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Ebony’s Parent Company Ousts CEO

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A salute to the “Ebony Power 100,” honoring Black achievers at a gala in Beverly Hills, Calif., is a major fund-raiser for the company.

Updated July 6

Board May Refer Its Concerns to Authorities
Allies Confront Own Anti-Black Racism:
Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans Speak
Douglass ‘Speaks Up’ on Statue Debate:
Clipping Shows Unhappiness With Lincoln Tribute
Guessing Game On for Next Name of D.C. Team
L.A. Times Owner Answers Black Caucus Demands
Robin Turner to Lead Politico Diversity Efforts
Facebook’s Zuckerberg to Meet Rights Leaders
NABJ Seeks Confidential Info About Essence
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Board May Refer Its Concerns to Authorities

The board of directors of the company that owns Ebony magazine — troubled since the venerable publication was bought by a Black-owned Austin, Texas-based company from the founding Johnson Publishing Co. in 2016, has ousted its CEO, the company announced on Sunday.

“The board decided to end [the] leadership” of Willard Jackson Jr. (pictured), Jacob Walthour Jr., newly elected board chairman and a black-owned asset manager, told Journal-isms by telephone.

The four-member board of Ebony Media Holdings had contracted with an independent counsel to review transactions “and felt there was enough there there to effect change immediately,” Walthour said. He cited Jackson’s failure to follow procedures, such as securing board approval for certain transactions, and acknowleged, “there is that possibility that the issues are referred to the regular agencies and authorities.

“We weren’t getting the level of transparency that we were accustomed to,” Walthour said, “and it raised a set of red flags.”

Michael Gibson, (pictured), co-founder and chairman of African-American-owned Clear View Group, which purchased Ebony, left management of the franchise two years ago but remains on the Ebony board, Walthour said.

Under Gibson and Jackson, Ebony was taken to court by writers who had not been paid; the magazine was difficult to find on newsstands, and in 2017, it laid off nearly all of its masthead — as many as a dozen key members of its editorial team. The Chicago mainstay said it was consolidating editorial operations with sister publication Jet in Los Angeles.

The publication’s operations are now in Houston. Walthour is based in Newark, N.J.

In addition, “Ebony no longer offers a print edition,” spokesperson Jennifer Farmer told Journal-isms. 

In its statement, the company said “The board of directors will appoint an interim CEO and operating committee. It will continue to assess all structural, managerial, and financial facets of the organization with an eye toward amplifying the current calls for economic and racial justice and equality. As part of the board’s engagement, they are prioritizing the payment of delinquent compensation to EBONY employees and expect to make announcement soon.”

As for Jet magazine, once a significant part of the company but which ended its print edition in 2014 to go digital, Farmer said, “We are in the early stages of developing a broader JET campaign.”

With Jackson out, the remaining board members are Walthour (pictured) of Newark, N.J.-based Blueprint Capital Advisers, John C. Robinson, president and CEO of Atlanta-based Consequent Capital Management, and Gibson, co-founder (with Jackson) of Houston-based CVG Group.

The future of the print publication will rest on an evaluation of the three pillars of the company, Walthour said — the print magazine, the digital operation and the Ebony Power 100, its annual fundraising gala to honor “beautiful black excellence.”

Walthor’s firm was in the news less than two weeks ago when it sued New Jersey for racial bias, saying officials told it that the state’s pension was averse to hiring money-management firms owned by people of color.

“Blueprint Capital Advisors is one of the few U.S. investment firms founded by African-Americans,” Dawn Lim reported June 23 for the Wall Street Journal.

“The Newark firm said in court documents Tuesday that New Jersey’s pension office ‘usurped’ its ideas and hired money-management giant BlackRock Inc. to run Blueprint’s strategy. Blueprint alleges pension staff made efforts to block it from investing state money and turned against the firm after it spoke up about being treated unfairly. Blueprint was eventually hired to run money for New Jersey, but under terms that it describes as ‘punitive.’

“It is rare for an asset manager to sue an investor. . . .”

Allies Confront Own Anti-Black Racism

 

“We brought together 13 panelists from a diverse cross section of our community . . . to address some of the systemic issues related to race,”” Suzette Hackney wrote June 21 for the Indianapolis Star. (video)

Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans Speak

The Black Lives Matter movement, reported by The New York Times Friday to be possibly “the largest movement in U.S. history,” is prompting writers of other races and ethnicities — Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Arabs and non-Black Muslims — to confront anti=black racism in their own ranks.

“Too often we have brought with us to the United States the anti-Black prejudice that [is] prevalent across Latin America, which was shaped [by] the same structures of slavery and European colonialism as the United States,” Antonio De Loera-Brust wrote May 30 for Latino Rebels.

