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Dean Baquet Named Top Editor at N.Y. Times

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Veteran Journalist Is First African American in Role

Calling “BS” on Excuses for Failing on Newsroom Diversity

Cooper’s Interview With Donald Sterling Boosts CNN Ratings

NBCNews.com Plans Site Targeting Asian Pacific Islanders

Williams Drops Request for Waiver to Buy Pa. Station

Cal State Long Beach Regains Accreditation After 17 Years

Short Takes

Veteran Journalist Is First African American in Role

Dean Baquet, managing editor of the New York Times and former top editor at the Los Angeles Times, was named executive editor on Wednesday after Jill Abramson stepped down from the New York newspaper’s top editorial job.

“Baquet, 57, becomes the first African American in the job.

“It is an honor to be asked to lead the only newsroom in the country that is actually better than it was a generation ago,” he said in a New York Times account of the development, “one that approaches the world with wonder and ambition every day.”

Baquet told the newsroom, “I will listen hard, I will be hands on, I will be engaged. I’ll walk the room. That’s the only way I know how to edit.”

The story of Baquet’s ascension, however, competed with the story of Abramson’s ouster, even in the Times. David Carr and Ravi Somaiya reported for the Times, “Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of the paper and the chairman of The New York Times Company, told a stunned newsroom that had been quickly assembled that he had made the decision because of ‘an issue with management in the newsroom.’

“Ms. Abramson, 60, had been in the job only since September 2011. But people in the company briefed on the situation described serious tension in her relationship with Mr. Sulzberger, who was concerned about complaints from employees that she was polarizing and mercurial. She had also had clashes with Mr. Baquet.

“In recent weeks, these people said, Mr. Baquet had become angered over a decision by Ms. Abramson to make a job offer to a senior editor from The Guardian, Janine Gibson, and install her alongside him in a co-managing editor position without consulting him. It escalated the conflict between them and rose to the attention of Mr. Sulzberger.

“Ms. Abramson had recently engaged a consultant to help her with her management style. Mr. Sulzberger nevertheless made the decision earlier this month to dismiss her, and last Thursday he informed Mr. Baquet of his promotion, according to the people briefed on the situation, who declined to speak for attribution because of the sensitivity of the matter.

“Ms. Abramson did not return messages seeking comment. As part of a settlement agreement between her and the paper, neither side would go into detail about her firing. . . .”

Sulzberger “informed senior editors of the change in a gathering in a conference room Wednesday afternoon, and shortly afterward addressed hundreds of staff members gathered on the newsroom floor and the staircases surrounding it,” Somaiya reported in an earlier version of the Times story. “He began by praising Mr. Baquet, but declined to elaborate on the question he said was ‘on all of your minds’ — the reason for the sudden switch. He said it was not about the journalism, the direction of the newsroom or the relationship between the newsroom and business sides of the paper.

” ‘I chose to appoint a new leader for our newsroom because I believe that new leadership will improve some aspects of the management of the newsroom,’ he said. ‘You will understand that there is nothing more that I want to say about this. We had an issue with management in the newsroom. And that’s what’s at the heart of this issue.’

In a New Yorker blog, Ken Auletta speculated that Abramson’s ouster could be traced to clashes with Mark Thompson, the New York Times Co. president and CEO, and to Abramson’s unhappiness with her compensation.

Regardless of the reasons, Baquet’s ascension was big news for black journalists, whose ranks have been buffeted by newspaper staff contractions and indifference to diversity concerns.

“He has reached a height many can only dream about,” messaged Don Hudson, the executive editor of the Decatur (Ala.) Daily who tracks the number of black top editors for the National Association of Black Journalists. “He’s an inspiration to all of us editor types out here in the trenches. I know I’m proud of him.”

Hudson added, “It’s a good day. God is good. First a president and now the top journalist.”

Errin Whack, vice president/print of the National Association of Black Journalists, tweeted, “@baquetnyt’s appointment as editor of @nytimes is huge. Rare air even rarer for talented journalists of color.”

However, she followed up with, “Baquet’s appointment is cause to celebrate but also to ask, where is the pipeline? Where will next Baquet come from? Too few places to look.”

