Articles Feature

What About the Insurrectionists’ Hometowns?

by richard05620

What About the Insurrectionists’ Hometowns?
Don’t Miss What’s Hiding in Plain Sight
Asian Americans Lead in Population Growth
Nation of Islam Rejects Media Labeling of Suspect
Tegna Shareholder Wants Bias Charge Investigated
Disney Said to Seek a Change in ABC’s Culture

Black Journalists Vary Coverage of Chauvin Trial
Midwin Charles, Legal Analyst, Dies at 47
AP’s Ron Nixon is First ‘News Leader of the Year’
Myanmar’s Junta Slaughters Press Freedom, Too
With Diversity, Reuters Wants to Avoid ‘Irrelevance’

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Smoke from pepper-spray hovers over pro-Trump insurrectionists during the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. (Credit: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/Shutterstock)

Don’t Miss What’s Hiding in Plain Sight

One of the reactions to the media coverage of the 2016 election and its aftermath, in some circles, was that reporters spent too much time interviewing white people in diners, many of whom voted for Donald Trump, the surprise electoral college winner.

It became must-reading to scan “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” by J.D. Vance, a memoir that “describes the plight of poor, angry white Americans in Appalachia and the Rust Belt, a tinderbox of resentment that ignited national politics,” as Karen Heller wrote in 2017 for The Washington Post.

Adam Serwer wrote in The Atlantic in 2016, “Much of the mainstream media . . . is working tirelessly to win back the trust of Trump’s followers, whether by conceding the president’s framing, offering endless watercolored portraits of Trump supporters in Midwest diners, or making other displays of sympathy.”

But a study released last week and the latest antics of Fox News talk-show host Tucker Carlson (pictured) suggest not that reporters spent too much time in those diners, but that they didn’t hear or emphasize the right things.

Political scientist Robert Pape found a connection between the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, in which thousands participated and five people died, and the growing feeling among many whites, rich, middle class and poor, that they are losing their privileged position.

Pape, working with the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, a think tank he runs at the University of Chicago, correlated by county the connection between loss of white population and the number who participated in the insurrection.

Then, last week, Carlson weighed in. He suggested that the white resentment was justified.

The Anti-Defamation League called on Fox to fire him.

As Ari Berman wrote in Mother Jones, Carlson said Thursday on “Fox News Primetime,” “The Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World. If you change the population, you dilute the political power of the people who live there. So every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter.”

In the Post, Philip Bump interpreted those comments with a zing. “They’ are taking over, as surely as dirty foreigners named ‘Lombardi’ from uncivilized lands were mucking up the U.S. late in the 19th century,” Bump wrote. Cesar Lombardi was Carlson’s great-great-great grandfather.

News editors don’t appear eager to talk about the implications of Pape’s findings for journalism.

Pape wrote Tuesday in the Post, “the people alleged by authorities to have taken the law into their hands on Jan. 6 typically hail from places where non-White populations are growing fastest.”

He gave some examples:

“Texas is the home of 36 of the 377 charged or arrested nationwide. The majority of the state’s alleged insurrectionists — 20 of 36 — live in six quickly diversifying blue counties such as Dallas and Harris (Houston). In fact, all 36 of Texas’s rioters come from just 17 counties, each of which lost White population over the past five years. Three of those arrested or charged hail from Collin County north of Dallas, which has lost White population at the very brisk rate of 4.3 percent since 2015.

“The same thing can be seen in New York state, home to 27 people charged or arrested after the riot, nearly all of whom come from 14 blue counties that [Joe] Biden won in and around New York City. One of these, Putnam County (south of Poughkeepsie), is home to three of those arrested, and a county that saw its White population decline by 3.5 percent since 2015.”

One of the faces of the Capitol mob, Jacob Chansley, aka Jake Angeli, aka “the guy with the horns,” is from Phoenix. The Arizona Republic shows him at the state capitol last year shouting about reopening schools in the midst of the coronavirus epidemic. “The Republic interviewed Angeli during 2020 as part of a series of stories and a mini-documentary on the Patriot movement in Arizona,” Richard Ruelas and Craig Harris wrote for the Republic. “Some adherents, including Angeli, promoted conspiracy theories including the baseless idea known as QAnon.” (Credit: David Wallace/Arizona Republic)

Journal-isms contacted the editors of newspapers in the areas Pape mentioned. Managing Editor Keith Campbell of the Dallas Morning News did not respond.

