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‘Damn, She’s Fine!’ . . . a ‘Show Stopper’ Exits

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Stylish Reporter Bernadette Carey Dies at 83
Al Dia Staff to be ‘Integrated’ into Morning News
News About Racial Struggle Said to Repel Advertisers
Emotion, Pride, Determination at DuPont Awards
Protecting Female Journalists, Especially of Color
5 Ways to Improve Diversity of Coverage
Charlotte Moore English Broke Broadcast Ceilings
Nicaragua Frees 222, Including Journalists

Short Takes: Soul newspaper; LaSharah Bunting; Calvin Watkins; donations to minority-led groups; Ozy; exposure to pesticides; Stephen Vittoria, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Shaquille O’Neal; Akili Franklin; whiteness of Italian media; arrest in Indian journalist’s slaying; Somalia taking foreign outlets off the air.

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Poor People’s Campaign demonstrators in Washington in 1968. Bernadette Carey wrote several stories about the protest and its lead-up. The campaign was described as a more radical successor to the March on Washington in 1963 and called for an occupation – Resurrection City – a tented community of thousands that would stay until their demands were implemented. (Courtesy of Southern Christian Leadership Conference Records in the Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library, Emory University)

Stylish Reporter Bernadette Carey Dies at 83

Ten years ago, a few Black male journalists were emailing about their former Washington colleague Bernadette Carey. “I’m glad to know that all of you fellows still have fire in your eyes and minds, if not elsewhere, when it comes to Bernadette,” wrote Hollie I. West, a former Washington Post cultural writer.

“One day she came into the newsroom dragging that gorgeous mink coat, and it WAS beautiful, switching down the row in front of the library as she made her way back to the Women’s Section.”

Nick Von Hoffman, the columnist, “was sitting astride a desk just off to her right. He jumped up and blurted out, ‘You are beautiful!’ That section of the newsroom went silent. Bernadette gave him a coy smile, fluttered her eye lashes and shook her coat in his direction as she added some extra spice to her switch in the stroll to her desk. We fell out!”

She was also called “a show stopper” that the Post wasn’t ready for. (Photo: Carey with David Frost; credit: Scottish Daily Mail.)

Bernadette Carey Smith, her married name, died Dec. 5 without benefit of an obituary in either of the two major newspapers where she worked, The New York Times and The Washington Post. She was 83 and lived in Bronxville, Westchester County, N.Y. A paid death notice appeared in the Gannett Co.’s LoHud.com in Westchester. [Lisa Westrich, a family member, told Journal-isms on Feb. 14 that Carey died in Bronxville of heart failure.]

“Bernadette had a notable career as a reporter for both the New York Times and the Washington Post, and later worked as an editor at Vogue magazine and as an associate producer with ABC News. She also worked for the Johnson Publishing Company and as a free-lance writer and publisher before becoming a residential real estate agent in Bronxville,” the notice read.

Carey called herself editor-in-formation of what in 1969 became Essence magazine, and in his 2014 memoir, “The Man From Essence,” magazine co-founder Edward Lewis described their first meeting, in New York.

” ‘Damn, she’s fine,’ whistled one of the partners under his breath. It wasn’t as if we didn’t all think this too. Clarence, Cecil and I were seated round the small conference table in our office on East 30th Street, openly staring at the young lady Jonathan had just ushered in. . . .” The references were to Clarence Smith, Cecil Hollingsworth and Jonathan Blount.

In 1969, Jonathan Blount, Cecil Hollingsworth, Edward Lewis and Clarence Smith interviewed Bernadette Carey for the inaugural editor-in-chief’s job at Essence. But, Lewis wrote, “Bernadette’s editorial ideas didn’t fly with the little ad-hoc focus group we had asked to review them.”

“Bernadette was a beauty, but more than that she had style, class, and the tinge of sophistication young men like us found so appealing in slightly older women. . . . We would later learn that she was also dating David Frost, the British TV talk show host who was then the biggest thing on nighttime television next to Johnny Carson. . . .”

Carey wrote Journal-isms in 2013, “Despite what has been said, written and attested to, when I was first approached by members of the Hollingsworth Group to consult about the formation of a new black audience magazine, it was I who suggested doing [a] women’s book, since I had already been collecting editorial and advertising background on doing one.

