Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews Promoted to Senior VP at CBS News
N.Y. Daily News Losing Last Black Reporter
Ferguson Grand Jury Member Challenges Prosecutor’s Account
Like Military, NYPD Exhibits “Puffed Grandeur and Bombast”
5 of Color Make Forbes’ “30 Under 30” Media List
Ukraine Was Racist, but Journalists Are Thinking About Putin
New York Post Goes After “Shakedown Al”
Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews Promoted to Senior VP at CBS News
Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews, CBS vice president/news, responsible for coordinating all day-to-day news coverage, foreign and domestic, will be promoted to senior vice president, news administration, CBS News president David Rhodes announced to CBS staffers on Monday.
Ciprian-Matthews, who was born in the Dominican Republic, “has been close to our newsgathering process for many years, including as VP of News since 2011, Rhodes said in his memo, Mark Joyella reported for TVNewser. “She will be moving to the front office with me where she will manage principally our people: who is doing what, on and off air—which ultimately is our whole business. Development, recruiting, and retention will run through this office. Standards Executive Director Al Ortiz will report to Ingrid. . . .”
In another move, Steve Capus, former president of NBC News who is now an executive editor at CBS, “will move to the front row to help coordinate management of our coverage across platforms and broadcasts. Steve remains in the fishbowl when he’s producing Evening News, just as Chris Licht is VP Programming but works in the CTM newsroom when producing that broadcast. . . . .”
Rhodes said of Ciprian-Matthews when she was promoted in 2011: “Ingrid has had a variety of important roles here since joining CBS in 1993 from CNN. She has done a terrific job coordinating our foreign coverage, most recently around the tumultuous events in the Middle East and North Africa. . . .”
N.Y. Daily News Losing Last Black Reporter
The Daily News in New York, already with an alarmingly low number of African Americans and Hispanics covering the majority-minority city, is losing its last black reporter.
Jan Ransom, who came to the News in 2013 from the Philadelphia Daily News, messaged Journal-isms Monday that “I am leaving the News. My last day is Tuesday. I will begin a new job with the Boston Globe next month. I’ll be covering the police department focusing on policy and police community relations. I was the only black reporter on staff.”
However, the News has hired Keldy Ortiz, a Dominican-American reporter at the New Haven (Conn.) Register who speaks fluent Spanish. “I will be starting at the Daily News, covering communities in the five boroughs in New York City. I would be more specific, but I haven’t started yet,” Ortiz said in a message.
The News does have managers of color, including Rob Moore, an African American who is a managing editor.
In June, the newspaper laid off Michael Feeney, who covered Harlem and the South Bronx and is president of the New York Association of Black Journalists, and Enid Alvarez, a photographer who said she was the only one in her department who spoke fluent Spanish. That same month, reporter Simone Weichselbaum announced she was leaving for the start-up Marshall covering criminal justice issues, and reporter Jennifer H. Cunningham was laid off. Tanyanika Samuels, who is black and covered the Bronx, was let go as part of layoffs in May.
Ferguson Grand Jury Member Challenges Prosecutor’s Account
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Les Payne, a retired Newsday editor and columnist, tells Roseanne Coletti of WNBC-TV on Friday that the police killing of Eric Garner in New York “”amounts to an execution”(video)
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“A grand jury member’s lawsuit seeking a court order to speak out about the Michael Brown investigation accuses Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch of publicly misrepresenting the panel’s viewpoint after it chose not to indict Officer Darren Wilson,” Joel Currier and Robert Patrick reported Monday for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“In documents filed Monday in federal court in St. Louis, ‘Grand Juror Doe’ wants freedom to challenge McCulloch’s comments, ‘especially the implication that all grand jurors believed that there was no support for any charges.’
“The filing says that the heavily-redacted grand jury documents McCulloch released Nov. 24 ‘do not fully portray the proceedings before the grand jury.’ McCulloch spoke publicly that night about the grand jury’s decision against charging Wilson.
“Ferguson erupted in protests, including arsons that burned about a score of buildings within hours.
“A spokesman for McCulloch declined comment on the lawsuit Monday. . . .”
- Editorial, New York Times Race and Voting Rights in Ferguson
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Thousands of mourners. many of them Chinese-American, lined 65th Street outside Aievoli Funeral Home in Brooklyn, where funeral services were held Monday for Officer Wenjian Liu, who was shot to death along with his partner, Officer Rafael Ramos, as they sat in their squad car Dec. 20. Many Asian American journalists were present, including Shirley Lew, a board member of the New York chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association, Philip Yam, AAJA-NY president, told Journal-isms. (Credit: NBC News)(Video)
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Like Military, NYPD Exhibits “Puffed Grandeur and Bombast”
“On Sunday, a relatively large group of New York police officers, sworn to protect and serve the public, turned their back on the public’s elected executive, Mayor Bill de Blasio:,” Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote Monday for the Atlantic.
“The show of disrespect came outside the funeral home where Officer Wenjian Liu was remembered as an incarnation of the American dream: a man who had immigrated at age 12 and devoted himself to helping others in his adopted country. The gesture, among officers watching the mayor’s speech on a screen, added to tensions between the mayor and rank-and-file police even as he sought to quiet them.
“This particular protest came after Commissioner William Bratton asked them not to stage a repeat of Officer Rafael Ramos’s funeral. This request included the telling caveat, ‘I issue no mandates, and I make no threats of discipline, but I remind you that when you don the uniform of this department, you are bound by the tradition, honor and decency that go with it.’
