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McCammond Exits Axios to Edit Teen Vogue

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Personal Life Thrust Her Into Headlines

AAJA Hero to Get Obit in His Old Paper After All

Homepage photo: Teen Vogue

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Alexi McCammond (Credit: Axios on HBO)

Personal Life Thrust Her Into Headlines

“Alexi McCammond, a political reporter at Axios whose relationship with a White House aide was recently in the headlines, will be the next editor in chief of Teen Vogue, Condé Nast announced Friday,” Katie Robertson reported for The New York Times.

“Ms. McCammond’s relationship with a former Biden press aide, T.J. Ducklo, recently made news after he threatened a reporter and was forced to resign.

“Ms. McCammond, 27, made her name covering the 2018 midterm elections and Joseph R. Biden’s presidential campaign for Axios, a site known for its punchy Beltway coverage. She has also been a frequent contributor to NBC and MSNBC. In her new role, she will lead the Teen Vogue team across digital, video and social media. Her start date is March 24.

“The appointment of Ms. McCammond to the top Teen Vogue job suggests that the publication, which stopped publishing regular print issues in 2017, will continue to be a venue for political reporting and commentary, in addition to its coverage of fashion, beauty and culture. Teen Vogue expanded its purview during the political rise of Donald J. Trump, winning plaudits for essays like Lauren Duca’s ‘Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America’ in 2016.

“Ms. McCammond succeeds Lindsay Peoples Wagner, the editor in chief of Teen Vogue since 2018, who in January was appointed to the top job at New York Magazine’s style website, The Cut. Anna Wintour, the global editorial director of Vogue and Condé Nast’s chief content officer, said in a statement that Ms. McCammond had ‘the powerful curiosity and confidence that embodies the best of our next generation of leaders.’ . . .”

Wintour also said of McCammond, 2019 Emerging Journalist of the Year of the National Association of Black Journalists, “Her interest in fashion, wellness and important issues in the lives of the Teen Vogue audience and broad knowledge of business leaders, elected officials, influencers, photographers and filmmakers is unrivaled. . . .”

McCammond tweeted Friday, “Still pinching myself . . . I’m endlessly grateful to @axios for believing in me and helping me grow as a reporter (and a human!) over the last 4 years. Incredibly excited for my next chapter.”

The Times story continued, “Ms. McCammond was a secondary figure in an early test for the Biden administration that centered on her boyfriend, T.J. Ducklo, who resigned last month from his job as a deputy White House press secretary.

“They started dating when she was covering the Biden campaign and Mr. Ducklo was its press secretary. Earlier this year, Politico told Mr. Ducklo, who has battled lung cancer, that it planned to write an item on the relationship. As Vanity Fair later reported, Mr. Ducklo tried to intimidate the Politico reporter writing the article, Tara Palmeri, telling her: ‘I will destroy you.’ “

Axios said at the time, “Alexi disclosed her relationship with TJ to her editors in November and asked to be taken off of the Biden beat. We reassigned her to cover progressives in Congress, the progressive movement, and Vice President Kamala Harris. Alexi is a valued member of the Axios team, and we stand behind her and her coverage.”

David Ibata died Jan. 26 from Covid-19 and pneumonia, according to family. He was 66. (Credit: AAJA; photo by Vino Wong)

AAJA Hero to Get Obit in His Old Paper After All

The Chicago Tribune failed to do an obituary on one of its own reporters who was regarded as a hero among Asian American journalists, but is now assigning one after Journal-isms pointed out an NBC News story mentioning the omission, Managing Editor Christine Taylor messaged Friday.

“The journalist David Ibata, who died . . .at 66, helped dozens of young, cash-strapped Asian reporters land coveted internships in Chicago newsrooms,” Claire Wang wrote Wednesday under the headline, “Losing generation of activists who fought racism proves need for Asian American studies.”

Wang wrote, “The coronavirus pandemic is amplifying a trend that experts say has been accelerating in recent years: the loss of the last living links to the Asian American movement. At a moment when Asian elders face threats on multiple fronts, they say, it’s even more important that their stories are taught in schools and other public institutions so their legacies aren’t forgotten.”

Managing Editor Taylor messaged Journal-isms, “We don’t do obits as we used to. That said we think David is a worthy obituary for us to write and we have assigned it.”

