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Journal-isms May 14

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Calling “B.S.” on Excuses for Not Improving 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, 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 multi-platform 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.

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. . . .”

Armstrong Williams Drops Request for Waiver to Buy Pa. Station

Conservative commentator 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 3-2 vote in March prohibiting “joint service agreements” would 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 condition on obtaining an FCC waiver for the deal.

The proposal passed after the addition of language designed to encourage waivers for joint sales agreements that encourage diversity in media ownership, Nagesh wrote. “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. . . .” 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, Charleston, S.C., and WABM-TV in Birmingham, Ala. Sinclair Broadcasting is acquiring Allbritton stations in those markets and 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 from the American Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, 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. “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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