Articles Feature

Palestinians Mourn Slain Journalists

by richard01642

Some Press Groups Take Sides; Urge Context, Safety

Washington Post Plans Buyouts to Cut Staff by 240

Homepage photo: The building where Palestinian journalist Salam Meimah, her husband and three children were killed Tuesday when Israeli warplanes bombed their house in Jabalya refugee camp, according to the Palestinian News & Information Agency (WAFA) (Credit: Rafi al-Maleh)

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On Monday, “CBS Mornings” shows network journalists under attack as they report live from the front lines of the Israel-Palestine war. (Credit: YouTube)

Some Press Groups Take Sides; Urge Context, Safety

Palestinian journalists began burying colleagues killed in the conflagration between Israel and Hamas Tuesday as press representatives pleaded for protections for the news media and some U.S. media organizations chose sides.

“More than 900 people have been killed in Israel, the Israel Defense Forces said,” Isabel Kershner, Aaron Boxerman and Hiba Yazbek reported for The New York Times. “More than 2,600 have been wounded since the incursion began early Saturday, and Hamas gunmen were holding about 150 hostages, the Israeli government said.”

The Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association reissued its guidelines for journalists, urging them to “Remember the broader context of Palestinian-Israeli relations and how they tie into the events you’re currently covering. [PDF]

“Guidelines” from the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association

“All reporting should take into consideration that, according to international law and consensus, Israel occupies Palestinian territory, and that Palestinians — whether they live in the West Bank, Gaza or inside the internationally recognized borders of Israel — are subject to an unjust and unequal system, as documented by international organizations like Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. . . . “

By contrast, the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the organization of Black-press publishers, issued a statement Saturday saying it had “unequivocally condemned the devastating acts of violence perpetrated against the Jewish people and the nation of Israel by Hamas.”

Similarly, the American Jewish Press Association said Monday it “stands in solidarity with the people of Israel as they grieve the lives of an estimated 700 men, women and children who have been killed and the thousands more who have been wounded, in addition to hostages taken. Sadly, the number of casualties is sure to increase in the coming days and weeks.”

PEN America said Tuesday it “deplores the premeditated and vicious attack launched against Israeli civilians,” adding, “Political conflicts, even when they involve grave denials of human rights, can never justify nor be resolved through attacks on innocent civilians.”

By Monday, U.S. networks had rushed their journalists to Israel — “the anchors of the nation’s three biggest evening newscasts — NBC’s Lester Holt, ABC’s David Muir and CBS’s Norah O’Donnell — were all based in the country,” as Jeremy Barr reported for The Washington Post.

Palestinian journalists were mourning slain colleagues.

“At least six Palestinian journalists have been killed in a matter of days, amid Israel’s ongoing shelling of the besieged Gaza strip, media networks and press freedom monitors have said,” Al Jazeera reported Tuesday.

“Journalist Saeed al-Taweel, editor-in-chief of Al-Khamsa News website, and two other members of the press were killed early on Tuesday as they went to film a building that Israel would soon bomb in Gaza City.”

The Vienna-based International Press Institute said Tuesday it was “deeply alarmed by reports that at least seven Palestinian journalists have been killed since Saturday, with several others injured. There are also reports that one Israeli journalist was abducted in southern Israel while two additional Palestinian journalists are reportedly missing. We urge all sides involved in the hostilities to respect the right of journalists and media organizations to safely cover armed conflict in accordance with international humanitarian and human rights law. . . .”

On YouTube, The Star, an English newspaper in Malaysia, posted a video clip from the funeral of Palestinian journalists Al-Taweel and Mohammad Sobh, killed in an airstrike Tuesday when they were filming a residential building in Rimal district in western Gaza.

On Tuesday, soldiers from the Israeli Defense Forces show members of the foreign press around Kibbutz Kfar Aza, one of the southern Israeli communities where Hamas terrorists massacred hundreds of Israeli civilians Saturday. (Screenshot via Times of Israel)

Meanwhile, the Israeli Defense Forces wanted the foreign press to view close-up the damage Israel had endured.

“The IDF took dozens of foreign journalists on Tuesday to see for themselves the death and destruction wrought by Hamas terrorists this week,” Lazar Berman reported for The Times of Israel.

