Site icon journal-isms.com

Legendary Journalist Chuck Stone Dies at 89

“A Firebrand With Unassailable Journalistic Credentials”

“A Firebrand With Unassailable Journalistic Credentials”

Charles Sumner (Chuck) Stone, newspaper editor, professor, columnist, former Tuskegee Airman and founding president of the National Association of Black Journalists — a legend to many — died Sunday at 89, according to news reports.

“Stone died in his sleep early this morning at an assisted-living home in Farmington, N.C., relatives said,” Naveed Ashan reported for the Philadelphia Daily News.

As news spread Sunday morning among NABJ members, many were quick to speak of Stone’s influence on them.

Herbert Lowe, who teaches at Marquette University and a former NABJ president, wrote to colleagues, “Growing up in Camden, N.J., across the river from the home of the Philadelphia Daily News, I remember reading Chuck Stone’s many columns as a high school student and believe they had an impact on my wanting to become a journalist. It wasn’t until years later that I had my first real conversation with him, when I was running the second time for president. It was an honor and thrill — and even moreso to see him elected into the NABJ Hall of Fame and to follow his footsteps into academia. He is one of the most important journalists and contributors of American society during the past 100 years.”

Lowe had commissioned a series of profiles of former NABJ presidents. Paul Brock, NABJ’s first executive director, wrote then of Stone:

Long before becoming NABJ’s first president, Chuck Stone was a journalistic legend. He had edited three influential black newspapers — the New York Age, the Washington Afro-American and the Chicago Defender. He had written two nonfiction books, ‘Tell It Like It Is’ and ‘Black Political Power in America,’ and a novel, ‘King Strut.’ He had been Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell’s chief administrative assistant and speechwriter. [In “King of the Cats,” a 1993 biography of Powell, author Wil Haygood called Stone “mercurial.”]

“As the now-defunct Washington Star put it in 1969, Stone was a ‘tough-minded militant’ who ‘probably poured forth more angry rhetoric, ruffled more political moderates and simultaneously pacified and frightened more whites than most of (Washington’s) other black leaders.’ He mellowed not one bit after becoming an outspoken columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News in 1971.

“Enough of a firebrand to have worked with Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, yet with unassailable journalistic credentials, the sharp-tongued but affable Stone was superbly suited to be the first leader of an organization seeking to not only change the way the media would tell black America’s story, but who was going to tell it. . . .”

As a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, “Stone became a trusted middleman between Philadelphia police and murder suspects, more than 75 of whom ‘surrendered’ to Stone rather than to the cops,” Brock recalled.

The suspects were black and Hispanic, Wayne Dawkins noted in “Black Journalists: The NABJ Story.” “They feared for their safety once in police custody. They would be photographed with Stone to confirm their condition and Stone would call the police, who would handcuff the suspect and transport the person to jail.”

Stone went on to become a popular member of the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication faculty, its Walter Spearman Professor from 1991 to 2005.

“Chuck’s ethics and law seminar at Carolina was one of the most popular classes on the entire campus,” David Bulla wrote in nominating Stone for the Society of Professional Journalists’ Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.

“His discussion of censorship captivated young people as few journalism topics can. He also inculcated what he called the four fundamentals of journalism — F-E-A-T (fairness, even-handedness, accuracy and thoroughness) — with the conviction of a preacher. Few mass communication professors in the country have had a more profound influence on a generation of journalists than Professor Stone. It’s a shame that he did not have more years in academia and did not reach even more students.”

SPJ noted then that Stone “received the Freedom Forum Free Spirit Award and UNC’s Thomas Jefferson Award. Additionally, he taught at Columbia College in Chicago and the University of Delaware. Further contributing to the African American political experience, Professor Stone has authored four books. Before launching his career in academia, Stone worked for the New York Age, the Chicago Defender, Washington Afro-American and the Philadelphia Daily News. On the broadcast circuit, Stone hosted the PBS show ‘Black Perspectives on the News’ and served as a television news analyst in Montreal, Quebec, and Durham, N.C. . . .”

To journalists of color, Stone was best known as a founder and the first president of NABJ.

“Chuck was by far more than a dominant influence. He was the reason the group was formed, USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham, another founder, told Dawkins. “NABJ was Chuck’s vision. He made it happen. He brought us together. He had a kind of mystical influence on us. There were a lot of big-shot black journalists, but when Chuck would walk into the room, it was the Adam Clayton Powell connection. Even then, people were turning themselves into Chuck.”

Stone told Dawkins for his book, “Journalism chose me.

“It was a fortitous circumstances. Like the Broadway play ‘A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to the Forum,’ a funny thing happened to me on the way to the train station in 1958.

