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Marty Baron’s ‘Most Serious Error’

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It Was Failing to Do More on Diversity, Editor Writes

Updating: Post Offering Buyouts to Cut Staff by 240

Homeowners Gave Jim Crow His Comeuppance

Short Takes: Black journalist history at Chicago Sun-Times; Chicago Public Media-Chicago Sun-Times; HBCU internship for covering auto industry; Robert Menendez; Indigenous Peoples Day; E.R. Shipp and Morgan State U. shootings; Mark Russell; Ibram X. Kendi, Mikki Kendall, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Banned Books Week; Alan Sealls; Kerwin Speight; Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; Black History Month in the U.K.

Homepage photo: Martin Baron at March 2014 Journal-isms Roundtable, by Jason Miccolo Johnson

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Martin Baron, second from right, and Kevin Merida, right, joined the Journal-isms Roundtable at Washington’s Mio Restaurant and Cafe in March 2014 to mark Merida’s first year as managing editor. “I was heartbroken when he informed me in October 2015 that he was leaving,” Baron writes of Merida in his book. (Credit: Jason Miccolo Johnson)

It Was Failing to Do More on Diversity, Editor Writes

Failing to try to secure the resources to properly address diversity issues “was regrettably the most serious error of my tenure” as executive editor of The Washington Post, Martin Baron, top editor at the news organization from 2013 to 2021, declares in his new book, “Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post.”

In perhaps the most complete account of the internal turmoil over racial issues at the newspaper in the period before and after the police murder of George Floyd in 2020, Baron also discloses that he wanted Kevin Merida, his managing editor and the first Black journalist in the role, to succeed him as top editor. Baron said he even offered to retire two years earlier than planned so that Merida would be in line for the job.

“I was heartbroken when he informed me in October 2015 that he was leaving to take a high-paying job as senior vice president of ESPN and editor in chief of The Undefeated, its digital site centered on the intersection of sports, race, and culture,” Baron wrote.

“I had done everything possible to keep him. We had raised our compensation offer as high as possible, And then I privately told Kevin that I was willing to retire early — in two years — if he stayed, with the goal of him becoming my successor. I suggested he use those years to build relationships with the publisher and hone digital and business skills that would make him the preferred candidate.

“Kevin’s departure was a blow not only to me but also to the morale of Black journalists on our staff, made worse by his move to recruit a half dozen of them to his new employer (at substantial higher salaries.)”

Five years later, “in a mood of despondency in June 2020, I offered publisher Fred Ryan my resignation. Working alone from home during the pandemic, I suggested to Fred that he lure Kevin Merida back from ESPN and name him as my replacement. Kevin, I emailed him, was ‘better equipped than I to lead this newsroom through the fraught period we are in. . . . Fred refused my resignation offer . . .’ “

Merida left ESPN in 2021 to become executive editor at the Los Angeles Times. Sally Buzbee, executive editor at the Associated Press, succeeded Baron that year.

Merida messaged Journal-isms on Sunday, “It was an agonizingly difficult decision to leave The Post, my home for 22 years, and a place where I had developed many close relationships. It’s something I have talked about publicly. The decision was made all the more difficult because of the strong partnership I had with Marty. I loved working with him, learned a lot from him, and we remain good friends.”

Baron also devotes several pages to his dealings with Wesley Lowery (pictured), another Black journalist, in a larger discussion of appropriate use of social media and the Post’s policies on what it considers advocacy by reporters. Lowery, hired from the Boston Globe when Lowery was 23, raised his profile in 2014 with his reporting from Ferguson, Mo., after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black man, by a white police officer.  Lowery and Huffington Post reporter Ryan Reilly were briefly arrested.

“Not only did Wes have to endure tear gas and rubber bullets while witnessing protesters’ injury and grief, he endured invective on social media, on air, and from right-wing critics intent on tormenting him and disparaging The Post,” Baron wrote. “It would have been a lot for anyone to handle; more so for someone at the start of his career.

“Post journalists are expected to take a lot of shit, mostly suppressing their emotions and continuing with their work. That was not Wes’s approach To his nastiest critics, he responded in kind, provoking more attacks. He didn’t handle it according to our standards.”