Somaiya’s initial story Wednesday also noted that  “Ms. Abramson, 60, a former investigative correspondent and Washington editor who was appointed to lead the newsroom in 2011, was the first woman to serve in the top job.

” ‘I’ve loved my run at The Times,’ she said in a statement. ‘I got to work with the best journalists in the world doing so much stand-up journalism,’ she said, noting her appointment of many senior female editors as one of her achievements.”

Sulzberger wrote this note to the staff:

“I am writing to announce a leadership change in the newsroom. Effective today, Dean Baquet will become our new executive editor, succeeding Jill Abramson.

“This appointment comes at a time when the newsroom is about to embark on a significant effort to transition more fully to a digital-first reality and where, across the organization, we are all learning to adapt to the rapid pace of change in our business.

“We owe Jill an enormous debt of gratitude for positioning the newsroom to succeed on both of these critical counts and of course, for preserving and extending the level of our journalistic excellence and innovation. She’s laid a great foundation on which I fully expect Dean and his colleagues will build.

“As those of you who know Dean will understand, he is uniquely suited to this role. He is a proven manager, both here at The Times and elsewhere. He is also a consummate journalist whose reputation as a fierce advocate for his reporters and editors is well-deserved. And importantly, he is an enthusiastic supporter of our push toward further creativity in how we approach the digital expression of our journalism.

“I know you will join me, Mark and the rest of the senior leadership team in wishing Jill the best and congratulating Dean on his appointment.

“Arthur”

Questions on social media immediately centered on Abramson’s surprise departure. Her own statement was circumspect about the reasons: “I’ve loved my run at The Times,” she said. “I got to work with the best journalists in the world doing so much stand-up journalism. Holding powerful institutions accountable is the mission of The Times and the hallmark of my time as executive editor, whether stories about China, government secrecy, or powerful figures and corporations.”

A New York magazine article last August spoke of tension between Abramson’s role and Thompson’s.

“The role of ‘visionary’ at the paper, traditionally held by the news chief, was now being ceded to Thompson,” Joe Hagan wrote. “And in recent months, say several Times sources, Abramson has chafed at some of Thompson’s moves as he redirects company resources to projects of ambiguous design, including an aggressive video unit run by a former AOL/Huffington Post executive who sits among news editors but reports to the corporate side of the Times. . . .”

But in a blog late Wednesday headlined, “Why Jill Abramson Was Fired,” Auletta added, “there’s a history behind it. Several weeks ago, I’m told, Abramson discovered that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, as managing editor were considerably less than the pay and pension benefits of Bill Keller, the male editor whom she replaced in both jobs.

” ‘She confronted the top brass,’ one close associate said, and this may have fed into the management’s narrative that she was ‘pushy,’ a characterization that, for many, has an inescapably gendered aspect. . . .”

The National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association applauded both Baquet and Abramson, saying, “At NLGJA’s urging, Abramson had The Times adopt new style guidance on gender identity amid coverage of the Chelsea Manning case. Abramson announced the new policy at NLGJA’s convention last year. She has been a friend to our organization and the LGBT community, and we wish her well.”

Baquet was ousted as editor of the Los Angeles Times in 2006 after he publicly opposed staff cuts at the paper. He had been national editor at the New York Times and returned as chief of the Washington bureau. In Los Angeles, staff members applauded his commitment to them, but journalists of color disagreed over whether Baquet had made diversity a priority. 

Baquet’s rise comes poignantly as PBS is airing “A Fragile Trust,” a documentary recapping the story of plagiarist Jayson Blair, the Times reporter whose fabrications prompted a racially tinged scandal that cost Executive Editor Howell Raines and the late Gerald Boyd, the Times’ first African American managing editor, their jobs in 2003.

“The burden of being in that role,” Bill Keller, then the Times’ executive editor, acknowledged to Journal-isms after a memorial service for Boyd in 2006, “is something a few of us are beginning to comprehend.”

Boyd said when he was named managing editor, “I’m not about to dwell on the firstness of all of this, but if somewhere a kid of color who reads about this can smile tomorrow or dream a little bigger dream, then that makes me very happy.”

