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Copy Editor Quits Over Front-Page ‘N-Word’

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Overruled After Seeing Slur on Page Proof

Stressful Time for Latino Journalists:

Extra Security as NAHJ Meets in San Antonio

Participation Up to 22.8% in ASNE Diversity Survey

Baltimore Ad Rep Links Firing to Race Complaint

U.S. Praise for Mugabe Deleted After Objections

. . . Some Dispute Western Narrative

Short Takes

 

In 2015, the Patriot Ledger building in Quincy, Mass., was undergoing renovations as another company planned to move into the structure. Part of the work was to preserve the facade, including the recognizable “Patriot Ledger” lettering. The three-story downtown building, built in the 1920s, housed the newspaper’s operations until 1988. (Credit: Gary Higgins/Patriot Ledger)

Overruled After Seeing Slur on Page Proof

A white copy editor at the Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass., owned by what is soon to be the nation’s largest newspaper company, quit on the spot last week when his objections to printing the “N-word” on the front page were overruled.

The story in question was relatively small potatoes. “A Braintree man was held without bail Tuesday after police say he drunkenly brandished a gun and repeatedly yelled a racial slur at neighbors in a car he thought was speeding down a residential street,” began the Sept. 3 story by Joe DiFazio.

“Michael S. Kerns, 41, was arraigned in Quincy District Court on two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon, two counts of civil-rights violations, improper firearm storage and drunkenly carrying a gun as a licensed gun owner. He is due back in court Thursday for a hearing to determine if he poses a danger to the public. . . .”

” ‘You niggas think you can flip me off!’ Kerns allegedly yelled. . . .”

Jeffrey Dale (Credit: Yanina Martinez)

Jeffrey Dale, the copy editor who objected, recalled in an email, “On Sept. 3, after designing/editing two completely different sports sections for The Patriot Ledger and Brockton Enterprise, basically doing the job of two people, I did what I always do, which was walk over to the copy desk and ask if they needed any help proofing or finishing pages. The front-page editor gave me pages to proof.

“A story titled ‘Braintree man accused of brandishing gun, yelling racial slur’ was published on the front page.

“As I started to proof the story, (the second reported hate crime in our coverage area in two weeks, but the first we reported) I noticed a couple small correx (e.g. civil rights being hyphenated), but then I got to the 5th graph, in which we published a quote that spelled out the N-word in full.

“I went to the copy desk where I was told that the decision to publish that word was already made and our hands were tied. No one on the copy desk wanted to publish it in full, yet for some reason we did. By the time I read the graph and tried to make my case, no one was left in the newsroom who could be a decision maker. All the senior editors had left for the evening, including the copy chief Jen Wagner. [One editor said in a text message, “I have a black kid and I agreed with this printing.”]

“After giving the front-page editor my proofed pages, I went back to the sports department [where] I began to stew.

“I have worked for six papers directly and 100s of papers indirectly in my short 10-year career in the newspaper industry and I’ve NEVER EVER seen that word published in full.

“When the president called certain countries in Africa ‘shithole countries’ we used asterisks to censor his epithets. Yet we publish the N-word in full?

“I could not stand behind this work, packed my desk, and quit on the spot. I texted the copy chief, Jen Wagner, who informed me that ‘the decision wasn’t taken lightly.’ This was also the same explanation I got from managing editor Greg Mathis. . . .”

Within 24 hours, the paper reversed itself. Online, the offending sentence was changed to ‘You n***** think you can flip me off!’ Kerns allegedly yelled.”

Regardless, Dale contacted the National Association of Black Journalists and its new president, Dorothy Tucker.

Lisa Strattan, vice president of news for GateHouse New England, told Journal-isms by email on Monday, “After a deliberative process, Patriot Ledger editors arrived at the decision to spell out the racial epithet. Upon further review among a larger group the following day, we determined use of the word in full was unnecessary and offensive and we modified it online. Simply put, we were misguided and we corrected the mistake where we could.”

