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Diversity Among Photojournalists at a Low Point

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Jim Trotter: Too Many Were Silent on My NFL Lawsuit

Homepage photo: In 2021, The Philadelphia Inquirer created “Wildest Dreams,” an “anthology of Black cultural inheritance, legacy and joy” produced by a team of Black journalists. This photo was used to illustrate the series. (Credit: Philadelphia Inquirer)

Journal-isms Roundtable photos by Jeanine L. Cummins

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In 2021, The Philadelphia Inquirer created “Wildest Dreams,” an “anthology of Black cultural inheritance, legacy and joy” produced by a team of Black journalists. Here, as part of “A love letter to Black Philadelphia,” Jonathan Delgado, left, and Rosa Sanchez dance to the music of Bomberos De La Calle at a Juneteenth celebration in 2020. “We created this space to center ourselves — our mental health, our beauty and our identities — and to put our truths out there, on our own terms,” the caption read. (Credit: Charles Fox/Philadelphia Inquirer.)

Jim Trotter: Too Many Were Silent on My NFL Lawsuit

Diversity among news photographers is at a low point, according to leaders in that line of work, despite the “racial reckoning” that led to increasing diversity efforts after the protests over the 2020 murder of George Floyd and the continuing push for progress that accelerated in the 1960s and 1970s, and again in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The culprit is the financial peril faced by many print news operations and the resulting contraction of news staffs. The decline in photographer diversity means a less accurate news product, particularly in portraying people of color, according to participants Tuesday at a Journal-isms Roundtable. Moreover, the rise of artificial intelligence looms for those remaining, with AI’s potential to replace human photographers.

That Roundtable — attended by 33 people by Zoom, with another 53 watching on Facebook, as of Wednesday — also heard Jim Trotter (pictured), the former NFL writer who sued the football league, disclose new details about his settlement with that organization and his disappointment that he didn’t receive more support; and saw former syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. discuss the advantages of escaping the demands of a columnist’s life. The group also heard tips on how journalists can help counter the rampant spread of disinformation and misinformation.

It took place as Vice President Kamala Harris addressed more than 75,000 people on Washington’s National Mall in Harris’ “closing argument” as the Democratic nominee for president, and as the New York Yankees were winning Game 5 of the World Series, besting the Los Angeles Dodgers.

First up on the Zoom, however, was the state of diversity among photojournalists. “Due to the tide of demise of journalism today with the slashing of staffs and reductions, layoffs, buyouts and whatnot, I think we’re probably at the lowest number in the industry as from, say, the beginning of Matt’s career,” said Akili Ramsess (pictured), executive director of the National Press Photographers Association. 

Ramsess was referring to Matthew Lewis, the African American Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post photographer who died at 94 on Oct. 2, and whose passing prompted the Roundtable discussion.

“With the exception of the major newspapers such as New York Times, Washington Post, maybe Chicago, Detroit, and L.A., major metropolitan papers, you have probably an average of two to three, if you’re lucky, Black photographers or photographers of color at all represented in any of the major newspapers these days. . . . More than ever, we’re in pretty dire straits in terms of representation,” she said.

James Estrin (pictured), who has implemented diversity efforts at The New York Times as senior staff photographer there, agreed.

“I was the co-editor of our photography blog, Lens, for 10 years,” Estrin noted.

He was hired by the Times in 1992, and “by 1995, we were by far the most diverse department in the newspaper.” About half of the staff, about 32 or 33 people, “were people of color. Now, however, we have a staff of about 15, and most of the work is freelancers by far” — and that pool isn’t very diverse either, he said.

“Those were retirements universally. Everyone retired. . . .  So three Black photographers and one Asian out of 15. And in photo editors, we have 60 photo editors. Six are Black. Three, I think, there’s three Hispanic and several Asian, I think six, as many as six.”

The photo editor category is key, these photojournalists said, “because the power, really, in making the editorial decisions visually starts with photo editors,” in the words of Sandra Stevenson (pictured), deputy director of photography at The Washington Post. That’s doubly true for Black women, Stevenson said. “There are very few of us.”

 “Akili has called black women photographers on newspapers unicorns because they are so rare,” Estrin wrote in the chat room.

Overall figures for the decline of staff photographers is difficult to come by, but overall, newspapers lost 77 percent of their jobs over the past 20 years, the single steepest dive among any of the 532 industries tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Washington Post has reported.

Lewis, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his portfolio of Washington-area personalities and ways of life, became the newspaper’s first Black assistant managing editor and, hired in 1965, only the Post’s second Black photographer.

