Maynard Institute archives

1,300 Applications for Four Positions

NPR Hiring for New Race-Relations Reporting Team

Tom Arviso Jr. Sole Candidate to Lead Unity Board

Joblessness of Young Black Men Worse Than It Seems

Obama Administration Scored for Lack of Openness

Univision: “Fast and Furious” Caused Mexican Deaths

Milwaukee’s Kane Decides to Take Buyout After All

Don Terry Joins Southern Poverty Law Center

FCC Move Could Add to Minority-Owned Mobile Space

Short Takes

Matt Thompson, NPR manager of digital initiatives, in purple shirt, and Keith Wo

NPR Hiring for New Race-Relations Reporting Team

In a sign of hunger for the topic or perhaps an indicator of the journalism job market, or both, NPR has received more than 1,300 applications for four positions on its new race-relations reporting team, according to Matt Thompson, the NPR journalist who is heading the team.

“We’re still accepting applications for one position (the reporter spot); we’ve stopped accepting applications for the other three positions, but are busily reviewing resumes and conducting interviews for them still,” Thompson told Journal-isms by email on Friday.

At the Unity ’12 convention in Las Vegas in August, Gary E. Knell, president and CEO of NPR, announced a $1.5 million, two-year grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting “to launch a major journalism initiative to deepen coverage of race, ethnicity and culture.” He said he was “delivering on our promise for NPR to look and sound like America.”

A six-person team is to “deliver a steady flow of distinctive coverage on every platform. Reporting will magnify the range of existing efforts across NPR and its Member Stations to cover and discuss race, ethnicity and culture. NPR will also create a new, branded space within NPR.org,” NPR said in its announcement then.

The team includes Thompson, who says his business cards now say “Manager of Digital Initiatives (and Mischief),” supervising the team, working with Ellen McDonnell, executive editor of NPR News programming; Luis Clemens, NPR’s senior editor for diversity, who is senior editor of the team, and Karen Grigsby Bates, Los Angeles-based correspondent.

NPR advertised for a blogger on race, ethnicity and culture; a digital journalist; and two reporters.

Thompson and Keith Woods, NPR’s vice president for diversity in news and operations, spoke with 25 Washington journalists of color over dinner Tuesday about the project. Most were veterans, and some had worked at NPR.

Many of the questions concerned permeating the NPR corporate culture, which has long been seen as a chief impediment to greater diversity. Some wondered whether race relations coverage at NPR might not become ghettoized, as has sometimes happened at  media outlets that have created race relations beats. When cutbacks come, such beats become more vulnerable.

Thompson said he expected about six pieces a week to be delivered to various shows on radio and especially mobile platforms, where more listeners of color might be found.

Knell, who became CEO less than a year ago, has touted diversity as a cornerstone of his tenure. Speaking to the Akron Press Club in Ohio on Thursday, Knell said NPR should improve its audience reach and range.

Knell has what he calls four corners of diversity,” Rich Heldenfels reported for the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal. “NPR needs to draw more on sources outside the Washington Beltway, he said. ‘There are a lot of smart people in northern Ohio and northern Texas and Michigan and other parts of the country who have something to say about these important national issues.’

“Another is ‘a diversity around race/ethnicity as the demographics of America change. … Those of you who have looked at the census data know how the changing landscape ethnically in our country is something we need to adapt to and embrace more in public radio.’ In addition, he said, [another corner] is ‘to diversify our political thought, that maybe we’re a little bit too conventional.’. . . “

Thompson’s experience sifting through the applications for the race-relations team informed “10 ways to make your journalism job application better than everyone else,” a piece on advice for job applicants that ran Thursday on the Poynter Institute website.

“You have no idea how much I want you to rock — how excited I get when I read a terrific cover letter, encounter a superlative clip, or find myself engrossed in an interview,” Thompson wrote. “Or what a heartbreak it is when you seem great on paper, but present lackluster work or a dismal demeanor.

“So to make this process harder on me (in the best possible way), here are 10 things I’m wishing for from you — and for anyone applying for a job in journalism.”

His 10 headlines: “Read between the lines of my job description.” “Get your vanity search in order.” “Speaking of which, please have a personal site.” “Your cover letter should tell me two stories, and both should be fascinating.” “There’s more than one way to skin a resume.” “Even if I’m not following you on social media, assume I am.” “Don’t hesitate to get one of our mutual colleagues to recommend you to me.” “A little follow-up at any point in this process doesn’t hurt. A lot might.” “The very best interviews feel like great conversations.” “Every hiring manager is different.”

Thompson told Journal-isms, “. . . I hope to have the two more senior positions filled by December, and the two more junior positions filled by January. I expect that by January/February, folks will start to hear noises from the team.”

In another development at NPR, reporter Ari Shapiro returned to a story that prompted debate among listeners and a column by the ombudsman.

