Articles Feature

For Journalists of Color, Covering Racists Can Take Its Toll

by richard02968

Challenge Is in Staying Safe, Mentally Healthy

Kaepernick Is GQ’s ‘Citizen of the Year’

Roland Martin, Jake Tapper Go at It

Vanity Fair Gets Its First Top Editor of Color

Time Inc. Steps Up Courtship of Latino Market

Black Ala. Paper to Focus on Moore’s Opponent

Lupita Nyong’o Says Don’t Edit Her Hair

Calle to Manage LA Weekly Under New Owners

The ‘Other Side’ of Maryland’s HBCU Funding Fight

Gordon Sakamoto, Wire Service Reporter, Dies at 82

Short Takes

White Lives Matter supporters attended a rally in Murfreesboro, Tenn., that reporter Julieta Martinelli covered in October for Nashville Public Radio. (Credit: Julieta Martinelli/WPLN-FM, Nashville)
White Lives Matter supporters attended a rally in Murfreesboro, Tenn., that reporter Julieta Martinelli covered in October for Nashville Public Radio. (Credit: Julieta Martinelli/WPLN-FM, Nashville)

Challenge Is in Staying Safe, Mentally Healthy

“Nashville Public Radio reporter Julieta Martinelli was covering a rally of white nationalists in Shelbyville, Tenn., last month when two young men began pushing her deeper into the crowd,” April Simpson wrote Friday for Current.org.

Julieta Martinelli
Julieta Martinelli

“ ‘You fucking cockroach, you need to move,’ they said to Martinelli.

“Speakers were riling up the crowd and screaming for media to leave, but the hostility also felt personal. Martinelli, 29, came to the U.S. from Argentina 20 years ago and was undocumented for most of her life. ‘I’m one of the people they were protesting against,’ Martinelli said.

“Martinelli kept her shotgun microphone hoisted and didn’t make eye contact with the men. The 5-foot-1-inch reporter said she felt intimidated but didn’t show emotion and stood her ground.

‘We’re talking to you, you fucking cockroach,’ the men said.

“ ‘I stood for a second longer, but I decided that was the time for me to step back,’ Martinelli said.

“White nationalists and rowdy Trump supporters have targeted all kinds of media figures at rallies, but journalists of color like Martinelli say they encounter particular challenges when encountering racist attitudes face to face. . . .”

In an accompanying story, Simpson quoted Phillip Martin, a senior investigative reporter with Boston’s WGBH, John Sepulvado, morning host of KQED’s The California Report, Al Letson, host of Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, and KQED reporter Erika Aguilar.

Phillip Martin
Phillip Martin

“It isn’t easy for journalists of color to interview racists or report on events where they may be discriminated against because of their skin color,” Simpson wrote. “While reporting this story on journalists’ experiences, Current also asked journalists and safety experts to offer advice about staying safe and mentally healthy in situations where a reporter may be verbally or physically harassed. Here’s what they said:

“1. Know who you’re dealing with . . ..

“2. Stick to the basics . . .

“3. Show empathy and remember it’s not about you . . .

“4. Have your follow-ups prepared . . .

“5. Brace yourself before and during the event . . .”

GQ's Citizen of the Year
GQ’s Citizen of the Year

Kaepernick Is GQ’s ‘Citizen of the Year’

“Colin Kaepernick is on the cover of Gentleman’s Quarterly,” Rochelle Riley wrote Monday for the Detroit Free Press.

“As he should be.

“He is GQ’s Citizen of the Year, and the magazine explains why in a beautiful, powerful essay that opens this way:

“ ‘He’s been vilified by millions and locked out of the NFL — all because he took a knee to protest police brutality. But Colin Kaepernick’s determined stand puts him in rare company in sports history: Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson — athletes who risked everything to make a difference.’

“While some people and media want to ignore that Kap ignited the necessary national conversation that we may truly be having for the first real time in decades — or hate him for it — we must remember that the world once hated Ali. And more and more each week, America is coming to terms with and understanding the protest. That means there is hope that the National Football League will pay for how they’ve treated one of their best quarterbacks — and all because he cried ‘Kunta Kinte’ rather than ‘Toby.’

