Latino Percentage of Newsroom Jobs at Lowest Since 2001
“As job losses have devastated U.S. daily newspapers, the disparity between the percentage of Hispanics in the newsroom and in the general population has widened,” Percy Lujan wrote for Hispanic Link News Service. “That can affect coverage of issues important to Latinos and others. — The annual census by the American Society of News Editors shows that Latinos represent an even 4 percent of newsroom employees on daily papers, while comprising 17 percent of the U.S. population.
“That’s the lowest Hispanic participation rate since 2001, when they made up 3.9 percent. It peaked at 4.6 percent in 2009.
“In 2001, the nation’s dailies had 2,098 Hispanics in newsroom jobs. By last year, the number had fallen to 1,512.
” ‘Unfortunately, the focus on diversity has been another one of the casualties of the current industry upheaval,’ says Rick Rodriguez, who became ASNE’s first Latino president in 2005 while serving as the Sacramento Bee’s executive editor. The office has a one-year term. . . .”
Scarbrough Named Exec Producer at Al Jazeera America
“Al Jazeera America, the new American news channel that will launch Aug. 20, today announced that Neal Scarbrough has been hired as its senior executive producer for sports programming and Jeff Green will serve as executive producer of sports programming,” the network announced on Tuesday.
Scarbrough is the highest-ranking African American named to the network.
“An award-winning journalist with two decades of newsroom experience in print, digital and television, Scarbrough comes to Al Jazeera America from Comcast, where he served as vice president of digital media for the Versus Sports Network (now NBC Sports Network) before transitioning to corporate communications,” the release continued.
“Prior to Versus, Scarbrough ran the sports division at AOL and was senior news director and editor-in-chief at ESPN.com. He served on the Pulitzer Prize-winning team at The Denver Post that in 1999 was honored for its breaking news coverage of the Columbine High School massacre. He has also won an Online Journalism Award for General Excellence and been named one of the Top 10 Most Influential People in Online Sports.
” ‘Al Jazeera America will feature one-of-a-kind sports coverage that will be perfect for both news junkies and passionate sports fans,’ said Scarbrough. ‘The weekly show we’re developing will delve into the top stories across sports and deliver new faces and places to American fans.’ “
It continued, “Al Jazeera America will feature regular sports updates, interviews and features through the day. An in-depth weekly sports magazine show will begin by year’s end and a second weekend sports show is planned for 2014.” [Added Aug. 6]
- Dylan Byers, Politico: Al Jazeera America sets own course
- Michael Calderone, Huffington Post: Al Jazeera America Promises To Stand Out In Cable News Market, But Concerns Loom
- Dru Sefton, current.org: Several pubmedia journalists to join new Al Jazeera America network
Fla. Lawmakers to Hold Hearings on “Stand Your Ground”
“Florida lawmakers will hold hearings this fall on the state’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ self- defense law, which has become a lightning rod for criticism following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin,” Tom Brown reported Monday for Reuters.
“The announcement on Friday by Will Weatherford, the speaker of Florida’s House of Representatives, marked the biggest concession yet by the state’s Republican leaders to protesters’ demands for a top-to-bottom review of the law, which allows people in fear of serious injury to use deadly force to defend themselves rather than retreat.
“Since Zimmerman’s acquittal on July 13, Martin’s grieving parents, backed by African- American civic leaders, celebrities, students and political figures, including President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, have all said the Stand Your Ground law needs to be re-examined. . . .”
- Charles M. Blow, New York Times: Marriage and Minorities
- David Carr, New York Times: Parodying Cable News With a Talk About Race
- Gregory Clay, McClatchy-Tribune News Service: Don Lemon and Bill O’Reilly told the truth
- George Curry, National Newspaper Publishers Association: Finally, the Barack Obama I Voted For
- Jarvis DeBerry, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune: Trayvon Martin travesty has a New Orleans parallel, but not the one you think
- Tammerlin Drummond, Oakland Tribune: Children exposed to urban gun violence suffer warlike trauma (July 21)
- Tammerlin Drummond, Oakland Tribune: Commitment needed to stop violence
- John W. Fountain, Chicago Sun-Times: ‘I am not invisible. I am a shadow.’
- Keli Goff, The Root: Can Obama Move Us Past Baggy-Pants Talk?
- Rhonda Graham, Wilmington (Del.) News-Journal: Why are public figures playing with the ‘N’ word?
- Eugene Kane, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Racial debate post-Zimmerman avoids real issues
- Dori J. Maynard, Bay Area News Group: Media need not look far to explain reasons for racial angst
- Dr. Andre M. Perry, the Grio: Black leadership is missing from education reform
- Khalid Salaam, Shadow League: If They Want To Use “The N-Word,” They’ll Have To Take It From Our Cold And Dead Hands
- Russell Simmons, HuffPost BlackVoices: Don’s a Lemon: Before You Go Back on CNN This Weekend, Read This!