In 2019, Lowery, who had amassed hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers, used his account to blast the media as “cowardly” for not immediately using the term “racist” to describe then-president Donald Trump’s attacks on four progressive congresswomen of color. Trump called on them to “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

The tweet seemed aimed particularly at The Post, Baron wrote, adding that Post practice was to have “considerable discussion” before using such a term. “Within a day, managing editor Cameron Barr assembled a diverse group to thoroughly discuss whether to label Trump’s comments ‘racist.’ ” We made the decision to do so.  Deliberativeness isn’t cowardice; it’s a guardrail against the perils of impulsiveness,” Baron asserts.

After other such examples, Baron describes a confrontational meeting with Lowery in his office and a subsequent letter in which the reporter “claimed that his championing of diversity in hiring and coverage ‘appears to increasingly run afoul’ of The Post’s expectations for reporters’ behavior.”

Baron responds, “The Post then employed 850 news department reporters and editors. If each of them acted both as a newsperson and commentator, it would be a cacophonous, unprofessional mess.”

He added, “We wanted Wes to keep working at The Post. Our view of him as a talented journalist was not at all diminished. But in January 2020, several months after receiving the first and lightest variant of formal discipline, an aggrieved Wes informed us that he would be quitting in a few weeks to take another job.”

Lowery, now an associate professor of investigative journalism at American University, executive editor of its Investigative Reporting Workshop, and a freelance writer and author, told Journal-isms Sunday that he did not want to comment. However, when Baron departed in 2021, Lowery both praised and criticized his former boss in Columbia Journalism Review.

In “Collision of Power,” Baron correctly notes that the Post was not the only newsroom where Black journalists personally felt the pain of the nation’s racial climate, including but not limited to the George Floyd murder. Baron referenced The Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and ESPN.

After the Floyd murder and Black Lives Matter protests, Baron writes, he congratulated the staff on “covering a story that tested their stamina and threatened their safety.”

The Washington Post News Guild said in 2022, ” “While The Post has made some progress closing the pay gap since our last study, women and people of color are still paid less compared with their male and White colleagues.”

But “I quickly learned, though,” that the congratulations were “not well-received. I had written of the racial justice protests as if they were just another huge story, failing to recognize that they were far more than that. I had omitted any mention of the deep pain felt by our Black journalists. The killing of George Floyd represented more than an act of police brutality. It was emblematic of the injustices, indignities, and inequities they themselves had experienced in their own lives. To them, the story was personal.

“And my failure to grasp that and reflect that was, in their view, symptomatic of what was missing in our own newsroom: No Black journalists among three managing editors and two deputy managing editors. Too few among department heads. Too few overall in our newsroom. Coverage that failed to adequately communicate the Black experience. Not enough leaders who were able to see the world from a Black perspective. Leadership that had not done nearly enough to set things right.”

In June 2020, the Post held a virtual town hall with employees. Some Black staffers had already been meeting among themselves.

According to Baron, attendees asked, “Will The Washington Post make a statement in regards to George Floyd’s death at the hands of police?” “What does The Post plan on doing to support its Black reporters during this trying time?” “What specifically is The Post doing to prioritize hiring more people of color?” “Other large organizations have persons and leadership positions dedicated to promoting diversity and facilitating tough conversations and change. What structural/management changes is The Post making to do the same?” “Are donations to Black-centered charities such as Black Lives Matter allowed under company policy? If not, can a policy change be revisited?”

Meanwhile, “One reporter, Jessica Contrera (pictured), said that she had ‘decided to reach out to my colleagues and former colleagues of color, asking them to share their stories with me, through a Google submission form. She was now forwarding their accounts in the form of a thirty-two page compilation of their experiences over a long period with The Post, including ones that preceded my editorship. ‘Certainly,’ she wrote us, ‘I have heard stories and snippets of discrimination or racism in our company that made me shudder. But I hoped — as perhaps you have — that those situations were rare. They are not.’ “

“The Washington Post Guild, the union that represents employees in the newsroom and in certain commercial operations, sent its own ’11 evidence-based, actionable solutions . . . to address discrimination and inequality at The Post. ‘Employees, said its letter signed by 450 employees, ‘deserve leaders who are clear-eyed about the reality of racism and take ownership of the systemic bias that exists in our company.”

The upshot was an announcement in June 2020 of “the creation of new roles designed to enhance coverage of the growing national discourse on race in this historic moment and beyond, including a Managing Editor for Diversity and Inclusion, a senior leadership position with responsibilities such as convening regular coverage discussions focused on race and identity and the identification and recruitment of candidates.” That post would go to Style section reporter Krissah Thompson (pictured).

