Maynard Institute archives

Journal-isms May 14

by richard0511

Columnists, Mourners, Pay Tribute to Lena Horne

Hispanics, Others in "Distinct Worlds" on Immigration

Detroit Web Editor Named Journalism Fellow at Michigan

Watch How States Plan to Help Low-Performing Schools

Limited Success for Tucson Citizen Workers in New Lives

Media Debate How to Report Elena Kagan Rumors

Dean Replies to Remarks About "Triflin’" J-Students

Short Takes

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4wpuHFrC6c]

Columnists, Mourners, Pay Tribute to Lena Horne

CBS News put together a photo gallery and nypost.com compiled a video as web sites covered the funeral in New York Friday of entertainer Lena Horne, who died Sunday at age 92.

In Horne’s memory, PBS is re-airing its 1996 American Masters special "Lena Horne: In Her Own Voice" through May 23. It has also made the show available for viewing online. "Singer Dionne Warwick, actress Vanessa Williams and crime writer Walter Mosley were among the stars who attended¬†the funeral at St. Ignatius Loyola on Park Ave.," Christina Boyle reported for the New York Daily News.

"Horne’s granddaughter, actress Jenny Lumet, former New York City Mayor David Dinkins and Rep. John Lewis gave heartfelt speeches, and Broadway star Audra McDonald sang ‘Amazing Grace’ over the casket."

 

Univision.com streamed Univision’s "town hall" meeting on immigration live in both English and Spanish, and its sister radio network, Radio Cadena Univision, planned to broadcast it simultaneously in Spanish.¬†

Hispanics, Others in "Distinct Worlds" on Immigration

"Univision, the dominant Spanish language network in the United States, is further inserting itself into the red-hot debate about immigration policy," Brian Stelter wrote Thursday for the New York Times.

"The network is holding a prime-time debate, ‘Inmigraci??n: Un Debate Nacional,’ about proposed immigration reforms on Friday. It is also releasing a poll on immigration conducted in conjunction with the Associated Press. For a sense of whether this is significant, just try to remember the last time the country‚Äôs English language networks turned over an hour of prime time for a public affairs debate that did not involve presidential candidates."

Alan Fram of the Associated Press reported on the poll:

"Illegal immigrants are a boon, not a burden to the country, a resounding majority of Hispanics say, according to an Associated Press-Univision Poll that underscores sharp contrasts between the views of Hispanics and others. Most non-Hispanics say illegal immigrants are a drain on society," he wrote.

"In addition, most Hispanics condemn Arizona’s strict new law targeting undocumented immigrants, while only 20 percent of non-Hispanics oppose it.

"The survey also found some remarkably similar views between Hispanics and non-Hispanics on the complex, emotional issue of immigration, which has gained prominence this election year. About two-thirds of both groups consider illegal immigration a serious problem, only a quarter of each think the Arizona law will ease the state’s troubles and the largest portion of both populations think current limits on legal immigration should be left alone.

"Even so, much of the poll — which questioned 901 Hispanic adults and was compared to a separate survey of the general population — reads as if soundings were taken of two distinct worlds, an impression fortified by follow-up interviews."

Detroit Web Editor Named Journalism Fellow at Michigan

James ThomasJames Thomas, a Web editor at the Detroit Free Press, is the sole journalist of color among next year’s class of 12 American Knight-Wallace Fellows¬†at the University of Michigan, program director Charles Eisendrath told Journal-isms on Friday.

Thomas plans to study "Improving Technical Know-How in the Newsroom."

"While on leave from regular duties, Knight-Wallace Fellows pursue customized sabbatical studies and attend twice-weekly seminars at Wallace House, a gift from newsman Mike Wallace and his wife Mary," a news release explains. "The program also includes training in narrative writing, multi-platform journalism and entrepreneurial enterprise." Each Knight-Wallace Fellow receives a stipend of $70,000 for the eight-month academic year.

The current class includes two African Americans, Lynette Clemetson, who was managing editor of theRoot.com, and Christina Samuels, a staff writer at Education Week.

"This year we had 82 US applications, 10 African-American, 9 Latino and two Asian," Eisendrath said. Last year, the program had 112 applications from U.S. journalists. Ten were from Latinos, 11 from African Americans and five from Asian Americans, said Birgit Rieck, assistant director.

The John S. Knight Fellowship program at Stanford University announced this month that four journalists of color¬† ‚Äî Evelyn Larrubia, Phuong Ly, Jigar Mehta and Edin?©ria Pinheiro Soares ‚Äî were among 12 U.S. journalists awarded fellowships in its program for the 2010-11 academic year.

Watch How States Plan to Help Low-Performing Schools

Dakarai I. Aarons Dakarai I. Aarons, a reporter for Education Week, becomes the only person of color on the board of the Education Writers of America at the conclusion of its meeting this week in San Francisco. He told Journal-isms, "for journalists who want to see more coverage of what is happening with minority kids, they should definitely pay attention to how states plan to tackle their bottom 5 percent of low-performing schools using school turnaround models from the Obama Administration. Poor and ethnic minority kids are overrepresented in such schools."

The Obama administration is awarding $3.4 billion in Race to the Top Fund grants to states that propose high-quality reform plans in the areas of standards and assessments, teacher and principal effectiveness, data systems and turning around low-performing schools.

Writing on the e-mail list of the National Association of Black Journalists, Aarons also said, "More than 35 governor’s seats are up for grabs this election year, but just as important in your states is the person who becomes the chief education officer, usually called the education commissioner or state superintendent of public instruction.

"Tom Horne of Arizona was elected to his position in a partisan race and is one of the most well-known state superintendents in the country. Journalists should pay attention to state education policy offices, because that is where many of the decisions are made that have the greatest impact on what goes on in schools every day.

