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Journalisms Wed Mar 6

New Fox Sports Network Is Hiring, Will Challenge ESPN

Fox, in announcing Tuesday that it will launch the 24-hour Fox Sports 1 network on Aug. 17, is mounting what executives say will be a direct challenge to ESPN,” Michael Hiestand reported Tuesday for USA Today.

“Our hope is that we can be equally professional” with ESPN, says David Hill, who led Fox Sports when it launched 20 years ago and is overseeing the new channel. “It’s going to take us a while. We’re not expecting to knock ESPN off in the first week or two. It’s going to take two to three years. It will be a slog.”

FS1 will debut in about 90 million TV households compared to about 99 million on ESPN and ESPN2. It will have a daily 11 p.m. ET Fox Sports Live show meant to directly challenge ESPN’s SportsCenter. Hill, noting that head-to-head competition said, “The quality of sports journalism on ESPN is world-class. It’s not going to be easy. But we’ll give it a shot.”

Hiestand also wrote, “FS1 will also take on ESPN, as well as HBO Sports, in sports documentaries. Its Being series begins in the fall with a film on Mike Tyson.”

Lou D’Ermilio, spokesman for the network, told Journal-isms, “I’m told we will have positions to fill. Interested parties should log on to www.foxcareers.com http://www.foxcareers.com/#/home . No one has been hired yet for our news operation.”

Time Inc. Now Planned as Independent Company

Weeks of negotiations between Time Warner and Meredith Corporation came to an end Wednesday when the two companies could not agree to a deal to join their magazines into a separate company,” Amy Chozick and Michael J. De La Merced reported Wednesday for the New York Times. “Instead, Time Warner said it would move ahead on its own with a plan to make Time Inc. an independent company.”

“The deal came apart after Time Warner in particular grew increasingly concerned over the future of four of Time Inc.’s iconic but struggling magazines — Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money, according to three people with knowledge of the negotiations who could not publicly discuss private conversations.”

None of the statements or news stories referred to the two Time Inc. that target people of color, Essence and People en Español.

 

Rick Hancock to Join Atlanta Paper’s Digital Team

Rick Hancock, digital platform manager at the Hartford (Conn.) Courant, is joining the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s digital staff as subscriber products editor, Monica Richardson, AJC managing editor of the Digital and Beats departments, told Journal-isms on Wednesday.

“He will oversee the digital staff devoted to the production of our digital subscriber products. The AJC’s digital staff recently reorganized to provide more focus and better meet needs of its digital suite of free and subscriber products,” Richardson said in an emailed statement. “In January, Cynthia DuBose was named AJC.COM Editor. Hancock will work closely with DuBose and other newsroom leaders on our digital platform.

“In December, the AJC released a new suite of digital news apps including ‘Today’s Paper,’ which offers subscribers total access to the day’s newspaper — all news stories and ads plus the comics, obituaries and more. Readers can page through each section, just like the printed paper, on tablets and smartphones.”

 

AP’s Rochester to Be Deputy Managing Editor in Pittsburgh

Mark J. Rochester, assistant West Coast bureau chief of the Associated Press, is joining the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as deputy managing editor, David M. Shribman, executive editor and vice-president, told staff members.

“A former assistant managing editor and Sunday editor of The Denver Post, he has special expertise in digital platforms for journalism, computer-assisted reporting, and newspaper investigations,” Shribman’s announcement said. “He is currently responsible for AP business development and marketing services in California, Nevada and Hawaii. He’s been on the national board of directors of Investigative Reporters & Editors and is on the national advisory board of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.”

Rochester told Journal-isms by email, “Pittsburgh is such a great news town, and one of the few competitive newspaper markets left. On top of that, The Post-Gazette position will allow me the unique opportunity to lead efforts on digital strategy as well as parts of the traditional print news operation. The publisher and executive editor are both committed to a robust print edition that provides high-impact watchdog journalism and breaking news, while continuing to grow its digital audience on multiple platforms. It’s going to be an exciting challenge.”