Mary D. Doland, executive editor of the Journal News in the area that includes Poughkeepsie, replied Wednesday, “We have related coverage in the works that I would be happy to share post-publication.”

Roderick Cowan, Pape’s executive director at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, told Journal-isms that the “white replacement” sentiment shouldn’t be underestimated, and proposed that the news media be part of a panel to examine the issue.

Cowan messaged, “The mobilization potential of the movement should also give pause: 10 million American adults believe the election was stolen and are prepared to take violent action. A further 74 million also believe the election was stolen and are unwilling to take violent action. At least for now.

“With high social media use another driving factor in our findings, including a broad belief in [Q’Anon], this may be too large an audience — and potential revenue stream — for political opportunists and media entrepreneurs to ignore.

“To dismiss this mass movement and its potential, however, would be akin to Mr. Trump’s response to Covid-19, with similar results: We cannot presume it will blow over. The ingredients exist for future waves of political violence, from lone-wolf attacks to all-out assaults on democracy, surrounding the 2022 mid-term elections — and beyond.

“The media and tech industries will inevitably play a big part, which means further serious debate is needed on reporting political violence while at the same time protecting first amendment rights.”

Cowan said he did not have evidence that media people believe these white supremacist sentiments would blow over. But on the First Amendment, he replied that “it is hard to see how you can address the issue of irresponsible [reporting] or spreading disinformation (deliberately or unwittingly) without freedom of speech being part of the discussion.

“That’s why we suggested a panel of experts would be needed, including media experts, constitutional lawyers, as well as political scientists.”

In Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, community members gather March 14 at the Japanese American National Museum to raise awareness and shed light on anti-Asian violence. (Credit: Sam the Leigh/Shutterstock.com)

Asian Americans Lead in Population Growth

“Asian Americans recorded the fastest population growth rate among all racial and ethnic groups in the United States between 2000 and 2019,” Abby Budiman and Neil G. Ruiz reported Friday for the Pew Research Center.

“The Asian population in the U.S. grew 81% during that span, from roughly 10.5 million to a record 18.9 million, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau population estimates, the last before 2020 census figures are released. Furthermore, by 2060, the number of U.S. Asians is projected to rise to 35.8 million, more than triple their 2000 population.

“Hispanics saw the second-fastest population growth between 2000 and 2019, followed by Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (NHPI) at 70% and 61%, respectively. The nation’s Black population also grew during this period, albeit at a slower rate of 20%. There was virtually no change in the White population. . . .”

The New York Post captioned this photo illustration, “Noah Green’s Facebook profile page before it was taken down.”

Nation of Islam Rejects Media Labeling of Suspect

When Noah Green crashed his vehicle into U.S. Capitol Police officers on April 2, killing one, little was known about the suspect. Some reporters latched onto identifying Green, 25, of Covington, Va., as a member of the Nation of Islam. On MSNBC, reporter Bob Hilliard, noted that the Nation had been branded a “hate group” and was a “black superiority organization.” Newsweek headlined, “Louis Farrakhan Silent After Noah Green Linked to Nation of Islam.”

After Green died that day, several reports cited his “depression and potential mental illness.” And last week, the Nation of Islam pushed back on the way its name was invoked.

“When thousands of American citizens engaged in an attempted insurrection, attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, resulting in the deaths of five persons and injuring many, the news media did not question what their religion was,” its April 6 statement said in part.

“Nowhere in the teachings of Islam, nowhere in the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, could we countenance any man taking the life of an innocent human being. For us, human life is sacred. And the violation of human life is a violation of God, Himself, because He’s the giver of life and He’s the ultimate cause of death. But He doesn’t give us the right to kill innocent people. That is against our law.”

Tegna reported it has about 62 television stations and more than three radio stations in approximately 51 U.S markets.