The Tribune reported six Asian Americans in its newsroom of 200 journalists [PDF] in the 2019 diversity survey of the American Society of News Editors, now the News Leaders Association. After that year, news organizations’ participation fell so low that the organization is now retooling the survey, which includes print and online newsrooms.

Editor-in-Chief Colin McMahon (pictured), messaged Friday, “We are working with the NLA on their new initiative to measure and improve diversity in U.S. Newsrooms. We should get new data at the end of that process.”

In December, the Chicago Tribune Guild called out the Tribune, already struggling with turmoil amid ownership and management changes, for its declining newsroom diversity.

Guild President Gregory Pratt, a City Hall reporter, messaged Journal-isms Friday, “We never heard back from the company in any meaningful way and we just lost another journalist of color. It’s disappointing.” He was referring to business reporter Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz, who announced last week she’s taking a media relations job.

Wang began her NBC piece, which appeared on the NBC Asian America page, “The photographer Corky Lee, who died in late January at age 73, captured images of some of the most pivotal moments in Asian American history. The journalist David Ibata, who died two days before at 66, helped dozens of young, cash-strapped Asian reporters land coveted internships in Chicago newsrooms. And the scholar Judy Yung, who died in December at 74, chronicled the experiences of Chinese women in 19th century San Francisco and launched one of the country’s first Asian American studies programs.
. . .

“While Lee’s legacy has been covered in national outlets like The New York Times and The New Yorker, the deaths of other Asian American activists have attracted far less media attention. Yung’s obituary appeared in few places other than the San Francisco Chronicle, and Ibata’s didn’t even make the pages of the Chicago Tribune, where he worked as a reporter and editor for more than two decades.”

Wang also wrote, “Michelle Lee (pictured), president of the Asian American Journalists Association, said the sudden passing of longtime member Corky Lee and Ibata, a co-founder of the organization’s Chicago chapter, shows that it’s ‘more important than ever to highlight the careers of trailblazers.’

” ‘We need to recognize that we’re just one of many generations carrying forward the mission of diversifying our industry, of making sure that diverse communities are covered accurately and fairly,’ she said, adding that the group has been collecting members’ memories of Lee and Ibata to document their impact on journalism. . . “

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a brief notice of Ibata’s death on Jan. 28.

Jessica Xiao of AAJA reported the same day, “David, a Southern Illinois University, Carbondale graduate, spent most of his career at the Chicago Tribune, where he helped expand the Tribune’s suburban coverage as a reporter and editor. One former colleague said ‘no finer wrangler of suburban stringers existed.’ He later joined the newsroom’s pioneering website team, editing breaking news and posting stories to the home page. . . .”

The Poynter Institute listed Ibata Friday among “journalists and colleagues we’ve lost to the coronavirus.”

Journal-isms carried the item on Jan. 30.

Vernon Jordan Dies at 85

March 2, 2021

Black Journalists Should ‘Stay on the Case’

Defeated Black Mayor Blames Disinformation:
Voters Vulnerable as ‘News Deserts’ Multiply
Covering Politics: ‘Listen More to Black People’
Ebony Reboots Online Monday Under New Owners
N.Y. Times Addresses Longtime Diversity Issues
Asian Americans Want More Coverage of Attacks
Board Folds Nonprofit After ‘I’m Not Woke’ Flap
White 4th Grader Picks Black Anchor as His Hero
Balta Casts Firing as Dispute Over ‘Objectivity’

Short Takes

Photos (c) by Jason Miccolo Johnson

Vernon Jordan, fifth from left in the front row, told the Journal-isms Roundtable in 2015, “Somebody laid a hand on me, and that’s what we have to do with these young people.” (Credit: Jason Miccolo Johnson)
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Black Journalists Should ‘Stay on the Case’

Vernon Jordan, the pre-eminent civil rights leader who urged Black journalists to “stay on the case” and report on the status of the Black community, died Monday evening, multiple sources close to the family told CNN, Jamie Gangel and Dan Merica reported Tuesday morning for the network. Jordan was 85.

“The former president of the National Urban League rose to prominence as a civil rights activist with close connections in all corners of American politics, working with presidents from Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama,” they wrote.

Jordan made his comments about Black journalists at a May 31, 2015, Sunday breakfast with the Journal-isms Roundtable in Washington.

“Trouble is a-comin’ like it used to did,” the power broker said of the pre-Trump climate, repurposing a statement from a 90-year-old Black man in the early days of the civil rights movement.