Calling “B.S.” on Excuses for Failing on Newsroom Diversity

“In less than three years, the way Matt DeRienzo has improved both the diversity and the journalism of Digital First Media’s Connecticut newsrooms is an outstanding story that calls bullshit on all the excuses too many newsrooms give for how difficult it is to improve newsroom diversity,” according to Steve Buttry, who until July 1 is digital transformation editor of Digital First Media.

“Matt took over as Connecticut editor in the summer (as I recall) of 2011. I visited the Connecticut newsrooms in June of 2011, shortly before that, and I think Angi Carter, a reporter, was the only journalist of color that I saw in any of the three newsrooms in Connecticut, other than the New Haven librarian, Angel Diggs,” Buttry said via email.

Digital First Media owns more than 800 multiplatform products across 18 states. In Connecticut, they include the New Haven Register, Middletown Press, the Register Citizen of Torrington and non-daily publications including Connecticut Magazine, the Litchfield County Times and West Hartford News.

Asked about Buttry’s recollection, DeRienzo messaged, “We had three minority journalists when I took over two and a half years ago — a reporter, a librarian and a copy editor. [Buttry] is correct that Angi, as a reporter at the time, was the only person on our staff visible to the community and not in a ‘behind the scenes’ role. Out of a total staff in Connecticut of about 120.

“Today, out of a staff of about 110, our minority newsroom staff includes:

“This includes 10 black employees, 2 bilingual Latino employees, 2 Asian employees, one of whom is bilingual, and 1 transgender employee. The latter is not a person of color, but I include her on this list because of how valuable her presence is as we really try to learn how to cover that community better, especially after the media’s fumbling of the Chelsea Manning story and the Grantland debacle.

“Oh, one other point. While we have gone from 3 minority journalists to 15 in the past two and a half years, we’ve actually recruited more than that! We had another four reporters who came to work for us, stayed for a while, and then left for various reasons — to work in TV, to go to grad school, to go to a pure digital news outlet and for personal reasons.

“As we talk about the challenge of diversifying newsrooms and maintaining that, I think that’s an important point — it’s a constant process, because others are going to hire away some of your people, and you’re going to have turnover for other reasons, too.”

Asked whether he had advice for others leading newsrooms, DeRienzo said:

“We started by deciding it would be one of our top priorities.

“It was really slow going and frustrating at first. We couldn’t find candidates. We had tried advertising with the right organizations, reaching out to some colleges. I think what we learned after it started becoming a lot easier is that our networks were limited by our lack of diversity. A more diverse newsroom (and importantly, leadership team) helps expand those networks, which makes hiring a diverse newsroom easier. But there’s a chicken and egg problem at first.

“To overcome that, we held positions open longer, sometimes so long to get more minority applicants that it caused grumbling because we were short on positions that really needed to be filled.

“We recruited from nontraditional sources — for example, hiring local people who hadn’t gone to journalism school but had dabbled in alternative or community media.

“When the president of the Connecticut chapter of the NAACP was meeting with us about a story and complained about the continued lack of diversity in our organization, we asked for his help in spreading the word about openings.

“We moved money around and went out and recruited some top-notch journalists from other places, including Brian Charles, who we hired away from a sister paper in California shortly after he was named our company’s ‘Journalist of the Year’ for mid-sized daily newspapers. We created a new position for him — covering the issue of poverty full-time.

“We participated in Chips Quinn [the Freedom Forum’s Chips Quinn Scholars program], not just from an intern placement perspective, but sending four of our early-career minority journalists there over two years to their development program. That paid off not only with professional development and retention, but was a recruiting tool. One of our editors who went through the Chips Quinn program recruited a member of his class to come to Connecticut and join our reporting staff.”

Cooper’s Interview With Donald Sterling Boosts CNN Ratings

“Anderson Cooper‘s exclusive interview with Clippers owner Donald Sterling provided a ratings boost for CNN Monday night, according to numbers from Nielsen,” Ryan Faughnder reported for the Los Angeles Times.

” ‘AC 360’ averaged 720,000 total viewers Monday, up 42% from the 508,000 average for the show over the last four weeks. The surge was even bigger among 25- to 54-year- olds, the key age demographic for cable news. Cooper drew 294,000 viewers in the key demo, which is 73% higher than the prior four-week average of 170,000.

