Is Washington Post’s Choice Good for Diversity?

richard

4 years ago

AP’s Sally Buzbee Picked for Editor’s Job
Versha Sharma Named Top Editor at Teen Vogue
NBC Cancels Golden Globes, Diversity Plays Part
Police Killings of Black Women Get Less Attention
Bill McCreary Dies, Pioneer in N.Y. Television
Jews Feel Rise in Bias, Becoming More Interracial

Updated May 12

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Sally Buzbee said she focused on diversity and inclusion during her tenure at the Associated Press. (Credit: Seth Wenig/Associated Press)

AP’s Sally Buzbee Picked for Editor’s Job

After Martin Baron announced in January that he would step down as executive editor of The Washington Post, Wesley Lowery (pictured), a Black reporter who left the paper in a dispute with Baron, told the Columbia Journalism Review that “some of the major challenges facing whoever succeeds him are the very things Marty failed to do during his tenure: assembling a newsroom and leadership structure that actually reflects the diversity of the nation — and world — it covers, figuring out how to nurture people with voices and experiences that differ from a white DC media establishment status quo, and figuring out a path forward in a social media world that manages to protect the reputation of the Post but does not rely on selectively punishing people based on incomprehensible and unequally enforced policies and the unpredictable moods of the executive editor.”

Author Hamilton Nolan wrote that Lowery was not alone in his views. “It remains to be seen whether the Post as an institution will take all of this into account when selecting Baron’s replacement,” Nolan reported. “The Post Guild, the paper’s labor union, said in a statement, ‘We expect the Post to seek a leader who is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive company that can fairly and comprehensively cover our local region, our nation and our world. Post Guild members are eager to participate in this process and we hope the staff will have a seat at the table.’ ”

Is Sally Buzbee, who will be the first woman to lead the newsroom, that person?

On Tuesday, The Post named Buzbee, executive editor and senior vice president of the Associated Press, as Baron’s successor. While not first or foremost among his listed priorities, Post Publisher and CEO Fred Ryan said in his announcement, “We looked for someone who shares our values of diversity and inclusion, and who is committed to prioritizing them in our news coverage as well as our hiring and promotion.”

Will Buzbee fulfill expectations?

Rachel Abrams and Katie Robertson reported in The New York Times, “Ms. Buzbee said she focused on ‘diversity and inclusion’ during her tenure at The A.P. ‘Everybody brings their own background and experiences to journalism, and that enriches journalism,’ she said in the interview. She cited an initiative in which employees in nonmanagerial roles became ‘inclusion champions,’ a group that helped the company emphasize a wider variety of voices and subjects.”

Buzbee had an opportunity to demonstrate her commitment last year when the news cooperative made a “terrible mistake” in cropping Vanessa Nakate (pictured), an African climate activist, out of a photo of five such young advocates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The remaining activists were white.

“A tearful Nakate posted a video on social media saying that when she saw the photo online, ‘it was the first time in my life that I understood the definition of the word “racism,” ‘ the AP’s David Bauder reported at the time. “She said she felt like her story had been erased.” The Ugandan said that also was true for the African continent.

“After an initial response from AP that Buzbee acknowledged was wrong in tone, she issued a statement Friday evening expressing ‘regret’ and saying that management had spoken with the AP’s journalists about the ‘error in judgment.’ On Sunday, she sent out a second statement on Twitter personally apologizing to Nakate.

Bauder also wrote, “ ‘My hope is that we can learn from this and be a better news organization going forward,’ Buzbee said. ‘I realize I need to make clear from the very top, from me, that diversity and inclusion needs to be one of our highest priorities.’ ”

Bauder added, “The AP already has diversity training in the works for staff members in the United States this year; Buzbee said staff members all over the world will be given such training.”

Clockwise, from top left: Amanda Barrett, David Ake, Michael Giarrusso, Julie Pace, David Scott. (AP Photo)

Last month, Buzbee included Amanda Barrett and Michael Giarrusso on a list of promotions and new responsibilities. Giarrusso is global sports editor and an Asian American whose mother is from the Philippines. He graduated from the AP’s internship program, which began in the early 1980s as the Minority Internship Program. Giarrrusso was named an assistant managing editor. Barrett, a Black journalist and deputy managing editor, “will assume broad responsibility for digital content and our efforts to grow audience.”

