Articles Feature

Branham Services Set for Philly Hometown

by richard01799

Campus Vigil Held for Dean of Syracuse J-School

Stephen A. Smith Could Make $10 Million a Year

L.A. Times Nabs BuzzFeed’s Hilton for a Top Job

Black Media Entrepreneur Sues Media Giant Nexstar

Nominate a J-Educator Who Promotes Diversity

B roll from Syracuse University News on Vimeo.

(Credit: Syracuse University)

Campus Vigil Held for Dean of Syracuse J-School

As students, faculty and administrators at Syracuse University held a vigil Wednesday to honor Lorraine Branham, the dean of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications who died Tuesday of cancer, plans were made for an April 11 funeral in Philadelphia, where Branham was born and began her journalism career.

Admirers tied orange ribbons to campus trees. (Credit: Syracuse University
Admirers tied orange ribbons to campus trees. (Credit: Syracuse University)

Services are scheduled for Thursday, April 11, at Sharon Baptist Church, 3955 Conshohocken Ave. Philadelphia, Pa. 19131. Viewing is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 12:55 p.m., with services at 1 p.m.

The program has not yet been set, said Roy Campbell, Branham’s friend and former Philadelphia Inquirer colleague.

The sanctuary holds nearly 3,000 members, according to the Rev. Lester Fields, an associate minister. The church has 3,000 to 4,000 members and was no doubt selected because of its renowned Bishop Keith W. Reed Sr., the senior pastor, Fields said.

Branham attended Temple University in Philadelphia and worked at the Philadelphia Tribune, part of the black press, before moving on to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Tallahassee Democrat and Baltimore Sun in her 25-year newspaper career.

Before Syracuse, Branham was dean of the journalism school at University of Texas at Austin.

More than 100 people attended the afternoon vigil at Hendricks Chapel on the Syracuse campus. They walked from there to the Newhouse School and tied orange ribbons on campus trees in Branham’s memory, attendees said.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the Lorraine Branham Scholarship Fund at the Klein College of Media and Communications at Temple University, 2020 N. 13th, St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19122

Stephen A. Smith Could Make $10 Million a Year

Stephen A. Smith
Stephen A. Smith

“Quite frankly, Stephen A. Smith is going to be richer,” Andrew Marchand reported Wednesday for the New York Post.

“Smith is in line to become the highest-paid on-air person at ESPN by potentially boosting his salary to $10 million per year, according to people with knowledge of the upcoming negotiations.

“The Post spoke with multiple executives and agents to figure out the number that Smith could garner, and the consensus was in the $8 million-to-$10 million range. By comparison, Mike Greenberg is paid $6.5 million to host ‘Get Up!,’ which is the network’s highest publicly known salary. PTI’s Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser are believed to be in Greenberg’s neighborhood. . . .”

L.A. Times Nabs BuzzFeed’s Hilton for a Top Job

After pledging for months to hire an African American to a high-ranking newsroom job at the newly invigorated Los Angeles Times, Executive Editor Norman Pearlstine announced Tuesday that Shani O. Hilton, vice president of news and programming at BuzzFeed News, has been named deputy managing editor for news.

Not only has Hilton worked hand in hand with editor-in-chief Ben Smith in running BuzzFeed News for the last few years in New York, as Jeremy Barr noted in the Hollywood Reporter, but she made waves in the news industry in 2014 when she called out online and print editors for their lack of diversity efforts.

“[I]t’s easy to hire a diverse staff if you try, but white dudes just aren’t trying,” Hilton wrote under the headline, “Building A Diverse Newsroom Is Work. Here’s what I’ve learned.”

Hilton told Nieman Report that same year, “When I started at BuzzFeed, there were three black employees. That number has grown dramatically. It’s really nice to be a place where you don’t have to agree with the other black person out of solidarity. You can disagree with them publicly, and it’s fine. That’s really great. That can’t be underscored enough.” BuzzFeed was honored by both the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Just before Pearlstine was named executive editor in June 2018, days after the paper was bought by Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire biotech executive, this column reported, “Veteran journalist Sylvester Monroe, who is African American, left his position as assistant foreign editor at the Washington Post in December to take a senior newsroom position at the Times, only to face turmoil as the ownership and newsroom management changed. He was hired by former editor-in-chief Lewis D’Vorkin. Monroe was laid off in April after the newspaper shut down the content division, where he worked.”

Pearlstine told Journal-isms the next month, after his first round of promotions, ‘You are right to ask about the lack of Latinos and African Americans in the newsroom leadership ranks. We can and must do better in seeking to create a more diverse workplace at the Los Angeles Times. . . . Increasing diversity and including more voices is a priority for us.”

In August, he brought in Sewell Chan, who is Asian American, from the New York Times to become deputy managing editor.

Angel Rodriguez, who is Hispanic, was promoted from sports editor to assistant managing editor for sports.

In December, Pearlstine announced that Sacramento Bee op-ed columnist Erika D. Smith, who is African American, would join Metro as an assistant editor.

The Times Wednesday announcement said, “At BuzzFeed, Hilton has overseen news programming and U.S.-based news operations, including structuring the news team, overseeing special projects, managing a staff of over 200 journalists, and maintaining the company’s editorial standards. Additionally, Hilton led efforts to diversify BuzzFeed News revenue through shows and programming with a large focus in live video, including ‘AM to DM’ on Twitter and ‘PROFILE’ on Facebook Watch, and developing original programming. . . .”