“The interview was a big get for the cable news network, which has struggled in the ratings at times when there’s not a big breaking story to cover, such as the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Coverage of the airliner mystery earlier this year significantly increased CNN’s numbers. . . .”

NBCNews.com Plans Site Targeting Asian Pacific Islanders

NBCNews.com, which earlier this year folded NBCLatino.com into its website, is preparing to launch an Asian Pacific Islander “vertical,” and announced Wednesday that Amna Nawaz will take on a new role leading the coverage.

A vertical is defined by businessdictionary.com as a “specialized website that serves as an entry point to a specific market or industry niche, subject area, or interest.”

In a note to staffers from Greg Gittrich, executive editor of NBCNews.com and vice president of news and product for NBC News Digital, and Hillary Frey, editorial director of NBCNews.com, the executives said:

“We’re preparing to launch a new Asian Pacific Islander vertical. We’re happy to announce that the coverage will be led by Amna Nawaz, who most recently served as the network’s Bureau Chief/Correspondent in Islamabad, reporting for all NBC News platforms from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the region.

“In her new role, based in New York, Amna will assign and edit coverage of news and issues that matter to Asian Pacific Americans. She will help us tell unique stories from both here in the United States and abroad, often contributing reporting herself to the vertical and all our platforms. The coverage will address issues of culture, identity, and experience. We also will delve into political and economic issues. In all cases, we will use NBC News’ original reporting resources across the region, the CNBC network in Asia, and our partnerships with Global Post, Al Jazeera English, and others.

“Under Amna’s direction, we plan to grow the Asian Pacific Islander vertical into a robust destination, featuring great storytelling, unique videos, breaking news, original photography and personal essays.

“Amna is an Emmy award-winning journalist who has been with NBC for nearly a decade, producing and reporting for the network shows, MSNBC, the Investigative Unit in DC, and NBCNews.com. In 2013 she became the first foreign journalist to gain access to North Waziristan, the global hub of Al Qaida and Taliban activity. . . .”

Williams Drops Request for Waiver to Buy Pa. Station

Conservative commentator and entrepreneur Armstrong Williams dropped his request for permission to buy WLYH-TV in Lancaster, Pa., on Monday in the first indication that the Federal Communications Commission’s vote in March prohibiting “joint service agreements” could adversely affect minority ownership.

Advocates of minority broadcast ownership and jobs for journalists of color each took comfort from the vote “to bar companies from controlling two or more TV stations in the same local market by using a single advertising sales staff,” in the words of Gautham Nagesh, writing then for the Wall Street Journal.

Williams’ company, Howard Stirk Holdings, had planned to acquire the station from Nexstar as part of a multistation deal with Sinclair that is conditioned on obtaining an FCC waiver for the deal.

The FCC proposal passed after the addition of language designed to encourage waivers for joint sales agreements that encourage diversity in media ownership. “Three of the four full-power TV stations in the U.S. owned by African-Americans are party to such agreements, and would be likely to secure waivers. . . ,” Nagesh wrote. Williams told Journal-isms then that he was encouraged by the language.

In a letter to the FCC, lawyer Colby M. May said Williams would still like waivers to purchase WMMP-TV in Charleston, S.C., and WABM-TV in Birmingham, Ala. Sinclair Broadcasting is acquiring Allbritton stations in those markets and would presumably operate them under joint service agreements.

Cal State, Long Beach Regains Accreditation After 17 Years

The journalism program at California State University, Long Beach has regained accreditation after a 17-year hiatus, Jason Ruiz reported Monday for the Long Beach Post.

“The main concerns the team had were with the student and staff demographics,” Ruiz wrote, referring to the American Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications.

“Diversity is one of the standards that the association judges programs by and CSULB’s journalism department’s diversity both student-wise (38% Hispanic, 12% Asian-American, 6% African-American, 3% international) and faculty-wise (four full-time international professors) came into question.

“However, students’ praise for the school’s emphasis on a diverse curriculum eventually won over the committee as they weighed their experiences heavily during the review process. The students were so involved that site team president Christopher Callahan, founding dean of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, told [Chris] Burnett [chairman of the department since 2011], he’d never seen a student body want the accreditation as badly as the ones at Long Beach. . . .”

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