Diversity Advocate to Edit Revived E&P

Updated January 17

Need to “Bring Everybody We Can into the Conversation”

Joyner Turns Back After Planning to Broadcast from Haiti

Black, Latino Print Journalists Among Those in Haiti

Fox News Panned for Downplaying Haiti Coverage

N.Y. Post Chooses Football Story Over Haiti

Root Editor Joel Dreyfuss Loses 2 Relatives in Quake

Deborah Howell Praised at Woman-Dominated Service

NPR Wins DuPont Award for Race Project

NPR’s Schiller Defends N.Y. Times’ Landman

Short Takes

Need to “Bring Everybody . . . Into the Conversation”

Editor & Publisher, the 126-year-old “bible of the newspaper industry” that went out of business two weeks ago, is restarting under new ownership, with its foremost diversity advocate as its editor, the publication announced Thursday night.

Mark Fitzgerald, the new editor, told Journal-isms, “the message has to come out from the top: Diversify sources, get people thinking about best practices. We’ve got to be the conversation pit and we’ve got to bring everybody we can into the conversation.”

He said there would be opportunities to broaden the freelance pool of contributors to get more diverse voices, and was said he was especially happy that the new owner will support his work with the Inter-American Press Association, which was co-founded by a former E&P owner, Robert U. Brown.

The Nielsen Co. sealed the deal to sell E&P at about 6 p.m. Thursday. The buyer is Duncan McIntosh Co. Inc., an Irvine, Calif.-based magazine and newspaper publisher. The company publishes several boating magazines and newspapers, “including Boating World magazine; Sea Magazine, America’s Western Boating Magazine; The Log Newspaper; and FishRap. The company also produces the Newport Boat Show in the spring and the Lido Yacht Expo in the fall. Both shows are held in California,” a news release said.

Duncan McIntosh told Journal-isms that his wife, Teresa, is a second-generation Mexican American who marched with the United Farm Workers’ Cesar Chavez in the 1960s, and that “Cesar Chavez Day” is one of the company’s eight or nine holidays. He is a longtime E&P reader, Fitzgerald said, who did not want to see the operation fold.

“E&P’s new owners announced plans to publish a February print issue and continue the monthly print publication schedule. Online reporting on its Web site, began immediately upon the close of the transaction Thursday,” the release said.

Fitzgerald, an E&P employee for 26 years, did the lion’s share of coverage of the black press and Latino issues, and wrote editorials supporting diversity, such as one from 2005 asking, “Newsroom Diversity: Was It Just a 1990s Ideal?”

E&P’s editor-at-large was elected in November to a full term on the board of directors of the Inter-American Press Association and was just appointed vice president of its Impunity Committee, which urges governments to investigate and prosecutor the masterminds of crimes against journalists.

He said he planned to continue E&P’s “Americas Extra” Web page and print column that looks at newspapers around the hemisphere and chronicles human-rights abuses involving Latin American journalists. “That’s the first thing I’ll do. I’ll be handling that with everybody encouraged to participate,” he said.

Fitzgerald, 57, said he would remain in Chicago, though the publication, for the time being, would operate from its New York offices. The previous editor, Greg Mitchell, and Joe Strupp, senior editor, will not be on the new staff, but Strupp might become a contributor, Fitzgerald said.

Shawn Moynihan, who was managing editor and online editor, will be managing editor. Jennifer Saba, a senior editor with whom Fitzgerald wrote a blog, is returning as well, Fitzgerald said.

Joyner Turns Back After Planning Broadcast from Haiti

The plans were for the syndicated “Tom Joyner Morning Show” to be broadcast from the devastated Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on Friday morning, but Joyner turned back en route to the country and transmitted the show from Miami.

“We are planning to leave late tonight to go to Haiti and broadcast the show from the streets (Friday),” Joyner wrote on his blog on Thursday.

But on Friday, Joyner told listeners he had left the mainland but, “We got as far as Santo Domingo and had to turn around and go back. We weren’t able to get into Haiti in time for the show.” At about 3 a.m., he said, “We figured out we were not going to get a helicopter to fly us and the roads were too long.”

Similarly, Joyner said, Black Entertainment Television host Jeff Johnson told him that Johnson had to change his plans to enter Haiti for security reasons.

Joyner said he had planned to set up communications equipment for Haitians and Haitian-Americans to communicate with family members but did not want to do so from Santo Domingo. So, “I decided to turn the plane around and head back to Miami.”