"And the way the Obama Administration and Congress have crafted both funding formulas and competitive grants under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act puts a lot more power than even before in the hands of governors and other state officials.

"We write about this at Education Week, but I’d love to see more coverage of this at the local and state level. K-12 education makes up a sizable portion of the budgets in most states ‚Äî and in several it’s the largest expenditure."

Referencing a report from the Brookings Institution, Lesli A. Maxwell reported in December for Education Week that, "Between January and September, education stories made up just 1.4 percent of all top national news, the study found. That number was even worse in the previous two years. Substantive stories about the main enterprise of K-12 schools — teaching and learning — were even more rare. And coverage of higher education, especially community colleges, was virtually nonexistent."

Limited Success for Tucson Citizen Workers in New Lives

Steve Rivera"The 65 Tucson Citizen employees laid off when media giant Gannett shuttered the 138-year-old paper are among the 16,500-plus journalists laid off nationwide since January 2009." Ren?©e Schafer Horton wrote Thursday for the Tucson Weekly.

"A year later, a mere 21 of the ex-Citizen employees have made it to Promised Land of paid fulltime work — only five in journalism."

As one example, Horton writes, "Things have not been as smooth for Steve Rivera, who covered UA men’s basketball for the Citizen for 19 years. He was unemployed for six months before becoming an assistant manager at Rillito Nursery and Garden Center, having been trained by the company in all things desert gardening.

"The hardest thing, Rivera said, was realizing that what gets you places in sports reporting—your good name and reputation—can be an albatross in a job hunt.

" ‘Sometimes they’d recognize my name and write me off, saying I’d be bored in the job because of what I used to do,’ he said. ‘I’m asking the girl to the dance, and she’s saying, "You’re not going to dance with me that long." It was humbling trying to convince people to give me a chance, that I could do something other than reporting.’ "

Media Debate How to Report Elena Kagan Rumors

"As speculation about Elena Kagan’s sexual orientation has circulated on the Internet in the wake of her nomination to the Supreme Court, leading newspapers have generally declined to address the rumors, and prominent commentators have tried to dissuade their colleagues in the chattering classes from asking the question," Greg Marx wrote Thursday in the Columbia Journalism Review.

"But a top editor and a reporter at Politico, which late Tuesday night published an article headlined ‘Kagan‚Äôs Friends: She‚Äôs Not Gay,’ said the decision to do so was not a hard call ‚Äî because the topic was already the subject of intense public discussion, and because the sources wanted to address, on the record, a false rumor that one said had become a ‘distraction’ to the debate over Kagan‚Äôs nomination.

"The story, by reporter Ben Smith, quotes two of Kagan‚Äôs old friends (one of whom, bizarrely enough, is Eliot Spitzer) asserting that she is straight, and notes that the lead interview ‚Äî with Sarah Walzer, a law school classmate of Kagan‚Äôs who now runs a non-profit organization in New York City ‚Äî occurred ‘after Kagan‚Äôs supporters decided they should tactfully put an end to the rumor, which White House officials had already tried to squelch in background interviews with reporters.’ ‚Äù

Dean Replies to Remarks About "Triflin’" J-Students

Jannette Dates, left, and Jack WhiteJack White, the veteran journalist who wrote last week that he had flunked half the students¬†in his Howard University "Writing for the Media" course at Howard University, "did not understand what we asked him to do," according to Jannette Dates, dean of Howard’s John H. Johnson School of Communications.

However, White said he stands behind his comments.

White, contributor to theRoot.com and veteran of Time magazine, wrote on his blog, "So, here are the final results: two As, based mostly on the potential the students demonstrated rather than actual performance; two Bs; four Cs; and eight Fs. Half the class,"

"So, here are the final results: two As, based mostly on the potential the students demonstrated rather than actual performance; two Bs; four Cs; and eight Fs. Half the class.

"The students who flunked were, to use a word the old folks favored, truly triflin’."

Dates told Journal-isms via e-mail this week, "I believe Jack White did not understand what we asked him to do as an adjunct faculty member in the John H. Johnson School of Communications at Howard University. The course that he taught is an entry level course for those who may want to major in journalism. It is designed to allow students to find out if they are suited for the field. Of course, these are not the top students and most of them are not even yet majors; they are exploring. We encourage that."

In his own e-mail, White said:

"My comments were not meant to be anything more than a personal statement about my recent teaching experience of one class at Howard. . . . I wasn’t talking about the entire school of communications, just the class I taught.

"Half the students in my Writing for the Media Class busted their tails to get the required work done. They attended budget meetings of the Hilltop on Sunday nights, got assignments, did the reporting and turned in their work by deadline, in addition to completing the rest of the required classwork. They passed the class. Two got As, two got Bs and four got Cs. I enjoyed teaching them.

"Of the half who failed, one stopped coming to class after four weeks and did not withdraw. Her explanation was that she did not enjoy being told how to write ‚Äî which after all was the purpose of the class. One skipped the first three weeks of class and attended irregularly thereafter. Some turned in work that verged on or constituted plagiarism. All of those who flunked missed many classes, did not turn in assignments, fared poorly on weekly news quizzes and failed to publish the required four stories in student publications such as The Hilltop ‚Äî despite being reminded frequently not to wait until the last minute to get the work done. For some, this was the second or even third time they have taken the course and flunked. I feel safe in describing many of these students as triflin’.

"Having taught journalism classes at other universities, I am well aware that these problems are not confined to Howard. And having dealt with some outstanding Howard students, I know and am gratified to know that Howard continues to produce many first rate journalism graduates. Nevertheless, my comments accurately reflect what occurred in the class I taught this semester and I stand behind them."

Short Takes

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