“I’ve basically done everything that you can do here, essentially, at one point or another,” Hilton told the Hollywood Reporter’s Barr, referring to the roles she has held at BuzzFeed. “I wasn’t looking to leave, actually, but I’m from California and I’m really psyched to be moving back. The job was too appealing, and it felt like a really big, needed role.”

“At the Times, Hilton will work on digital strategy, driving subscriptions, newsroom operations, events, budgets, video programming and recruiting. ‘It’s kind of like what I do now, which is everything,’ she said,” Barr wrote.

Black Media Entrepreneur Sues Media Giant Nexstar

Black media entrepreneur Pluria Marshall Jr. announced Wednesday that his company is suing media giant Nexstar Media Group, saying that Nexstar’s 2014 sale of three stations to his company was simply a ruse to put Nexstar in the good graces of the Federal Communications Commission.

Pluria Marshall Jr.
Pluria Marshall Jr.

“Since selling three television stations to Marshall Broadcasting Group (MBG) in 2014, Nexstar Broadcasting Inc. (Nexstar) has actively worked to undermine MBG and its stations, according to the lawsuit in the Supreme Court of the State of New York this morning,” the MBG said in a news release accompanying notice of the suit.

“The suit seeks to make MBG whole from Nexstar’s disingenuous and damaging actions — bringing to light Nexstar’s effort to sabotage MBG’s business and eventually buy back the stations for pennies on the dollar.

“In 2014 Nexstar sold three stations (KPEJ-TV, KMSS-TV, KLJB-TV) to MBG. Nexstar was forced to sell the stations due to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations and chose MBG as a buyer, believing that the FCC would look favorably upon MBG’s status as a minority-owned business.

“While the FCC was led to believe that the sale would further the commission’s objective of increasing ethnic diversity in ownership of broadcast stations, as soon as the arrangement was inked Nexstar sought to sabotage and undermine MBG’s operations to decrease its worth.

” ‘It has become clear that our only value to Nexstar was diversity optics at the FCC,’ said MBG president and CEO Pluria Marshall Jr. ‘Ever since the deal was signed, Nexstar has gone to great lengths to constantly interfere, undercut our authority and sabotage our business, with little regard for the agreements in place with us or the FCC.’ . . .”

Joe Jaffoni, a spokesman for Nexstar, told Journal-isms by telephone that the lawsuit “is spurious, without merit,” and that the company “intends to defend itself vigorously.”

In an indication of its size, Nexstar has agreed to purchase Tribune Media for $4 billion, subject to FCC and other regulatory approvals. It agreed last month to sell 19 television stations to two buyers for a total of $1.32 billion in cash to facilitate its merger, as the Dallas Business Journal reported.

As noted in this column when the 2014 deal was announced, Marshall has owned radio stations and newspaper properties and is the son of Pluria Marshall, photographer, co-founder of the National Association of Black Journalists and activist who challenged broadcast licenses as chairman of the National Black Media Coalition in the 1970s.

According to the FCC, blacks or African Americans owned 12 stations (0.9 percent) in 2015 and 9 stations (0.6 percent) in 2013.

” Nexstar’s efforts to push MBG out of business would remove 25 percent of the black-owned stations on the air today,” MBG said.

Nominate a J-Educator Who Promotes Diversity

Beginning in 1990, the Association of Opinion Journalists, formerly the National Conference of Editorial Writers, annually granted a Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship — actually an award — “in recognition of an educator’s outstanding efforts to encourage minority students in the field of journalism.”

AOJ merged in 2016 into the American Society of News Editors, which is continuing the Bingham award tradition.

Since 2000, the recipient has been awarded an honorarium of $1,000 to be used to “further work in progress or begin a new project.”

Bill Celis
Bill Celis

Past winners include James Hawkins, Florida A&M University (1990); Larry Kaggwa, Howard University (1992); Ben Holman, University of Maryland (1996); Linda Jones, Roosevelt University, Chicago (1998); Ramon Chavez, University of Colorado, Boulder (1999); Erna Smith, San Francisco State (2000); Joseph Selden, Penn State University (2001); Cheryl Smith, Paul Quinn College (2002); Rose Richard, Marquette University (2003).

Also, Leara D. Rhodes, University of Georgia (2004); Denny McAuliffe, University of Montana (2005); Pearl Stewart, Black College Wire (2006); Valerie White, Florida A&M University (2007); Phillip Dixon, Howard University (2008); Bruce dePyssler, North Carolina Central University (2009); Sree Sreenivasan, Columbia University (2010); Yvonne Latty, New York University (2011); Michelle Johnson, Boston University (2012); Vanessa Shelton, University of Iowa (2013); William Drummond, University of California at Berkeley (2014); Julian Rodriguez of the University of Texas at Arlington (2015) (video); David G. Armstrong, Georgia State University (2016) (video); and Gerald Jordan, University of Arkansas (2017); Bill Celis, University of Southern California (2018).

Nominations may be emailed to Richard Prince, ASNE Opinion Journalism Committee, richardprince (at) hotmail.com. The deadline is May 17. Please use that address only for ASNE matters.

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Richard Prince’s Journal-isms originates from Washington. It began in print before most of us knew what the internet was, and it would like to be referred to as a “column.” Any views expressed in the column are those of the person or organization quoted and not those of any other entity.
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