However, he said, “We’re not through trying to do some good.”

Joyner went on to interview Haitian Americans with relatives in Haiti, and the Rev. Al Sharpton briefly traced the troubled history of Haiti-United States relations as the day’s “little-known black history fact.” Sharpton told of a man trapped in the rubble who was able to reach his sister in the United States after his cell phone suddenly came to life. The sister put his information on Facebook and someone was able to contact rescue workers.

The Washington Post reported Friday that at the small Port-au-Prince airport, “planes are clogging all available space, unloading equipment is scarce and fuel for departing aircraft is unavailable, officials said Friday.”

El Nuevo Herald video journalist Jose A. Iglesias documents life in the streets of Port-au-Prince two days after the quake struck Haiti. (Video)

Black, Latino Print Journalists Among Those in Haiti

African American and Latino journalists from the print and Internet media are among those in Haiti.  Readers looking for them should seek out these bylines and photo credits:

Associated Press: Michelle Faul, chief roaming Africa writer; resident Haiti photographer Ariana Cubillos, who is Colombian, and Ricardo Espinosa, who is Dominican, among other Latino photographers.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Reporter P?©ralte Paul, who, with photographer Elissa Eubanks, is traveling with CARE, the humanitarian organization, to Haiti. The AJC reported that the group flew to the Dominican Republic on Thursday, then stayed near the border for security reasons.

Haitian Times: Garry Pierre-Pierre, editor of the New York-based weekly, is filing from Port-au-Prince.

Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald: Photographer Carl Juste; reporters Frances Robles, Jacqueline Charles, Daniel Shoer and Luis Felipe L??pez, and video journalist Jose Iglesias.

New York Times: Reporters Marc Lacey, Simon Romero and Ginger Thompson; photographer Ozier Muhammad.

Washington Post: Reporter Theola Labbe-Debose; photographer Nikki Kahn.

Fox News Panned for Downplaying Haiti Coverage

“When critics accuse Fox of being a tool of the conservative political movement, the company’s executives counter that they deliver serious news during much of the day,” media critic James Rainey wrote Friday in the Los Angeles Times.

“But its prime-time headliners expose the values of the entire operation, and this week they’ve given abysmally short shrift to the biggest crisis in the world.

“Why dwell on one of our closest hemispheric neighbors in its hour of dire need, when – like both Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck – you can conduct prolonged, frothy promotional interviews with Fox’s newest contributor, Sarah Palin?

“Why focus on all that misery, if, like Hannity on Wednesday, you can engage conservative virago Michelle Malkin in a soaring conversation about the Obama administration’s ‘culture of corruption.’

“Bill O’Reilly played his no-Haiti card too, managing a gripping discussion Wednesday with Bo Derek about the threat to the West’s wild horses. Not to mention those whales being hunted by the Japanese in the Southern Ocean.

“Fox’s lack of focus on the subject during its most popular programs was not for a lack of resources. A moneymaking juggernaut, the cable giant had about 20 employees in Haiti by midweek, nine of them on-air personalities.

“Based on what went out over the air, though, you’d hardly know. Only one of those correspondents seemed able to get into the heart of the capital, with much of the reporting coming from staging areas and the secure airport.

“CNN, in contrast, succeeded much as it did five years ago, when it dominated coverage of the Indian Ocean tsunami.”

. . . N.Y. Post Chooses Football Story Over Haiti

“For the second day since the international crisis in Haiti, the NY Post has chosen NOT to put the earthquake aftermath on the front cover,” Gary Anthony Ramsay, president of the New York Association of Black Journalists, wrote to his colleagues in the National Association of Black Journalists on Friday.

“Instead, the NY Jets, a Healthcare reform issue under the caption ‘$ick Deal’ and the conviction of Dominic Carter, a black reporter are highlighted.

“While it is certainly up to the editors to decide what they think will grab their readers, it would be a really sad state of affairs to think those readers have already moved on from what could be the worst natural disaster in 20 years, just three days after its occurrence. The story is covered inside the newspaper but one has to wonder how committed the NY Post is to covering it, if it isn’t the lead story, as it is with just about every other outlet in the world.

“On the train, on the street and in the Starbucks ALL New Yorkers are talking about this. Maybe the editors of the Post should get out more.”

The New York Post and Fox News share a common owner, News Corp.

