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Little Love in Black Press for Slain Soldiers

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African American Reservists Killed in Drone Strike
What Top 10 Black-Oriented Sites Featured Tuesday
(Including Those That Don’t Pretend to Do News)

Chicago Tribune, Sister Papers Plan Thursday Strike (Jan. 31 update)

Prisoners Are Hidden Workforce for Popular Foods
Worldwide, Indigenous Journalists Cite Turnoffs
14-Year-Old Is Already a Scientist

Short Takes: Joy Reid; Hector Becerra; Amy Robach, T.J. Holmes, Andrew Shue and Marilee Fiebig; Byron Allen; dictionaries as contraband; background checks for journalists; BET and CBS’s “America In Black”; $250,000 for N.Y. journalism multiplatform initiative; Dexter King; Baltimore Sun, David D. Smith and Baltimore schools; Dow Jones News Fund Early Career Program; Society of Environmental Journalists diversity fellowships; CNN Philippines.

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KTVU-TV in San Francisco reports Monday on the identification of the three soldiers killed in the Jordan attack. (Credit: YouTube).

African American Reservists Killed in Drone Strike

If you received the “Editorially Black” summary from the New York Amsterdam News in your email queue Tuesday morning, you quickly got the headlined story of three Black Army reservists who were killed in Jordan by a drone attack in northeastern Jordan Sunday, a personal tragedy for their families and the more than 40 others who were injured, but also an act that threatens to widen the Israel-Hamas war.

The Amsterdam News and the Atlanta Voice were just about the only members of the traditional Black press that carried the story, according to a quick survey of Black newspaper websites and the most-viewed Black online platforms. The National Association of Black Journalists’ Black News & Views also had the AP story, and some other websites had the news on an inside page.

Black Press USA — which supplies content for the more than 200 members of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the Black press’ trade group — featured a posting from four days ago: “Watch Live!: Lifetime Achievement Award Gala

“Lifetime Achievement Award Gala celebrating Carl and Carol Zippert, publishers of the Greene County Democrat.”

Below that was a video about a “National Town Hall Meeting on Affirming the relationship between Blacks and Jews in America” that takes place “tonight,” which was actually last Wednesday.

From left, Army Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett. (Credit: U.S. Army)

(Benjamin Chavis, NNPA president, did not respond to a request for comment, but NNPA subsequently produced a story on the soldiers.)  

Local NNPA papers ignored the story, by and large leading with local developments, from “The Former Bears Players and Coaches in The Super Bowl” in the Chicago Defender to “Andrew Young reflects on Civil Rights Movement at Washington National Cathedral” in the Afro-American in Baltimore.

Online, Blavity, the most-viewed Black-oriented website, according to a survey by Comscore last year for Journal-isms, featured a story headlined, “COREY HAWKINS TAKING OVER JONATHAN MAJORS’ ROLE IN WALTER MOSLEY ADAPTATION ‘THE MAN IN MY BASEMENT’.”

BET.com, the second most-viewed site, headlined, “A New Character Shakes Things Up on Tyler Perry’s Sistas: Andi and Sabrina both find themselves competing with workplace rivals, Danni is torn between her friendships with Karen and Fatima, and Penelope makes a shocking discovery about Gary.”


Even in Georgia, the home of the three Black reservists, the story was missing from the Black newspapers Atlanta Black Star and the Atlanta Daily World, though it was the lead story in the dominant, general-interest Atlanta Journal-Constitution. To its credit, the Atlanta Voice ran a CNN story.

At the Amsterdam News, Josh Barker (pictured), who has spent 16 years at the newspaper, the last two as digital editor, explained to Journal-isms, “The story [in ‘Editorially Black’] is an AP wire story. I decided to put it at the top of our newsletter because oftentimes, the images we usually see in mainstream media of U.S. military personnel are white males.

“It’s a major news story today and [I] wanted our audience to know that they have a connection with the story. The fact that all three of those killed in the drone strike are Black is significant to the fact that even our brothers and sisters are giving their lives for all Americans.”

Clint C. Wilson II (pictured) would agree. A retired Howard University journalism professor and author of books about the Black press, told Journal-isms that when he heard the news about the drone killings, “my first thought was whether any of the dead victims were Black. My next thought was a fleeting sense of shame that I had interjected racial perspective into an event of general national importance. In 21st century ethical practice, racial/ethnic status should not be relevant in journalistic practice unless specifically central to a story.

“Nevertheless, I anxiously awaited photographic evidence that would reveal whether any or all the dead were in fact African Americans.

“My reaction was largely the result of having spent my newswriting career divided between reporting for Black and White-owned newspapers. If I were an editor or reporter for a Black news outlet there is no question my first instinct would be to learn the racial identities of the American soldiers. Thus, because it appears some Black news media either missed (or failed to consider) the fact [that] all three victims were Black disappointed me. The additional matter that two of the three victims were young Black women magnifies my concern.