Interviewing attendees at an American Legion Conference in Indianapolis last month, Shapiro spoke to Bobbie Lussier, a veteran’s wife who said of President Obama, “I just — I don’t like him, can’t stand to look at him. I don’t like his wife. She’s far from the first lady. It’s about time we get a first lady in there that acts like a first lady and looks like a first lady.”

Noting that many listeners took that as a racist comment, ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos wrote, “I think that he and his editors were wrong to let [Lussier’s] interview run without clarifying what she meant.”

Shapiro reported Friday, “Yesterday, [Candidate Mitt] Romney held a much smaller event at an American Legion post outside of Washington, D.C. As I was packing up to leave, a man tapped me on the shoulder. You were in Indianapolis, he said. It was Mr. Lussier. His wife agreed to talk to me again.”

The woman denied any racist intent. “. . . I don’t care what color she is,” she said of the first lady. “It’s just she doesn’t act and look like a first lady. I mean, she’s more about showing her arms off and, you know, I think that’s very inappropriate for a lot of functions that she goes to.”

Tom Arviso Jr. Sole Candidate to Lead Unity Board

Tom Arviso Jr., publisher of the Navajo Times in Window Rock, Ariz., and member of the Native American Journalists Association, is the sole candidate for president of Unity Journalists, the group announced this week.

The coalition of Hispanic, Asian American, Native American and lesbian and gay journalists groups meets next weekend to elect officers who, some of the candidates say, plan to make the return of the National Association of Black Journalists to Unity their top priority.

The group must also select a new executive director. Walt Swanston is Tom Aviso Jr.filling the job on an interim basis after the recent departure of Onica N. Makwakwa. NABJ left the group last year over financial and governance issues, and attendance at the summer Unity convention dropped sharply without NABJ’s participation.

Arviso said he had been nominated by the presidents of the Asian American Journalists Association, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Native American Journalists Association and the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association.

Elections for president of the Unity board are rarely contested. However, two board members of the Asian American Journalists Association are vying for the vice president’s slot: Doris Truong, outgoing AAJA national president and multiplatform editor at the Washington Post, and Janet Cho, a business reporter for the Plain Dealer in Cleveland who is a former AAJA national secretary and national vice president for print. She lost to Paul Cheung in the summer’s election for national AAJA president.

Truong wrote:

“. . . I am committed to restarting the conversation about bringing NABJ back to the UNITY fold. I will work with NABJ to outline areas that need mutual agreement and will keep alliance members apprised of progress.

  • “I have experience with executive searches that will position us to make a strategic hire in our next UNITY ED [executive director].
  • “I bring my strong sense of branding and knowledge of social media. I will make sure that UNITY’s online presence gets more traction for issues of importance to our partners as well as to the journalism industry at large.”

Cho wrote that she was “. . . concerned that we are falling short of our potential as the foremost coalition for media diversity and inclusion.

“As a UNITY officer, I would strive to better communicate with our members; work toward reconciliation and reunification with our founding member, the National Association of Black Journalists; and boldly remind the media industry that the strength of this alliance is much greater than a quadrennial convention.”

In April, Arviso and Cho voted against changing the name of the coalition from “Unity: Journalists of Color” to “Unity Journalists,” saying that consultation with members was needed before such a decision.

Truong voted for the change, saying it “sends a clear signal that we welcome our brothers and sisters in NLGJA. UNITY continues to be an organization that strives for inclusiveness, which is even more clearly reflected now.”

David Steinberg, immediate past president of NLGJA, is running for Unity treasurer. “This is a critical time for UNITY, with our longtime executive director having left and issues raised by NABJ’s departure still unresolved,” Steinberg wrote. “We have an opportunity to remake this alliance in a way that will benefit all our organizations while also providing the leadership that’s needed to focus our industry on the value and necessity of newsroom diversity.”

There are no candidates for secretary, but an NAHJ member is expected to fill the post.

Arviso became managing editor of the Navajo Times in October 1988, editor and publisher in 1993, and was named CEO of the Navajo Times Publishing Company in 2004.

In 2003, when the Navajo Nation Council voted for the newspaper to become Navajo Times Publishing Inc., Arviso said no other tribally owned newspaper had ever succeeded in gaining its independence from its tribal government. Last week, he accepted a Robert G. McGruder Award for Diversity Leadership from the Associated Press Media Editors.

Joblessness of Young Black Men Worse Than It Seems

The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any wealthy nation, with about 2.3 million people behind bars at any given moment,” Peter Coy, Bloomberg Businessweek’s economics editor, wrote on Friday. “(That’s 730 out of 100,000, vs. just 154 for England and Wales.) There are more people in U.S. prisons than are in the country’s active-duty military. That much is well known.