“From Argentina to Mexico, Latin American societies are deeply racist against people of African origin. These very same societies have celebrated and worshipped whiteness for centuries at the expense of our fellow Black Latin Americans. If we can’t confront that reality, how can we begin to confront what is in front of us right here in the United States?”

Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota and a founder of the Native American Journalists Association, wrote Monday for indianz.com, “If Native Americans are going to seriously discuss racism I think we should be taking a close look at ourselves.” (Pictured: Oglala Sioux tribe)

None of the non-Black groups has a monopoly on racism, and Blacks can be bigoted toward other groups.

Still, Giago recounted, “Many years ago a group of Lakota girls were a short way from their village swimming when a troop of U. S. soldiers rode up. There [were] no such things as swimming suits back then so the girls were swimming nude. The soldiers dragged them from the water and raped them. Some of the girls got pregnant and gave birth to mixed blood children.

“When the black Buffalo Soldiers patrolled the Dakotas along with their white cavalry companions they would sometimes fall in love with Lakota women, marry them and have children. Their children were called Hasapa’s by the Lakota. The children of mixed white blood were called Iyeska. Actually the word Iyeska was first used as a name for the translators who were usually half French. . . .

“Every one of these children experienced racial discrimination from members of their own tribe. One who rose to be a prominent attorney was often dismissed as a ‘Mexican’ even though on his mother’s side of his family, he carried the blood of Lakota chiefs. . . .”

Writing for HuffPost on Friday, Rowaida Abdelaziz referenced African American George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police and reminded readers, “Black Muslims were among the first Muslims in the U.S., particularly those who were captured and enslaved in the 17th century.

“But they are often ignored in mainstream conversations about Islam. Now, the protests that have rocked the world in the weeks since Floyd’s death are also forcing non-Black, predominantly Arab and South Asian Muslims to evaluate their role in systemic injustice. . . .”

Abdelaziz also wrote, “The conversation became more real for members of the Arab and non-Black Muslim communities in the U.S. when they learned that it was an employee at Cup Foods — a convenience store owned by a Palestinian American Muslim man — who called Minneapolis police on Floyd over a suspected counterfeit $20 bill.”

Ahmad Jitan, a community organizer for the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, a community organization and clinic with facilities on the South Side of Chicago, “has partnered with MuslimARC to create ‘Corner Store Witness,’ an online curriculum for non-Black Muslim business owners about how to navigate their relationship with Black customers in an equitable and moral way. . . .”

Shortly after Floyd’s death,  Kimmy Yam wrote June 1, updated June 4, for NBC Asian America, “The image of then-Minneapolis police Officer Tou Thao (pictured), a Hmong American, standing with his back turned as a white officer knelt on George Floyd’s neck has ignited a discussion about how to approach the topic of anti-blackness in the Asian American community. . . . “

Yam also wrote, “Several experts expressed that this is a pivotal moment for Asian Americans to tackle the subject of anti-blackness in a productive way, beginning with unpacking the biases in their own communities by first confronting the historical context behind it. . . . “

Sewell Chan, editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times, sought to emphasize the ties between Asian Americans and African Americans in a June 22 essay.

“Anti-Black racism and anti-Asian racism have often gone hand in hand, serving similar functions of distracting Americans from the common values and interests that should unite them.” President Trump’s repeated descriptions of COVID-19 as the “kung flu” “is but a taste of the kind of verbal abuse that Black Americans routinely face in our society.”

To be sure, a wide spectrum of Americans, including the journalists of color organizations, is expressing outrage at the racism brought to the fore by the Floyd killing. Among the latest is Unify:(emphasis added): Journalists for Diversity, a New England coalition formed in 2017 and modeled after Unity: Journalists for Diversity, which was soon to dissolve.

“Unify” includes the New England chapters of the National Association of Black Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and the NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists.

“Those of us who are non-Black Latinx, AAPI, and LGBTQ journalists support our Black colleagues, our Black loved ones and neighbors, and the Black and biracial members of our own communities demanding an end to police violence and systemic racism,” they declared on June 26.

“The Black communities we cover are in pain. We pledge to listen for insight and guidance as we support change driven by Black voices, ideas, and priorities. We pledge to foster frank conversations within and among our communities about the anti-Black racism that exists in every community. . . .”

Douglass ‘Speaks Up’ on Statue Debate

“If people had listened to [Frederick Douglass] it might have resolved it 144 years ago,” historian Jonathan White says.