Baron’s recounting of the events comes with at least one mea culpa. “I had not been the good listener I regularly urge others to be. Black journalists at The Post were telling me we had not done nearly enough — that their voices weren’t being heard at senior levels and that our diversity efforts needed to go deeper than a top-level appointment or overall numbers,” Baron writes. “I should have assessed our newsroom with a wider lens. Our immediate growth needs were existentially pressing, but other needs should not have been ignored. Whether I expected to be successful or not, I should have advocated for a top-level editor who could lead our diversity efforts, not just for purposes of hiring but also to strengthen our coverage of long-standing, unresolved issues of race, ethnicity, and identity. Success at getting the resources might have eluded me, but failing to try was regrettably the most serious error of my tenure at The Post.“

The news organization has produced some outstanding journalism about race since then. However, the Washington Post Guild found in 2022 that “While The Post has made some progress closing the pay gap since our last study, women and people of color are still paid less compared with their male and White colleagues,” adding, “Though the company seems to be making a concerted effort to hire more people of color, it is not retaining them.”

A July snapshot of the diversity of the Post’s newsroom showed, in the major categories, whites to be 47 percent of all employees and 58.8 percent of leadership; Blacks or African Americans 22.6 percent of all employees and 18.7 percent of leadership, Asians 14.7 of all employees and 8.6 percent of leadership, and Hispanics or Latinos at 8.1 percent of all employees, 6.8 percent of leadership.

Among concerning indicators, some privately question whether the managing editor for diversity and inclusion could be more aggressive and influential; the Foreign Desk has no Blacks or Hispanics (scroll down), saying that current Black and Hispanic newsroom staffers are not willing to go abroad; and most recently, the paper failed to tell its Black print edition readers of a study that confirmed that fellow African Americans find mainstream media coverage as wanting as they do. (The Washington Association of Black Journalists convened a membership meeting with the authors to discuss the report.)

Baron rejects the contention by some that journalists should be permitted to bring their “full selves” to work, and he closes his chapter titled “Uprisings” by urging diversity, but also “good journalism.”

“One argument among journalists was that under the old rules they could not bring their ‘full selves’ to work, forcing them to be one version at home and another in the office,” he writes. “But that sort of thinking wasn’t something they’d likely tolerate from certain other professions — judges or police, for example. Or, for that matter, from colleagues who might embrace ideas that most in the newsroom would find objectionable. Or from their own newsroom supervisors. I can only imagine the reaction among staff if I, as executive editor of The Post, had chosen to march for a cause that ran counter to the views of many in our newsroom. . . .”

Baron adds, “One goal of greater diversity had to be inclusiveness: Allowing all Americans to see themselves, their concerns, and their aspirations more accurately and fully reflected in our stories.

“Another had to be understanding: Giving Americans the means to see the world from the vantage point of others whose background and experiences were very different from their own.

“However, participation by journalists in the very events our news organizations covered — whether through marches or donations or social media — risked undermining public confidence in the independence and professionalism of our work. The cause of public understanding would not be well served if our journalists were seen as indistinguishable from activists. Within the news department at The Post our mission was to inform, not to advocate. Good journalism would have to do the talking, as it had for decades. For us, there was no more effective form of speech.”

Updating: Post Offering Buyouts to Cut Staff by 240

“The Washington Post announced plans Tuesday to offer voluntary buyouts to its staff, in an effort to reduce head count by 240,” Will Sommer and Elahe Izadi reported Tuesday for The Post.

“In an email to staff, interim CEO Patty Stonesifer wrote that The Post’s subscription, traffic and advertising projections over the past two years had been ‘overly optimistic’ and that the company is looking for ways ‘to return our business to a healthier place in the coming year.’ (Photo: Washington Post building,)

“The Post currently employs about 2,500 people across the entire company. A staff meeting is planned for 10 a.m. Wednesday to discuss the buyouts, which will be offered to employees in specific jobs and departments. . . .”

“Stonesifer added that the buyouts are being offered in hopes of “averting more difficult actions such as layoffs — a situation we are united in trying to avoid.” . . .

“The steep cuts at The Post come as the newspaper is set to lose $100 million this year, as first reported by the New York Times. . . .”

In a statement from the Washington Post Guild, posted by Andrew Beaujon on the Washingtonian magazine site, the union said, “We are infuriated about this decision and concerned for our dedicated, brilliant colleagues. Today’s announcement comes after at least 38 people were laid off over the last year.