- Goldie Taylor, The Grio: Don Lemon and the rage of a privileged class
A Week When Anti-Asian Slurs Were Off the Charts
“If you haven’t noticed, in one week the anti-Asian/Asian American meter was off the charts and maxing out in the red, Emil Guillermo wrote Monday for the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
“But it’s likely that you, like everyone else, probably didn’t even notice.
“Asian American cultural slights? Are you kidding? Who takes those seriously as civil rights violations?
“Maybe you should. Unfortunately, these are times when everyday racist fare tends to go unchecked, thereby becoming the acceptable “norm.”
“Add to that, the news of Philadelphia Eagle player Riley Cooper saying the ‘N’ word in public, and you know any transgressions about Asian Americans will barely register a blip on society’s racial radar.
“Yet, last week was practically high tide for anti-Asian sentiment in the media. Not since the Asiana Ho Lee Fuk episode have we seen so many offensive instances come at us at once. Let me count the ways: . . .”
- Angry Asian Man blog: FishbowlDC, racist jokes and the phrase that needs to die
- Paul Bond, Hollywood Reporter: CNBC Reporter Accused of ‘Offensive’ Slur in Report About Wendi Deng (Video)
- Emil Guillermo, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund: Race conversation? After Asiana gaffe, new Asian American slur at CNBC — a CHITA problem (July 31)
Photographer Documents Toll of Oil Industry on Indians
“Ian Willms has photographed the effects of oil extraction on First Nations land in Fort McKay and Fort Chipewyan, in northern Alberta, Canada,” begins a July 30 photo essay on the Lens blog of the New York Times. “Mr. Willms, 28, based in Toronto, is a founding member of the Boreal Collective and spent several months over the last three years photographing his project ‘As Long as the Sun Shines.’ His interview with James Estrin has been edited and condensed.”
“Q. How did this project start?
“A. When I graduated from school in 2008 I was hearing a lot about the oil sands in Canada. So I started doing research, and the more I learned, the more horrified I became.
“I read a CBC article about cancer rates in indigenous communities that immediately surrounded the oil sands, and I knew right then that was exactly what I had to do. I searched pretty thoroughly for anybody who had done a proper photo story on the community, and I couldn’t find anything that was particularly in-depth.”
Estrin also asked, “What is the effect of the oil sands on the environment?
“A. Well, they’re finding a lot of animals with physical problems. They’re finding fish with large, golf-ball-sized tumors. There was actually an industry-funded study a few years ago that found that the moose meat had 453 times the acceptable level of arsenic in it.
“These people who have hunted this land for a hundred years can read their environment like a book. They know when something’s wrong. They open up an animal, they can see the health of that animal by how it looks. The industry and the government don’t really take that knowledge seriously. . . .”
- Laurel Morales, NPR: From Cops To Lawyers, Indian Country Copes With High Crime
“Reliable Sources” Hosts All of the Same Gender, Hue
“Politico’s Patrick Gavin yesterday tweeted that he’d be hosting the long-running CNN program ‘Reliable Sources’ this Sunday,” Erik Wemple wrote Thursday on his Washington Post blog. “He is among the crowd that is filling in following the departure of Howard Kurtz* for Fox News. Gavin’s guest-hosting stint follows that of George Washington University big shot and former CNN correspondent Frank Sesno, which followed that of NPR reporter David Folkenflik, which followed that of CNN contributor John Avlon. All of them precede the New York Times’s Brian Stelter.
“What could all of these light-complected males possibly have in common?
“The lack of diversity among the fill-in crew at ‘Reliable Sources’ makes sense on one level. Media/TV criticism has its share of guys, after all — from the Carrs and the Shaferses to the Byerses and the Folkenfliks to the Kurtzes and the Degganses. (Disclosure: The Erik Wemple Blog is a white male). But who says the next ‘Reliable Sources’ host needs to have spent years slinging blog posts and columns on paywalls, ethics, conflicts of interest and cable-news-anchor hirings?
“What, for instance, is keeping CNN from screen-testing a talent like Karen Tumulty, the veteran Washington Post political reporter? Doesn’t she know something about the media? Ditto for Politico’s Maggie Haberman, the sine qua non of Politico’s excellent video coverage of the 2012 presidential election. While we’re in Rosslyn, doesn’t Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown present herself pretty well on television? Wanna stir things up? Then poach Kirsten Powers from Fox News — she’ll shout down those who would excuse media bias.
“Joy-Ann Reid of MSNBC has been known to carry a discussion or two on various topics. And hey, what’s wrong with Molly Ball of The Atlantic? Get a mic on that woman! The New York Times’s Amy Chozick — didn’t she do an okay job of covering the media? . . .”
Short Takes
- “In keeping with our advocacy role and looking out for our members, NAHJ joins the FreePress in expressing concern over Sinclair Broadcast Group’s multi-million dollar deal to purchase nine local TV stations from Allbritton Communications,” Hugo Balta, president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, wrote Monday. “If approved, the deal would give Sinclair control of 149 stations in 76 markets nationwide. NAHJ has a long history of advocating against the monopolization of news media. What is always billed as a move to improve service and lower costs for the public is in reality the silencing of diverse and unique voices. . . .”