It’s important for black journalists to “stay on the case,” Jordan said, referring to the plight of African Americans. “Most black people aren’t having this kind of breakfast, and don’t have the kind of jobs that we are blessed to have.”

He added, “somebody laid a hand on me, and that’s what we have to do with these young people.” When it was pointed out that civil rights leaders such as Roy Wilkins of the NAACP and Whitney Young Jr. of the National Urban League are unknown to most Americans today, Jordan added his own anecdotes about people who should have been familiar with the late historian John Hope Franklin, but weren’t.

Part of the problem with some in recent generations is that “they somehow believe they got there all by themselves,” Jordan continued. In addition, preachers “preach from Isaiah but they don’t say anything about what’s in the newspapers.”

CNN added, “Jordan, born on August 15, 1935, studied law at Howard University and began his career fighting segregation, beginning with a lawsuit against University of Georgia’s integration policy in 1961. He worked as a field director for the NAACP and as a director of the Southern Regional Council for the Voter Education Project before he became president of the National Urban League.”

Defeated Black Mayor Blames Disinformation

March 1, 2021


Voters Vulnerable as ‘News Deserts’ Multiply
Covering Politics: ‘Listen More to Black People’
Ebony Reboots Online Monday Under New Owners
N.Y. Times Addresses Longtime Diversity Issues
Asian Americans Want More Coverage of Attacks
Board Folds Nonprofit After ‘I’m Not Woke’ Flap
White 4th Grader Picks Black Anchor as His Hero
Balta Casts Firing as Dispute Over ‘Objectivity’

Short Takes

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Former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs said, “I’m worried that this malicious, this evil, this weird obsession [with] disinformation and misinformation will spread like wildfire, particularly in communities like Stockton.” (Credit: Jason Henry/The New York Times via Redux)

Voters Vulnerable as ‘News Deserts’ Multiply

With disinformation widely credited for the refusal of Donald Trump supporters to continue their belief that the November election was “stolen,” a 30-year-old Black mayor, thought of as a rising star, can testify that disinformation at the local level can help cost a mayor his job.

Michael Tubbs, formerly top official in Stockton, Calif., joins others in linking his defeat to a disinformation campaign that thrived with the growing irrelevance of the local newspaper. The Stockton Record, a Gannett property, has become so impotent that the area is thought of as a “news desert.”

“I made the false assumption that reality was reality and facts were facts and that people would see the truth in the matter and we’d be fine, (audio), Tubbs told Akintunde Ahmad Friday for Columbia Journalism Review.

“We just thought that by using traditional media, by being on TV all the time, . . . by writing a response to our newspaper whenever they wanted one, myself, going online and doing Instagram Lives, and Facebook Lives, where people could ask questions. We thought that would be enough, frankly. . . .”

In December, David Siders wrote a piece for Politico Magazine headlined, “The Fall of Michael Tubbs.” Siders said, “The culprit most commonly cited — by Tubbs, his supporters, his critics and neutral observers — was 209 Times.

“Launched in 2017 by a local activist, Motecuzoma Patrick Sanchez (pictured) who ran against Tubbs in the primary, the blog named for the local area code had spent four years mauling the mayor. And by the time of the election, it had developed a massive-for-Stockton following — nearly 120,000 people on Instagram, nearly 100,000 on Facebook.

“Its posts, shared throughout the city on those platforms, included a racist meme of Tubbs as a crack addict, with the text, ‘Got any more of that taxpayer money?’ and one of him with a martini, labeled, ‘When you’re too busy living your best life to notice your city’s on fire.’ The site claimed, deceptively, that Tubbs’ scholarship program was ‘missing millions of dollars.’ When officials discussed the possibility of sheltering homeless people at a county fairgrounds, it depicted the mayor as overseeing a ‘Homeless Tubbsville.’

Siders added, “In another city — or at another time in Stockton — the presence of 209 Times might not have mattered. But the guardrails of civic discourse have eroded in recent years. The local newspaper, The Record, has been butchered by budget cuts, with the newsroom listing just five reporters on its website, for a city roughly the size of Pittsburgh. The newspaper’s building is for sale, and San Joaquin County supervisors last month were considering buying it to turn into a homeless shelter. TV stations based in nearby Sacramento do little to fill the void.”

Anita Chabria, writing in November in the Los Angeles Times, reported, “Sanchez, the 209 Times founder, said the goal of his publication isn’t to be fair or balanced, though it identifies itself as a news and media company on Facebook. It also sells political and other advertising.