“For anyone who doesn’t understand the reference and doesn’t want to Google, there is a moment in ‘Roots,’ the landmark television series about American slavery, where an overseer is forcing a young African boy to take on a new name to replace the one his parents gave him. The monster beats the boy until he calls himself ‘Toby’ rather than ‘Kunta Kinte.’ It is one of the most heartbreaking thefts in American literature — and entertainment. . . .”

Roland Martin, left, and Jake Tapper (Credit: Mediaite)
Roland Martin, left, and Jake Tapper (Credit: Mediaite)

Roland Martin, Jake Tapper Go at It

“Earlier today, CNN’s Jake Tapper lit into TVOne’s Roland Martin after Martin took to Twitter to tell Tapper that the media needs to stop using the term ‘false claims’ and instead should be using the word ‘lie’ when calling out President Donald Trump,” Justin Baragona reported Sunday for Mediaite.

“Martin had taken issue with Tapper telling Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin that Trump had falsely claimed that the latest GOP tax plan was the biggest tax cut in history.

“After Tapper said he didn’t need to be lectured by Martin on journalism and that Martin still needed to answer for how his debate questions made it to Hillary Clinton’s campaign last year, the TVOne host fired back. And he took some pointed shots at the CNN anchor. . . .”

Radhika Jones at the Time 100 Gala in New York, April 23, 2013. By Casey Kelbaugh/The New York Times/Redux. On Monday afternoon, shortly after The New York Times broke the news of her appointment as the next editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, Radhika Jones visited the editorial and sales staff of V.F. at its headquarters on the 41st floor of One World Trade Center. Jones was accompanied by Condé Nast C.E.O. Robert A. Sauerberg; Vogue editor-in-chief and Condé Nast artistic director Anna Wintour; and, of course, the man Jones succeeds, Graydon Carter, the legendary editor who has run V.F. since 1992 and announced in September that he would be stepping down at the end of the year. “I truly feel honored to be entrusted with this role,” Jones, who is 44, said to the assembled staff members, beside a wall emblazoned with the mantra “Think Like a Start-Up.” Jones, a former high-ranking editor at Time and The Paris Review, spent the past year as the editorial director of the books department at The New York Times. She will begin her V.F. tenure on December 11. Shortly after addressing the troops, she sat down to talk with me. Vanity Fair: You met Graydon for the first time this morning. Did he give you any good advice? Jones: He said I’m gonna be very busy for at least a year or two, probably longer. It’s fun to meet a legend on a Monday. Your name first surfaced in press reports a couple of weeks ago. When did your conversations with Condé Nast begin? It was mid-September. And at what point did it became clear to you that you wanted this job? It was appealing to me at first mention. Vanity Fair holds this very unique place in the culture. There’s no title that compares. I’ve worked at a number of different places, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought that I could draw on different parts of my experience in a way that would be meaningful. But I always thought I was a long shot, so maybe that took a bit of the pressure off. I heard that you submitted an ambitious memo. Can you walk me through the broad contours of your pitch to Condé Nast? I think I should probably wait and just let it show. On paper, your background is very literary, academic even. What are your interests in Hollywood and society, some of Vanity Fair’s strongest suits? I’m fascinated by celebrity culture. When I started at Time in 2008, I was the arts editor, and it felt like this moment where entertainment and celebrity were really starting to change. Reality TV was gaining momentum, and the ways that people watched TV and watched movies and read about them and participated in the voyeurism of celebrity life, all of those things seemed to be changing. It’s the kind of thing you can look back on, years later, and think, wow, something fundamental shifted in the culture. I also happen to have read Tina Brown’s Vanity Fair Diaries this summer, and found it interesting to think about how she positioned high and low culture, because they’re so much more mixed now, and it’s an interesting proposition for a magazine like Vanity Fair to sort that out. It feels right to me to be thinking about these things at this moment. It feels like our culture is calling for it. All magazine brands are facing intense pressures