Tegna Shareholder Wants Bias Charge Investigated

“Tegna Inc. has been called on by one of the company’s largest shareholders to open its books and records to investigate what is being called a broad pattern of bias and racially-insensitive behavior,” Jeff Clabaugh reported Friday for Washington’s all-news WTOP radio.

“The letter to Tegna’s board of directors is from New York investment management firm Standard General, which holds 7% of Tegna stock.

“In it, Standard General cites both media reports and an anonymous letter from a former Tegna employee citing numerous alleged incidents of discrimination, race-related job terminations and insensitive behavior by Tegna managers at several of its television stations.

“Standard General said allegations show ‘the root of racist behavior within Tegna/Gannett are ugly and run deep’ and are reflected in ‘egregious practices with Tegna/Gannett dating back decades.’ “

Writing for the company, Soohyung Kim, chief executive officer and investment manager, attached an anonymous letter that said, “The behavior goes on and on, but these examples will give you a good idea of just how deep racial issues are ingrained at Tegna. The company puts on a good face to get minority hires in the door at various stations but does not retain them. Imagine being an Asian reporter who is instructed by an image consultant how to apply makeup so her eyes will look more ‘Western’ or being a Black or Latin on-air person who is repeatedly hammered for your dialect.

“It happens all the time and people get fed up and leave, or if they defend themselves, they are fired. Those actions are from the very company who is defending a White investigative producer who paid cash to a ‘security guard’ to show up in plain clothes at a rally where the ‘security guard,’ who was unlicensed, shot and killed a protester. Hopes are high that police will discover that producer Zack Newman paid cash to Matthew Doloff under the direction of his bosses. Regardless, Tegna has blood on its hands over that entirely avoidable incident that left a man dead.”

Standard General also mentioned lawsuits filed by journalists of color in association with outlets in Tampa Bay and Indianapolis, as Michael Roberts reported for Denver’s Westword.

On Tuesday, leaders of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists met with Grady Tripp, Tegna chief diversity and inclusion officer, and Eric Valadez, Tegna corporate content executive team member, to discuss concerns raised in a March 28 column by former KUSA employee Lori Lizarraga (pictured). They included the incorrect use of the phrases “illegal immigration” and “illegal immigrants.”

In a statement afterward, NAHJ indicated its dissatisfaction with the session and said board leadership “will return for follow-up meetings with TEGNA leadership in mid-April. We expect to speak to CEO Dave Lougee, Patti Dennis, director of recruiting, and 9News Content Director, Tim Ryan.”

TEGNA spokesperson Anne Bentley did not respond to a request for comment on the meeting with NAHJ, but offered this statement on the SEC filing by Standard General, a hedge fund that has called for a shakeup of the Tegna board:

“Increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) continues to be a top priority for TEGNA across the company and at our 64 stations around the country. We have made significant progress in recent years, but our record is not perfect. However, the distorted picture of TEGNA and its stations painted by Standard General to advance its ill-conceived proxy fight will not distract from our significant focus on DE&I as well as our strong financial performance.

“TEGNA’s Board of Directors, management team and station leadership continue to take concerted action to build a more diverse, equitable and inclusive TEGNA — all of which is publicly detailed here. We have clear processes for promptly investigating and addressing inappropriate workplace conduct at all levels of the organization. We remain committed to ensuring that TEGNA effectively serves and represents all of our communities.”

​Disney Said to Seek a Change in ABC’s Culture

In offering CBS news executive Kim Godwin (pictured, below) the presidency of ABC News, Disney, owner of the network, hopes Godwin can help revamp ABC’s troubled culture, Alexandra Steigrad reported Friday for the New York Post, citing “sources.”

Steigrad reported that ABC has been plagued by complaints of poor communication, a lack of diversity, feelings of distrust among staffers and oversized personalities running roughshod over the place, sources said.

“ ‘The biggest talent are the biggest bullies in the building. She will have to stand up to them,’ said one former ABC staffer who described the work environment at the Disney-owned broadcast news network as ‘divisive, cutthroat and “Shark Tank”-like.’ “

Dylan Byers reported Friday that Godwin “is in the final stages of negotiations with Disney to become president of ABC News, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation.” But Brian Steinberg, writing for Variety, wrote, “There has been no official announcement of Godwin’s hire and there is always a chance decision-making might change.”