Root Editor Joel Dreyfuss Loses 2 Relatives in Quake

Veteran journalist Joel Dreyfuss, managing editor of theRoot.com and a native of Haiti, said this week that an aunt and a cousin in Haiti died after the earthquake.

“The news has been mixed,” Dreyfuss wrote Thursday on his Facebook page. “The only one of my sisters to live in Haiti escaped unharmed with her husband, but their house was completely destroyed. One aunt died when her house collapsed and a cousin who lived with her is missing. Many friends have lost multiple family members, so I . . . feel fortunate despite the sadness.”

He told Journal-isms on Friday that, “My cousin also died. My aunt would have been 91 today. Her daughter was 62. They found their bodies under the rubble of their house.”

• Russell Adams, Wall Street Journal: Obama to Pen Cover Story on Haiti and the Earthquake for Newsweek
  
• Henry (Chip) Carey, Columbia Journalism Review: Haiti, on Background: A Haiti expert gives context to the current tragedy
• Sam Eifling, Columbia Journalism Review: The Undercovered Country: Haiti as journalists have known it
• Paul Farhi, Washington Post: News sources scurry to get reporters to Haiti to cover earthquake’s aftermath¬†
• Alexandra Fenwick, Columbia Journalism Review: The Haitian Times Heads to Haiti
  
• Matea Gold, Los Angeles Times: CNN’s Sanjay Gupta treats injured baby in Haiti
• Marisa Guthrie, Broadcasting & Cable: Destruction in Haiti Causes Array of Communications Difficulties
• Natalie Hopkinson, theRoot.com: Pat Robertson and Haiti’s Deal With the Devil¬†
• Greg Marx, Columbia Journalism Review: Was Haiti making gains before the quake hit?
• Barack Obama, Newsweek: Why Haiti Matters
• Bill Quigley, Facing South, Institute for Southern Studies: 10 things the U.S. can and should do for Haiti
• Steve Rendall, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting: Robertson: Haitians Signed Up for Catastrophe
• Mallary Jean Tenore, Poynter Institute: Haitian Community Asks Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel for Earthquake Answers
• Danny Shea, Huffington Post: Fox News Wins Haiti Ratings, But CNN Crushing MSNBC
• Brian Stelter and Richard P?©rez-Pe?±a, New York Times: Media Struggle to Convey a Disaster

Deborah Howell Praised at Woman-Dominated Service

Editors from around the country were at the Washington National Cathedral on Friday to pay tribute to Deborah Howell, one of their own, whose family and church arranged for a woman-dominated service that concluded with three stanzas of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” otherwise known as the “Negro National Anthem.”

“She really was a champion of justice,” the Rev. Susan C. Burns, rector of Howell’s church, the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Bethesda, Md., told Journal-isms. “And a believer and supporter of civil rights. And there was a list of suggested hymns that’s in the list of the church. They saw it and said, ‘that one!’ It is powerful, uplifting and strong, and it’s about righteousness.”

As for the predominance of women, said Burns, officiant and homilist at the service, it just worked out that way when the roles at the service were assigned.

Howell, the former St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press editor, editor and Washington bureau chief of Newhouse News Service and Washington Post ombudsman, died Jan. 2 in a New Zealand accident. The service took place on what would have been her 69th birthday ‚Äî also the birthday of Martin Luther King, her stepson, Chris Coleman, noted for Journal-isms. He said that made “Lift Ev’ry Voice” even more appropriate in what was otherwise a traditional Episcopal service.

“In the tributes that poured out of the hearts of family and friends when word spread that Deborah had been killed in New Zealand, she was described as an intense friend, a pioneer, a hard-charging editor with the gift for colorful language,” he said in his tribute. “She was all these and more.”

Jacqui Banaszynski, who worked with Howell at the Pioneer Press and now holds the Knight Chair in Journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism, delivered another tribute, beginning with an anecdote about Howell editing Banaszynski’s story from her first overseas reporting trip. She went to the “horrifying famine camps” on the Ethiopian border.

“Soon we were toe-to-toe in a verbal smackdown,” Banaszynski said. “She demanded I cut my story ‚Äî a lot. I demanded she explain herself ‚Äî with precision. . . . At the time, I just wanted to set fire to her hair.”

Yet Banaszynski said she became a better writer from the experience and went on to laud Howell’s compassion, love of great writing, affirmation of imagination and belief in journalism as a public trust. The story became a Pulitizer Prize finalist.