- “Americans’ attitudes about their economic future are sharply divided by race, with whites significantly less likely than blacks or Hispanics to think they can improve their own standard of living,” Hope Yen and Jennifer Agiesta reported Thursday for the Associated Press. “Indeed, optimism among minorities now outpaces that of whites by the widest margin since at least 1987, a new analysis shows. . . .
- Lester Holt will host “NBC Nightly News” for “a few weeks” while Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor, has knee surgery, NBC spokeswoman Kathy Kelly-Brown said on Monday. “Williams joins a multitude of other Americans with bad knees opting for surgery,” Linda Carroll and Jane Derenowski reported for NBC. “Over the past decade the rate of knee surgeries has risen dramatically from 378,000 in 2003 to an estimated 704,000 in 2012, according to a government report released in 2012. The report also finds that people are getting knee surgery at younger and younger ages.. . .”
- Veteran sports journalist Mike Freeman is joining Bleacher Report, “a leading digital destination for team-specific sports content and real-time event coverage,” the site, a division of Turner Sports, announced on Monday. Freeman comes to Bleacher Report from CBSSports.com, where he was a national columnist and national NFL Insider covering the NFL since 2007.
- In the Bay Area, “A KGO-TV news crew was robbed at gunpoint of camera equipment while accompanied by a security guard in West Oakland in broad daylight, the latest in a spate of holdups in the city targeting the media, authorities said,” Henry K. Lee reported Saturday for the San Francisco Chronicle.
- “Former Memphis wrestling legend and promoter Corey Maclin was killed late Tuesday evening in a car crash on I-55 near Sardis, Miss.,” WHBQ-TV in Memphis reported. It added, “For two years in 2010 he was the sports anchor at WPTY Channel 24 in Memphis and also ran for office in Shelby County, Tenn. . . .”
- New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez, suspended by Major League Baseball Monday for 211 regular-season games through the 2014 season after an investigation into the use of performance-enhancing drugs, told Univision’s Tony Dandrades in an interview Sunday, “My mom is spending a lot of time in Santo Domingo now and is always praying for me. I want to thank all my Dominican fans, this is a difficult time, I carry the flag on my shoulders and this protects me, also with God’s help. I am very Dominican. Very proud of being Dominican. Very proud that the Dominican team won the crown [at the World Baseball Classic]. I want to do a good job of being the face, not only of Dominicans, but also Latino baseball players and keep on going forward.” Rodriguez, 38, plans to appeal.
- “Pacifica station WPFW in Washington, D.C., is in ‘a pretty critical financial situation,’ according to Summer Reese, interim executive director of the network,” Mike Janssen wrote July 30 for current.org. “Reese discussed the state of WPFW during a July 25 Pacifica board conference call. Responding to a board member’s question about a WPFW on- air fund drive planned for in September, she said: ‘The concern there is, frankly, that you don’t have enough money to get through until September.’ ”
- In El Paso, Texas, “Television news anchor Adrienne Alvarez was arrested early Thursday morning on suspicion of domestic violence, officials said,” Aaron Martinez reported for the El Paso Times. “Alvarez, 28, allegedly was involved in a fight with her husband at about midnight . . . She was arrested on suspicion of battery against a member of a household, officials said. . . .”
- Cheryl Owsley Jackson, 51, a journalist who now lives in Chicago and teaches at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, never believed her brother committed suicide when he was found dead in April in their Indiana hometown with a gunshot wound in the chest, Dawn Turner Trice wrote Monday in the Chicago Tribune. Jackson and her brother, Cary “Dodie” Owsley, struggled with their biracial identity while growing up.
- “‘Early Start’ co-anchor Zoraida Sambolin returned to CNN today, two and a half months after taking a leave of absence to undergo treatment for breast cancer,” Alex Weprin reported Monday for TVNewser. “She received a warm welcome from John Berman and her colleagues. . . .”
- “Reporters Without Borders condemns Egyptian journalist Anas Fouda’s detention by the authorities in the United Arab Emirates for the past month. Based for many years in the UAE, Fouda has been held incommunicado ever since his arrest on 3 July,” the press freedom organization said on Friday.
- “The South African Broadcasting Corporation is in the news for not airing a politically sensitive documentary that details allegations of apartheid-era theft of public funds,” Sue Valentine reported Friday for the Committee to Protect Journalists. “The public broadcaster, which had commissioned the film, has also refused to sell the rights back to the filmmaker and has filed a lawsuit demanding she turn over her raw footage and accusing her of breaching copyright by staging private screenings. . . . ”
- “An Afghan radio station that has sought to highlight women’s issues has reportedly been shut down by local authorities in northern Sar-e-Pul province, allegedly for lacking ‘requisite documents and professionalism,’ ” the International Press Institute reported on Friday. “However, the Afghanistan Journalists Center (AFJC), a member of the IFEX global network for freedom of expression, has said that Radio Saday-e- Bano (Voice of Woman) was taken off the air after station employees refused to pay bribes to provincial officials. . . .”
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