Matthew Lewis talks about covering Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1968 riots after his assassination. (Courtesy Lucian Perkins/YouTube)

A Black college dropout from Pittsburgh, Lewis rose to prominence documenting such historic events as civil rights marches led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1963 funeral of President John F. Kennedy. His feature photography earned him a Pulitzer in 1975, recognized for capturing the essence of America during pivotal moments. One of his mentors was the legendary Gordon Parks.

For the Lewis family, diversity meant grounding their work in the lived experiences of all people. “His life was demonstrated in his work. One thing he taught me as a kid, he always told me, ‘Whatever you do, I don’t care what you do. Just love it. Just love it. Let that passion pour in,’ ” Kevin Lewis, Matt’s son, told the Roundtable. “His work demonstrates exactly what I would want everyone to remember: how much he loved not just his art, but the people in his field.” 

Kevin Lewis later said of the session, ” I know dad would be proud to see the gathering of great minds in his love and passion.”

A service is to take place Saturday at 11 a.m. at First Baptist Church, 141 N McDonald St, McDonald, Pa., near Matt Lewis’ Pittsburgh hometown.

The segment ended with agreement that photojournalists should meet among themselves to find solutions to the need for more diversity.

In the Roundtable’s second segment, Tim Richardson (pictured), director of PEN America’s Journalism and Disinformation Program, said that as artificial intelligence and social media manipulation increase at a fast clip, some communities, particularly those of African Americans, risk falling victim to disinformation through unchecked image alterations.

The disinformation expert pointed out that, between 2022 and 2024, the AI tool Midjourney evolved from generating cartoonish images to creating hyper-realistic pictures that could easily be mistaken for authentic photographs by those without specialized training. 

Communities such as the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, have been targeted with false rumors perpetuated by X users from the far right. Many of these campaigns appeal to emotions and values that resonate widely, particularly around issues such as immigration.

Surveying journalists since 2016, “We learned that 90 percent of reporters told us that they were altering their journalistic practices because of disinformation… 17 percent said they had avoided reporting a story fearing a fake news backlash, and 40% said their newsrooms didn’t have effective processes to cope with disinformation,” Richardson said.

PEN America used this graphic to illustrate its 2022 report, “Hard News: Journalists and the Threat of Disinformation.”

Richardson has trained journalists in 100 newsrooms on dealing with disinformation over the last six months.

As Richardson wrote in The Hill, “One area we are pursuing is showing promise in its early stages: helping community members who are committed to sharing factual information and having sensitive conversations as ‘trusted messengers.’ ” 

Pitts retired from his nationally syndicated Miami Herald column at the end of 2022 after more than 30 years.

No longer having a column, he said, is “liberating.” 

“You know what? I get to ignore stuff,” Pitts (pictured) said.

“And I am finding that such a blessing.

“This year, when the Republicans had their convention, my reflex was, OK, let me sit down and watch this and see what they’re going to do that’s going to piss me off that I’m going to have to write about. And then I realized — I don’t have to!

“Somebody else is going to watch it. . . .  I do not miss having to subject myself to this stuff or having to think about all the crazy and the hatefulness, like the thing at Madison Square [Garden] the other night.

“I don’t have to think much about that. I can see what Stephen Colbert said about it and with Jon Stewart, and I can read the accounts in the paper, and I’ve got quite enough. I don’t need to add anything to what has been said.

“I’m sorry, do I sound too happy?”

Pitts also said writing a novel allows him to pursue truth rather than facts. 

“Writing a column is — you’re constrained by, you have to report the facts. You’re writing your opinion based on these other facts.

“In a novel, you’re less concerned with the facts, although this is a historical novel,” he said of his latest work, “54 Miles,” so I am bound by the historical record, but you’re looking for the truth. And the truth and the facts are not always the same thing,” Pitts said. “When I talk about the truth, I’m talking about the lessons, the things that the facts add up to.” 

The new novel takes place during the civil rights movement.  “I think it’s a great story and I think it’s a great story seldom told. But I think it’s even more critical now to discuss this history and to bring it alive and not to let it sit and molder in history books because people are actively trying to steal our history,” Pitts told the group.

“They’re trying to restrict it, restrain it, subvert it, lie about it and make it almost impossible to teach. And so . . . that bothers me. That angers me, to be perfectly honest about it. So the other mission of this book and some of my other books has been frankly to make history more accessible.

“You know, when March 7 rolls around, you get a  10- or 15-second clip on television of John Lewis getting his head beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, but you get no sense of what it was like to be on that bridge. You get no sense of what came before that, i.e. Jimmie Lee Jackson. Or what came after that, James Reeb, Viola Liuzzo, and that long 54-mile march. So I wanted to recreate that for anybody that’s interested to put people on that bridge, to put them in Selma, to put them in Alabama in 1965.