“I had returned from India and Egypt where I was working for CARE and I was in New York getting ready to work for the Foreign Policy Association as an associate director. I was living with my sister.

” ‘I was taking our mother to the train station on 125th Street and we ran into this old friend of mine. Al Duckett. This was very fortuitious. We stopped and talked. He had been the editor of the Hartford Chronicle (the black newspaper in Stone’s hometown.)

“He asked me what I was going to do. I told him I was going to work for the Foreign Policy Association. He said ‘don’t go work for those white people. Come work for me.’ He was editor of the New York Age at the time.

“I said, ‘I can’t write. He said ‘yes you can. I used to read your letters to the editor to The Hartford Courant and Hartford Times. You’re a terrific writer. I can train you to become a reporter. Come work for me and I’ll let you cover Adam Clayton Powell exclusively.’

“He knew I liked politics. I said ‘let me think about it.’

“My mother was horrified. She didn’t want me to work for a black, or segregated newspaper. She always wanted to be mainstream. Second, she didn’t have high regard for journalists.

“So when we got to the train station she said ‘promise me you won’t do that.’ I said ‘I promise.’

“Then I went back and got hired. That was August 1958.

“By October, I was writing a column. In February, Duckett resigns after a dispute with the publisher. The publisher jumped me over nine people and made me the editor.

“It was very fast, too fast. I didn’t stay a reporter long enough to get the training and discipline to be a good reporter.

“That is not a good career path.”

Dawkins continued, “Stone later became editor of other black-owned newspapers, The Afro-American in Washington, D.C., then The Chicago Defender.

“At The Defender, Stone was fired for ‘authorizing stories that made Mayor (Richard) Daley look bad.’ . . . .”

For all of the plaudits, Stone was not a household name among all generations of journalists. Stone spoke before the 2006 HBCU National Newspaper Conference and Job Fair in Greensboro, N.C., a gathering of journalism students at historically black colleges and universities.

Eddie R. Cole Jr. wrote then for the Black College Wire, “Nine of 10 HBCU student journalists interviewed before Stone’s keynote address at the conference awards banquet did not know of him or his accomplishments.”

Lowe told colleagues, “I hope that many more Americans who never knew about Chuck will get to know more about his life and legacy in the days to come.” He preceded that with, “what a life and legacy it was.”

Contrarian Columnist Disinvited Again

April 4, 2014

Hispanic Conference Says “Never Mind” to Navarrette

Roy Johnson Rebounds to Lead Sports at Ala. Media Group

Adams Simmons of Plain Dealer Named to Company Post

Star-Ledger Cuts 167 Jobs; 40 in Newsroom

AP Team Uncovers Secret U.S. Government Program in Cuba

Won’t Utter Shooter’s Name, but Will Say It Sounds Latino

Women-to-Men Ratio Higher for Journalists of Color

12 Schools Awarded Grants to Collaborate With Communities

Short Takes

Hispanic Conference Says “Never Mind” to Navarrette

It’s always great to be invited,” Ruben Navarrette Jr. wrote Wednesday in his column for the Washington Post Writers Group. “But with Latinos, things don’t get interesting until you’re ‘uninvited,’ ” wrote the Latino columnist most widely syndicated in mainstream media. “It has happened to me a few times.

“Several years ago, I agreed to speak at the annual conference of the California Association for Bilingual Education. The invitation was extended because the organizers approved of my support for immigration reform. Then someone ‘Googled’ me and found out that, over the years, I had also been critical of bilingual education. The invitation was quickly withdrawn.

“Soon thereafter, I was invited to accept an award from Latino legislators in California. The day before the event, a lawmaker called and took it upon herself to uninvite me. Another recipient — former United Farm Workers Vice President Dolores Huerta — was furious at me for revealing publicly the union’s ugly history of turning over illegal immigrants to immigration officials for deportation. I went anyway, accepted the award, and wound up in a shouting match with Huerta.

“Now, it has happened again. I had been asked by Manny Ruiz, the CEO of the Miami-based social media conference Hispanicize, to moderate a panel that was centered on a study about the political leanings of Latino journalists. The panel included a representative of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, with which Ruiz has been trying to forge a partnership. Last year, I had criticized the NAHJ for caving in to a demand from California Assembly Speaker John Perez that the group boot a political rival from a panel at its own annual conference.

“About two weeks before the Hispanicize event, I got an email from Ruiz saying that he should have consulted with the other panelists, and that — after speaking with them — ‘a decision (had) been made’ and that he had to ‘rescind the invitation.’ “

Navarrette also wrote, “What holds Latinos back isn’t just discrimination, bad schools, inadequate access to capital, nativist backlash and closed doors from Wall Street to Hollywood.

