Move, Planned for Spring, Expected to Boost Diversity

NBC News is planning to pay its interns starting in the spring of 2013, according to a well-placed source at the network, addressing a long-held contention that requiring interns to work only for the experience or for college credit amounts to favoring students with well-to-do parents.

The number of internships and the salary level have yet to be determined, the source said.

The arguments for and against unpaid internships have been made for years.

In 2006, NBC News was embarrassed when Brian Williams, "Nightly News" anchor and managing editor, posted a photo of the unpaid "Nightly News" interns that showed that none were of color. Williams wrote afterward on his blog, "In previous years, our interns have better reflected American society" and added that ". . . I have spoken to Steve Capus, the President of NBC News, and going forward, racial diversity will now also be a factor in our unpaid summer internship program, because our newsrooms have to better reflect our society."

"The economics of unpaid internships are obvious," Derek Thompson, a senior editor at The Atlantic, wrote in April. "Employers are desperate for cheap work, and 'free' is pretty cheap. Workers are desperate for, well, anything, and students and recent grads are willing to negotiate their wages down to zero. But the ethics aren't so clear-cut. If unpaid internships are the key to better jobs and bigger salaries, should we be concerned about the millions of lower-class students who can't afford to work for free?"

In 2005, Reginald Stuart, then a recruiter for the now-defunct Knight Ridder newspaper chain, and now corporate recruiter for the McClatchy Co., accepted the Ida B. Wells award for promoting diversity from the National Association of Black Journalists with a plea for audience members to advocate for paid internships.

"Are you insisting at every turn that interns be paid for the work they do?" Stuart asked. "At the Howard University Jobs Fair yesterday, I was reminded how ingrained this no-pay notion is, especially in the heads of young recruiters who need to be on the front lines fighting it. I asked a young recruiter if his company was paying its interns. 'Oh no,' he said. 'They don't do that.' If he's working for them, shouldn't he be saying 'we?'

"In one breath, I was ashamed of him and for him. He reminded me of the character in the movie 'Crash' who seemed powerless to determine anything in his company, even how a line of script in a sitcom should be read. Trust me. Paying interns is an easy one."

Although NBC News in general has not paid its interns, ABC News and CNN do, and CBS News and Fox News have arrangements for the college to offer course credit.

"ABC News offers a number of paid and unpaid internships every semester," then-ABC spokeswoman Natalie Raabe told Journal-isms in 2006. "The paid internship program was instituted in 2000 for students of color who demonstrate a solid interest in journalism and network news."

[LaShanti Jenkins, ABC News intern coordinator, added by email on Tuesday: "Typically there are 50-65 interns per term (including NY, LA, and DC).  All news interns are paid $8.50/hour and we transitioned to an all-paid program in Spring 2008."]

ABC's internship material states, "We offer an attractive hourly salary. Interns are not eligible for company medical benefits, holiday pay or sick pay." The internships are in New York; Burbank, Calif.; and Glendale, Calif. Candidates must be available a minimum of 16 hours a week.

CNN's website says, "Students @ Work Internships are paid at minimum-wage and structured to last approximately 12 weeks. Program dates are January 28 - April 19. Course Credit is available."

NBCUniversal news internships take place in New York; New Jersey; Universal City, Calif.; and Burbank, Calif.; and Connecticut, and include the cable networks CNBC and MSNBC.

"In addition to an up to date knowledge of the news, a successful intern exhibits extraordinary attention to detail, and can function as part of a dynamic environment driven by both pace and accuracy. Journalism and political science majors are preferred, but not required," NBC says.

An exception to the no-pay internships at NBC has been the Emma Bowen Foundation.

"The Emma L. Bowen Foundation was established by the media industry to help increase access to permanent job opportunities for minority students," according to the NBC website.

"The Foundation's program is unlike other intern programs in that students work for a partner company during summers and school breaks from the end of their junior year in high school until they graduate from college. During that five-year period, students have an opportunity to learn many aspects of corporate operations and develop company-specific skills. Students in the program receive an hourly wage, as well as matching compensation to help pay for college tuition and expenses. Mentoring from selected staff in the sponsoring company is also a key element of the program."

At CBS News, the interns' duties are listed as, "Log tapes, coordinate script, research stories, conduct preliminary interviews, assist during shoots, select footage, perform light clerical duties and assist staff members," with the proviso that "Duties vary in each department."