After Howell died, Banaszynski said she received a call from a young Pioneer Press reporter assigned to write Howell’s obituary. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” the reporter said. Banaszynski said she had been “without words or breath” until then.¬† But she regained them. “‘Oh, my dear,’ I said. ‘I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m sorry you didn’t know her. I’m sorry you’ll never have the chance to work for her. I’m sorry she’ll never send you out or kick your ass or dress you down or lift you up. Yours is the greater loss.”

The 557 attendees were not all editors, but they would have been at home at a convention of the American Society of News Editors.

Just a few of the names: Jerry Ceppos, Hedrick Smith, Georgie Anne Geyer, John Cochran, Barbara Cochran, Bob Giles, Jim Amoss, Marty Kaiser, Richard Karpel, Walt Swanston, Bobbi Bowman, Donald Graham, Fred Hiatt, Susan Goldberg, Tom Rosensteil, Peter Bhatia, Steve Newhouse, Bo Jones, Charlotte Hall, Kevin Klose, Cynthia Tucker, Marcia Bullard, Dan Balz, Marcus Brauchli, Milton Coleman, Steve Holmes, Deborah Heard, Michael Getler, Kelvin Childs, Adelle Banks, Robert G. Kaiser, Robert McCartney, Roderick P. Hart, Cheryl Hampton, Jose Antonio Vargas, Andrew Alexander and Alicia Shepard.

The Deborah C. Howell Memorial Scholarship has been established at her alma mater, the University of Texas.

• Ted Diaduin, Cleveland Plain Dealer: Deborah Howell inspired journalists around the country

NPR Wins DuPont Award for Race Project

“The York Project – Race and the ’08 Vote,” a series of candid conversations on race and politics broadcast on National Public Radio during the 2008 election, has won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for excellence in broadcast journalism, Columbia University announced on Thursday.

The series of discussions in the central Pennsylvania town was moderated by NPR hosts Michele Norris of “All Things Considered” and Steve Inskeep of “Morning Edition.”

“Norris and Inskeep spent more than 15 hours with the group over three meetings in September, October and immediately following the election in November, addressing voting preferences and the role of race in public life, as well as voters’ own experiences with race. What resulted were conversations remarkable for their candor and, at times, for illustrating enduring prejudices and misconceptions,” NPR said.

“To accompany the series, NPR.org produced an interactive multimedia feature profiling the York residents who participated in the conversations.”

Norris took leave from NPR last summer to complete a book about the project. She told Journal-isms on Friday that she was finishing it up for fall publication by Pantheon. “I set out to eavesdrop on America’s hidden conversation about race and wound up learning a lot about myself and my country when I put an ear to the covert conversation within my own family,” she said.

Columbia said in its news release on the winners, “For coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign, CBS News and Katie Couric won for her skillful interviews with former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

“Other winners include an eye-opening documentary from American RadioWorks about the legacy of U.S. detainee abuse in Iraq, an HBO documentary about the push to recruit new soldiers in the U.S. Army, and KHOU-TV Houston’s extensive reporting on widespread fraud and discrimination against women in the Texas National Guard. International reporting to be honored includes a report from FRONTLINE/World about Pakistan’s youth; PBS’ POV documentary about a judge investigating human rights abuses in Chile; and a multimedia presentation about children born of rape in Rwanda, produced by MediaStorm, the first duPont Web winner.

“Gwen Ifill, the moderator and managing editor of PBS’ ‘Washington Week,’ will host the awards ceremony on Thursday, Jan. 21.”

Norris has described Ifill as “my closest sisterfriend” and godmother to her firstborn.

NPR’s Schiller Defends N.Y. Times’ Landman

Vivian Schiller, CEO of National Public Radio, defended former New York Times colleague Jonathan Landman from characterizations in a new memoir from the late Gerald M. Boyd in which “Boyd accuses the current culture editor, Jon Landman, ‘of being a bully-smug, aggressive, a master of office politics – and one of the primary enemies that celebrated his ouster.

According to Boyd, Mr. Landman was a man of no ‘decency and integrity,'” in the words of John Koblin, who wrote about the book Tuesday for the New York Observer. Boyd, the first and only black managing editor of the New York Times, resigned after the 2003 Jayson Blair scandal.

Schiller wrote in a letter sent to Jim Romenesko on the Poynter Institute Web site, “Since Jon Landman is far too classy a guy to defend himself against a posthumously published attack, I feel compelled to do it for him.