as they grapple with the shift away from being print-driven platforms. In terms of Vanity Fair’s platforms, where do you see the most exciting opportunity? I think it has opportunity on every platform, but I think of significant interest to me, coming out of the gate, are the Web site and the events. They’re both areas where Vanity Fair is already strong and it would be incredible to build on that. Having overseen the Time 100, which is a hugely influential events franchise, what are your ambitions for Vanity Fair’s events business in particular? There are a lot of possibilities, but it’s important to sit down and talk to everyone who’s involved and figure out what the priorities should be. What are you favorite parts of Vanity Fair? What are stories or sections or areas of coverage that have most dazzled you? I’ll say a nerdy one first: the Star Wars portfolios. I love photography in general, and I love spectacular portrait photography and photojournalism, and I think that’s such a great strength of this magazine. Basically, what I’m saying is, everything. But I also love really deeply reported long-form narrative. And profiles. I’m a big believer in the ability to tell stories through people, and so for me, the profile is a way not just to get to know someone who’s important, but to figure out something about the way we live now and what we care about. You were at the Times just short of a year. What did you learn there? It was an amazing year to be at the Times, and it did feel like a transformative year. I learned a lot about talent, and also about engaging with the reader and how important that is. I think we all know this, but what was really emphasized for me, in my year at the Times, was how a great publication can create a community around its content. I’m sure they were fighting to keep you. The Times is a hard place to leave. I will say that, for me, it was a wonderfully welcoming place, and I will miss it a lot. In the end, I felt that this opportunity was unique. What are you like as a media consumer? What do you read? What do you watch? Who do you follow on Instagram? I follow National Geographic so I can see all the animals, and also travel sites. I love travel magazines and food magazines, and I read New York and The New Yorker and other things with the words “New York” in them. I’m on Twitter, so I read the things that come to me from any number of places. Because I’ve been immersed in books in the past year, my reading has skewed toward books and book trades. I’m obsessed with The Americans, and I can’t wait for the new season of The Crown. I aspire to watch more television. There’s so much right now that you have to really make a commitment. I need to re-commit. What would be your biggest gets for Vanity Fair? Who do you want to see on the cover? I’m gonna make a private list and put it in a drawer and in a year, we can take it out and look at it. As someone who’s relatively unknown compared to some of the other candidates who were being considered for this position, like Janice Min or Andrew Ross Sorkin, what’s one thing you’d want people to know about you? That I’m an omnivore, culturally speaking, and story-wise too. I’m always ready to be interested in something. That’s my default position. Radhika Jones at the Time 100 gala in New York in 2013 (Credit: Casey Kelbaugh/ New York Times/Redux)

Radhika Jones at the Time 100 gala in New York in 2013 (Credit: Casey Kelbaugh/ New York Times/Redux)

Vanity Fair Gets Its First Top Editor of Color

“Radhika Jones, the editorial director of The New York Times books department and former editor in chief of Time magazine, will take over as top editor of Vanity Fair, replacing Graydon Carter,” Tom Kludt and Jackie Wattles reported Monday for CNNMoney.

“Vanity Fair confirmed the news Monday, after multiple reports over the weekend indicated that Jones was taking over.

“Jones, 44, will be the first woman to run Vanity Fair since Tina Brown, a British journalist who edited the magazine from 1984 to 1992.

“She will also be the first woman of color to hold the top editing spot at Vanity Fair, which is owned by Condé Nast.” Her mother is from India.

” ‘There is nothing else out there quite like Vanity Fair,’ Jones said in a statement. ‘It doesn’t just reflect our culture — it drives our understanding of it.’ . . .”

planetafutbol

Time Inc. Steps Up Courtship of Latino Market

“On the eve of its third-quarter earnings report, Time Inc. revealed it’s putting an aggressive focus on the fastest growing U.S. market with the introduction of Time Inc. Latino,” Caysey Welton reported Wednesday for Folio:.