Last month, GateHouse and Gannett announced their intent to merge and form the largest newspaper chain in the country. GateHouse already owns 156 daily publications,  operating in 612 markets across 39 states.

It is rare for mainstream newspapers to spell out the well-known racial slur. The Associated Press stylebook says of the term “N-word,” “Do not use this term or the racial slur it refers to, except in extremely rare circumstances — when it is crucial to the story or the understanding of a news event. Flag the contents in an editor’s note. See obscenities, profanities, vulgarities and race-related coverage.”

Dale says he is not assuaged by the paper’s reversal.  “I don’t want my job back because the people who made that incredibly stupid decision remain in power.

“I lost all the respect for them the second they thought publishing that word would be OK,” he told Journal-isms by email.

“Maybe I’m being too hard on them. But the newsroom remains 100 percent white. Until they make changes to address their extreme lack of diversity I can’t work [for] them.”

Strattan did not respond to a question about the newsroom’s diversity. The Patriot Ledger did not participate in last year’s annual diversity survey from the American Society of News Editors.

Asked what he’ll do next, Dale replied, “I’ve started applying to jobs. One of my old colleagues from my days at The Norwalk Hour is in law school and is encouraging me to take the LSAT. I’m still pretty young, 32, so that is an option.

“But honestly, after all of this, and the conversation that I had with Dorothy Tucker who told me I can’t give up, I want to stay in the business.

“Dorothy told me ‘we need people like’ myself, which just warms my heart so much.

“It feels so good not to be alone on this. . . .”

Members of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Society of Professional Journalists and Radio Television Digital News Association attend the J-Expo and career fair last week during the 2019 Excellence in Journalism Conference in San Antonio, Texas. (Credit: Jackeline Lizama/Latino Reporter)

Stressful Time for Latino Journalists

Extra Security as NAHJ Meets in San Antonio

By Mc Nelly Torres

Latino journalists are facing unprecedented stress as they report on violence and/or hate crimes against people of color, including members of their own communities, a circumstance evidenced last week when the National Association of Hispanic Journalists met in San Antonio, Texas.

Amid concerns from members, “Excellence in Journalism” conference organizers ramped up security after the Aug. 3 mass shooting at a Wal-Mart Supercenter in El Paso, Texas, in which Latinos were targeted by a white supremacist who traveled from Dallas, killed 22 people and injured 24.

NAHJ leaders told attendees before the conference that armed and uniformed off-duty police would be present at the hotel property. The co-hosts — NAHJ, the Society for Professional Journalists and the Radio Television Digital News Association — are to share the cost for the security. They were not disclosing that cost.

“RTDNA, SPJ and NAHJ together agreed to have enhanced security at EIJ ’19 in San Antonio September 5-7, Dan Shelley, executive director of RTDNA, explained by email on Tuesday. “This was only out of an overabundance of caution and was not in response to any specific threat or threats. The three parties also agreed not to disclose specific details of the security plans in case we wish to replicate them at future events. I heard from a number of EIJ ’19 attendees who appreciated the extra security and said they felt safe because of it.”

 More than 600 Latino journalists from the United States and Latin America were present, according to Alberto Mendoza, NAHJ executive director, as the organization celebrated its 35th anniversary. Race, violence, immigration and self-care for journalists were frequent topics, and newsrooms were urged to call out racism when it happens.

A “cultural competency guide” covering Latinos is expected to be released in January. The concern over “cultural competency” arose, according to President Hugo Balta, after members of NAHJ’s board felt that news coverage of the El Paso shootings did not adequately capture the gunman’s intent, Valeria Olivares reported for the Latino Reporter.

“There was a missed opportunity in the storytelling of that mass shooting,” Balta said.

At a membership meeting on Saturday, Balta recalled that Jim Acosta, a Cuban-American CNN White House correspondent who had become one of the most visible symbols of President Trump’s attacks on the news media, briefly had his White House press credentials revoked last November. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ruled in favor of Acosta and ordered the White House to reinstate his press pass.