“Some impediments are internal. Many Latinos are — because of how they’ve been treated — plagued by insecurities, prone to infighting, envious toward one another, eager to tear each other down and insistent that everyone stick to the established narrative. They will often berate, scold or attack those who offer a different point of view.

Navarrette concluded, “Pay attention, Latinos. Standing on principle isn’t the way to make friends. But it’s essential if we’re going to stop being our own worst enemies.”

Ruiz, a former Miami Herald reporter who headed Hispanicize 2014, did not respond to requests for comment. Ruiz calls the fifth annual event, which NBC News says drew 1,500 bloggers, journalists, marketing professionals and entertainment figures, the “Hispanicized” version of South by Southwest.

Navarrette, 46, has taken pride in taking contrarian positions delivered with swagger. He was laid off in 2010 from his job as editorial writer and columnist at the San Diego Union-Tribune, but continued the syndicated column he began for the writers group in 2002 and freelances elsewhere.

[NAHJ President Hugo Balta wrote Journal-isms Saturday that he disagreed with Navarrette’s characterization of the study of Latino journalists. “I am the NAHJ representative who Navarrette mentions in his column. As a member of the coalition (NAHJ, Hispanicize, FIU, CSUF) which produced the study — I can assure you Navarrette is mistaken when he writes, ‘…a study about the political leanings of Latino journalists.’ ‘The focus of the study and the findings centered around their impressions of newsrooms, the increasing importance of multiple platforms and Spanish language proficiency. NAHJ supports Manny Ruiz, Hispanicize and the coalition that worked together in providing this invaluable information to the public. We look forward to collaborating in future projects.”]

Roy Johnson Rebounds to Lead Sports at Ala. Media Group

Roy S. Johnson, a veteran journalist who has been an assistant managing editor of Sports Illustrated and editor-in-chief of Men’s Fitness, has been named director of sports for Alabama Media Group, overseeing “the 24/7 sports content of Al.com, and sports in The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times, Mobile’s Press-Register, The Mississippi Press and GulfLive.com,” Al.com announced on Thursday.

“I am overwhelmed by the love I’m feelin’ from my FB fam over the news of my new, exciting gig,” Johnson wrote on Facebook Friday. “Many of you did not know that I was laid off in January by the North American Media Group, where I was editor of History Channel mag/digital. I didn’t post it, nor tweet it. I simply prayed, enlisting a few of my prayer gladiators to ask God to move me where He needed me to be. I am humbled and grateful for this enormous blessing. He IS good!”

The announcement continued, “The latter half of Johnson’s 30-plus year career includes deep, innovative and entrepreneurial involvement in digital journalism. In many of the senior roles, he was involved in the publications’ online ventures as well as print, particularly with mensfitness.com, where he led the team that developed the outlet’s mobile app. Johnson founded the fitness and nutrition venture and website Fit!Live!Win! and has for several years run his own sports blog, Ballers, Gamers and Scoundrels. . . .”

Johnson’s appointment was announced by Michelle Holmes, vice president of content. “Roy knows sports, he knows journalism, he knows content, he holds great respect for the value of print publications, and he knows what digital is about and has embraced it as the journalist’s most effective means of engaging readers, especially sports fans. That’s an amazing mix. We are thrilled to have Roy joining us,” Holmes said in the announcement.

“Holmes said she was especially impressed that ‘throughout his career, even in very senior and demanding roles, Roy has continued writing and being published. We look forward to tapping that drive and energy. . . .”

In 2012, Advance Publications announced that the Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times and the Press-Register in Mobile would drop daily circulation and distribute printed editions three days a week. The publications would put new emphasis on the al.com site, Advance said.

Adams Simmons of Plain Dealer Named to Company Post

Debra Adams Simmons, editor of The Plain Dealer, has been named vice president of news development for Advance Local, which oversees local newspapers and websites across the country,” Tom Feran reported Friday for the Cleveland newspaper.

“Advance Local is part of Advance Publications, which owns The Plain Dealer and about 30 other newspapers and websites nationwide.”

“Simmons, who became editor in 2010 after three years as managing editor, announced the appointment in a meeting with staff Friday morning.

“She said that her new job — a new position in the company — would focus on producing the best possible journalism and recruiting the top journalists in the country. . . .”

The story also said, “Simmons will start on April 21 and will be based out of Advance Local’s Cleveland and New York offices.

Virginia Wang, general manager of The Plain Dealer Publishing Co., said the company will conduct a national search for a new editor.

“Managing Editor Thom Fladung will continue to be in charge of day-to-day operations.

” ‘I feel like I’m leaving you in good hands,’ Simmons told her staff. ‘When there is a big story to be told in Cleveland, this community knows that no one can tell it like we can.’