(Credit: University of North Carolina School of Media and Journalism)

“ ‘We are not journalists. I looked at it like we were a guerrilla group up against the mainstream army,’ Sanchez said. ‘We are not asking their side of it. We are telling you what we know. We never tried to hide our bias.’ ”

In an “exit interview” on Tuesday with Kojo Nnamdi of WAMU-FM, Washington’s public radio station, retiring Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron said, “I think the threat to democracy comes from an aspect of the internet. And that has allowed so-called media outlets to develop that basically reinforced people’s preconceived notions of reality, when they are often divorced from reality — people who live in sort of parallel information universes — and filled with falsehoods and bizarre conspiracy theories and the like. And they turn to those media outlets for their so-called information, and they see the world through that.”

Siders, in Politico, maintains that disinformation wasn’t the only reason for the defeat of Stockton’s first Black mayor, and its youngest of any ethnicity.

“No question, the blog was a big part of it,” Siders wrote. “But it wasn’t the only reason Tubbs lost. The other reasons had more to do with Stockton itself — a scrappy city whose takedown politics are so aggressive as to verge on the bizarre — and with Tubbs’ failure to watch his flank. And as much as Tubbs’ defeat revealed about the emerging real-world power of social media and fake news, it was also an object lesson in the peril of cultivating a national profile that eclipses one’s image at home.” Tubbs was the subject of an HBO documentary last year, “Stockton on My Mind.“

The trailer for the 2020 HBO documentary, “Stockton on My Mind.” It was the second documentary made about Michael Tubbs before he was 30. (Credit: YouTube)

But Tubbs says the disinformation is reason enough for action. “Indeed, it was a four-year campaign that only works in a news desert, that only works when you’re able — the algorithm rewards racism and bigotry, and bias and only works when there is no check, there’s no certification; there’s no — nothing that says this is true, because we know the brain research tells us that we look for news that confirms our bias,” he told Columbia Journalism Review.

Tubbs added, “In Stockton, because of our population, so much of the disinformation was focused on the Latino community . . . we also have a ‘209 Time en espanol,’ like a Spanish disinformation page parroting the same garbage information. . . .

“I’m now adding disinformation as a focus area and priority area for me and an area I’m actively getting expertise. I just don’t see how a country as diverse, that has as many challenges as the United States, can really move forward if we allow disinformation to be unchecked.

“Let’s make sure we’re training our people how to think, in terms of being critical thinkers. And
also make sure that we’re holding the bad actors accountable who would seek to divide us in a
way that makes us weaker, that compromises our national security, that compromises the
integrity of our elections, that compromises the type of community we live in.

“So I definitely see myself advocating for policy and really being a voice around the dangers of
disinformation and also about the need for local press — the need for a vibrant and free press
that’s local, that has trust, that has credibility, that can be as objective as possible . . .”

“It’s not telling people what to think but training our people how to think, and making sure we’re . . . in terms of being critical thinkers, and also making sure that we’re holding bad actors accountable, who would seek to divide us in a way that makes us weaker . . . that compromises the integrity of our elections, that compromises the kind of community we live in.

“So I definitely see myself advocating for policies, doing pilots, and being a voice around the dangers of disinformation and also about the need for local press, the need for a vibrant and free press that’s local, that has trust, that has credibility, that can be as objective as possible.”

Tubbs advocates stronger action by social media to identify false information, such as Twitter’s placement of a blue checkmark to verify identities.

After the November election, Sarah Mizes-Tan reported on the election loss for Capital Public Radio, based in Sacramento.

Mizes-Tan quoted  Mike Fitzgerald, a former columnist for The Stockton Record. “You’re going to see this all over the country as print journalism declines and everybody’s on the Internet, more and more charlatans, they’re going to get websites. You won’t know who they are necessarily.  . . .

“The only antidote is to put counter-information out there, good information, so that the public is better served,” Fitzgerald said.

To their credit, journalism foundations have prioritized local news, and newer organizations such as Report for America, founded in 2017, supplement local media by paying for additional reporters.

Mizes-Tan also wrote for CapRadio, “In the past few weeks, a new community-oriented news site called Stocktonia has launched, founded by local historian Phillip Merlo. He doesn’t see the site as countering 209 Times, but wanted to start it because he saw a news hole.”

“I don’t know if anybody’s unbiased, you know, I think I think the truth is that no journalism is objective,” Merlo said. “All good journalism should be fair. And I think that’s what I’m really interested in.”

