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Journalisms Wed Jan 23

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NBC News, CNN Most-Watched During Inauguration

“The Nielsen ratings are in, and NBC News and CNN were the big winners on Inauguration Day,” Dylan Byers reported Tuesday for Politico.

“NBC News was the most-watched broadcast or cable television network, drawing an average of 5.081 million viewers during its 10am – 4:30pm broadcast, according to Nielsen ratings provided by NBC. CBS News averaged 3.671 million; ABC News averaged 3.922 million.

“On cable, CNN scored an average 1.923 million total viewers throughout the day, 3.573 million total viewers in primetime, and 3.136 million viewers during President Obama’s address, according to Nielsen numbers provided by CNN. Fox News averaged 1.104 million during the day, 1.666 million in primetime, and 1.316 million during the address. MSNBC averaged 1.095 million viewers during the day, 1.365 million during primetime, and 2.273 million during the speech.”

Jen Christensen to Lead Gay Journalists

Jen Christensen, a writer and producer with cnn.com, has been chosen by the board of directors of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association as its new president, succeeding the late Michael Triplett, the association announced on Tuesday. Christensen is to serve the remainder of the term, through the 2014 convention.

“Since 2009, Christensen has served as NLGJA’s vice president for broadcast. She previously served on NLGJA’s board of directors for three terms, as president of the Georgia and Carolinas chapters and as the founding president of the Kentucky chapter,” the announcement said. She is also a board member of the Unity coalition.

Meanwhile, Triplett’s family announced a memorial service to be held Saturday, Feb. 2, at noon at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church at 4900 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. Visitation will be held at 11:00 a.m. prior to the service in the church’s baptistry. A reception will follow.

The family has requested that memorials be made to St. Paul’s Lutheran Church.

 

18-Month Project Finds, Photographs Wrongly Convicted

Billy Smith II of the Houston Chronicle produced a photo essay this week for the Houston Chronicle on people who were wrongfully convicted.

“The stories of each of the 20 men and women in these pages, are, like DNA, uniquely their own,” reads an accompanying text by Tony Freemantle. “But the one thing they have in common is that their lives and the lives of their families, the jurors who convicted them, the judges who presided over their conviction, and the witnesses or victims who got it wrong, were irrevocably altered.”

Smith, a member of the 2008 class of the Maynard Institute’s Media Academy, told Journal-isms by email that the project took a year and a half.

“The Exoneree Project was my story idea from the start,” Smith wrote. “Tony, one of the best wordsmiths at our paper, came to me wanting to be a part of it. This was always first and foremost a photo-driven project. I tracked down all of these guys myself. We are talking late-night drives to addresses that may or may not be them and cold-calling numbers hoping it’s the guy you’re looking for. I did the audio interviews and each portrait is in a setting or posed is a way that tells each exoneree’s story. The web presentation was produced by fellow co-worker and Photo Coach Smiley N. Pool. Smiley did a stunning job with the presentation.

“Tony Freemantle knew from the beginning the importance of this being a photo-driven project. He treated his written essay as the foreword to the images. The photos needed a entry point for the viewer and he supplied that. He also did a lot of fact checking and data work.

“As you know no good project is done alone. we had an excellent team here at the Chronicle working to make this an excellent project.”

In the middle of the project, his son was born three months premature and spent 50 days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

“I am proud to say we celebrated is first birthday the same weekend the project was published.”

 

Scholar Challenges 2nd Amendment Tie to Slavery

Legal scholar Paul Finkelman is challenging an assertion by author and talk-show host Thom Hartmann on the Truthout website and highlighted in this space, “The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery.”

Hartmann’s piece began, “The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says ‘State’ instead of ‘Country’ (the Framers knew the difference — see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to get Virginia’s vote. Founders Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Madison were totally clear on that . . . and we all should be too.”

Writing on the Root on Monday, Finkelman differed.

“The idea of Madison, Henry and Mason teaming up in 1787 or in 1789 (when Madison wrote the Second Amendment) would make an entertaining Saturday Night Live skit,” Finkelman wrote. “Madison and Henry could not stand each other. They were political opponents throughout this period. After 1787 Mason joined Henry in opposing the Constitution (which Madison worked so hard to create), and both Henry and Mason opposed the Bill of Rights. Indeed Virginia was the last state to ratify the Bill of Rights (in 1791) because of Henry’s opposition to the Bill of Rights. Henry wanted to scuttle the whole Constitution and not make it better. So he opposed all the amendments.

“Thus, Hartmann’s “conspiracy” falls flat because a conspiracy would require that the people allegedly involved talked to each other.

“This is not to say that slave patrols were not important to the South and slavery. They surely were. But the Second Amendment was directed solely at the federal government, which was prohibited from disarming state militias, and thus allowed the states to arm their militias if the federal government did not do so. Even if the amendment did not exist and the national government had abolished the state militias, the states would have been free to create their own slave patrols, just as they can create police departments and other law-enforcement agencies. . . .”

Los Angeles Times Had Cameo Role in “Dreamgirls”

The Los Angeles Times had a role in the movie version of the “Dreamgirls” blockbuster released in 2006. Who knew?

“There’s a scene where Jennifer Hudson‘s character is yelling at Jamie Foxx’s character that was shot in the atrium,” Times spokeswoman Hillary Manning told Journal-isms Wednesday by email. “There’s a scene in Jamie Foxx’s character’s record company office that was shot in the Chandler Pavilion. There’s a scene where police (I think?) come to seize records that was shot in what we call the round table room.”

Christine Haughney reported Sunday in the New York Times that over the last several years, the Los Angeles paper “has rented its offices for use in the films ‘Argo,’ ‘Moneyball,’ ‘Frost/Nixon,’ ‘Dreamgirls’ and ‘The Soloist.'” She quoted Manning, who said the rentals were part of a strategy “to maximize the value of our real estate assets and diversify our revenue streams to best support The Times’s core journalistic mission.”

The L.A. Times is not the only newspaper to go that route. “While most newspapers lack cash, employees and a clear strategy for finding greater profits in the digital age, they do not lack for office space,” Haughney wrote.

 

Online Only, Star-Ledger Readers See What the Fuss Was About

The Star-Ledger’s online readers were warned Sunday that “The artwork, which can be seen lower in this column, may be offensive to some readers.” A portion of the drawing depicted a white man holding the head of a naked black woman to his groin, her back to the viewer.

“The painting that caused such a ruckus at the Newark Public Library is uncovered again, viewable by all, and the controversy around it gone,” the story said. “. . . .The huge drawing was done by Kara Walker, a renowned African-American artist whose themes deal with race, gender, sexuality and violence. This piece shows the horrors of reconstruction, 20th-century Jim Crowism and hooded figures of the Ku Klux Klan.”

The artwork actually ran twice online, editor Kevin Whitmer told Journal-isms by email. The first time in December, in “Censorship or common decency? Newark Library covers up controversial artwork,” a column by Barry Carter.

The second time was Sunday, in “Controversial painting in Newark Library is bared once again.”

“The photo in [question] has run only online and we used it both times,” Whitmer said, citing the editor’s note about its potential to offend. “Our feeling is that it’s hard to write about controversial art without showing the artwork somewhere. I suppose that’s another great frontier the internet has opened for us. If people want it, they can have it.

“Gone are the old days when a 4-column photo on a cover page was one of the only options.”

 

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