Sportswriter Streeter Gets Expanded Role at L.A. Times
A year ago, when sportswriter Lonnie White left the Los Angeles Times, he said, "When I began, the LA Times had only one African American sportswriter (Chris Baker) and when I leave 21 years later," there will be two (Kurt Streeter and Brad Turner).
Now he can make that "one" again. As the Times continues to downsize again, with staffers reportedly expecting 35-40 exits this week, columnist Streeter has been given an expanded role, but outside the Sports Department.
"Kurt Streeter, who has been columnizing¬†for us for the last two-plus years, is returning to the Metro staff to concentrate on producing more long-form front-page stories like his recent Column One¬†on Dodgers interpreter Kenji Nimura," sports editor Mike James wrote to staffers on Tuesday. "Kurt has always shown a talent for thoroughly researching a story and producing a strong narrative account; he’ll now have the opportunity to do that regularly.
"Kurt will continue to write about sports in some of his front-page pieces but will be free to tackle a wide variety of stories. He also will occasional write commentaries for Sports when suitable issues arise."
White now writes for AOL Fanhouse.
RTDNA, NAB Say They’re Weathering Financial Storm
The journalist organizations of color, the Online News Association, the Society of Professional Journalists and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association struggled amid the economic climate this year, and the American Society of News Editors and its magazine counterpart canceled their annual conventions entirely.
But two broadcast associations told Journal-isms they were pleased with how they’re weathering the storm.
"So far, RTDNA (our new name) is holding its own financially," Stacey Woelfel, chairman of the Radio Television Digital News Association, told Journal-isms. "I think we are in better shape than a lot of the other journalism organizations out there. I credit that to a great deal of expense cutting we have done over the last few years in anticipation of dropping membership. Our convention was our smallest in a long time ‚Äî about 550 people attended ‚Äî "but we were prepared for that. Our partnership in Las Vegas with NAB has allowed us to put on a convention that is very cost effective, so we did end up making some money there. I’m hopeful next year will tick up a bit for us."
The organization changed its name on Oct. 13 from the Radio-Television News Directors Association.
For the National Association of Broadcasters, comprising broadcast owners, Dennis Wharton, Executive Vice President, Media Relations, told Journal-isms, "Our NAB Show in Vegas had 84,000 attendees this year, down about 19% from the previous year. We were quite pleased with that turnout, given the fact that many conventions were down as much as 40% in attendance this year."
The 84,000 figure "includes everyone who attended, including spouses, exhibitors, regulators and reporters. Most attendees are not NAB members, since our convention branched out many years ago beyond ‘just broadcasting’ to encompass all elements of the content delivery business (satellite, cable, video post production, Internet)."
Merging Journalist of Color Groups Called Unrealistic
Rafael Olmeda, former Unity: Journalists of Color president who stepped down from his leadership role last week, told Mallary Jean Tenore of the Poynter Institute that any suggestion that the journalist of color organizations should merge to save funds is unrealistic.
"We cannot pretend that one overall organization is going to be able to satisfy the unique needs" of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists, the Native American Journalists Association and the Asian American Journalists Association," he said. "It’s very important that they stand on their own."
"Each group has its own identity and distinct needs that members of the other minority journalism groups might not fully understand. NAJA members, for instance, have expertise in tribal issues that give them added credibility when they speak out on controversial stories involving Native Americans. NAJA and the other three minority journalism groups, Olmeda said, should be able to act independently," Tenore wrote.
Sergeant in Chauncey Bailey case to Return to Duty
"The Oakland police sergeant who led the investigation into the 2007 slaying of a newspaper editor has been cleared of internal charges that he compromised the probe to keep the leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery from being implicated, The Chronicle has learned," Jaxon Van Derbeken wrote  Wednesday for the San Francisco Chronicle.
"Sgt. Derwin Longmire was told last week that acting Police Chief Howard Jordan had ordered that he be returned to duty. Longmire has been on paid leave for six months while the Police Department considered whether he should be fired for misconduct in investigating the killing of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey.
"Jordan and other police officials concluded that Longmire should serve a five-day suspension for minor problems with other homicide cases, but that the 23-year department veteran had done nothing wrong in the Bailey probe, sources close to the investigation said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision has not been made public.
"Longmire’s attorney, Michael Rains, said details such as what Longmire will do when he goes back to work were still being worked out. He had been reassigned from the homicide unit to the patrol detail before being put on leave."