In December 2019, Perry Bacon Jr. predicted on ABC’s “This Week” that Donald Trump, though unpopular, had a “very good chance” at being reelected because the Democratic candidates were growing more unpopular by the day. “Some lessons came the hard way: By being really wrong,” Bacon writes. (video)

Covering Politics: ‘Listen More to Black People’

When Washington political reporter Perry Bacon Jr. compiled a list of what he learned about covering national politics during the Trump era, his first takeaway was “Listen more to Black people.”

“It wasn’t only Black political observers who proved prescient about Trump,” wrote Bacon, who is African American and writes for fivethirtyeight.com. “But Black political observers were often the ones most bullish about Trump’s chances from the start and the most willing during his campaign and presidency to speak bluntly about his racial and at times racist language and why some of his supporters liked that language.

“By the end of Trump’s presidency, covering Trump this way was mainstream, but Black journalists were often the ones taking this first approach while white colleagues often cast Trump’s actions in racial terms only when it was no longer controversial to do so. And Black experts were often those who most forcefully rejected the argument that Trump’s appeal to voters was primarily based on feelings of ‘economic anxiety’ or that Trump’s ideas should be taken ‘seriously but not literally.’

“Two Black political experts stand out in particular. The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer argued that many of Trump’s supporters backed him because of his harshness toward conservatives’ perceived enemies (‘The Cruelty Is the Point,’ a Serwer piece was headlined.) And Ta-Nehisi Coates, then at The Atlantic, dubbed Trump ‘The First White President,’ arguing that his rise was best understood as a backlash to Obama. Those pieces were written early in Trump’s presidency but are still memorable because they ended up accurately capturing some of the main themes of his tenure in office.”

Bacon also gives a shout-out to CNN’s Don Lemon, who in his own guest shot writing the “Political Playbook” for Martin Luther King Day, wrote, “here’s what I’m looking ahead for:

“For journalists of color, who gets credit, accolades, promotions, raises and awards for holding an administration — as well as their own newsrooms and America — accountable early on? Especially when Black and brown journalists were more likely to be cancelled for speaking out than our white counterparts. I wonder how many journalists of color didn’t get hired or promoted because companies just didn’t want to deal with that in the age of Trump?“

Lemon asked, “When Black journalists in newsrooms all over America questioned Trump’s history of racism, from housing to birtherism and more, did you stand up for us or keep quiet?”

One of Bacon’s other points: Don’t be too reliant on political insiders. “The wrongheaded reliance on GOP insiders culminated in what in hindsight was a huge media mistake: initially downplaying Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results,” he wrote.

Ebony Reboots Online Monday Under New Owners

“Ebony, the Chicago-born magazine that served as the voice of Black America for more than 75 years, is set for a digital rebirth Monday under new owners.” Robert Channick reported Friday for the Chicago Tribune.

“Bought out of bankruptcy for $14 million in December by Louisville-based Bridgeman Sports and Media, a company owned by retired Milwaukee Bucks forward Ulysses ‘Junior’ Bridgeman, Ebony will relaunch with a startup mentality, a lean operation and lofty aspirations. The storied publication’s print format and its Chicago roots will be relegated to the past.

“ ‘We’re going to ask for grace, because we did this quickly,’ said Michele Ghee (pictured), 54, a media veteran who was named CEO of Ebony in January. ‘But we are in a rush to show that we have great intentions.’

“A countdown clock on the website, ebony.com, highlights the March 1 relaunch. Ghee said Ebony will offer a new look as part of a plan to reclaim its cultural influence. That mission will fall on Ghee and a staff of about seven full-time employees scattered across the country. . . .”

The New York Times newsroom. “We heard from many Asian-American women . . .about feeling invisible and unseen — to the point of being regularly called by the name of a different colleague of the same race, something other people of color described as well,” the report said. (Credit: David Gelles/Twitter)

N.Y. Times Addresses Longtime Diversity Issues

The New York Times has set a goal of “increasing the representation of Black and Latino colleagues in leadership by 50 percent over the next five years,” and is committing itself to ensuring, starting in 2022, “that clearly defined diversity, equity and inclusion expectations are woven into all leaders’ assessment and compensation.”

The pledges were among several announced Wednesday in a wide-ranging internal report that found that “The Times is too often a difficult place to work for people of all backgrounds — particularly colleagues of color, and especially Black and Latino colleagues. It calls for us to transform our culture.”