Sonya Ross (pictured), who left the AP two years ago after 33 years, was complimentary. Ross had been race and ethnicity editor and a White House reporter. “As bureau chief, Sally was very supportive of my Race & Ethnicity reporting team and our work,” Ross messaged.

“She understood the importance of taking this coverage to the next level in the industry, and she gave me latitude to pursue that. Sally embraced my suggestion of specialty training for desk editors on handling race/ethnicity content as soon as I brought it up, and met personally with me and Dori Maynard about making it happen.” Maynard, who died in 2015, was president of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, whose focus is news industry diversity.

“Sally saw the training program to fruition as Executive Editor after I had retired, and I was pleased by that.” Ross is now editor in chief of the digital startup Black Women Unmuted, and a board member of the Society for Professional Journalists Foundation, the Washington Press Club Foundation and the NNPA Fund of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the trade group for the Black press.

Dissatisfaction with diversity progress at the Post spiked last summer, during the national reckoning over the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd. The Post announced more than a dozen newsroom positions to be focused on race, including a managing editor for diversity and inclusion, filled by Krissah Thompson. It also released its “first public demographics report and will continue to do so on an annual basis.”

There is no counterpart at the Associated Press.

According to published speculation, two Black journalists were considered at various points for the top Post newsroom job, former Post managing editor Kevin Merida (pictured), named executive editor at the Los Angeles Times last week, and Marc Lacey, New York Times assistant managing editor. “Insiders claimed” Lacey was the strongest external candidate, Maxwell Tani, Lachlan Cartwright and Lloyd Grove reported Thursday for the Daily Beast.

Joe Pompeo wrote on March 24 for Vanity Fair, “Merida was encouraged to apply for the job, but he wasn’t exactly courted, at least not in the way one might have expected given all the boxes he appears to tick off: vast experience at the Post and support from former colleagues; stewardship of an innovative digital start-up inside a major media corporation; prominent journalist of color.

“The Los Angeles Times, which is a few months into its own hunt for an executive editor, has vigorously pursued Merida from the outset, and Disney has apparently made it clear that it doesn’t want to lose him to either newspaper. The Post, on the other hand, has been surprisingly ‘passive,’ as one source put it, and Merida decided not to enter the formal application process.”

Buzbee has another booster in her predecessor as AP’s executive editor, Kathleen Carroll (pictured).

“She cares about impactful journalism and has a wide range of experience — from running important coverage in more than a dozen countries in the Middle East (from her base in Cairo), to leading coverage of two presidential elections and modernizing AP’s election polling along the way,” Carroll messaged Journal-isms.

“She’s a collaborative leader, holding people to high standards while ensuring they are genuinely part of the team. She’s also a great spotter and nurturer of talent, having identified plenty of young journalists who developed into leaders for AP and other news organizations. She works hard to bring diversity of all kinds into decision-making positions. (Ron Nixon, Amanda Barrett, Michael Giarrusso, Wong Maye-E, Enric Marti, Jeannie Ohm, Maad Al-Zekri are among the newsroom leaders promoted by Sally.)

“Diversity in a global organization like AP also means hiring and promoting talented people to cover the countries and regions where they live (as opposed to having them all be led by white Anglo-America-Australian expat men, as was the practice for decades before the 2000s). Just look at this list of promotions from March of this year.

Top, from left: Najib Jobain, Fay Abuelgasim, Isabel DeBre, Oded Balilty; bottom, from left: Acer Hoteiba, Sam Magdy, Wafaa Shurafa, Bassam Hatoum. (AP Photo)

“Under her leadership, the AP has also enriched coverage of economic gaps, migration, and injustice issues.”

The Daily Beast report of last Thursday said that “Earlier this year, the Post’s employee union sent a letter to the publisher seeking some input in the hiring process and noting that members hoped Ryan would hire a new top editor specifically committed to publishing work about underrepresented communities and the local D.C. area, fostering a more positive work environment, and tackling some lingering, thorny questions about social media policies.

“Ryan said in response that while some of the requests were ‘consistent with our vision for this position,’ he would not agree to hold an employee town hall on the matter. ‘Given the confidential and sensitive nature of the executive editor search, however, we do not plan to broadly address the search process with employees,’ he wrote in a reply email.”