“So, I am left to ponder whether some Black press outlets have adapted their coverage to consider such stories ‘race neutral’ — as their White [counterparts] do – or simply failed to pursue the issue on the rather likely chance it could prove to be of particular interest to their primary audience.

“Isn’t there a reason we call it the ‘Black press’?”



Veteran journalist Gene Seymour (pictured) told Journal-isms, “Chuck Stone in his angry young prime woulda been all over that mess.”

Stone, as Seymour has written, was his uncle, and “was at various times in the 1950s and ’60s editor of The New York Age, The Washington Afro-American, and The Chicago Defender — all before his 18-year run as a columnist, political gadfly, go-between for law enforcement and Black suspects, and senior editor at the Philadelphia Daily News.” Stone was also founding president of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Seymour wrote about the Black press for The Nation last month with the headline, “One Big Cookout: From the ‘Negro Press’ to Black Twitter: We always suspected that whatever magazines and newspapers for white folks weren’t telling us, Black newspapers and magazines would.“

“This is where we need the old JET,” messaged Todd Steven Burroughs, a Black press historian.

As with Jet, there is plenty of human-interest material in the story of the service members.

Jeremy Redmon wrote Tuesday for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Ga., and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Ga., enlisted in the Army Reserve in 2019 as horizontal construction engineers. They were first assigned to the 381st Engineer Company in Tifton. In 2021, Sanders completed an 8-month rotation to Djibouti in East Africa. Rivers enlisted in 2011 as an interior electrician. Seven years later, he completed a 9-month rotation to Iraq.

“Sanders’ parents told the Associated Press Monday she volunteered to deploy, eager for a chance to see a different part of the world.

“ ‘She was loved. She didn’t have any enemies. All the time you saw her smiling,’ Sanders’ father, Shawn Sanders, told the AP. ‘This is somebody who was just living life, enjoying life at a young age, working toward a career.’ ”

Jozsef Papp added Tuesday for the AJC:

“Shane Davis came to the Rivers’ home [in Carrollton, Ga.,] Tuesday morning with a plant and a heartfelt message: We are here for you.

” ‘You just try to reach out, that’s what we’re here for,’ said Davis, chairman and president of local non-profit West Georgia First Responders. ‘In this time of need, reach out and let them know we are here.’

“The family didn’t want to speak publicly. A neighbor who brought some pies for the family didn’t want to, either. . . .

” ‘It really hits home,’ said Davis. ‘It really makes you think about when you’re watching the news, it isn’t just somewhere else.’ ”

President Biden called the Sanders family on Tuesday to express his condolences, and all 14 members of Georgia’s House delegation, plus several from other states, gathered in Washington for a tribute to the reservists.

What Top 10 Black-Oriented Sites Featured Tuesday

(Including Those That Don’t Pretend to Do News)

While not in the top 10, EURWeb.com also had the soldiers’ story on its homepage.

Still, Danielle Belton, editor of HuffPost and a former editor of The Root, contends that homepages might not be the best indicators of how a site values the story.

 “Most people find news through social media, or at least did historically until sites like Facebook started de-prioritizing news, which is why some news sites are much more aggressive on social than their homepages.

“Homepage traffic is down for a lot of news sites and has been in some cases for years. HuffPost is one of the few news sites that has a large, dedicated homepage audience. Building this kind of loyalty can still be done, but it takes a degree of time and investment that most news sites stopped doing in the advent of social media.

“Now that social media giants like Facebook and Twitter/X have become less traffic drivers or promoters of news, investing in homepages may become more necessary.”

The News Guild makes a request of Thursday’s news consumers.

Chicago Tribune, Sister Papers Plan Thursday Strike

Journalists at the Chicago Tribune plan Thursday to join “hundreds of unionized journalists at Tribune Publishing across seven newsrooms in a one-day strike to demand fair wages, protection of 401k match,” the NewsGuild announced Wednesday. It will be the “biggest collective action against Alden Global Capital since 2021 purchase of Tribune Publishing,” the Guild said.

Mobilizing for the job action are, according to the union:

“The company has also failed to remedy long-standing wage inequities on race and gender lines,” a Guild statement said. “A Chicago Tribune Guild study from 2023 showed that journalists of color at the Tribune make a median wage that’s $10K less than their white counterparts, while women typically make $20K less than their male counterparts when examining median salaries.”

Critics have long said the Alden Global Capital model of aggressive cost-cutting has hurt the local news industry.

In a letter posted to Alden Global Capital posted Wednesday on X, the Guild said, “in your time owning Tribune newspapers across the country, you have shrunk our staff by dozens, cut freelancer budgets and limited access to critical information.“

Laura Wagner reported for The Washington Post, “while most of the recent media walkouts — from the New York Times a year ago to Condé Nast last week — have largely been PR exercises, aimed at pressuring owners in the court of public opinion, union members believe their action could seriously disrupt the Tribune newspapers’ production this week.

“ ‘I presume a paper will get out,’ said Dave Roknic, a print production specialist in the Tribune unit that oversees the entire chain’s print publication, from which 90 percent of unionized employees plan to walk out alongside editorial staffers. ‘But I can’t speak to how those papers are going to look.’