The document addresses a broad spectrum of complaints from journalists of color that are voiced throughout the news business, from ideas not being taken seriously to lack of upward mobility.

“Eight months ago, against the backdrop of a societal reckoning around race, we commissioned a diverse group of senior leaders from across the company to help us examine how we were falling short within our own walls, and what it would take to change,” reads an introduction by Publisher A.G. Sulzberger, CEO Meredith Kopit Levien and Executive Editor Dean Baquet.

“We picked this group — led by Amber Guild, Carolyn Ryan and Anand Venkatesan — because they were respected truth tellers. And we told them not to pull any punches.

“Today, we’re sharing the results of their work.”

The leadership diversity pledge would raise the number of Blacks and Latinos in top jobs from 9 percent to 13.5 percent within five years. Baquet, who is Black, is expected to retire.

At the core of the report is including journalists of color in all aspects of the newsroom, especially and significantly in the evaluation and editing of stories.

“Several desks will experiment with bringing more voices and perspectives into the critical process of assigning stories and working with reporters as they develop,” it says.

“One approach will be to make sure that editors new to assigning are paired with veteran editors, allowing them to gain experience assigning, collaborating with reporters and shaping coverage as preparation for eventually stepping into more senior roles themselves. And the newsroom team is using qualitative and quantitative data to analyze how people and communities of color are represented in our coverage, both as sources and as subjects. The aim is to create an inclusive culture that emphasizes teamwork and organically incorporates diverse perspectives.

“This work should ultimately render the informal practice that some now call a ‘sensitivity read’ obsolete. These requests for additional feedback come with good intentions — for example, to determine if story framing and language hold up to our news standards and do not play into tired stereotypes — but often arrive unexpectedly, too late to remedy deep journalistic issues. The phrase itself conveys a timidness that’s out of keeping with coverage of the world without fear or favor.

“We will continue to encourage collaboration across the newsroom; another set of eyes, particularly from a different perspective, immeasurably improves our coverage. But more intentional and organic inclusion of people of color throughout the process of assigning, reporting and editing our stories should eventually curtail the need to call in journalists at the last minute to catch embarrassing gaps. For now, we will be adopting a system to enable departments to solicit added layers of editing expertise — on race or any other subject matter — in a structured way.”

The Times report additionally says, “senior leaders should be judged by how well they create pathways for a diverse group of deputies to succeed them.” In many newsrooms, diversity edicts from the top have been blocked by indifferent middle managers without consequences.

The practice of linking overall compensation to progress on diversity goals, a concept known as pay at risk, was a strategy successfully used by the late Al Neuharth, CEO of the Gannett Co. Last year, Gannett, the owner of USA Today and more than 260 local news operations, announced a broad initiative to make its workforce as diverse as the country by 2025, and pay at risk remains part of its policy. 

As Thomas Lee reported for sfgate.com in 2014, “Linking pay to diversity is not as audacious as it sounds. Verizon, Dell, Coca-Cola and Kraft base top managers’ pay on diversity initiatives, as do several hospitals and nonprofits. According to a report last year by Calvert Investments, 42 percent of the companies in the Standard & Poor’s 100 index link executive compensation to diversity goals.”

Asian Americans Want More Coverage of Attacks

“The recent spike in attacks against Asian Americans [is] part of a larger trend that deserves more media coverage, said ‘Nightline’ co-anchor Juju Chang and CBS News White House correspondent Weijia Jiang,” Angela Fu wrote on Thursday for the Poynter Institute.

“The broadcast journalists joined Poynter senior adviser and faculty member Joie Chen Thursday to discuss recent media coverage of violence against Asian Americans. The conversation was part of Poynter’s On Poynt series, which features interviews with journalists for the story behind the story of current events.”

The session took place as attacks on Asian Americans are receiving increased media attention, as the Asian American Journalists Association is crowdsourcing reports of anti-Asian American incidents, and as the Washington Post issued a statement condemning online attacks on White House correspondent Seung Min Kim. She was photographed showing Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, a critical tweet from Neera Tanden, President Biden’s nominee for Office of Management and Budget director.

Fu’s story continued, “Though many of the attacks that have garnered significant media coverage have taken place on the coasts — most notably the Bay Area and New York City — Chang said the problem has been much more widespread.