“I also suggested not competing with Ebony by doing the general market magazine they had in mind, and I agreed to come on board only if I received a percentage stake in what we were doing. (Photo: Bernadette Carey story from April 1, 1968, three days before Martin Luther King’ Jr.’s assassination.)

“When I failed to get a contract including this, and having it signed in a timely fashion, the four members of the Hollingsworth Group (all men) decided without even mentioning it to me that they were bringing Gordon Parks on board to be editorial director, and they were giving him the 5% stake in the enterprise they had promised. I walked out the next evening, leaving only the tape recordings they had made of our meeting discussions as to what I wanted to do at the magazine. I never gave them or discussed my business plan. . . .”

A 1961 Smith College graduate, Carey was one of the first Black women to report at either the Times or the Post. She wrote feature stories for the Times in 1965, 1966 and 1967 that would appear on the “Food, Fashion, Family and Furnishings” section.

At the Post, while in the old “For and About Women” section, which in 1969 became Style, and when assigned to the city desk, Carey took on weightier subjects, such as the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, a protest planned by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and executed after King was assassinated.

There were others, such as “A Profile of Brutality: Family of 9 Flees in Fear to District” in 1968, “Law Students Hold Boycott at Howard” in 1969, and, also in 1968, a report from inside Washington’s Women’s Detention Center, “Once You’re in the Women’s Jail, ‘You Don’t Do Nothin’.”

“All of the sentenced prisoners, with one exception, are Negroes,” she wrote.

“Most of the staff of 42 are white.

“I arrived on a weekday morning as a reporter to spend 24 hours as a sentenced prisoner. . . .”

In the world of gossip, those subjects were secondary to Carey’s dating such public figures as television anchor Max Robinson and Frost. The Scottish Daily Mail included Carey in a 2013 article about women Frost had dumped. The two met “at a fashionable party in the Hamptons. ‘He was very bright, very nice, very charming. We spent the evening talking, and he took me to the train station,’ recalls Bernadette, now 73 and still living in New York with her husband of 33 years, Bruce Smith. She remembers the two years of their relationship as a charmed and glamourous time. . . .” (Pictured: funeral home photo)

Carey messaged Journal-isms in 2013, “After leaving Essence I spent a year at Vogue, got dumped by David Frost for Diahann [Carroll], then went to Chicago to do advertising and public relations for Fashion Fair Cosmetics.

“I married[,] moved back to New York where I’ve had a moderately successful real estate sales career.
These days I’m just a happy Bronxville Village housewife. . . .

“If you Google me as Bernadette Carey Smith, you will find my real estate office posting — it’s a bit thin these days as I am an emeritus associate broker — and only work with old customers and friends. There is also posted, something I wrote for the Times Metropolitan Diary several months ago that they ran. [It began, “Dear Diary: In the early 1970s, I attended a small dinner party at Mrs. Jacqueline Onassis’ Fifth Avenue apartment. . . .”]

“There is a quite recent photo of me in the real estate posting. I’m not fat, and someone who was at my house for brunch on Sunday, seems to think I’m not too bad looking for my age.”

The LoHud.com notice concluded, “During her career she produced insightful commentary on politics, fashion and local events, interviewing and befriending many notable people during her lifetime. Bernadette was a trailblazer at a time when women of color were often relegated to lesser roles. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in her honor to the Museum of Modern Art (www.moma.org).”

Research assistance: Jerry McCoy, D.C. Public Library, and Andrew M. Mayer

Al Dia Staff to be ‘Integrated’ into Morning News

Al Dia (“Up to Date”), the Spanish-language offshoot of the Dallas Morning News launched as a daily in 2003, will become a weekly, its staff integrated “throughout the newsroom” of the Morning News, the company announced.

The move was greeted by protests from the Dallas News Guild and the Society of Professional Journalists.

The Guild said Thursday, “Al Día has been covering the Hispanic community in North Texas for 19 years. Throughout this journey, it has created a bridge with the community and provided a reliable means of communication with Spanish-speaking readers long underserved by traditional media outlets.

“Dismantling this team affects not only the employees but also the entire Hispanic community of North Texas.

“It is with sadness that the Al Día team believes it has no choice but to accept the company’s decision. However, this does not mean that we agree with how this transition was communicated or undertaken.