“The new division looks to leverage the company’s already-deep penetration into the Hispanic/Latino market by serving more English and Spanish language content tailored to that audience.

“Believe it or not, Time Inc. has a larger Hispanic/Latino audience than Univision and Telemundo combined in digital, with a reach of 18.3 million, according to 2017 comScore Multiplatform/GfK MRI Media + Fusion data. So more emphasis on this audience is intended to further strengthen the market share, which offers a lot of upside as marketing budgets are increasing to reach multicultural demos.

Shirley Velasquez
Shirley Velasquez

“For now, the new division is rolling out with two branded verticals — People Chica and Planeta Futbol. The former will be an English-language extension of the People brand, and the latter is Spanish-language collaboration between Sports Illustrated and 90min, a company that produces soccer coverage from around the world.

“But more is coming in 2018, ac cording to People en Espanol’s VP and brand sales director, Monique Manso, who is spearheading this project. While she wouldn’t reveal what other new brands or verticals are on the horizon, she did suggest that food and health and wellness are extreme areas of interest for the company. . . .”

Shirley Velasquez is the executive editor of PeopleEnEspañol.com and Chica. “A tri-lingual journalist [Spanish, French, English] with 15 years of experience, Velasquez has written about the lives of young, professional women during her tenure at established general market brands, including Glamour, Elle, and Ralph Lauren Digital,” according to Time Inc.


On social media, people posted photos of themselves at age 14 to express disapproval of Alabama Republican Senate candidate Ray Moore, accused of sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old when he was 32.

Black Ala. Paper to Focus on Moore’s Opponent

The sexual misconduct accusations against Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy S. Moore dominated news reports on Monday, but at the Birmingham Times, which calls itself “The Southeast’s Largest Black Weekly,”editors have their eye more on Moore’s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones.

“We’re focusing our coverage on the upcoming senatorial election on Dec. 12 between Democrat Doug Jones and Republican Roy Moore and not on the allegations surrounding Moore,” Barnett Wright, executive editor, told Journal-isms by email. “Those allegations are getting 24/7 coverage in all media outlets — as well they should — and there’s very little we can add without regurgitating what’s already out there.

“We expect our coverage to include coverage of Jones, a former U.S. attorney, who secured the convictions of KKK members who murdered four African-American girls in the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and the crucial role the black vote can play in the outcome of the senate election, especially in light of what happened in Virginia on [Nov. 7] elections.”

As DeNeen L. Brown reported Thursday in the Washington Post, “The case haunted Birmingham for years. Four black girls in Alabama had been killed in the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church — a crime that shocked the country and helped fuel the civil rights movement.

“Yet the men responsible — members of the Ku Klux Klan who’d boasted about their role — were never tried and convicted. That changed in 1977 when Robert ‘Dynamite Bob’ Chambliss, the suspected ringleader of the bombing, was put on trial.

“At the time, Doug Jones, now a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in a hotly contested race Alabama, was a second-year law student. He skipped classes to sit in on the trial, watching in amazement as William Joseph Baxley II, then U.S. attorney in Alabama, presented evidence against Chambliss. . . .”

As for Moore, a new accuser, Beverly Young Nelson, said Monday that Moore sexually assaulted her “when she was 16, the fifth and most brutal charge leveled against the Republican Senate candidate,” Jonathan Martin and Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported for the New York Times. “Senate Republicans are now openly discussing not seating him or expelling him if he wins the Dec. 12 special election. . . .”

Via al.com, newspapers in Birmingham, Mobile and Huntsville, owned by Advance Publications, published an editorial Monday calling Moore “grossly unfit” for office.

On social media, Alanna Vagianos reported for HuffPost that “People on Twitter are using a powerful hashtag to condemn Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore of Alabama amid the recent allegations that he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl.

“. . . .The #MeAt14 hashtag picked up steam when Lizz Winstead, co-creator of ‘The Daily Show,’ tweeted a photo of herself at 14 on Saturday.