“ ‘I think that we’re getting at some of the roots of the otherness that Asian Americans have been subject to for decades,’ Chang said. ‘This is something that spreads across the entire spectrum, both geographically, socioeconomically and ethnically across our country.’ . . .”

Board Folds Nonprofit After ‘I’m Not Woke’ Flap

The founder of a California journalism nonprofit who denied he told an applicant he was not interested in diversity has resigned and the board of directors has decided to dissolve the company. 

“This step is taken with regret as the small journalism nonprofit has devoted the last 11 years to protecting the public from harms to their health and safety,” the board of FairWarning said in a Feb. 19 statement. “Circumstances beyond the board’s control have unfairly damaged FairWarning’s reputation and made it difficult to carry on a small-budget news organization dependent on charitable donations.”

The statement listed a roster of accomplishments. Among them, “FairWarning was an early investigator of the cancer risks from talc powders; examined the racial politics of menthol cigarettes and told how giant tobacco companies use trade treaties to fight anti-smoking measures around the world. It revealed a disinformation campaign by the indoor tanning industry to hide the risk of skin cancer.”

On Feb. 2, Matt Krupnick, who is white, tweeted that he was offered an editor’s job by FairWarning’s founder and editor, Myron Levin (pictured). “I noted to the founder/editor that diversity seemed to be a challenge there. The entire staff (and board) is white and I haven’t found a single article written by a person of color. When I mentioned to the editor that I wanted to diversify the freelance pool, this was his response: ‘We’re not woke.’

In his farewell note, posted along with the board’s statement, Levin said Krupnick’s message “contained serious inaccuracies and distortions. Nonetheless, in response to the attack our two staff writers, including one who has worked here nearly three years, went on Twitter to publicly demand that our board force me to resign.

“The board refused to do this, but we have been crippled. Hiring new staff and recruiting a strong new leader under these circumstances would be difficult, to say the least. And so, the board and I have decided that the best course is for FairWarning to shut down.

“We’ll be winding things down over the next few weeks. We won’t be accepting new donations, and we plan to donate the balance of our funds to another worthwhile nonprofit news organization.”

(Credit: WRC-TV) (video)

White 4th Grader Picks Black Anchor as His Hero

A 9-year-old white boy decided to do something different for his Black History Month presentation in school: He chose to research Jim Vance, the late Washington, D.C., television anchor and inductee into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame.

Doreen Gentzler, Vance’s former co-anchor at NBC owned-and-operated WRC-TV, reported Friday that “Eli Kauffman of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, dressed up like Vance and shared a newsworthy report for his fourth-grade class that his mother shared on social media.

“ ‘I see a lot of people pick Martin Luther King (Jr.) and Rosa Parks, so I just wanted to be different and choose Jim Vance (pictured),’ Eli said.

“His mom helped him to dress up like Vance. For his presentation he wore a suit and tie, a beard and glasses, and, of course, an earring. . . .”

The Vance impersonation was just one of several ways that Black journalists figured in this year’s Black History Month commemorations.

The Chicago Tribune profiled Roi Ottley, the first locally based Black writer hired by the Chicago Tribune, and surely another candidate for the NABJ Hall of Fame.

“Ottley was a major figure among Black journalists and was the first African American war correspondent for major newspapers during World War II. He wrote human interest stories about Black soldiers, witnessed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s execution and even interviewed Pope Pius XII,” Bob Goldsborough wrote on Feb. 18. A report on Mark A. Huddle’s collection of Ottley’s dispatches from World War II appeared in this space in 2013.

Alix Strauss of The New York Times wrote about John Johnson, one of the first Black producer/directors for network television in New York.

“Mr. Johnson bought his Rockland County home — an A-frame with a pitched roof that sits on two acres of woods — as a country escape in 1992. His art studio is there, as is a photography studio for his wife, Ann Yih, 57, who is a retired news producer. ‘Moving here was intuitive, as we’re living a very isolated life right now,’ Mr. Johnson, 82, said.”

In Wilmington, Del., legislators voted to rename a post office to honor Mary Ann Shadd Cary, the first Black woman to establish and edit a North American newspaper.

Cary was also a suffragist and helped recruit African American soldiers for the Civil War.

Some stations put Black reporters on the air to discuss their experiences. Keydra Manns
of The Grio “spoke to four meteorologists from The Weather Channel, which is Black-owned, who shared what it means to be Black in media and their thoughts on Black History Month.” The four are Paul Goodloe, Britney Hamilton, Alex Wallace and Tevin Wooten.