“And, you know, have some sense of what it was that we came through and why people were marching in the first place.”

The NFL settled a racial discrimination lawsuit with Trotter on Oct. 9, just over one year after the former NFL reporter sued the league. In exchange, the NFL pledged financial support for a scholarship foundation for journalism students at historically Black colleges and universities.

Terms of the settlement were not publicly disclosed.

Trotter, who reported for the NFL Network, sued the NFL and the league-owned cable channel last year for racial discrimination, claiming that his contract was not renewed because he repeatedly spoke out about pro football’s lack of diversity at the league office. The lawsuit said NFL Media did not have a single Black person in a managerial position or on its news desk. Last year, he was named “Journalist of the Year” by the National Association of Black Journalists.

The Oct 29 Journal-isms Roundtable, embedded above, was attended by 33 people by Zoom, with another 53 watching on Facebook, as of Wednesday. (Credit: YouTube)

Trotter disclosed to the Roundtable the calculations he made in deciding to settle.

“I’m going to be honest, there was a part of me that did not want to settle,” said Trotter, now a correspondent for The Athletic, that “wanted to go all the way through to trial. And have a jury rule one way or the other.

“But that was ego talking, and talking to other attorneys, and people that I respect, what I had to come to the realization [of] was, there were several factors that said to me, it’s worth settling or it is a best-case scenario to settle.

“And by that, I mean, number one, a lot of innocent people were going to get hurt if we went to trial. . . .

“There were a lot of private conversations that took place, electronic conversations. And these individuals had no idea that their names might one day surface in a lawsuit and that they would be called in to have to speak to that. And some of these individuals still work at the NFL Network.

“And so there was a part of me that felt it was unfair to put them in that position if we were to go to trial.

“The other thing, based on information that I received from attorneys as well as my own was, if you go to trial, it’s always a risk, you know, that it might not go in your favor.

“And that even if it does go in your favor, the damages might not be more than what, let’s say, someone is offering in settlement.

“And so if you’re trying to do something positive or to make a positive out of a negative situation, you know you weigh those factors as well and so for me, it was time. . . .

“I personally had no problem going forward. But there are a lot of people who are impacted by it and you start to take that into consideration.”

Trotter also said, “I was determined that whatever happened, if I came out of it with any sort of monetary gains, that part of that was going to go toward scholarships and resources to help aspiring sports journalist at HBCUs.

“And we’re going to do that.”

Trotter told the group he was disappointed in the lack of support from some African Americans in the NFL, leading to a larger question for some about the state of Black solidarity.

“The things that I was fighting for had nothing to do with me,” Trotter continued. “Like it wasn’t going to impact me. I wasn’t going to gain anything from this lawsuit. . . . It was interesting to me that the people I was fighting for did not stand up, and recognize that I was fighting for them.

“By that, I mean Black players, Black coaches, Black executives.

“Because I can tell you, I could probably count on one hand the number of them that reached out to me after I filed that lawsuit.

“And that was kind of sobering for me.

“Because I wasn’t expecting all of them to come running and say thank you or whatever, but I at least thought some of them would acknowledge what’s going on here.

“Now, I understand a lot of them are young. And when you’re young, your focus is on getting that bag and getting paid and all of that. I get it.

“But there are enough who know better.

“And so every time that they complain about how they are being covered, and how they are being treated by the media, and many times they mean mainstream media, white reporters, I’m thinking, here is an opportunity for you to stand up and fight for that change.

“But that wasn’t the case. So that was sobering for me, and disappointing. And it was also disappointing . . . to see how some Black reporters handled that, and people who call themselves journalists, and chose to speak on my case, but never once reached out to me, or my attorney, to even ask us about the case or why we were filing it and what was involved with it.”

Closing the presentations was a brief one from Nicole Johnson, founder and CEO of Baltimore Read Aloud, which this fall launched a 100-book home library campaign. 

“We are working with local schools and nonprofit partners to host a community-wide book drive, with the target of getting 20,000 new books donated so that 200 families can set up their own home libraries for the new year,” Johnson said.

“And my work in Title I schools, I’ve seen firsthand how difficult it can be for families to buy books on a tight budget. And every day I meet teachers and parents who struggle with finding books that children will enjoy or even be able to relate to because they can’t relate to the characters or they can’t relate to the story.

“Research tells us that growing up with almost no books at home is associated with literacy levels at about 50 percent below average. And yet having at least 80 books at home raises literacy levels to average, and we can definitely do better than average.

“I believe that every family, regardless of socioeconomic status, deserves a home library.”

Johnson provided a link to one of our partner schools’ wish list, and to sponsorship opportunities for purchasing libraries for two or more families.

Contributing: Christian Spencer

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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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