“It’s not clear that Bratton could (or should) do much of anything to stop his officers from protesting. But whatever Bratton’s sense of honor and decency, it clearly isn’t shared by the officers working under him, and it’s unlikely that his appeal swayed anyone.
“Those who are demoralized by these protests would do well to read James Fallows’s cover story on the American month. The same cloak of puffed grandeur and bombast that surrounds our army can be detected in our police. Jim is describing a society that has taken its hands off the wheel. Give us safety now (real or imagined), goes the agreement, and we won’t ask about what comes later. Until some critical mass of Americans decides that police cannot, all at once, wield the lethal power of gods and the meager responsibilities of mortals, change is unlikely. . . .”
- David W. Chen, New York Times: In New York City, a Toll Is Newly Felt as Asians Rise in the Police Ranks
- Brian Dickerson, Detroit Free Press: In Detroit, a tale of two homicides
- Ron Howell, Daily News, New York: Pat Lynch’s NYPD is disappearing
- Huffington Post: Judge Agrees To Consider Release Of Eric Garner Grand Jury Records
- Sonora Jha, Seattle Times: Race coverage by media should be more nuanced
- David Remnick, The New Yorker: The Mayor and the Police
5 of Color Make Forbes’ “30 Under 30” Media List
Five people of color made Forbes’ “30 Under 30: Media,” which includes ” “The New Guard of Media Makers, Influencers And Game Changers.” They include:
- Lori Adelman, executive director, Feministing.
- Jamelle Bouie, 27, staff writer, Slate
- Jonathon Francis, 28, cofounder, Elite Daily
- Shani Hilton, 29, executive editor, News, Buzzfeed
- Koda Wang 26, general manager, international, Huffington Post
New York Post Goes After “Shakedown Al”
The New York Post devoted its front page Sunday to the Rev. Al Sharpton. “Want to influence a casino bid? Polish your corporate image? Not be labeled a racist? Then you need to pay Al How Sharpton gets paid to not cry ‘racism’ at corporations ,” the story by Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein said. “For more than a decade, corporations have shelled out thousands of dollars in donations and consulting fees to Sharpton’s National Action Network. What they get in return is the reverend’s supposed sway in the black community or, more often, his silence. . . “
Sharpton replied on the National Action Network website: ” What is interesting is that the exact same story was done by the exact same New York Post writer on June 15, 2008 and was widely discredited . . .”
Meanwhile, a story by Luke Mullins in the January issue of Washington magazine suggests that Al Sharpton’s MSNBC “PoliticsNation” was part of an effort to win federal approval for Comcast’s takeover of NBC. “In 2009 and 2010, Comcast gave $155,000 to an organization founded by the Reverend Al Sharpton, who ended up endorsing the merger,” Mullins wrote. “The campaign paid off. In January 2011, Washington approved the deal. . . .”
- Joe Concha, Mediaite: Al Sharpton Arguably Now the Most Powerful Person in America
Short Takes
- “Cairo-based CNN correspondent Reza Sayah has left the network, TVNewser has learned,” Chris Ariens reported Saturday for TVNewser. “Sayah, who has been with CNN since 2008, was named Cairo correspondent in November 2012. Before that, he covered South Asia, based in Islamabad. Sayah joined CNN from WXYZ-TV in Detroit. . . .”
- “He has been called ‘a giant in New York politics,’ ‘an oratorical magician who electrified liberals,’ ‘intelligent and compelling,’ and ‘Hamlet on the Hudson.’ But to Indian country, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, who passed into the spirit world on the first day of the New Year, was ‘a steadfast ally”’and ‘a truly great man,’ ” Gale Courey Toensing wrote Monday for Indian Country Today Media Network. . . ”
Lonnae O’Neal, a 19-year reporter for the Washington Post who wrote under the byline of Lonnae O’Neal Parker, debuted Monday as a twice-weekly columnist for the Post’s Style section. “I’m feeling like a newsroom therapist ,” she wrote. “Message: I care. I’m here to listen. Tell me all your little business. It might end up in a column, but at least you’ll be heard. And don’t worry. I’ll protect your identity, even if the Justice Department subpoenas me. Actually, I won’t. I’ll sing like Mahalia Jackson. . . .”
- Aaron Maybin, a senior journalism at Marquette University, will be awarded its $10,000 Ed Bradley scholarship, the Radio Television Digital News Foundation announced Monday. “The Wisconsin native is currently an associate producer at WISN-TV in Milwaukee, where he writes for newscasts, pitches story ideas and shadows reporters. During the summer of 2014, Maybin investigated inner-city gun violence in Flint, Michigan and the deep-rooted hunting culture in Minnesota for the Carnegie-Knight News21 initiative,” the foundation said.
- “Northwest Arkansas Newspapers, LLC announced Monday that it is consolidating its five northwest Arkansas daily newspapers into a single regional newspaper, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette,” the company said. “Northwest Arkansas Newspapers, LLC is jointly owned by WEHCO Media, Inc. and Stephens Media. Northwest Arkansas Newspapers owns and operates the Benton County Daily Record, Rogers Morning News, Springdale Morning News and Northwest Arkansas Times and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Northwest Edition. With the consolidation, the individual daily newspaper nameplates and content will continue to be published as the ‘B’ section of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. . . .”
- Vulture.com editor Carl Swanson apologized Monday for a piece he wrote on Detroit artists Friday that featured only whites. “As many commenters have pointed out, this story, which focuses on artists who have chosen to make Detroit their home, missed an opportunity to highlight artists of color. The list does not fully reflect the diversity of voices and experiences in the city, for which we apologize.”
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