Steigrad continued, “Godwin could, however, face some resistance in her new role given that she hails from CBS, whose major news shows — ‘CBS This Morning’ with Gayle King and ‘CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell‘ — currently rank last place among the major broadcast networks.

“ ‘The challenge she is going to have is that culturally all these guys like George Stephanopoulos and David Muir and all the big talent are going to say, ‘Why did we go outside and hire someone from CBS where their s*** is not working” to tell us what to do?’ said a second source familiar with ABC’s culture. . . . “

Jay Webb, an outdoor caretaker at a George Floyd memorial in Minneapolis, expresses his sentiments. The Sahan Journal, an immigrant-focused digital outlet in the Twin Cities, reported on Webb as part of its “more holistic strategy” in covering Floyd case developments. Here, Webb helps tend a makeshift garden lined with cinder blocks encircling a 10’x10’ platform, on which sits a large raised fist sculpture. It was designed by a local artist and constructed entirely from weathered steel. (Credit: Ben Hovland/Sahan Journal)

Black Journalists Vary Coverage of Chauvin Trial

(This item appeared encapsulated as a link last week in this space.)

The tension “between law enforcement, the media, and how the public at large conceives of policing . . . has never been more present than now as reporters from around the world converge on Minneapolis for the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis officer charged with murdering [George] Floyd by kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes last May, Josh Marcus reported April 3 for Britain’s Independent.

“But a cohort of journalists of colour and indigenous backgrounds in Minnesota are pioneering new ways, and upholding long standing traditions, of coverage that goes deeper than the familiar, ostensibly neutral ‘both sides’ framing of common news stories, and gets at something much harder to pin down: the truth about racism in America.

“Among those projects is a new initiative called Racial Reckoning: The Arc of Justice, a collaboration between the Association of Minnesota Public Educational Radio Stations . . . the Minnesota Humanities Center, and KMOJ, a popular African-American radio station in Minneapolis.

“A team of journalists who are Black, indigenous, and people of colour have been covering the Chauvin trial daily on the radio as it unfolds, plus producing weekly updates in Spanish, Somali, and Hmong to reach the Twin Cities’ diverse immigrant communities, as well as the roughly 240,000 people listening statewide. Other media outlets can request free use of their stories.

“Georgia Fort grew up in the Twin Cities and is the lead reporter for the project. She says that the mainstream media is often disconnected from the Black communities it storms into when it reports on police brutality cases, and tends to mostly rely on government sources like police and local politicians. Their perspectives are important, of course, but Ms Fort says a built-in bias for official accounts rarely conveys the lived experiences of those at the heart of the story. . . .

“Others, like Mel Reeves, community editor of the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, a long-running Black paper in the area, are taking an explicitly activist approach to covering the story of George Floyd. . . .”

Midwin Charles, Legal Analyst, Dies at 47

On theGrio.com, Jason Johnson, professor of politics and journalism and commentator, wrote Wednesday, “Within Black media circles, Midwin Charles (pictured) was one of those people who everybody respected and was number one on any list of ‘Yo, why isn’t she a bigger deal? Why isn’t she signed to a network?’ conversations.”

Charles’ family announced Tuesday that Johnson’s colleague had died at 47, Darragh Roche reported Wednesday for Newsweek. No cause of death was provided. “Charles was a defense attorney best known as a legal analyst for CNN and MSNBC, though she contributed to a wide variety of media, including Essence magazine.”

Johnson continued, “She and I had long conversations about the challenges of racism, sexism and colorism in the media industry. The dedication she had to still be a practicing lawyer with a thriving practice, working in the community and still working in television. For many of us, Midwin was like Taraji P. Henson before Empire, or Viola Davis before How to Get Away with Murder. She was Black famous, and we all just knew she was a step away from the opportunity that would give her all the flowers she deserved.

“She gave all of that love back too. . . .”

AP’s Ron Nixon is First ‘News Leader of the Year’

Ron Nixon (pictured, by Sharon Farmer/sfphotoworks), a veteran investigative journalist who is global investigations editor at the Associated Press, has been chosen the News Leaders Association’s inaugural News Leader of the Year awardee.