“Al Día reporters have been radically underpaid and overworked for years, a problem the Dallas News Guild is working to correct, and the team believes the treatment it faced this week added to the historic disparity between the company’s English and Spanish-speaking staff.”

SPJ said, “The reassigning of Al Día staff is part of a worrying trend of news publishers cutting Spanish-language coverage. In 2019, The New York Times, BuzzFeed News Mexico and HuffPost Mexico stopped producing Spanish-language coverage. Tribune Publishing closed Hoy, a Spanish-language weekly newspaper in Chicago. Although content is sometimes still published in Spanish, as will be the case at the Dallas Morning News, it is no longer original reporting.”

Grant Moise (pictured), CEO of the DallasNews Corp., issued this statement:

“The Dallas Morning News and Al Dia remain committed to reaching the growing Hispanic audience in North Texas. We will continue to publish Al Dia every Wednesday in print and aldiadallas.com will continue to publish daily. The Al Dia team is now reporting into the same content areas as reporters from The Dallas Morning News in an effort to better serve the growing Latino community in North Texas. This community is not only our future, but it is the present, and it deserves enhanced coverage from our newsroom.”

“Additionally, we are and remain committed to publishing stories in Spanish and written in Spanish. The integration of the team throughout the newsroom is so that more of our journalists are focused on our Hispanic community and therefore we have more content for our diverse readership.

“We think it’s important to integrate our team because North Texas is home to more Hispanics born in the United States than most other areas in the country. This is what the Census tells us, not anyone else.

“As such, far more Hispanics in North Texas are either bilingual or speak Spanish at home thus our plan is and always has been to continue to publish content written in Spanish and English.”

Alfred Liggins responded to a question about TV One’s public-affairs commitment at 2:04:29; Roland Martin began his remarks at 4:32:40. (Credit: FCC/YouTube)

News About Racial Struggle Said to Repel Advertisers

TV One, the Black-oriented cable channel that launched 19 years ago on Martin Luther King Day, is now skimpy on news and public affairs programming partly because “News is very difficult to do in minority spaces because a lot of it is about struggle, and advertisers have difficulty now with that, and that doesn’t always garner a large audience,” according to CEO Alfred Liggins. He nonetheless acknowledged that “telling our own stories” has “kind of been like the bedrock of the company’s mission.”

Liggins (pictured) was speaking Tuesday at a day-long forum, sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission, on how to achieve more diversity among media owners.

As was noted in this column, while the rest of the nation was gripped on Jan. 6, 2021, by the insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol, TV One was showing “Family Matters: We’re Going to Walt Disney World.”

By contrast, entrepreneurial journalist Roland Martin, whose shows once constituted nearly all of the public affairs programming on TV One, later told the group, “If we’re not serving a public interest, then why do they still have those licenses? And so, we need to make sure in whatever we’re doing, that we’re challenging power at every single turn.”

Martin (pictured) also disclosed that he has a stake in an issue now before the FCC: whether it should approve a merger of Standard General, whose founding partner Soo Kim is Asian American, with Tegna, which owns 64 TV stations in 51 U.S. markets. The transaction would bolster the ranks of media companies headed by a person of color, but critics have expressed concerns that the deal would restrict access to local news coverage, cut jobs and raise prices for consumers.

“So you have Soo Kim (pictured), who has a deal that’s gone before the FCC,” Martin said. “And I’ve been talking to him and his team for the last several months, and so, if that deal buying Tegna closes, we’re going to have a content partnership, but also a back-end partnership when it comes to advertising as well.

“Because for me, and I’ve been saying for a long time, we can’t be just sitting here operating as if it’s only just us. How do we create partnerships? How do we create joint ventures? How do we create opportunities even with mainstream companies, when it comes to assets, when it comes to what they own, when it comes to their towers and their signals? We do that by being able to leverage what our power is, and our power is that we have numbers.”

He noted that white people will no longer make up a majority of Americans by 2043, according to census projections.


The symposium, “Expanding Digital and Media Ownership Opportunities for Women and Minorities,” hosted by the FCC’s Communications Equity and Diversity Council, took place less than a month after the agency reported that Blacks have majority ownership in only 2 percent of all commercial broadcast stations, Asians 1 percent, Hispanics or Latinos 6 percent. Women have majority ownership in 9 percent.