“With explosions and artillery fire in the background, the crews, wearing helmets and flak jackets, picked through the destroyed Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where the bodies of Palestinian terrorists still lay outside of fire-scarred homes.

“The journalists were protected by at least a company of IDF soldiers, clad in full combat gear as they continued to clear homes.

“Reporters spoke of the stench of death in the air. . . .”

For the Poynter Institute, Tom Jones and Ren LaForme wrote Tuesday that “The most powerful reports in the past day have come from reporters who are in the danger zone, forced to take cover with explosions all around them. These aren’t reporters who are a mile or two from the explosions. We’re talking about buildings being hit from just up the street, or less than a block away.

Fox News reporter Trey Yingst and crew take cover from bombings while covering the war in Israel. (Credit: Fox News)

“Here are some of the examples:

“Here’s a clip of CNN’s Clarissa Ward, who said, ‘Forgive me, but I’m in a slightly inelegant position.’ She was lying in a ditch because, as she explained, ‘We just had a massive barrage of rockets coming in here, not too far from us.’ And here is the scary clip of how she ended up in that position.

“Ward told viewers, ‘We’re just about five minutes away. Gaza is in that direction. We can hear now a lot of jets in the sky. We can also hear the Iron Dome intercepting a number of those rockets as they were whizzing overhead and making impact in that direction. We came to this location because this was ground zero for this entire operation of carnage. Hamas militants came on a pickup truck. This was the first place where they breached that border wall.’

“Meanwhile, viewers got to experience exactly what it looks and sounds like when a journalist and his team are literally in the war zone in this jarring clip with NBC News’ Richard Engel. Mortars could be seen overhead and then heard crashing nearby, breaking glass and rooting up dust and smoke. Engel implored his team to ‘stay down!’ as they lay on the ground and huddled against a small wall. . . .”

William Drummond in the Jerusalem bureau of the Los Angeles Times. (Courtesy Willliam Drummond)

One would be hard-pressed to recall Black journalists who have been assigned to the Mideast, though a few have been over the years: Jesse W. Lewis Jr. covered the 1967 Six-Day War for The Washington Post and followed that, between 1969 and 1972, as The Post’s correspondent in the region; William Drummond was Los Angeles Times bureau chief in Jerusalem from 1974 to 1976; the late Herbert H. Denton Jr., was assigned to cover Lebanon during sectarian violence in 1981; and Nicholas Casey (pictured, below) was a foreign correspondent at The Wall Street Journal leading the Journal’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from 2013 to 2015.

Moreover, Sunni Khalid was Cairo bureau chief for NPR from 1995 to 1997. “And I reported from Israeli and Palestine, including twice from Gaza. I was part of team coverage of the 1996 Israeli elections, when [Benjamin] Netanyahu first came to power,” Khalid told Journal-isms. “I reported on the Palestinians because none of my other colleagues were either interested, willing or able to.”

In this latest conflagration, African Americans have identified from afar with both Israelis and Palestinians, viewing each through the prism of having been objects of violence themselves.

On Sunday, the National Action Network, the National Urban League, the NAACP and the Drum Major Institute issued a joint statement declaring, “we are again witnessing the horrifying effects of violence upon innocent civilians in the Middle East. We condemn this terrorist attack on Israel in which civilians have been targeted, killed, and kidnapped. The long thread of Middle East history reaffirms that the region remains an unsettled boiling point.”

In an interview with radio’s syndicated “Russ Parr Morning Show,” digital journalist Roland Martin reminded listeners that Gaza residents had been “living under constant duress,” and that Gaza had been called a densely packed “open-air prison.” In what he called relatable terms, Martin compared the two sides to rival gangs.

On X, formerly Twitter, journalist Terrell Jermaine Starr (pictured), the only African American journalist to have consistently covered Ukraine, asked Tuesday, “How many of you have lost friendships over the past few days because of your views supporting Palestinians and their oppression (NOT HAMAS OR TERRORISM)? I’ve lost a few relationships, but I worry I’ll lose a few friends I care about. I’ve lost relationships during all of the BLM [Black Lives Matter] flashpoints. How about y’all?”