The association, the result of a merger between the American Society of News Editors and Associated Press Managing Editors, said of its choice April 5, “Nixon was tapped to lead his team in March 2020, and was nominated in a heartfelt letter signed by 24 members of his team who described his leadership as having ‘instant impact.’ He led and inspired his colleagues to produce important, ambitious work through an ‘unthinkably challenging time.’

“Their work both helped free a man and put another in jail. Their investigative series on labor abuses in the palm oil industry, ‘Fruits of Labor,’ won the 2021 Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting and the 2021 Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics. Nixon advocated that ‘the decision to diversify news staff ultimately rests with those who have hiring power.’ And then, ‘with remarkable speed and determination, he turned word into action.’

“Nixon built a more diverse team and created opportunities for less experienced reporters. ‘His message has been clear: Break down internal barriers and infuse the broader AP with greater investigative capacity.’ “

Nixon is a co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting and the author of “Selling Apartheid: South Africa’s Global Propaganda War,” published in 2015.

Back in 1996, he wrote about how propagandists successfully promoted Nigeria to the Black press in the United States while Black activist groups denounced the country, then under the military dictatorship of Gen. Sani Abacha. The reporting Nixon had seen in mainstream papers showed “Nigerian journalists frequently censored, political activists banned and human rights abuses rampant. . . . “

Citing the vision of the late scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois of uniting Africans and African Americans, Nixon wrote, “The N.N.P.A. [National Newspaper Publishers Association] . . .under the influence of a black lobbyist and the Nigerian government, appears to have desecrated this vision by crossing the line between good journalism and public relations, substituting one myth for another.”

CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward is in Myanmar reporting on the protests there. CNN is in the country with the permission of the military and the team is being escorted throughout. “No other international journalist has been allowed into Myanmar since this coup happened” on Feb. 1, Ward had earlier told viewers. This video was posted Sunday, April 11. (Credit: YouTube)

Myanmar’s Junta Slaughters Press Freedom, Too

“”To be a reporter in Myanmar today, to be someone who documents the military’s casual and cruel violence, is now a crime” (scroll down), Hannah Beech reported Friday for The New York Times. “Dozens of journalists have been arrested.

“Others have been shot at. Despite this, a brave corps of journalists is documenting the military’s slaughter — at least 600 civilians have been killed since the coup — and telling the stories of those who are standing up in protest. Their ranks are supplemented by citizen reporters whose footage and photos are valuable evidence of what is unfolding in Myanmar.

“Meanwhile, those of us stuck outside the country have had to rely on skills that we honed during the pandemic year as foreign correspondents who don’t travel. That means a lot of video chats and talking with sources on encrypted apps. It means asking someone to please pan their phone camera to get a full view of the interior of their house because it might provide a salient detail for a story. It means poring over shaky videos of military brutality and crosschecking them with others from different angles to ensure that the geotagging is accurate. . . .”

Meanwhile, under the headline, “Myanmar’s military junta slaughters protesters and press freedom,” Jon Allsop wrote Friday for Columbia Journalism Review, “Journalists in Myanmar have been grappling not only with trauma, but with uncertainty; initially, the military did not directly target the press, though it did shut off internet access in parts of the country, and some broadcasters went off air. As Kyaw Hsan Hlaing and Emily Fishbein reported for CJR, things soon got much worse. . . . .

“The junta ordered reporters not to call it a junta, and also sought to ban the words ‘regime’ and ‘coup.’ In early March, authorities raided the newsroom of Myanmar Now, seizing documents and electronic equipment. They revoked the site’s license to operate, and did the same to four other independent newsrooms. . . .”

With Diversity, Reuters Wants to Avoid ‘Irrelevance’

Reuters, the British-based global news agency, released its diversity report on Tuesday [PDF], with results for race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation and disability. The results for race and ethnicity are in the chart above.