Panelists repeatedly called for an overhaul of FCC regulations that they said were outdated and holding them back, and Asian American speakers, particularly, urged that their group be taken as seriously as other people of color. “We’re not even an afterthought,” said Diana WP Ding (pictured), founder and CEO of Ding Ding TV.


Liggins’ comment about advertisers was part of a response to a question from this columnist: “People are advocating diversity in broadcasting, but my question is, toward what end? Is this just to enrich some people in a diverse way? Or is there a component that requires public affairs and news programming?”


Liggins replied, “It’s part of the fabric of all of our shows, our personalities on the radio side, whether it was Tom Joyner or Ricky Smiley or D.L. Hughley. You know, we just launched a new syndicated show with a woman, Amanda Seales. 

“These people are on the radio because they actually want to air their viewpoints and have impact. They’re not on the radio telling jokes, right? . . . or just playing music. It’s about impacting the audience and having commentary and influence.”


Faith Bautista, founder and CEO of Chime TV, said remotely from the Philippines, “During the Monterey Park shooting, we have a show on Chime TV, ‘Owning a Piece of America,’ and this is where we really told the story, you know, how these people died, and showing that we’re all in this together, and to have this Asian news locally, I think it was really helping a lot of our community also, that they understand that they’re also being heard. So, ‘Owning a Piece of America,’ is to really inform, empower, inspire. . . .”

Emotion, Pride, Determination at DuPont Awards

“Dr. Stuart Lord is one of the thousands of people to come forward over the years to tell their story of abuse at the hands of members of the Boy Scouts of America, including many here in Georgia,“ Lisa Rayam reported in June for WABE-TV in Atlanta.

“Their accounts are included in the recently released documentary ‘Leave No Trace,’ which tells of the downfall of the once-revered American institution that filed for bankruptcy in 2020. . . .”

Lord’s website adds, “In time, by embracing his spirituality, reporting his abusers, and eventually forgiving those who hurt him so greatly, Lord transcends his life of fear, shame, and anger to heal and embody his deepest calling to serve with a fully awakened heart. His life is dedicated to social justice.”

On Monday, Lord (pictured), who became the first Black president of Naropa University in Boulder, Colo., was on stage in New York for the DuPont-Columbia Awards. ABC News Studios and Hulu won for “Leave No Trace: A Hidden History of the Boy Scouts.” The audience saw a clip of Lord emotionally discussing his abuse by a fellow African American. (1:03:20 on video)

Among the other winners:

Co-host Amna Nawaz “gave a shout-out to her father, who graduated from Columbia’s journalism school. ‘He taught me to always ask tough questions, to listen carefully, to choose my words wisely,’ she said. ‘That’s what makes good journalism, and that is why we need at this moment in history more good journalism.’ (16:22 on video)

“This year’s jurors include jury chair Madhulika Sikka, Lynne Adrine, Nina Alvarez, June Cross, Mark Jurkowitz, Mark Lukasiewicz, David Rummel, Robert Smith and Mark Whitaker,” Hayes reported for Deadline.

Research assistance: Andrew Mayer, Jerry McCoy of D.C. Library People’s Archive

Protecting Female Journalists, Especially of Color

“In just the first half of 2020, we documented 25 major organized trolled campaigns targeting women journalists — a visible growth in comparison to 17 cases in the respective period last year,” Katarzyna Mierzejewska reported in 2020 for Ms. Magazine. “This is just a tip of the iceberg, as the statistics cannot possibly consist of a solid dose of sexualized and hateful comments that female reporters see daily on their social media.

“Additionally, our research shows that women of color are 34 percent more likely to be mentioned in abusive or problematic tweets than white women. Black women are disproportionately targeted, being 84 percent more likely than white women to be mentioned in such tweets. Trolling therefore goes along not only with sexist but also racist rhetoric. . . .”

On Feb. 3 in Editor & Publisher, Michael Bugeja, a distinguished professor of journalism at Iowa State University, reiterated three steps that can be taken by employers:

5 Ways to Improve Diversity of Coverage

“The American Press Institute worked with the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation and five news organizations in the metropolitan region to assess and improve how multiple news organizations in a single area cover communities of color,” Letrell Deshan Crittenden (pictured) reported Wednesday for the institute.