“What’s less known is that people who are incarcerated are excluded from most surveys by U.S. statistical agencies. Since young, black men are disproportionately likely to be in jail or prison, the exclusion of penal institutions from the statistics makes the jobs situation of young, black men look better than it really is.

“That’s the point of a new book, Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress, by Becky Pettit, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington. Pettit spoke on Thursday in a telephone press conference. . . .”

Obama Administration Scored for Lack of Openness

On his first full day in office, President Barack Obama ordered federal officials to ‘usher in a new era of open government’ and ‘act promptly’ to make information public,” Jim Snyder and Danielle Ivory reported Friday for Bloomberg News.

“As Obama nears the end of his term, his administration hasn’t met those goals, failing to follow the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, according to an analysis of open-government requests filed by Bloomberg News.

“Nineteen of 20 cabinet-level agencies disobeyed the law requiring the disclosure of public information: The cost of travel by top officials. In all, just eight of the 57 federal agencies met Bloomberg’s request for those documents within the 20-day window required by the Act.”

Meanwhile, Margaret Sullivan, the new public editor at the New York Times, wrote of Obama Thursday that “. . . it’s worth acknowledging that he has also authorized the federal government to engage in an unprecedented crackdown on journalists and whistle-blowers here in the United States, relentlessly pursuing and initiating new cases against journalists and their sources.

“Consider the Times reporter James Risen, whose 2005 work with Eric Lichtblau on the federal government’s use of warrantless wiretapping was perhaps the most important national security journalism of the last decade. Mr. Risen has been under constant pressure from the Justice Department to reveal his confidential sources. Federal prosecutors say one of those sources is the former C.I.A. official Jeffery Sterling, whom they accuse of leaking secrets about American efforts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program to Mr. Risen for his 2006 book ‘State of War.’. . . “

Last December, the American Society of News Editors noted that Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and Openthegovernment.org issued a joint report that reviewed several aspects of Freedom of Information Act compliance by the 15 largest independent agencies and cabinet-level departments. “Their answer appears to be that the improvement has been slight, at best” [fifth item], ASNE said.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. walks out of a Feb. 2 hearing of the House C

Univision: “Fast and Furious” Caused Mexican Deaths

The consequences of the controversial ‘Fast and Furious’ undercover operation put in place by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in 2009 have been deadlier than what has been made public to date,” Univision News announced on Thursday. “The exclusive, in-depth investigation by Univision News’ award-winning Investigative Unit — Univision Investiga — has found that the guns that crossed the border as part of Operation Fast and Furious caused dozens of deaths inside Mexico.

“Univision’s Investigative Unit identified massacres committed with guns from the ATF operation, including the killing of 16 young people attending a party in a residential area of Ciudad Juárez in January of 2010. This and many other shocking new revelations about Fast and Furious will be presented in a special edition of Univision Network’s newsmagazine ‘Aquí y Ahora’ (Here and Now) this Sunday, September 30, 2012 at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT (6 p.m. Central). The Univision News special will be aired with closed captioning in English to expand the reach and impact of this eye-opening investigation.

“Univision News’ Investigative Unit was also able to identify additional guns that escaped the control of ATF agents and were used in different types of crimes throughout Mexico. Furthermore, some of these guns – none of which were reported by Congressional investigators – were put in the hands of drug traffickers in Honduras, Puerto Rico, and Colombia. A person familiar with the recent Congressional hearings called Univision’s findings ‘the holy grail’ that Congress had been searching for.”

Milwaukee’s Kane Decides to Take Buyout After All

Eugene Kane has changed his mind about giving up his Metro column in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to return to reporting, covering the Milwaukee Public Schools. Instead, he is taking a buyout.

Eugene Kane

Thomas Koetting, deputy managing editor/local news, wrote in a staff memo on Wednesday, “. . . Eugene Kane also will work his last day at the newspaper this Friday, but his 31-year association with the Journal and then Journal Sentinel will not come to an end. Eugene will write a weekly column for the Sunday Crossroads section, and will continue to maintain his blog. He has been a valuable voice in our community, particularly in his nearly two decades as a local columnist. He took principled stands on lightning-rod issues, and for many readers was a singular advocate for matters close to their hearts and minds. He handled more challenging exchanges with readers than the rest of us combined, and did it with grace and honesty. His community outreach, especially with young people, was exemplary.”

Kane told Journal-isms by email that he had discussed his situation with family members and concluded, “The buy-out is the best deal going and they will also pay me to write a Sunday Op-ed column. Like one of my advisers told me: ‘That’s a no-brainer!’ “

He wrote on Facebook Friday, “Lots of love from FB friends about my decision to leave Journal Sentinel. I really appreciated it! Many younger FB folks congratulated me on my ‘retirement’. C’mon; a middle aged black man like me can’t afford to retire. I’m still going to be in the mix with my Sunday column and more. Bet.”

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