“Hard-working Post employees are going to lose their jobs because of a litany of poor business decisions at the top of our company. We cannot comprehend how The Post, owned by one of the richest people in the world, has decided to foist the consequences of its incoherent business plan and irresponsibly rapid expansion onto the hardworking people who make this company run. . . .”

“Swank Negro Homes Come to Alexandria,“ [PDF] reads the headline on a Sept. 25, 1962, story about Randall Estates in the old Washington Daily News. The story was framed and became part of the ceremony. (Credit: Richard Prince)

Homeowners Gave Jim Crow His Comeuppance

“From plantation to farm to subdivision,” mused Dan Storck, a member of the board of supervisors for Fairfax County, Va., outside Washington.

Storck was speaking at a ceremony Saturday organized by retired Los Angeles Times journalist Jube Shiver Jr., celebrating the county’s designation of Randall Estates as a “historic district,” whose developers navigated Jim Crow to make it one of the few Black subdivisions of its scope put together by African Americans for African Americans in the segregated South.

(Shiver’s research found fewer than a half dozen others, including Madonna Acres, a 13-acre subdivision of 40 custom homes developed between 1960 and 1965 by John Winters in Raleigh, N.C., and Collier Heights, started in 1948 by Herman Russell of Atlanta. Randall Estates, built in 1962 and 1963, had 42 homes over 20 acres.)

Shiver, who also worked at the old Washington Star, USA Today and The Washington Post,  now runs the real-estate business founded by his late father, Jube Shiver Sr. Their house is the cornerstone of the development.

  “We received this recognition, first and foremost, because this land that we are standing on — at least these two lots right here. . . — have been owned by African Americans for nearly 150 years. Ever since descendants of George Mason the IV, one of the founding fathers of this country, sold 10 acres of their land to Griffin Johnson, the Masons’ long serving coachman in 1874,” Shiver (pictured) told the 50 or so gathered, many of them original residents or their relatives.

“It was no walk in the park building this community in the early 1960s during Jim Crow,” Shiver continued. “One of our guests today, [State] Sen. [Scott] Surovell, spearheaded an effort to get an historic marker erected a few hundred yards from here to recognize a bitterly fought Supreme Court case that led to the desegregation of the Bucknell Manor swimming pool, as well as other neighborhood clubs across the United States.

“Yet even after that court decision, one of our former neighbors in Randall Estates, James Lewis, the first head coach of the Washington Mystics women’s basketball team, was asked to leave the Bucknell Manor tennis court right next to the swimming pool after a white friend had invited him to come play tennis there. Even more poignantly, one of Randall Estate’s original home owners, William Carr, could not legally occupy the house he had built in 1965 for his kids and German-born wife, because of Virginia’s miscegenation laws. Those laws were eventually struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 and dramatized in the 2016 Hollywood film ‘Loving‘.”

Surovell, one of the speakers, said he was a grandson of Jewish immigrants who arrived in 1935. Jews weren’t welcome in the area, either, so they joined the NAACP, he said.

Black children went to schools designated for Blacks only, sometimes miles from home. White neighbors tried to undermine plans for a Black subdivision that might have nicer homes than their own. Shiver’s dad was repeatedly frustrated in his efforts to secure bank loans, though he persevered.

“History does matter,” Storck said, referring to some of this struggle, “but we can change the future by what we do today.”

Asked whether his journalism background helped him win the historic designation, which requires the submission of narratives and undertaking research, Shiver told Journal-isms, “I don’t know. Maybe that I loaned my dad $3000 of my saved Washington Star salary in the late 70s that saved my dad’s business. But my dad seriously distrusted journalists.” No worries; none seemed to be assigned to cover the event.

For more background , go to https://mjfi.org/ and click “Resources.”

Short Takes

Lacy J. Banks in 2010. After a sports editor rejected some columns Banks wrote — a move the reporter labeled “racist”— and the Black press got hold of the story, Banks was fired, But after federal mediation, he got his job back. (Credit: Al Podgorski /Sun-Times)
Jordan Cooke, Seneca language teacher at Lake Shore High School in Angola, N.Y., shares the significance of Orange Shirt Day with students at John T. Waugh Elementary School. The event is intended to call attention to bodies found at a residential school in Canada. A new Department of Indigenous Studies at the University at Buffalo intends to teach such history. (Credit: Joshua Bessex/Buffalo News)
Authors Ibram X. Kendi, left, Mikki Kendall, Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates speak at the Howard University School of Social Work during the International Black Writers Festival on Sept. 28. (Credit: Takier George for Andscape)

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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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