 

Dominican woman Nexis de los Santos Santana was one of three women who claimed in a Skype interview with ABC News to have been paid for sex with Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J. Santana was later identified by a Dominican official as the woman who signed an affidavit saying she was actually paid to make up the story. (Credit: ABC News) (Video)

Story on Menendez and Prostitutes Begins to Unravel

The Daily Caller, Tucker Carlson’s conservative version of Huffington Post, is at the center of a media controversy. And loving it,” Jeff Sonderman reported Wednesday for the Poynter Institute.

“In November, the Caller published a story based on two anonymous Dominican women claiming that New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez had paid them for sex.

“ABC News says it received similar information at the same time, as Republican operatives organized interviews with those two women, plus a third woman the Caller did not talk to, all of whom said the senator paid them for sex. But ABC News didn’t run with the story, because ‘none of the women could produce identity cards with their names, and they all provided the same story almost word for word, as if they had been coached.’ ”

“After the Caller’s story was published, things started to unravel. . . .”

Menendez has been an advocate of media diversity. In 2010, he released a “Corporate Diversity Report” with the results of a survey of 537 companies that appeared in the Fortune 500 in 2009 and 2010. “At the five media/entertainment/marketing companies that responded, says the report, 13 of the 59 board seats are held by women and 11 by minorities. On those companies’ executive teams, 11 of 58 positions are held by women and three by minorities,” RadioInk reported.

Meanwhile Carlson, the Daily Caller’s editor-in-chief, told Michael Calderone of the Huffington Post in an interview that racial diversity is, “by far, the shallowest and least interesting kind of diversity.”

He said, “Maybe the unintended consequence of professionalizing journalism is that all journalists come from the same background and think the same things and have the same assumptions. There’s no diversity at all. And I’m not talking about racial diversity, which is, by far, the shallowest and least interesting kind of diversity. But I mean cultural and ideological diversity. And I don’t think you should hire right-wingers. I don’t care if they have some affirmative action program for right-wingers. That’s stupid. But just make sure every third person’s from North Dakota. That’ll fix it.”

Indian Country Sees Deep Impact in Budget Cuts

Indian Country is an asterisk in the federal budget,” Mark Trahant wrote Monday for indianz.com. “Yet the impact of this austerity will impact our communities deeply and fairly soon. By my count, there will be at least $386 million in direct service budget cuts between now and the end of September. As the National Congress of American Indians said last week, ‘forced spending cuts will undermine the trust, treaty, and statutory obligations to tribal governments that are funded in the federal budget. Not only would it sacrifice the federal trust responsibility to tribes, but it would thwart tribes’ ability to promote economic growth or plan for the benefit of future generations.’ . . . “

Why Some Groups Still Need Their Own Spaces

MyBrownBaby.com has grown by leaps and bounds since it launched. Why was it important to create an online space specifically for African-American mothers?Janelle Harris asked Denene Millner, described as an award-winning journalist and the author of 21 books and counting, for MediaBistro.

My last job inside of an office was working at Parenting. I loved what the magazine did, but I just found that the brand didn’t necessarily speak to black mothers,” Millner replied.

“When I moved to Atlanta, they gave me a column called ‘Reality Check,’ and every month I would give advice on parenting ethics and etiquette. But during the 2008 election, there was a conversation about Bristol Palin, and I just remember getting the impression from newspapers and websites that we weren’t supposed to talk about her decision to have a baby or her getting pregnant.

“I just felt like, you know what? This is not the conversation that my black mom friends and I are having. As a matter of fact, we’re all walking around saying if that was Sasha or Malia who wound up knocked up during the presidential election, they would’ve buried Obama under the bus, under the White House, and the whole discussion would’ve been about the irresponsibility of black women, teenagers, the high rate of single motherhood in our communities. It would’ve been about irresponsibility or our aversion to protection.

“So I said, ‘Since nobody else is going to say it, I’ll go on ahead and say it. I wrote something basically to that effect and emailed it to all of my friends and said, ‘I managed to set up a blog on Blogger. You need to read it and leave comments.’ It felt good to me. I got to write from a very specific black mom perspective in a way that you won’t find anywhere else. It was a huge hit right off of the bat, because nobody was talking about what it means to raise black children in America and what it means to constantly be thrown under the bus when we’re talking about black mothers but never being invited to the conversation. . . . “

Short Takes

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