy

A security guard at the Detroit Free Press helped the newspaper win its fourth Emmy Award in New York on Monday night.

Although Joseph Palmer, 45, has been a security guard at the newspaper for 13 years, he is also a 2005 graduate of the Specs Howard School of Broadcast Arts in Southfield, Mich., and with that distinction inscribed on his business card, let that be known to colleagues.

So when the Free Press was creating a multimedia project for its series¬†on Detroit Christ child House, "an intimate look at daily routines, tender moments and the rawest pain of some of the state’s legal orphans," Palmer’s name came up when it decided it needed a narrator.

"I knew he had this really nice deep voice; he was thoroughly eager to do it," Kathy Kieliszewski, deputy director of photography and video, told Journal-isms. It was "gritty and tough but melodic and good. It had this really nice balance that spoke to what the project was about," she said.

"The boys at Christ Child House on Detroit’s west side are a sliver of Michigan’s foster care system and its more than 6,000 legal orphans. As they wait to be reunified with families or adopted, they share tears and tantrums, giggles and hugs, uncertain futures and some surprisingly happy endings," begins the story on the Free Press Web site.

Palmer worked on the project after his 8 a.m.-to-4 p.m. shift.

Palmer, Kieliszewski and Nancy Andrews, Free Press managing editor/digital media, all said they were happy that some of the foster children — at least six — found homes as a result of the series. The newspaper also used musicians in its video, including one who had been a ward of the state himself.

On Monday, six people from the Free Press, two officially representing the company, accepted the award in New York. Palmer was among them. On Wednesday, back in Detroit, the Free Press newsroom celebrated with champagne.

After the Christ Child House project, Palmer narrated a Free Press video on the abandoned Michigan Central Train Station, and among other narrations, did an "audio obituary" for a friend, played at the funeral.

Not all stories lend themselves to narrators, Kieliszewski said. Some have more authenticity when the reporters themselves speak; most are better without any narration.

This one worked, and Palmer said he plans to spend the $300 to get his own individual Emmy statuette, which was given to the Free Press collectively.

"I’m probably more optimistic in my life now than I’ve ever been, in terms of my professional life," Palmer said.

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