“ ‘This is me at 14. I was on the gymnastics team and sang in the choir. I was not dating a 32 year old man,’ Winstead wrote, asking others to tweet a picture of their 14-year-old selves. . . .”

In another development, Scott R. Brunton, a former model and actor, contacted Ryan Parker of the Hollywood Reporter to accuse “Star Trek” icon George Takei of sexual assault in 1981, when Brunton was 23.

“THR spoke to four longtime friends of Brunton — Norah Roadman, Rob Donovan, Stephen Blackshear and Jan Steward — who said that he had confided in them about the Takei encounter years ago, Parker wrote Friday.

“Takei’s rep, Julia Buchwald, told THR, ‘George is traveling in Japan and Australia and not reachable for comment.’ Takei, now 80, rose to fame playing Hikaru Sulu on the original Star Trek television series. He is also an author and activist and has been an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ rights. . . .”

Lupita Nyong’o Says Don’t Edit Her Hair

“A word to the wise: Don’t touch Lupita Nyong’o’s hair,” Jamie Feldman wrote Friday for HuffPost BlackVoices. “Or anyone else’s.

“The Academy Award-winning actress is not too pleased with the U.K. [edition] of Graziaafter the magazine edited out and smoothed parts of her hair for its November 2017 cover, saying she never would have participated in a shoot that erased her natural hair texture.

“Nyong’o shared side-by-side before and after photos on Instagram, writing that ‘there is still a very long way to go to combat the unconscious prejudice against black women’s complexion, hair style and texture.’ . . .”

Calle to Manage LA Weekly Under New Owners

Brian Calle
Brian Calle

“The financial backers of Semanal Media — the fledgling company buying LA Weekly from Voice Media Group — are still largely a mystery,” Lauren Raab reported Thursday for the Los Angeles Times. “But they have selected someone to manage the paper’s operations: Brian Calle, who on Thursday laid out an ambitious vision for the alternative newsweekly as the hub of the city’s culture.

“Calle comes to the role from Southern California News Group, where he has served as opinion editor for the Orange County Register and 10 other daily newspapers. While running the Register’s historically libertarian editorial page, he described himself as a ‘free-market enthusiast.’ But he said Thursday that the new ownership and management would not change LA Weekly’s editorial bent. . . .”

In 2013, when Calle was at the Orange County Register and was one of only five Hispanic editorial page editors of major metro newspapers, he told the Association of Opinion Editors, “For me, and my road to my position, I’ve been embraced every step of the way.

“Most people do not realize I am Hispanic until we get into a discussion about my last name or I tell a story about myself so I did not endure any bumps and when people find out that I have some Latin roots they tend to get more excited and intrigued, if anything.”

The ‘Other Side’ of Maryland’s HBCU Funding Fight

“Rejecting proposals by a civil rights group and Maryland higher education officials to boost diversity at the state’s historically black colleges, a federal judge said she will appoint an official to craft an alternative plan,” Ian Duncan and Talia Richman reported Thursday for the Baltimore Sun.

“In a ruling issued Wednesday, Judge Catherine C. Blake said she wouldn’t require so-called ‘traditionally white’ schools to close academic programs and transfer them to historically black colleges — the most controversial aspect of the case.

“Her decision comes more than a decade into a lawsuit about whether historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, were denied the chance to attract students of other races because academic programs offered at the HBCUs were copied and offered by traditionally white schools.

“Blake ruled in 2013 that the state’s actions fostered segregation in the public higher education system even after legal segregation ended.

“Coming up with a solution has proven difficult, however, and the judge wrote that ‘neither party’s remedy, as currently proposed, is practicable, educationally sound, and sufficient to address the segregative harms of program duplication.’ . . . ”

Asked about the implications for Morgan State’s School of Global Journalism & Communication, Dean DeWayne Wickham said by email, “at this point (with the issue of remedies still up in the air) I’m focusing on trying to get Baltimore area foundations to give us some support. I struck out with the Abell Foundation, which gave the University of Maryland’s journalism school $500,000 to create a Baltimore Reporting Professorship (even though the U of Md. is in College Park, Md.) but turned us down when we asked the foundation for support.