“We are also under attack for being members of the Hispanic and Latino communities and some of us for being part of the immigrant community,” Balta said.

Balta also talked about NAHJ’s decision to denounce Fox News management and return $16,666 that the news organization had paid NAHJ as a sponsor for the EIJ conference. Fox radio host Todd Starnes‘ made racist comments referring to Latin American migrants as “a rampaging horde of illegal aliens.”

“We are championing the fair treatment of Latinos in the newsroom and in the communities,” Balta said, noting the decision does not target Fox journalists at local stations, but management that allowed the negative rhetoric against Latino immigrants to air.  While NAHJ returned the $16,666 check to Fox News, it made most of that amount back thanks to individual donations, Cheyenne Darcy Amaya reported for the Latino Reporter.

The NAHJ board in San Antonio. From left: Fin Gomez, Steve Soliz, Rodrigo Cervantes, Robert Hernandez, Blanca Rios, Rafael Mejía, Angélica Serrano-Román, Melissa Macaya, Dianna M. Náñez, Hugo Balta, Tomás Mier. (Credit: Twitter)

As the EIJ conference began, SPJ and RTDNA announced that the organizations were joining NAHJ in adopting a code of conduct similar to one the NAHJ board approved in March 2018.

Other journalism organizations, including Investigative Reporters and Editors, have adopted similar codes in recent years.

The code of conduct adopted by EIJ prohibits any member of SPJ, NAHJ and RTDNA, including sponsors attending the conference, from “harassing conduct that is not limited to slurs, offensive jokes, statements, gestures, photographs, drawings, cartoons or pictures, assault, impeding or blocking another’s movement or otherwise physically interfering with activities, conducting unwanted audio or visual recordings, violating someone’s ‘personal space,’ engaging in leering, stalking, staring, intimidating or threatening behavior or making offensive communications such as in the form of emails, telephone calls, voicemails, text messages or social media.

“It also declares that “sexually harassing conduct in particular may include all of these prohibited actions as well as other unwelcome conduct, such as requests for sexual favors, conversation containing sexual comments, physical contact, lewd or offensive behavior or language and other unwelcome sexual advances. Sexually harassing conduct can be by a person of either the same or opposite sex.”

The code adopted by NAHJ comes of the heels of an 18-month investigation prompted by allegations of an inappropriate relationship between a mentor and a student journalist working for the Latino Reporter during the conference in 2010.

At the membership meeting on Saturday, Balta announced that a four-member committee had concluded its probe, and said a summary, including some recommendations approved by the board, would be provided to the membership within the next few weeks.

“We feel that we needed to offer something that is reflective of the time and care that the committee put into the investigation,” Balta said. Mendoza added, “The other reality is that we got pro bono attorneys so the timeline doesn’t always exactly align with need to get it done.”

Blanca Rios, Region 6 director and one of the four assigned to the committee looking into the allegations, said the committee interviewed between 16 and 20 people.

“The people we reached out to were appreciative of us reaching out to them and were open,” Rios said, clarifying that not all the people contacted were suspected of inappropriate behavior. Some were witnesses or people with information. “They were open to talking to us and they hope that we can prevent this from happening again.”

Rios said that at least three allegations of inappropriate conduct and/or relationships surfaced during the inquiry.

At the Saturday gala, Ricardo Sandoval-Palos, public editor for PBS and a long-time NAHJ member, announced “palabra,” a bilingual, multimedia long-form journalism platform that is to feature original content to promote the work of NAHJ’s freelance members.

“We’ve long been denied and not had a place at the table,” Sandoval-Palos told attendees at the gala. “So maybe it’s time we build our own damn table.”

Palabra is to be home to stories that the mainstream media have ignored, abandoned or failed to tell.