Katie Mettler (pictured), co-chair of the Washington Post Guild, said it was too early to evaluate Buzbee on diversity, since “we only just learned of her selection today,” but the official Guild statement made clear that diversity was still a priority.

For many, Buzbee’s gender was cause for celebration. “As someone who arrived at the Post in 1971, when there were few women editors, no women foreign correspondents, no women on sports staff, and such a scarcity of women hires on Metro that people kept asking me who I knew, I applaud this historic decision,” messaged Karlyn Barker.

“When I had my interview with Harry Rosenfeld,” then metro editor, “my one contact at the paper warned me that the only way I would get a job was ‘if you walk into Harry’s office and urinate standing up.’ So glad he was wrong. And so glad to have been part of the women’s class action suit, paid for by The Newspaper Guild, that helped change the male-dominated culture.”

Megan Rosenfeld, another Post alumna, messaged, “Maybe us news hens should invite Buzbee to tea and give her a living history backgrounder.”

At the AP, “The search for Buzbee’s replacement is expected to take a few months,” the news cooperative said in a statement.

“Until a selection is made, the executive editor duties will be shared. AP Vice President and Managing Editor Brian Carovillano will lead AP’s news report; AP Vice President and Managing Editor for Operations David Scott will handle news operations.”

Versha Sharma Named Top Editor at Teen Vogue

“The last person hired as the top editor of Teen Vogue resigned before her start date,” Katie Robertson reported Monday for The New York Times. “Now, the wide-ranging Condé Nast online publication is trying again, with the announcement on Monday that Versha Sharma (pictured), a managing editor at the news website NowThis, will be its next editor in chief.

“ ‘Versha is a natural leader with a global perspective and deep understanding of local trends and issues — from politics and activism to culture and fashion — and their importance to our audience,’ Anna Wintour, the global editorial director of Vogue and the chief content officer of Condé Nast, said in a statement.

“Ms. Sharma, 34, was in charge of news and cultural coverage at NowThis, a site owned by Group Nine Media, the publisher of Thrillist, The Dodo, Seeker and PopSugar. She was part of a team that received an Edward R. Murrow Award in 2018 for a documentary on the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

“She was named to the job nearly two months after Alexi McCammond, a former Axios journalist, resigned after more than 20 Teen Vogue staff members publicly condemned tweets she had posted a decade earlier. . . .”

NBC Cancels Golden Globes, Diversity Plays Part

“There will be no Golden Globes ceremony on NBC in 2022,” Chris Murphy reported Monday for Vanity Fair. “On Monday, Deadline reported that NBC would not be airing a Golden Globes ceremony next year, due to a series of very public missteps made by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which has raised eyebrows for the lack of diversity among its membership (such as its lack of Black members), as well as its members’ allegedly unethical behavior.

“ ‘We continue to believe that the HFPA is committed to meaningful reform said NBC, which has aired the Golden Globe Awards ceremony since 1996. ‘However, change of this magnitude takes time and work, and we feel strongly that the HFPA needs time to do it right. As such, NBC will not air the 2022 Golden Globes. Assuming the organization executes on its plan, we are hopeful we will be in a position to air the show in January 2023.’

“The 2021 Golden Globes, hosted by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, were widely panned; the show received its lowest ratings ever this year. The tide against the Golden Globes and HFPA began to turn on Thursday, May 6, when HFPA members voted in favor of a plan to reform its organization and voting body, with the goal of increasing its membership by 50% in 18 months.

“This plan was met with widespread criticism for not being urgent or sweeping enough in its scope, with Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos announcing that the streaming giant would stop working with the HFPA until more substantial changes were made, which was followed by a similar condemnation from Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke. . . .”

Police Killings of Black Women Get Less Attention

“When Lajuana Phillips was shot and killed by a police officer in late 2018, she was a mother of three children, a daughter and a cousin who was described by family as ‘a hard worker,’ according to an online memorial,” Alex Samuels, Dhrumil Mehta and Anna Wiederkehr reported Thursday for fivethirtyeight.com. “But Phillip’s death received little media attention. There were a few local stories when she was first identified by police, and others detailing the circumstances that led to her being shot at six times. But that was about it.

“Phillips isn’t alone. Crystal Danielle Ragland, who was killed in Huntsville, Alabama; Latasha Nicole Walton of Florida; and April Webster of South Carolina, to name a few, also received little news coverage after their fatal encounters with law enforcement.