“Gregory Royal Pratt, an investigative reporter at the Chicago Tribune, said Thursday’s strike is just the beginning of the staffs’ attempt to confront management over practices they believe are undermining coverage of their communities. Journalists at the New York Daily News, another Alden paper acquired with the Tribune purchase, conducted a walkout last week.

“ ‘This is not a one-time thing where we’re gonna go away if they ignore us,’ Pratt said. ‘This is something that we’re going to continue to fight over.’ ” (Jan. 31 update)

Inmates walk down the long hallway on their way out to the recreation yard, at the Deuel Vocational Institution near Tracy, Calif. Due to the jail overcrowding, the inmates get only four hours of recreation a week. (Credit: Tony Avelar/file photo/Christian Science Monitor)

Prisoners Are Hidden Workforce for Popular Foods

“In a sweeping two-year investigation, The Associated Press found goods linked to U.S. prisoners wind up in the supply chains of a dizzying array of products from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour and Coca-Cola. They are on the shelves of most supermarkets, including Kroger, Target, Aldi and Whole Foods,” Margie Mason and Robin McDowell reported Monday for the Associated Press.

“Here are takeaways from the AP’s investigation:

“PEOPLE OF COLOR DISPROPORTIONATELY AFFECTED

“The U.S. has a history of locking up more people than any other country – currently around 2 million – and goods tied to prison labor have morphed into a massive multibillion-dollar empire, extending far beyond the classic images of people stamping license plates or working on road crews. . . .

“WIDE RANGE OF BUSINESSES BENEFIT FROM PRISON LABOR . . .

“WIDE RANGE OF JOBS

“Almost all of the country’s state and federal adult prisons have some sort of work programs, employing around 800,000 people, according to a 2022 report by the American Civil Liberties Union. The vast majority of those jobs are tied to tasks like maintaining prisons, laundry or kitchen work. Some prisoners also work for states and municipalities, doing everything from cleaning up after hurricanes and tornadoes to picking up trash along bustling highways. . . .

“WHAT DO THE COMPANIES SAY?

“While prison labor seeps into the supply chains of some companies through third-party suppliers without them knowing, others buy direct. Mammoth commodity traders that are essential to feeding the globe like Cargill, Bunge, Louis Dreyfus, Archer Daniels Midland and Consolidated Grain and Barge have been scooping up millions of dollars’ worth of soy, corn and wheat straight from prison farms. . . .

“WHAT DO THE PRISONS SAY?

“Corrections officials and other proponents note that not all work is forced and that prison jobs save taxpayers money. They also say workers are learning skills that can be used when they’re released and given a sense of purpose, which could help ward off repeat offenses. In some cases, labor can mean time shaved off a sentence. And the jobs provide a way to repay a debt to society, they say. . . .”

Ron Nixon, the AP’s vice president, news and head of investigations, enterprise, partnerships and grants, told Journal-isms, “Margie Mason and Robin McDowell are Pulitzer Prize winners who have done these types of investigations abroad and wanted to turn their attention to [a] similar issue at home.”

Indigenous Affairs Editor Bridget Brennan of the Australian Broadcasting Corp. presents her findings in London. (Credit: Andrew Bailey/Reuters Institute)

Worldwide, Indigenous Journalists Cite Turnoffs

“In the past five years alone, Indigenous journalists have uncovered multiple allegations of human rights abuses in settler colonial countries. These stories have exposed allegations of police brutality, the disappearances and murders of Aboriginal women, land theft, deaths in custody, racist media coverage and failures to repatriate human remains,” Bridget Brennan reported Jan. 16 for the Reuters Institute.

“But amidst all the power and promise inherent in the growth of Indigenous affairs beats around the world, there are unseen pressures that – if not dealt with systematically – threaten to derail the progress made.

“We can start to alleviate the risk of burnout and disillusionment if we talk more openly about the factors that can make this job so challenging.

“During my fellowship at the Reuters Institute, I conducted six in-depth interviews with Indigenous journalists from five countries to ask why so many talented First Nations journalists consider quitting, despite loving the work that they do.

“Five key themes emerged. This list is not exhaustive, but it serves as a starting point. Some of these will be applicable to other journalists from marginalised communities, too.

“My interviewees called for more dedicated and well-resourced Indigenous affairs units led by Indigenous journalists and editors who deeply understand the issues. These teams need adequate funding and resources, equivalent to other respected bureaus. They also need editorial autonomy for meaningful story selection. . . .”

14-Year-Old Is Already a Scientist

Everybody likes feel-good stories. Here’s one from “PBS News Weekend”: “Heman Bekele spent the last year developing a bar of soap that could treat skin cancer. It was the winning entry at the annual 3M Young Scientist Challenge, considered one of the top science and engineering competitions for fifth through eighth graders. For our Weekend Spotlight, John Yang speaks with Bekele about his work.” This young man is 14.

Short Takes

Barbara Reynolds is flanked by Martin King III, left, and Dexter King.

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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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