Other convention highlights included:

Also at NAHJ, Oscar Serrano, co-founder of El Centro de Periodismo Investigativo de Puerto Rico (CPI in English) and Carla Minet, executive director of CPI, participated in a session Thursday with veteran anchor Maria Elena Salinas.

In the session, “After 889 pages: The impact of investigative reporting,” Minet and Serrano described how independent non-profit organizations such as CPI hold the powerful accountable. CPI, a nonprofit based at the InterAmerican University in Puerto Rico, has been producing investigative work for more than a decade.

But it was the release of more than 800 pages of leaked chat messages from an application known as Telegram in which Ricardo Rossello, the beleaguered former governor of Puerto Rico, members of his cabinet and operatives including lobbyists revealed conversations in which they made offensive and, at times, racist comments about enemies, the media, victims of Hurricane Maria and low-income people, among others.

The chats sparked a movement that led to Rossello’s resignation this summer. The leaked chats also revealed that for about two months the group strategized attacks against politicians and media members and discussed government business.

Minet and Serrano were quick to explain that the public outrage followed social unrest that accumulated over decades.

Puerto Rico has undergone a major-fiscal economic crisis, bankruptcy and many political scandals. Add to this Hurricane Maria in 2017 and the slow local and federal response, and the lives of people in Puerto Rico have been difficult.

The leaked chats, Minet said, were like a drop that filled the cup.

CPI was honored during the luncheon awards with NAHJ’s Si Se Puede Award.

Mc Nelly Torres is a Florida-based independent investigative journalist.

Participation Up to 22.8% in ASNE Diversity Survey

Participation in the American Society of News Editors’ annual newsroom diversity survey increased by more than five points from its historic low of 17 percent last year, ASNE, now the News Leaders Association, said in releasing the latest figures on Tuesday.

(Credit: News Leaders Association)

But “[w]hile encouraging, these figures cannot be generalized to interpret the landscape of the U.S. journalism industry as a whole because the survey relies on information collected from a convenience sample of organizations that volunteer to participate,” the group added.

“Overall, people of color represent 21.9 percent of the salaried workforce among newsrooms that responded to this year’s Newsroom Employment Diversity Survey,” the organization said. “The results summarize responses from 429 news organizations, including 267 newspapers and 65 online-only news sites (some organizations did not specify).”

This year, 1,883 news organizations were contacted for inclusion, for a 22.8 percent response rate.

Among the conclusions the association was willing to draw, it said that “people of color make up only 18.8 percent of newsroom managers at both print/digital and online-only publications” and that “[j]ournalists of color make up nearly a third of the full-time workforce among online-only news organizations” that participated.

In addition, “Nearly 200 journalists who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender completed an additional self-administered survey that was offered this year, which was distributed through a link forwarded to newsrooms, and via the Association of Gay and Lesbian Journalists’ weekly newsletter. Of the journalists who completed the self-administered survey, 78 percent identified as white, while 7.5 percent identified as African American or Black. Another 7.5 percent identified as biracial or multiracial, and nearly 3 percent identified as Asian. . . .”

The survey measures progress toward ASNE’s goal of having the percentage of journalists of color in newsrooms nationwide equal to that of people of color in the nation’s population by 2025. The original goal was to have that percentage match that of the general population by 2000.

In 2010, the Census Bureau said Hispanics or Latinos were 16.3 percent of the U.S. population; blacks or African Americans were 12.6 percent; Asians 4.8 percent; Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islanders 0.2 percent; and Native Americans or Alaska Natives 0.9 percent. The census counted 6.2 percent as “some other race” and 2.9 percent as two or more races.

Baltimore Ad Rep Links Firing to Race Complaint

An African American sales representative at the Baltimore Sun is pursuing a race discrimination complaint against the newspaper, saying that “The Sun retaliated against her by firing her after a three year discrimination battle which is still under investigation” by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, according to David DeJesus, secretary of the Washington-Baltimore News Guild.