 

Clipping Shows Unhappiness With Lincoln Tribute

A newspaper clipping has emerged as a key bit of evidence in a controversy over an 1876 statue depicting Abraham Lincoln, holding a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, standing over a formerly enslaved man, now unshackled but in a loincloth, looking up at the “Great Emancipator.”

The clipping shows that Frederick Douglass, who spoke at the unveiling of the Washington statue, originally conceived of and funded by freed Black people, in fact did not like it.

[Update: A statue of Douglass in Rochester, N.Y., was toppled from its base Sunday and left near the Genesee River gorge. The damage to the statue was said to be too significant for it to be repaired, but another is to take its place, Gary Craig and Ryan Miller reported for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.]

As James Holmann reported with Mariana Alfaro Wednesday in the Washington Post, “seven score and four years later, some people want to get rid of the statue. The activists who have been gathering almost every night in Washington’s Lincoln Park, a few blocks from the Capitol, for more than a week say the depiction diminishes the agency of black people in securing their own liberation. Some even say it promotes white supremacy. A few local leaders have called for the monument to go into a museum. . . .”

A District of Columbia Council candidate, Marcus Goodwin, has gathered more than 7,000 signatures on a petition to either remove or alter the Lincoln statue. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s nonvoting representative in Congress, has said she would introduce legislation to move the statue to a museum.

Boston’s art commission voted unanimously on Tuesday night to remove an exact replica of the statue that was installed in a park just off Boston Common in 1879.

The Fourth of July weekend is already a notable one for Douglass, abolitionist and publisher of the storied newspaper The North Star. Douglass’ speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” delivered July 5, 1852, is widely referenced. The Philadelphia Inquirer, for instance, ran the text on its editorial page Saturday and on NPR, Douglass’ descendants read excerpts from it.

The discovery of the clipping is testimony to Douglass’ enduring relevance and to the value of newspapers as keepers of “the first rough draft of history.”

Defenders of the statue note that Black people of the time celebrated it. Jonathan White, who teaches at Christopher Newport University, wrote June 26 in The Hill, “The National Lincoln Monument Association counted among the leaders some of the most prominent African Americans of the era. They included Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, Robert Smalls, Daniel Payne, and [Martin R.] Delany. To be sure, a white organization had eventually taken on the organizing process and design selection, but the statue was something that the Black community of Washington took great pride in.

 “The first donation for the statue came from a former slave in Ohio named Charlotte Scott. She handed five dollars to her former enslaver and said, ‘The colored people have lost their best friend on earth. Lincoln was our best friend and I will give five dollars of my wages toward erecting a new monument to his memory.’ Word of her remarkable gesture made it into the newspapers, and soon others made similar contributions. 

“When the monument was finally dedicated in 1876, African American civic organization members paraded through the streets of Washington for two hours before it was unveiled in Lincoln Park. . . .”

In the Wall Street Journal on Saturday, Ted Mann described the detective work in documenting how Douglass really felt.

On “the last Friday evening in June, sitting on the couch with his wife watching ‘Gilmore Girls,’ Mr. White was texting back and forth” with fellow historian Scott Sandage of Carnegie Mellon University, “pondering the alleged distaste for the statue by Douglass, who had dedicated it with a famous address in 1876.  (payroll)

“The account of Douglass criticizing the statue at its unveiling came from a 1916 book that included the recollection of activist John W. Cromwell, who was in attendance.

“”Mr. White pointed out the account was secondhand from three decades later, and could be apocryphal. Mr. Sandage had thought Cromwell’s account had been corroborated and cited it in his own work in the 1990s. He went searching for a corroborating account.

“Mr. Sandage said he didn’t at first realize the importance of his discovery, but alerted Mr. White and texted an image of the letter to David Blight, a Douglass biographer and history professor at Yale University.

“Mr. Blight was ‘practically giddy,’ Mr. Sandage said. . . .”

Mann also wrote, “Mr. Goodwin has said that concerns about the statue could be addressed by adding more Black figures to the statue that are in standing positions, including contemporaries of Lincoln like Douglass. It is a compromise that the newly discovered Douglass letter seems to anticipate.

“Still others believe the existing monument should be moved, including Kirk Savage of the University of Pittsburgh, whose work includes ; ‘Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves,’ a history of monuments erected after the Civil War.

“ ‘It is a distorting image,’ Mr. Savage said. ‘It’s a white savior narrative that puts Lincoln in the position of a kind of saint, working a miracle cure on the enslaved population.’

“If new additions to the memorial are done right, Mr. Sandage said, ‘the original statue would become an artifact and the new groupings around it would become the focus.’