“Most people fatally shot by police get little to no attention from national media outlets. But this media landscape is especially stark for Black women, who are also far more likely to be killed by police than other women, according to The Washington Post’s database of deadly police shootings. . . .”

“ ‘Mainstream narratives are often still written by men or are tailored toward a male perspective,’ said Keisha Blain, a history professor at the University of Pittsburgh and the president of the African American Intellectual History Society. ‘For these reasons, among others, Black women’s experiences with police violence are too often marginalized. ” [Added May 12]

Jenni Monet, Indigenously: “Missing and Murdered”

Bill McCreary Dies, Pioneer in N.Y. Television

“Bill McCreary (pictured), an Emmy Award-winning reporter who was one of the first Black television journalists in New York, and whose perspective helped fill a noticeable gap in local public affairs reporting, died on April 4 in Brooklyn,” Sam Roberts reported Tuesday for The New York Times. “He was 87.

“The cause was a neurological disease he had for many years, said O’Kellon McCreary, his wife of 62 years and only immediate survivor.

“His death, which had not been made public earlier by his family, was announced this week by WNYW, the flagship station of the Fox television network. He was hired in 1967 when the station, Channel 5, was owned by Metromedia and known as WNEW, and he remained a familiar on-air presence until he retired in 2000.

“As a co-anchor, Mr. McCreary helped build the station’s 10 O’Clock News into a ratings powerhouse. He became the managing editor and anchor of the weekly program ‘Black News’ in 1970 and of ‘The McCreary Report’ in [1987], when he was also named a vice president of Fox 5 News.

“As the civil rights movement exploded on television screens, a demand also grew for Black journalists to be seen and heard. Mr. McCreary, Bob Teague on WNBC, and Gil Noble and Melba Tolliver of WABC were among the few seen on local newscasts in New York at the time. . .

“Cheryl Wills, an award-winning reporter for the news channel NY1 who met Mr. McCreary when she was a production assistant at Fox 5, said: “Black newscasters were frowned upon for telling the truth about discrimination and other societal ills in urban America. Bill McCreary told the unvarnished truth, and that’s what set him apart. He told it with tremendous dignity and integrity.” [Added May 12]

“Be’chol Lashon was founded in 2000 as a response to a ‘Study of Racial & Ethnic Diversity of the American Jewish Community,’ which found that 20% of America’s 6 million Jews or 1,200,000 are African American, Latino/Hispanic, Asian, mixed race, Sephardic, and Mizrahi.” (Credit: Be’chol Lashon)

Jews Feel Rise in Bias, Becoming More Interracial

“Three-quarters of Jewish Americans say there is more antisemitism in the U.S. than five years ago, and 53% say they feel less safe,” David Crary reported Tuesday for the Associated Press, citing a Pew Research Center study.

“Jews who wear distinctive religious attire such as head coverings are particularly likely to feel less safe.”

Crary also wrote, “Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union of Reform Judaism, said American Jews believe they are being singled out for attacks and vitriol, yet also see antisemitism as part of a broader national problem of bigotry and intolerance.

“ ‘We have to get a lid on the tolerance of intolerance in the United States,’ he told The Associated Press. ‘Hatred and bigotry existed before five or six years ago, but in recent years it has become OK to do it in a very public, unrestrained way.’

“Interfaith marriage is commonplace: 42% of married Jewish adults said they had a non-Jewish spouse, according to Pew.

“Jacobs said he wants Reform congregations to embrace this phenomenon rather than view it as a sign of demise.

“ ‘Intermarriage can expand who’s part of the Jewish community,’ he said. ‘You see Black, brown, Asian families choosing to be a part of Jewish life.’

“Pew found evidence that the U.S. Jewish population is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. Overall, 92% of Jewish adults identify as non-Hispanic white, and 8% identify with all other categories combined. But among Jews ages 18 to 29, that figure rises to 15%.”

The Forward, the nation’s oldest and leading Jewish journalism outlet, announced last month that Robin Washington, veteran journalist and a founder in 1995 of the Alliance of Black Jews, would become its new editor-at-large. That is “a flagship position aimed at elevating and expanding diverse voices. Washington will write an opinion column, develop and host an interview show, help recruit diverse contributors, interns and staff. . . .”

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