Teen Vogue Features Black, Pregnant Teen Model
"When Jamie Lynn Spears revealed she was expecting a baby back in 2007, the question of whether a pregnant teen should have a starring role on a television show that targets a young audience was broached (Spears played the lead on Nickelodeon’s "Zoey 101"), Courtney Hazlet wrote in her "Scoop" column for MSNBC.
"Now the magazine world enters into a similar dialogue as Teen Vogue‚Äôs November issue, which pictures a pregnant, unmarried 19-year-old model on its cover, hits newsstands.’ The model is the British-born Jourdan Dunn.
"There‚Äôs nothing about the cover that would indicate that Jourdan Dunn, who is the first black model to walk a Prada show since Naomi Campbell in the 1990s, is pregnant. She looks no different than Chanel Iman, who is also pictured, and the accompanying cover line says simply, ‘Teen Supermodels Jourdan and Chanel on their rise to the top.’
"Not until you read the accompanying piece does the subject of Dunn‚Äôs pregnancy come into play. Toward the end of the interview, Dunn says her unplanned pregnancy was ‘really hard,’ and ‘all I could think about was what my mom was going to say, my agency, my boyfriend.’
"A representative for Teen Vogue said that they didn’t know Dunn was pregnant until after the photo shoot, and production schedules, among other factors, led to the decision to keep the cover in place."
Short Takes
- "For the first time since it was created fourteen years ago, Columbia University’s highly regarded dual-degree graduate program in environmental journalism will not be accepting applications for next academic year," Curtis Brainard wrote Tuesday for Columbia Journalism Review. "In a letter to faculty at the Graduate School of Journalism, the Department of Environmental Sciences, and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the program directors cited falling employment in the field, the rising costs of education, and a lack of financial aid for students as the reasons for their decision."
- "In court papers filed by The Associated Press, the news organization said Shepard Fairey concocted the story that he was mistaken about which photo he used to create the famous Obama HOPE poster and disputed his contention that he has not personally profited from the iconic red, white and blue image," the AP wrote on Tuesday. "Until recently, Fairey had claimed his image was based on a 2006 photo of then-Sen. Barack Obama, seated next to actor George Clooney. Fairey now says that he was in error and that he used a solo, close-up shot of Obama, as the AP had long alleged."
- "A new National Newspaper Association survey found that 81 percent of respondents read a local weekly paper each week, 73 percent read "most or all of it," and those readers spend an average of 40 minutes with the paper," Joe Strupp reported Tuesday for MediaWeek.
- "Of all the consequences of shrinking newsrooms, one of the oddest is this: Fewer journalists are available to watch people die," Richard Perez-Pena wrote Tuesday in the New York Times. "Newspapers sometimes use The A.P.’s reporting rather than their own — or they do not cover the executions at all. What was once a statewide story has become of strictly local interest."
- The New York University journalism graduate students who went¬†to the Southwest to report on the Navajo Nation’s uranium contamination and housing issues have posted¬†their reports on the university’s Pavement Pieces Web site.
"Yoani S?°nchez is a 34-year-old Cuban writer, editor and linguistics scholar who last week became the first blogger to win one of the Maria Moors Cabot Prizes given by Columbia University for journalism that advances inter-American understanding," Larry Rohter wrote¬†in Sunday’s New York Times Week in Review section. "Her two-year-old blog, filled with personal observations and sardonic social commentary from Havana, is called Generaci??n Y; it now gets more than 14 million page views a month, routinely inspires thousands of comments and can be read in an English version. But it circulates far more freely outside Cuba than within, where the Castro dictatorship regards it as counter-revolutionary."
- "On October 19, 1986, the sun quite suddenly set at noon," Dan Agbese recalled Tuesday for the Committee to Protect Journalists. "In the brutal darkness, we lost Dele Giwa, just two short years after he and I, along with two other professional journalists, launched Nigeria’s first newsmagazine, Newswatch. "Dele was home on Talabi Street, Ikeja, Lagos, about to eat a meal with our London bureau chief Kayode Soyinka when his son, Billy, brought in a large brown envelope addressed to him and carrying what seemed to be the official government seal. Two men in a Peugeot had delivered the parcel to Dele’s home. As Dele attempted to open the parcel, which he believed had come from the office of the Nigerian president, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, it blew up. It was a parcel bomb. Dele’s lower half was almost severed from his body. . . . We are soldiering on, in our own way, expanding the frontiers of press freedom even as we bear the burden of official intolerance and the fickleness of the Nigerian public."