And on Facebook, economist and columnist Julianne Malveaux (pictured) wrote, “Barbary. Savagery. Inhumane. I keep hearing these words applied to the awful Hamas action this weekend.

“It took them a day or so to support Israel. I’m not saying either or. Wrong is wrong and terrorism is terrorism. But we have to ask why terrorism against Black people is not universally condemned. And we have to ask, without supporting it, why Hamas has been pushed to such desperate measure. This did not happen in a vacuum. While regretting the loss of life, I am wondering how many lives have been lost as Palestinians have been expelled from their land. I know Ima get blowback, but I’m just sayin’.”

Washington Post Plans 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. . . .” (Added Oct. 11)

Marty Baron’s ‘Most Serious Error’

Oct. 9, 2023

It Was Failing to Do More on Diversity, Editor Writes

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.

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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; editorial writer Jonathan Capehart (pictured) did not report to the newsroom, but he quit the editorial board in February, (scroll down) meaning the editorial board became all-white; 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.”

“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)
  • “For decades, letting the world know the plight of Blacks in America fell on the shoulders of journalists like Fletcher Martin,” Mary Mitchell wrote Tuesday to help commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Chicago Sun-Times. “Martin became the first Black journalist to work with white journalists in the Sun-Times newsroom when he joined the staff as a reporter in 1952 after also being the first Black journalist to be awarded a prestigious Nieman Fellowship. . . . Mitchell also namechecked Lillian Calhoun, the first Black woman to work in the newsroom; Lillian Williams, who arrived in 1973; Lacy J. Banks, the newspaper’s first Black sportswriter; and Don Terry, who went on to The New York Times and is now the Chicago Police Department’s director of news affairs.
  • “New Jersey’s Robert Menendez is entitled to the presumption of innocence (again). But after his latest federal indictment on bribery charges, he should not be entitled to continue to serve in the United States Senate,” the Philadelphia Inquirer editorialized Sept. 26. “Menendez should resign. The cloud hanging over the Garden State’s senior senator will inevitably distract from his ability to put his constituents first. He should step down and focus his energy on mounting a credible defense. . . .”
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)
  • Monday is Indigenous Peoples Day, and the Associated Press’ Hallie Golden and Christine Fernando offer an explainer. Separately, “ICT has compiled a list of events that are free and open to the public, from California to New York, there is [an] Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebration happening near you. The events are organized by time zone and states or major cities. . ., ” Christopher Lomahquahu wrote.
  • E.R. Shipp (pictured), an associate professor at Morgan State University who contributes to the Baltimore Banner, wrote Monday of takeaways from last week’s shooting at the school, where five were injured and others terrorized. “First is something that it is not popular to say in mixed company, so to speak. But it is what a caller named Dwayne said on WEAA the other day: In our families and in our neighborhoods, we must stop providing excuses and safe harbors for the bad actors in our midst. When people do what they did at Morgan — and worse — he said: ‘It is an assault against the community, which should be the worst crime that any Black person can commit.’ The second thing is what the best HBCUs have always done: expect and celebrate excellence. When I headed to my office in the School of Global Journalism and Communication after the chapel service, I stumbled upon a ceremony in which five alumni were being inducted into the Garden of Fame. Three of the more recent graduates included the recipient of a local Emmy Award and two Pulitzer Prize winners. These kinds of activities strengthen Morgan as an institution that is defined by its works — not by an October surprise that upended expectations for a festive Homecoming Week. . . .”
  • Mark Russell (pictured), executive editor of the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Monday becomes vice president and South Region editor of the USA Today Network. Its South region has 17 newsrooms throughout Tennessee, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina.
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)

  • “The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has three new legal fellows — Zachary Babo, Julia Dacy, and Mayeesha Galiba (pictured) — who are to support the organization’s efforts to provide free legal services to journalists and news outlets through litigation, friend-of-the-court briefs, pre-publication review, the Legal Hotline, and more, the organization announced Sept. 28. “Galiba is the new NBCU News Group Race Equity in Journalism Legal Fellow. She will focus on providing pro bono legal support for journalists of color and newsrooms led by people of color. . . .”

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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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