“Mr. White said that ‘people of good will are on both sides’ of the issue. ‘If people had listened to [Douglass] it might have resolved it 144 years ago,’ he said. . . .”

[DeNeen L. Brown wrote July 6 in The Washington Post that the real-life model for the statue, Archer Alexander, was an active agent in his own freedom and not passive as depicted.

[Brown quoted historian Arica L. Coleman, author of “That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans, and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia.”

[“The monument is historically inaccurate,” Coleman said. “It gives the impression that we were just sitting around waiting for Lincoln to free us. That is not true. From the beginning of the war, we were running away. A lot of us were going into the Union lines seeking freedom. Black people were like, ‘I’m not sitting here waiting to be freed.’ So a lot of them just took off and they ran into the Union lines.”

[Brown added, “Decades later, the family of boxing great Muhammad Ali discovered through family DNA research that Ali was the great-great-great-grandson of Alexander. . . . “]

Guessing Game On for Next Name of D.C. Team

“What will the new name of the Washington NFL team be after ‘Redskins’ is disposed of?” Chris Russell asked Saturday for Sports Illustrated..’ . . .”

“The obvious answer is we don’t know but sources told RedskinsReport.com that Dan Snyder would like to pay homage to the past.

‘”Another source backed that desire up and also added that paying homage to the past and not completely burying the controversial history of the franchise is important to Snyder, who once famously said “we’ll never change the name. It’s that simple. NEVER — you can use caps.’

” ‘Dan realizes that the Redskins name is detrimental to business,’ one source said.

“The same source added that it was a very good ‘bet’ that the name would change soon. . . .”

 

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong wrote the Black Caucus of the L.A.. Times, “We see you. We hear your voices. We have experienced institutionalized racism in Apartheid South Africa from the day we were born. We understand systemic racism and the daily struggle to overcome implicit bias.”

L.A. Times Owner Answers Black Caucus Demands

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the Los Angeles Times, responded Thursday to demands from the Black Caucus of the L.A.Times Guild by pledging to hire “more Black journalists over the next thirty-six months to better reflect the diversity of Southern California” and to begin “reshaping our coverage to address unconscious bias, evident in the frequent headline use of terms such as ‘looting.’ . . .”

Soon-Shiong, who bought the newspaper two years ago, wrote the group, “At the Los Angeles Times, we acknowledge a need for change. Michele and I commit to communicate and fulfill our personal and institutional goals to you and our staff to be the beacon of change.

“We will accelerate processes that began our first day as the paper’s first non-white owners: diversifying the organization to represent Los Angeles, especially by providing more coverage of Black, Latino and other under-represented communities in our English and Spanish publications. We will enhance transparency and the effort to ‘shape-shift’ the LA Times. . . .”

The Black Caucus asserted on June 23, “We are in a crisis and it is not new. Those of us who have been here since the tumult of 1992 say history is repeating itself. We don’t have enough Black journalists — or, more broadly, journalists of color — to cover our overwhelmingly diverse city, state and nation with appropriate insight and sensitivity.

“And most of us who do work here are often ignored, marginalized, under-valued and left to drift along career paths that leave little opportunity for advancement. Meanwhile, we’re hearing the same empty promises and seeing the same foot-dragging from management.”

While Soon-Shiong did not meet all of the caucus’ demands, he did commit to:

[Meg James and Daniel Hernandez reported June 24 for the newspaper, “One of the flashpoints in the discussion has been Metpro, originally known as the Minority Editorial Training Program, which the paper has relied on since 1984 to develop a pipeline of working journalists, including copy editors and photographers, from underrepresented groups.

[“But many young staffers complained about how Metpro had been mismanaged and abused. Staffers said a program that has produced world-class journalists, including Pulitzer Prize-winners and high-ranking editors, had turned into a ‘Survivor’-like competitive culture where young journalists were pitted against one another.”]

In their June 24 report, James and Hernandez wrote, “Two years after the Los Angeles Times reverted to local ownership, one of the country’s largest metropolitan daily newspapers is facing a painful internal reckoning over glaring deficiencies and missteps regarding race and representation in its pages and its staff. . . .”

Robin Turner to Lead Politico Diversity Efforts

2 “Today we’re delighted to unveil a new position charged specifically with advancing diversity and inclusion in the newsroom, including the recruitment and mentorship of journalists of color,” Politico Editor in Chief Matt Kaminski; Editor Carrie Budoff Brown, and Joseph J. Schatz, managing editor, platforms and operations, announced to the staff on June 25.

“And equally thrilled to appoint Robin Turner (pictured, by Jason Miccolo Johnson) to it as POLITICO’s Director of Editorial Diversity Initiatives, effective immediately.”