In Los Angeles, Cora Jackson-Fossett of the Sentinel reported, “Through [a] forum called ‘African American Equity in Media,’ the new city agency known as L.A. Civil Rights brought together three representatives of the city’s leading media to review how Blacks are represented in newsrooms and news coverage. LA Civil Rights Executive Director Capri Maddox moderated the event, which featured Beverly White, NBC4 news reporter; Angel Jennings, L.A. Times assistant managing editor of culture and talent; Brandon Brooks, L.A. Sentinel and L.A. Watts Times editor.”

In Birmingham, Ala., Emma Simmons wrote Thursday for WSAV-TV that “we reflected on the challenges facing the industry, as experienced by three Black television news trailblazers: Carole Simpson, former anchor of ABC World News Tonight; Bob Jordan, former anchor at WGN-TV Chicago; and Monica Pearson, former anchor at WSB-TV Atlanta. WFLA-TV anchor and reporter Rod Carter moderated the discussion.”

In some cases, the commemoration was personal. Sharon Epperson, CNBC’s senior personal finance correspondent, survived a brain hemorrhage due to a ruptured aneurysm in September 2016, and now is “part of a scientific study that looks at the brains of those who have survived brain hemorrhages . . .,” Kerry Breen reported Friday for NBC’s Today website. Epperson said that she’s “been thinking about the topic during Black History Month, as she discusses her family history.”

Writing Feb. 19 in the Los Angeles Times, Erin Aubry Kaplan brought the discussion to today’s headlines. “Every year during Black History Month, the heroes of Brown vs. Board of Education — most prominently, Thurgood Marshall, who argued the case in the Supreme Court — are go-to figures for celebration.

“But we don’t talk much about the white history of fierce resistance, the actions that undercut desegregation over decades and reduced so many public schools to spaces for the unwanted and dispossessed. It’s a legacy we’ve lived with for so long, we’ve lost sight of it as a crisis.”

Balta Casts Firing as Dispute Over ‘Objectivity’

“I was wrongfully terminated last week because I don’t hide behind the handicap of objectivity as if journalists can check their humanity at the door,” Hugo Balta (pictured below), the former president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists who was fired as news director of Chicago’s public television station, WTTW, wrote Wednesday in the Chicago Sun-Times.

“I subscribe to transparency in the pursuit of truth. By acknowledging my own biases, I surround myself with people who don’t often share the same experience, background and ideologies. It is by engaging with them in discourse about story coverage, those who tell the stories, and those who have the chance to be heard that we ensure fair and accurate coverage.

“In an interview with Sun-Times columnist Laura Washington (pictured), Phil Ponce, longtime host of ‘Chicago Tonight’ defended journalistic objectivity. ‘Objectivity is, you know, it’s at the core of “Chicago Tonight’s” DNA,’ he said. ‘If we become partisan and political, or people think we are, I mean, at that point, we’ve lost our credibility and relevance.’

“Objectivity proposes that there are two sides to every story. But in fact, there are many perspectives, and the ones most often left out are from marginalized communities whose representation is absent from newsrooms.

“It is objectivity that dilutes the coverage of systemic racism in government, health care, education, employment, victimizing communities that are not looking for handouts to survive but a fair chance to thrive.

“Ponce sent posts from my personal Instagram account to WTTW’s news department that he deemed as ‘overtly political.’ Among them was a post celebrating Kamala Harris on Inauguration Day.

“Kamala Harris. The first woman to be elected vice president. The first woman of color to be elected vice president.

“That post was not political; it was about a historic moment.

“Laura Washington wrote: ‘Like every legacy news operation, it (WTTW) can always do more to cover and reflect communities of color.’

“But how long do people of color have to wait?”

Short Takes

The Cherokee Phoenix celebrated its 193rd birthday on Feb. 21. Assistant editor Will Chavez explained in that day’s edition, “After Sequoyah invented the Cherokee syllabary in the early 1800s, his written language was used primarily for Christian instruction, but tribal leaders saw the syllabary could also be used to inform Cherokee people via a newspaper.
‘To obtain a correct and complete knowledge of these people, there must exist a vehicle of Indian intelligence, altogether different from those which have heretofore been employed,’ Elias Boudinot, the Cherokee Phoenix’s first editor, said.” Depicted is the newspaper’s second edition.
(Credit: Article 19)

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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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