“We think these findings are useful for any news organization looking to assess the diversity, equity and inclusion within and outside its newsroom. It may also be useful within the classroom for both undergraduate and graduate students. . . .

Charlotte Moore English Broke Broadcast Ceilings

“Charlotte Moore English (pictured) was a pioneer, breaking barriers and glass ceilings for women managers in broadcasting,” according to an announcement posted on the website of the Johnson County Funeral Chapel and Memorial Gardens in Kansas. English, 74, died Jan. 29. No cause of death was listed, and the funeral home was unable to persuade family members to return a call seeking more information.

“She was the first woman and first African American broadcast boss in Kansas City history,” the notice continued. “In January 1993 Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Inc. named Charlotte Moore English Vice-President and General Manager of KSHB Channel 41.

“When asked if being the first woman and African American created added pressure, Charlotte English replied: ‘I don’t like to think of it that way. I just want to do a good job. But I don’t ignore that fact. I hope I’m an inspiration to other women and other African Americans.’ Prior to the promotion she had been station manager, the #2 position, since May 1990. . . .”

Sharon Stevens, a retired broadcast journalist in St. Louis, messaged Journal-isms, “To me, she was an unsung sheroe, quietly getting the job done.”

Visitation is scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 14, at 9 a.m. Central time at the funeral chapel, 11200 Metcalf Ave., Overland Park, KS 66210, with a livestreamed service to start at 10.

Nicaragua Frees 222, Including Journalists

Nicaragua released 222 political prisoners, including journalists and an American citizen, in a deal negotiated with Washington that marks one of the biggest prisoner releases ever involving the United States, according to senior Biden administration officials, Maria Abi-Habib reported Thursday for The New York Times.

“One of those traveling to the United States was Cristiana Chamorro Barrios (pictured), a journalist who was a leading contender in Nicaragua’s presidential elections held in 2021.

“Just months before the elections, Ms. Chamorro was disqualified as a candidate. Government forces then raided her home and detained her minutes before she was scheduled to give a news conference to speak about her disqualification and criticize the government’s interference in the polls.

“For Carlos Fernando Chamorro Barrios, the news could not have been more of a surprise. Beside his sister, Cristiana, his brother, Pedro Joaquín, was also freed on Thursday. Both had been jailed for their opposition to the Ortega family and Mr. Chamorro had expected to possibly never see them again. . . .”

In the Washington Post, Mary Beth Sheridan and Trish Wilson wrote Friday, “Juan Lorenzo Holmann Chamorro (pictured, by La Prensa) was drifting off to sleep in Nicaragua’s notorious El Chipote prison this week when the guard appeared. The newspaper publisher had been locked up for 545 days, a political prisoner in perhaps the Western Hemisphere’s most repressive country. Now the guard was ordering him to get up. Put on civilian clothes, he said.

“Holmann, 56, slipped on a pair of jeans his wife had recently brought him. He was led to a line of buses filling with inmates. The vehicles snaked through Managua’s dark streets, and Holmann wondered where he was headed. To a different prison? Another ‘trial?’

“Then his bus turned right, onto an access road into Managua’s Augusto C. Sandino International Airport. Holmann and 221 others — nearly all of Nicaragua’s imprisoned opposition — were being freed, on the condition they leave the country. They boarded a U.S. government-chartered flight; within hours, they landed at Dulles International Airport — beneficiaries of the unexpected mass release by the authoritarian government of Daniel Ortega and a secret Biden administration operation to pick them up and take them in.

“ ‘I don’t know if it’s a dream or it’s reality,’ a gaunt Holmann told reporters. . . .”

The Committee to Protect Journalists identified a third freed journalist, Miguel Mendoza Urbina, a sports and political commentator.

Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, said the deportation “brings a sense of relief that they will no longer have to spend years in prison,” but called on authorities to “guarantee that the media can report without fear of detention or forced exile.”

Short Takes

Credits: Left to right, from top left: Bruce Talamon; Regina Jones; Howard Bingham; Michael Jones; Bruce Talamon; Bobby Holland; Earl Fowler; Bruce Talamon and Bobby Holland; Bruce Talamon and Bobby Holland. All covers via Soul Publications.

(Credit: Atlanta Black Star)

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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. Send tips, comments and concerns to Richard Prince at journal-isms+owner@groups.io

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