They also wrote, “We’ve established smarter hiring policies to ensure better representation across the publication, invested in programs to build stronger pipelines of journalists and engaged more deeply with journalism diversity groups. These efforts are paying off in real ways: People of color now comprise a quarter of POLITICO’s staff, up from 14 percent less than four years ago. . . .

“Robin’s mandate is ambitious, and she’ll initially focus on several priority projects.

The memo said of Turner, “An Ohio native, Robin joined the POLITICO copy desk in the early days, in 2010. She has spent decades at national and international publications, including 14 years at USA Today and nine years with Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal. For most of her time with POLITICO, she has worked tirelessly to build PJI from an idea to a program that sets the industry standard. . . .”

The Washington Post last month advertised for a managing editor for diversity and inclusion as part of its diversity initiative.

Facebook’s Zuckerberg to Meet Rights Leaders

“For years, Facebook Inc. brushed off complaints from civil rights groups that it didn’t do enough to combat racism, discrimination and voter suppression flourishing on its site,” Naomi Nix reported Sunday for Bloomberg. “Now, pressure from a boycott by major advertisers is forcing the social media giant to address their concerns.

“Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) has agreed to meet on Tuesday with leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Anti-Defamation League and Color of Change to discuss their requests. Facebook is increasingly playing defense against a growing group of civil rights organizations, employees and companies demanding that the technology giant do more to fight injustice on its platform. . . .”

“Concerns have included how the platform has promoted discriminatory advertising, allowed foreign adversaries to try to suppress the Black vote, and let white supremacy groups organize rallies. . . .’

“Civil rights advocates had been contacting Facebook as early as 2017 about issues such as hate speech and election interference, but intensified their outreach following reports that Russian operatives had exploited Facebook and other platforms to suppress Black voting, stir social unrest and help Trump win the 2016 election. . . .”

Sahil Patel added Thursday for the Wall Street Journal, “Among the top requests from the groups will be for Facebook to hire an executive with civil rights expertise for a post in the social-media giant’s C-suite. . . . [paywall]

“Thursday, a Black Facebook employee and two job candidates filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission saying Facebook is biased against Black employees and makes it more difficult for them to get hired and promoted. Among other issues, the employee said he heard the N-word said at work. . . .

“Other steps requested of Facebook by the boycott organizers include the creation of an internal system to automatically flag hateful content in private groups for human review, and the finding and removing of public and private groups focused on white supremacy, violent conspiracies, vaccine misinformation and other objectionable content. . . .”

 

The annual Essence Festival was virtual this year, from June 25 to June 28 and July 2 to July 5. (Credit: Essence)

NABJ Seeks Confidential Info About Essence

The National Association of Black Journalists encouraged its members and others Friday to email the organization to share confidential information about mistreatment of employees at Essence magazine. The email address is nabjalerts@gmail.com.

NABJ declared, “Every day Black journalists, and journalists across the world, are having to fight against discrimination, parity issues and efforts to muzzle press freedom. It is disappointing that journalists are also having to face issues of harassment and bullying within their newsrooms, and worse from fellow members of the Black community.”

The statement followed publication Monday of an anonymous letter on medium.com by purported current and former Essence employees that said, “for the Black women who [make up] over 80% of the company’s workforce, they are systematically suppressed by pay inequity, sexual harassment, corporate bullying, intimidation, colorism and classism. . . .”

Essence Communications responded at first with a statement that “the accusations are false and we fully deny them.” Then, on Tuesday, it announced that it is hiring “law firms and other independent external experts” to review the accusations and named a new interim CEO to replace owner Richelieu Dennis (pictured) in that role.

However, the company took issue Thursday with language in some reports that said Dennis had “resigned” as interim CEO.

“There was no interim CEO at ESSENCE Communications, Inc. (ECI), following the departure of Michelle Ebanks on March 31 until Richelieu Dennis appointed Caroline Wanga to this position on July 1. As owner, Dennis helped to lead the team along with the ECI senior leadership team, but never took on the roles or responsibilities of CEO. So he never stepped down from, resigned from or was replaced in any role.”

In a statement posted on Twitter Thursday, the anonymous group, #BlackFemaleAnonymous, claimed success, though it said it was awaiting further moves.

“As of Sunday, June 28, the day our testimonial The Truth About Essence went live, there is a community-driven accountability watch on Essence, its ownership and advertising partners. As of business day 4, existing staff are released from the toxic management style of Richelieu Dennis, Michelle Ebanks, Joy Collins Profet and MoAna Luu,” company executives.

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Dana Canedy heads to Simon & Schuster (Credit: Pulitizer Prizes)

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