“She said her new post would essentially extend her efforts to ensure that we are doing great journalism — particularly watchdog and public service journalism. . . .”

Star-Ledger Cuts 167 Jobs; 40 in Newsroom

It’s not been the best week for jobs in journalism,” Aparna Alluri reported Thursday for Columbia Journalism Review. “Entertainment Weekly laid off seven staffers. Digital First Media shuttered its ambitious Thunderdome project, and at least one local paper in that chain is bracing for more cuts. And today, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Star-Ledger, based in Newark, NJ, reported that the paper is cutting 167 jobs — 40 of which belong to reporters, editors, and photographers in the newsroom.

“News of the cuts was not entirely unexpected. It comes a week after Advance, The Star-Ledger’s owner, announced it was forming a new company, NJ Advance Media, that will provide sales and marketing services to the paper and its affiliated website NJ.com by June, and editorial content by the fall.

“The changes follow a model Advance has established in other markets, including New Orleans and Cleveland, though in New Jersey, The Star-Ledger and other daily papers owned by Advance will continue to publish seven days a week.

“According to the Ledger’s own reporting, the paper currently has 750 employees, including 156 in the newsroom. Thirty-four jobs, including 18 full-time newsroom jobs, were eliminated in a round of layoffs last year. Newsgathering staff at the paper was at a high of 350 before buyouts, attrition, and layoffs began about five years ago. . . .”

Although it could not be determined how many journalists of color would be affected by the latest Star-Ledger layoffs, business reporter Stacy Jones, 27, confirmed to Journal-isms that she was one of them. Jones, a black journalist, said by telephone that by coincidence she had been offered a job at another newspaper this week but turned it down.

 “I’ve been a business reporter, and I’ve been looking at companies and which ones are succeeding,” she said. “I don’t want to work for another newspaper.” However, she amended that to say, “for the right newspaper, I’ll make an exception.”
Jones received a master’s degree in online journalism in 2010 from the University of Maryland, College Park, and joined the Star-Ledger in 2011.

Won’t Utter Shooter’s Name, but Will Say It Sounds Latino

“Last night on her Fox News program, star anchor Megyn Kelly kicked things off with a lesson in journalism ethics:” Erik Wemple reported Thursday for the Washington Post.

“Breaking tonight. Fort Hood, Texas on lockdown. A suspected shooter is reported dead. This is ‘The Kelly File’ and I’m Megyn Kelly. We’re expecting the first news conference from Fort Hood to begin any moment, Fox News confirming four people are dead, including the shooter. Fourteen people are wounded. Authorities are identifying the shooter. If you are interested, you can get his name on other shows like the one that preceded this one and online, but we have decided not to name these mass killers as a policy here on ‘The Kelly File.’ Too often it is infamy they seek and we decline to help.

“Some points here:

” . . . If you don’t publish the name, what other details do you withhold? Kelly and her producers apparently considered newsworthy the ‘nationality’ of the shooter: ‘The nationality of the shooter appears — it sounds Hispanic, Latino, but you can look up his name online if you care to know more.’ ‘Hispanic’ and ‘Latino,’ of course, are not nationalities, but Kelly was on live television doing breaking news. The point is that if you provide certain details about the shooter’s background and not others — and you can’t even use the person’s name — how to present a scannable news story? . . .”

Women-to-Men Ratio Higher for Journalists of Color

The Status of Women in the U.S. Media 2014” [PDF] from the Women’s Media Center reported Thursday that the overall tally of female staffers continued to hover at 36 percent and that “men were quoted 3.4 times more often than women, though the rate was not as high when women wrote the story.”

It also showed that, based on data from the American Society of News Editors, women of color represented a higher proportion of those of the same race or ethnicity than was true for white women.

“In the 2013 report:

12 Schools Awarded Grants to Collaborate With Communities

“A dozen U.S. universities each won a $35,000 micro-grant to seed collaborative news experiments in living labs — their communities,” the Online News Association announced on Friday.

Among them:

Among the honorable mentions were Howard University, “The News Oasis,” Ingrid Sturgis, assistant professor/new media; and USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, “Augmenting City Hall,” Robert Hernandez, assistant professor of professional practice.

“The competitive Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education was created to encourage universities to experiment with new ways of providing news and information,” the announcement said.

It quoted Irving Washington, ONA operations director, who administered the selection process. “We zeroed in on ideas and teams that we hope inspire innovation, collaboration and real-world impact in academia and media. The potential for true community engagement in the winning projects was every bit as important as the tools and technology used to achieve it.”

Short Takes

Follow Richard Prince on Twitter @princeeditor

Facebook users: “Like” “Richard Prince’s Journal-isms” on Facebook.

Exit mobile version