In a message accompanying the report, newsroom diversity editor Joyce Adeluwoye-Adams (pictured below) said, “We have known for a long time that news organisations have to better reflect our societies. But the events of the past 12 months – including the death of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter movement, the debate over media portrayal of Meghan Markle, and the campaign to stop Asian hate – have made our industry realise this is now an existential issue; we must reflect the world we report on or we will become an irrelevance.”

She added, “However, we are clear on where we want to be. Last July, we committed to setting more aggressive goals around racial and ethnic diversity targets, including in our leadership. We committed to:

  • “Improve our ability to track and monitor racial and ethnic diversity data globally to drive transparency, accountability and year-over-year progress
  • “Training to help us continue to build a newsroom culture that values inclusion.
  • “Increase overall ethnic and racial diversity at senior leadership levels by 20% over two years (by end 2022)
  • “Double black employees in senior leadership levels over two years (by end 2022)
  • “Reach at least 40% women in our senior leadership levels by end 2022.

The report also says:

“The activities we have started or expanded in 2020 are continuing. We want to build on
our momentum and explore more areas for lasting change. Look out for:

  • “Further work to improve the breadth and depth of our employee demographic data.
  • “Specific diversity and talent objectives for all our senior newsroom leaders.
  • “More consistency around diverse shortlists and using diverse interview panels when we’re recruiting.
  • “A renewed effort to build stronger global alliances and partnerships with schools and universities.
  • “Ongoing discussions with our Employee Networks around coverage and points of style.
  • “A deepening of efforts to ensure our coverage reflects the voices, points of view and ideas that matter on any given issue, including a drive to quote more sources from diverse backgrounds in our stories.”
“Even before she wore that Prada coat to the Capitol building, yellow was Amanda Gorman’s favorite color, Vogue says. The dress is from Aliétte. (Credit: Annie Leibovitz/Vogue)