“While I cannot speak to Landman’s role in the Jayson Blair affairs since I was not working closely with the newsroom at the time, I did subsequently work along side Jon for several years. As such, I offer this revision to Boyd’s characterization: there is no man of GREATER decent and integrity than Jon Landman. I saw that demonstrated time and time again ‚Äî as a person and a professional – and it’s on display again in his response to this publication. Schiller was a Times vice president before joining NPR in 2008.

Short Takes

• A judge not only threw the book at disgraced political TV newsman Dominic Carter on Thursday, he gave him a magazine, too,” Matthew Lysiak and Katie Nelson reported Thursday in the New York Daily News. “The former New York 1 star was called ‘the classic case of a domestic abuser’ by a judge who sentenced him to 30 days in jail ‚Äî and handed him a magazine article about actor Matt Damon’s humility. “Carter, convicted of attempting to assault his wife, pulled on an orange jumpsuit in a Rockland County jail after Ramapo Town Justice Arnold Etelson’s blistering sentencing. Etelson also barred Carter from seeing his wife, Marilyn Carter, for two years unless a psychiatrist can prove interaction would be safe.”
• Terence Samuel, deputy editor at theRoot.com, has been named communications director in an expansion of the Washington office of Green for All, the Oakland, Calif.-based environmental group announced on Friday. “He was an integral part of the leadership team that developed and launched the publication, and oversaw its daily operations and long-term editorial strategy,” the release said. Managing Editor Joel Dreyfuss told Journal-isms, “I’m looking for someone who is really web-savvy” to replace Samuel.
• Janice C. Simpson, a former assistant managing editor of Time magazine, has been named contributing entertainment editor of W magazine, a Cond?© Nast publication. A spokeswoman for W said, “Jan will be contributing to entertainment coverage of the magazine.” At Time, Simpson had also been senior editor of the magazine’s Arts & Media section. She has worked at such publications as the Wall Street Journal, Essence, and Woman’s Day writing breaking news stories and feature articles.
• The Institute for Justice and Journalism is inviting journalists to apply for its 2010 fellowship program, ‚ÄúImmigration in the Heartland.‚Äù Selected Fellows participate in a weeklong conference in Oklahoma and Texas, starting April 10, focusing on immigration issues in the nation‚Äôs nonborder regions. IJJ will cover all expenses. Application deadline: Tuesday, Feb. 9. For details, guidelines and application, go to http://justnews.org/news/100105ImmigrationReporting.html
• Fifty federal administrators, corporate leaders, civil rights veterans and influential policy bloggers will gather to discuss critical issues surrounding broadband literacy, journalism in broadband and closing the Digital Divide at the inaugural MMTC Broadband and Social Justice Summit next Thursday and Friday at Howard University, the Minority Media Telecommunications Council announced. General registration is $100. Participants include FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn; filmmaker and actor Robert Townsend, Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill.; Larry Strickling, director of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration; FCC Broadband Initiative Director Blair Levin; FCC Wireless Bureau Chief Ruth Milkman and Executive Director Brent Wilkes of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). “Noted African American policy bloggers Wayne Bennett (the Field Negro), Angela Benton (BlackWeb2.0), Richard Prince (Journal-isms) and Navarrow Wright” are also on the program.
• Anjuman Ali, online editor and editorial writer at the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, has been named mobile products editor for the Washington Post, State Journal staffers have been told. “Anju has played a variety of key roles here for the last seven years. She started as our nation/world editor and rolled with every change we threw her way. She essentially blazed a trail for us online, and I am very thankful for it,” Managing Editor Teryl Franklin said in a Jan. 7 memo.
• The official public viewing for Teddy Pendergrass, the R&B heartthrob of the ’70s and ’80s who died Wednesday at age 59, will be held Friday at 10 a.m. at Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church, 2800 W. Cheltenham Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19150, Philadelphia International Records announced. Funeral services are scheduled Saturday at the church.
• A profile of Ron Thomas and Morehouse College’s Journalism and Sports Program he directs was to be featured this week during ESPN‚Äôs January college basketball coverage. “As a tribute to February’s Black History Month, the sports network will feature people at colleges and universities who do work benefiting the African American community. Thomas, who has been the program‚Äôs director since its inception in 2007, and 12 others will each be profiled in 30-second vignettes that run during commercial breaks of college basketball games on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN-U,” Morehouse said in a news release.

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