Jackie Roane-Griffin

“My goal is to raise awareness of the discriminatory practices against men and women of color who work in media, and outside of the newsroom,” DeJesus wrote to Journal-isms. “I like to think of ad sales as an extension of the newsroom since we provide the financial platform to support news operations. . . . Our fight for inclusion has to be through the whole organization, since the powers that be make diversity decisions affecting us all.”

Jackie Roane-Griffin, the sales rep, worked at the Sun for three decades, and filed her complaint in 2017. “The key facts are that Jackie protested what she felt were discriminatory actions taken against her by her sales management team, by removing accounts from her, which were handed to less experienced white employees. Jackie was the only African-American on the outside sales staff (34 years),” DeJesus told Journal-isms by email.

“She filed an EEOC after multiple attempts to have the issue handled by The Sun’s HR department.  Rather than resolve the issue, The Sun pursued Jackie looking for anything she may have done to violate their policies,” DeJesus wrote on Aug. 7. ” She was fired two weeks ago for sharing proprietary information with former Sun employees, and for taping a conversation between The Sun’s HR department and herself. . . .”

The case is also before the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights.

Asked to comment, Renee Mutchnik, a spokesperson for the Sun emailed Thursday, “I can tell you that we take these matters seriously, but it is our policy not to comment on personnel matters.”

The case covers familiar terrain for DeJesus, a veteran ad department salesman. Two years ago, the Washington Post quietly paid to settle a  longstanding advertising department discrimination lawsuit that DeJesus filed, Evan Gahr reported at the time for the Observer.

Robert Mugabe’s message to journalists (Credit: SABC News) (video)

U.S. Praise for Mugabe Deleted After Objections

“The U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe deleted a tweet praising the country’s late Prime Minister and President Robert Mugabe after users called out his controversial human rights record,”  Morgan Phillips reported Saturday, updated Sunday, for Fox News.

“Mugabe died Friday at age 95, two years after he was forced to resign after decades in power.

“ ‘The United States extends its condolences to the Mugabe family and the people of Zimbabwe as they mourn the passing of former President Robert Mugabe,’ the since-deleted tweet read. ‘We join the world in reflecting on his legacy in securing Zimbabwe’s independence.’

“Fox News’ Tucker Carlson called the tweet an example of the executive branch being ‘completely out of control.’

“ ‘Apparently the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe signed off on it,’ Carlson said Friday on ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight.’ ‘He should be recalled for that… This is when you know the executive branch of government is completely out of control. That it’s being run by bureaucrats who don’t care at all who was elected, who are acting out their left-wing agendas without any restraint.

“ ‘Because Robert Mugabe was such a bad leader that no normal person would look at him and say we need to mourn his passing,’ Carlson continued. ‘Not one person. The only words in response to his death would be “good riddance.” ‘ ”

. . . Some Dispute Western Narrative

Some commentators have pushed back against the Western narrative that Robert Mugabe was a hero when he sought independence for Zimbabwe but a disaster when he became a ruinous dictator.

Among them was the Herald in Zimbabwe, which editorialized Sunday:

“As Africa mourns the death of its iconic Pan Africanist Cde Robert Gabriel Mugabe last week, its new crop of leaders should learn important lessons derived from his thinking.

“One of those lessons is Cde Mugabe’s emphasis on African unity, which he viewed as necessary for the development of the continent.

“Throughout his life, especially from the early days of his involvement in the liberation struggle, most of Cde Mugabe’s speeches were centred on African unity.

“Internally, this quest was manifested in the way he managed to unite Zimbabweans to focus on a common purpose of developing the country. . . .”

The editorial added, “Most of the problems that faced Zimbabwe during Cde Mugabe’s time were directly as a result of the [response] by Western countries to his stance on African unity.

“A united Africa is definitely not in the interest of the imperialists, and this explains why they react ruthlessly to anyone who [dares to propagate] such a stance. We all know that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was eliminated with the aid of Western countries because of his persistent calls for a united Africa. . . .”

Short Takes

 

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