Short Takes

  • “Amanda Gorman is on the rise and continues to shine,” Jacqueline Laurean Yates wrote Thursday for “Good Morning America.” “The 23-year-old, who became the youngest poet to perform at a presidential inauguration, is featured on the cover of Vogue magazine’s May 2021 issue. On the awe-inspiring cover, she was photographed by Annie Leibovitz wearing a gorgeous Louis Vuitton dress and Tory Burch sandals. She has a Auvere ear cuff in her hair as well as Khems Designs hair charms. ‘Poet, activist, optimist, style icon — @amandascgorman has become so much more than a literary star,’ Vogue wrote in a post. . . .”
  • “With funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, AP has added two reporters to cover issues of injustice,” the Associated Press announced April 1. “Annie Ma (pictured), based in Charlotte, North Carolina, will cover leadership, funding and access in education, as well as what is taught in classrooms, to show the impact of inequity and the efforts to address it. . . . Ma joins AP from The Charlotte Observer, where she was an education reporter. Reporter Drew Costley (pictured), based in Washington, will focus on equality, justice and fairness in science and the environment. He will cover the effects of climate change, pollution and environmental degradation on different communities, and how science and medicine is serving — or failing to serve — people of all backgrounds. . . . “
  • “The IRE Board is thrilled to announce that Diana R. Fuentes (pictured) will serve as the next executive director of the 6,000-member organization. She is the first person of color to serve in that role,” Investigative Reporters and Editors said Wednesday. “Fuentes, a Texas native, has served as the Deputy Metro Editor of the San Antonio Express-News since 2015. She has extensive senior management and masthead-level experience running newsrooms throughout Texas, and has served on numerous boards, including the American Society of Newspaper Editors (now the News Leaders Association). She is past president, treasurer and secretary of the Texas APME and the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. She is a lifetime member, and former secretary and financial officer of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.” 2020 IRE Award winners
  • “Alexander Quince (pictured) has been named senior director of news for Spectrum News in upstate New York,” Kevin Eck reported April 2 for Adweek. “. . . Quince will oversee the day-to-day news operations for Spectrum’s Albany, Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse networks.” Eck also wrote, “Quince comes from WABC in New York where he was executive producer. He’s also worked as news director at KTUL in Tulsa, Okla., assistant news director at WBMA in Birmingham, Ala., weekend [executive producer] at WXIA in Atlanta, Ga. and producer at WTSP in Tampa, Fla.”
  • “ESPN has fired NBA analyst Paul Pierce, (pictured) a source confirmed to The Post,” Andrew Marchand reported April 5 for the New York Post. “The decision was made after Pierce published racy Instagram videos on Friday, showing him smoking what appeared to be marijuana and with scantily clad women whom may have been strippers. “The news was first reported by Barrett Sports Media’s Ryan Glasspiegel. Pierce, 43, has been on a bit of a downward trajectory at ESPN but had hung on enough where he was a regular contributor to its top studio shows, ‘NBA Countdown’ and ‘The Jump.’ During a recent show, he went on the air and said the wrong team won. He was quickly corrected.”
  • James Dao (pictured), the New York Times op-ed editor who was reassigned last June “amid internal and external criticism of a Times essay by Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, that called for troops to be deployed in response to civil unrest,” has rebounded with an appointment as Times metro editor. “Jim will oversee the most consequential mayoral race in many years, and the epic story of the rebuilding of a city devastated by the pandemic,” Dean Baquet, executive editor, and Joseph Kahn, managing editor, said in an April 5 note to the staff.
Author and activist Kevin Powell in the first season of “The Real World” in 1992. (Credit: MTV/YouTube)
  • “As the failures of representation on reality TV have reached a breaking point, a Paramount+ reboot, The Real World New York: Homecoming, has brought the castmates from the original first season back together to grapple with the racial politics over the course of their six episodes,“ Alessa Dominguez reported Thursday for BuzzFeed News. The show, which ran on MTV from 1992 to 2017, “often sacrificed nuance in favor of drama when framing the Black castmates for the network’s predominantly white audience. Kevin Powell, an author and activist, was positioned, as Heather B. puts it in the reboot, as the ‘angry Black man.’ For Kevin, Homecoming has been an opportunity to reclaim his story. ‘Through the years, I was hurt, I was depressed, I was sad about it; I avoided talking about The Real World at all,’ he explained in an interview with me in March. ‘Coming back has actually been healing because I got to say a lot of the things that I didn’t get to say back then.’ ”
The sculptures, including this one of W.A. Scott II, sit in front of Atlanta’s Mozley Park. (Credit: Alexis Scott)
  • Acknowledging that the Commercial Appeal in Memphis “too often failed to cover the full spectrum of life in predominantly Black communities,” Executive Editor Mark Russell (pictured) told readers April 2 that last fall, the newspaper picked the Whitehaven neighborhood, 93 percent Black, “to craft a long-term strategy to sustain better coverage. This effort was part of a program called Table Stakes, where national journalism groups partner with local new organizations to boost coverage and trust in underserved communities.” Russell also wrote, “Later this year, we’re also committed to extending our Whitehaven effort to other communities,” and that “The CA last year donated $10,000 to efforts to erect a statue on Beale Street honoring the late journalist and civil rights icon Ida B. Wells. The newspaper also donated $4,000 to the Tigers Athletic Fund at the University of Memphis, from the proceeds from The CA’s ‘The Mighty Roar’ book about the record-setting 2019 Tigers’ football season. . . “