“That’s the other side of the funding issue: a Baltimore-based foundation funds the U. of Md’s journalism program’s Baltimore Reporting Project, but won’t fund the effort of Morgan’s journalism program to train future black journalists.”

Wickham added, “According to Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Morgan is the nation’s 8th leading producer of blacks with degrees in journalism and communication; the University of Maryland ranks 30th. College Park has a very good journalism program, but I don’t understand why a Baltimore-based foundation, which claims to have a great interest in fixing what’s broke in Maryland’s largest city, won’t support us — especially with the 50th anniversary of the Kerner Commission Report just a few months away.”

The Abell Foundation was seeking more information in order to respond.

A 1980 photo shows Gordon Sakamoto at work in the UPI bureau in Honolulu . (Credit: Family)
A 1980 photo shows Gordon Sakamoto at work in the UPI bureau in Honolulu . (Credit: Family)

Gordon Sakamoto, Wire Service Reporter, Dies at 82

“Gordon Sakamoto, one of the first Asian-Americans hired to work in a U.S. bureau of an international news service, died Wednesday at 82,” the Associated Press reported Thursday.

“Sakamoto, a former Hawaii bureau chief for The Associated Press, started his journalism career with United Press International in Honolulu in 1960. He retired in 2001 after overseeing operations in Hawaii and the Central Pacific for AP.

“He died in his Honolulu home after heart failure and a long battle with chronic kidney disease, his son Kyle Sakamoto said.

“Honolulu-born Sakamoto worked for UPI for 27 years in San Francisco and Hawaii. He joined the AP in 1993 after working five years as a marketing specialist for the state of Hawaii.

“The AP named him chief of bureau in Honolulu on Jan. 1, 1994. The next day, he was kicked off the island of Lanai while trying to cover billionaire computer-software mogul Bill Gates’ ultra-secretive wedding. It was one of the adventures in reporting he often reminisced about. . . .”

The AP also wrote, “‘He taught me a lot about journalism, about life, about family and to be a better person,’ said Jaymes Song, a former Honolulu Star-Bulletin reporter Sakamoto hired to work with him at the AP.

“Song recalled Sakamoto helping a cash-strapped student at the Asian American Journalists Convention in New York City in 2001.

“ ‘Gordon gave him money out of his own pocket — a complete stranger,’ Song said. ‘He brought the guy with us to a Yankees game. That’s the kind of guy he was. He took care of people, and he cared about people. That’s what made him a great news leader and person.’

“Sakamoto was a pioneer as an Asian-American in journalism.

“ ‘He was a manager in an industry where there were little-to-no minorities in management,’ Song said, noting that Sakamoto graduated from Missouri Valley College.

“That wasn’t something Sakamoto talked about or bragged about, but it made him a leader who was sensitive to differences in culture and values, said Song, who later led the Hawaii bureau as an administrative correspondent. Song and Sakamoto remained close even after Sakamoto retired and after Song left journalism for a career in real estate. . . .”

Leonise Greig-Powell was living in a destroyed complex until the Virgin Islands Daily News wrote about her plight. Then the government moved her. (Credit: Virgin Island Daily News)
Leonise Greig-Powell was living in a destroyed complex until the Virgin Islands Daily News wrote about her plight. Then the government moved her. (Credit: Virgin Islands Daily News)

Short Takes

Support Journal-isms

Facebook users: “Like” “Richard Prince’s Journal-isms” on Facebook.

Follow Richard Prince on Twitter @princeeditor

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@yahoogroups.com

To be notified of new columns, contact journal-isms-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and tell us who you are.

About Richard Prince

View previous columns (after Feb. 13, 2016).

Related posts

NPR Names First Latina Head of News

richard

Sportswriting’s Velvet Revolutionary

richard

Tiffany Cross Out at MSNBC

richard

Leave a Comment

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.