At WSOC-TV in Charlotte, N.C., “We were the only station in the market with an in-depth commitment” to addressing affordable housing issues, station leaders said. “Going even deeper was both exciting and a little daunting, because we really wanted to do it right.”
  • Challenged to connect with an underserved part of its community, Cox station WSOC-TV in Charlotte, N.C., chose to focus on affordable housing, the station’s Mike Oliveira, Kim Holt and Zack McGhee wrote for Better News. Among the results, “In the first half of 2020, we raised almost $50,000 in our partnership with the Crisis Assistance Ministry. On average, they tell us it takes $400 to keep someone in their home. That means we were able to keep 120 individuals or families from eviction. On top of that, we’re raising awareness: One of our digital stories about affordable housing got 32,000 page views. All of the stories we produced ended up in our special section in our app and on our website. . . .”
  • “For more than 25 years, award-winning political cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz (pictured) has advocated for Latino and immigrant rights through his work. Now, he is bringing his passion for these issues to Arizona State University’s School of Transborder Studies to serve as the school’s first-ever virtual artist in residence,” the school announced April 5.
Eli Reed. (Credit: Emree Weaver)
  • Photographers of color are among winners of the National Press Photographers Association’s annual awards. They include Eli Reed of Magnum Photos, a clinical professor of photojournalism at the University of Texas at Austin, co-winner of the organization’s highest honor, the Joseph A. Sprague Memorial Award; Kyndell Harkness of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, editor of the year; Helen McQuerry, a former photography lab technician and lab manager at the Detroit Free Press, for technical achievement; and Elizabeth Cheng Krist, the John Durniak Mentor Award for serving as an outstanding photojournalism mentor. In addition, Deb Pang Davis is receiving a citation for her instrumental work on the Trailblazers of Light website, chronicling decades of women photojournalists, picture editors, and other pioneers in visual journalism. Marcia Allert, director of visual journalism at The Dallas Morning News, receives a President’s Award “for efforts to aid the leadership of the NPPA and guide it through a year of crisis with countless calls on communications and advice.”
  • The Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media is being shared “by a publication and two journalists who undertook trailblazing and intrepid reporting during 2020,” The Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College announced April 2. “The nonprofit news outlet Truthout extensively covered the injustices enmeshed in the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting its political, economic, environmental, and racial issues; Liliana Segura at The Intercept undertook path-breaking reporting that revealed longstanding truths about the unfairness of capital punishment — from its disproportionate impact on people of color to the arbitrariness of how people end up on death row; and Tim Schwab writing in The Nation uncovered The Gates Foundation’s striking conflicts of interest, complicated web of influence, and troubling monopoly power in the field of global health.” The awards are named for the late muckraking journalist I.F. Stone.
  • In Tampa, Fla., “WFLA News Channel 8 is launching a new Spanish-language local newscast, focusing in the area’s Hispanic community,” Veronica Villafañe reported April 5 for her Media Moves column. “Noticias Tampa Hoy kicks off today, April 5. The newscast, which will air weeknights at 9 pm on WTTA Great38, taps already existing station journalists, as well as NEXSTAR correspondents for the new project.”
  • “The Texas Tribune, a digital news outlet in Austin, is losing two of its leaders,” Katie Robertson reported March 31 for the New York Times. “Stacy-Marie Ishmael (pictured, above), the editorial director, and Millie Tran, the chief product officer, said on Tuesday that they planned to leave The Tribune next month, a little more than a year after they both started working at the publication. Ms. Ishmael, 36, and Ms. Tran, 32, (pictured) announced their resignations on Twitter and in a joint email to the Tribune staff that was viewed by The New York Times. Ms. Ishmael, who is Black, wrote in her part of the email that she had reached her limit after ‘an absolute brutal year for many people, and especially for nonwhite people.’ . . . Ms. Tran, a former deputy off-platform editor at The Times, had been working in New York rather than Austin, The Tribune’s home city, because of the pandemic. She said she had decided she would rather stay put. . . .”
  • “Earlier this week, new Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan announced that media outlets shut down under her predecessor could reopen,” The Observer in Uganda reported on Friday. “But the chief government spokesman said Wednesday that Suluhu was only referring to online television. Journalists are confused and not happy with the new administration.”
  • Reporters Without Borders said it holds the Cameroonian authorities responsible for what happens to Amadou Vamoulké, a 71-year-old journalist who has been jailed arbitrarily for nearly five years and who reports in an open letter to the justice minister that at least two of his cellmates have contracted Covid-19 in recent days. This journalist must be freed before it is too late, RSF said March 31.
  • “Sicilian prosecutors investigating sea rescue NGOs and charities for alleged complicity in people smuggling have wiretapped several Italian journalists covering the central Mediterranean migration crisis and allegedly exposed their sources,” the Guardian reported April 2, updated April 3. “Prosecutors in Trapani this month charged rescuers from charities including Save the Children and Médecins Sans Frontières with collaboration with people smugglers after thousands of people were saved from drowning in the Mediterranean. The Italian newspaper Domani . . . published the contents of a file assembled by magistrates containing the transcripts of dozens of conversations between at least seven reporters and their sources, in apparent violation of their journalistic rights. . . .”
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