A description adds, "This is an unpaid internship. Student must get credit." [Updated Nov. 27]

Steven Greenhouse, New York Times: Jobs Few, Grads Flock to Unpaid Internships (May 5)

Derek Thompson, the Atlantic: In Defense of Unpaid Internships (May 10)

George Curry, Editor Step Down at Heart & Soul

Veteran journalist George E. Curry, part of a group that purchased Heart & Soul, a health-and-wellness magazine targeting women of color, has resigned as executive vice president/content and editorial director, he confirmed to Journal-isms.

So has the woman Curry brought in as top editor, former Latina magazine editor-in-chief Sandra Guzman.

"This has been an extremely disappointing experience and I don't want to go into the details about everything that went wrong," Curry said by email. "I will say, however, that everyone had different areas of responsibilities and not everyone performed as well as we had expected. Even working with a restricted budget, I am proud of the issues we published this year. I can walk away from Heart & Soul knowing we produced an excellent product."

Curry and his partners in Brown Curry Detry Taylor & Associates, LLC of Silver Spring, Md., announced in January they had bought the 18-year-old publication from Edwin V. Avent, a Baltimore-based businessman who now heads a nascent cable network, Soul of the South.

The new Heart & Soul owners promised to compensate a group of angry writers who said they were owed more than $200,000 in back pay. The writers have not been fully compensated, and the National Writers Union has taken up their cause.

"Thirteen people are owed $150,000," Larry Goldbetter, president of the union, told Journal-isms by telephone on Monday. The owners "haven't made a payment in nine months. We initially got seven writers paid in full for $20,000. We're waiting on more." Goldbetter said that the union planned to go to court and that the company had offered a "Ponzi scheme" in which the writers would be paid later if they agreed to continue writing for the magazine.

Patrick H. Detry, executive vice president, advertising, told Journal-isms by telephone that the company was "looking at things to see how we move forward. We inherited a lot of debt. Once we started paying writers, it seems a lot more people started popping out of the woodwork."

Asked whether the company was undercapitalized, Detry said, "It was tight, but the problem was when these extra liabilities started popping up. That's when things started to have a crescendo effect. Things started slowing down, revenues got a little sporadic.

"My personal view is that if things were rolling on a regular basis, if the magazine were coming out regularly, we wouldn't have had these problems. . . . then [there were] rumors that we were going out of business. It kind of helped to slow down the selling process" for advertising. Detry said the magazine missed deadlines after "writers were slow in getting their editorial" content in.

Guzman did not respond to requests for comment.

The December issue will be the sixth under current management, Detry said.

Curry said by email, "The hardest part for me was bringing talented writers and editors aboard after being assured that the funds would be there to pay them. Obviously, that was not the case. I've never been in this situation before and hope to never been in one like it again."

Avent previously told Journal-isms that the magazine, published six times a year, had a circulation of 300,000.

Brown Curry Detry Taylor & Associates, LLC is the magazine's sixth owner in its 23 years. Until the new owners, Heart & Soul was a health-and-wellness magazine targeting African Americans. The decision to name Guzman its top editor as part of an effort to broaden its focus to other women of color.

"We're at a very critical juncture," Detry said. "The biggest thing is the writers getting paid. We need to get more positive news out there, and giving all the women of color the information we need."

"Lincoln" Movie Praised, Gave Abe Too Much Credit

Steven Spielberg's new "Lincoln" movie, third ranking in holiday weekend box office receipts, was also a hit on the Sunday talk shows.

"And what a film!" moderator David Gregory said on NBC's "Meet the Press." That‹ the chronicle is such a critical part of our history and Lincoln's presidency, fighting to abolish slavery and ‹ and‹ and‹ and winning the 13th Amendment."

Gregory was joined in the discussion by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, New York Times columnist David Brooks, MSNBC host the Rev. Al Sharpton, NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell and Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard.

Most of the discussion was about leadership and Lincoln's political skills, but Burns said, ". . . Race is always there in America. It's always something we don't want to talk about. It's on the table. Do you think we'd have a Secession Movement in Texas and the other places, faddish Secession Movement, if this president wasn't African-American?"

Sharpton said, ". . . that was the striking part to me of the film, because I've been an activist and an advocate all my life, leading an advocate organization. A president has to get things done. So even if a president is transformational as how he gets there. And that's what Lincoln had to deal with. . . . I think that's the challenge that Mr. Obama has now. And I think that was very critical in that‹ that movie. I wish Frederick Douglass pushing Lincoln would have been a‹ a scene in the movie because I think that¹s what we're dealing with, David."

On CBS, "Face the Nation" featured a panel of authors of books on Lincoln (Doris Kearns Goodwin), Thomas Jefferson (Jon Meacham), Dwight Eisenhower (Evan Thomas) and President Obama (Bob Woodward).

Lerone Bennett Jr., former editor of Ebony magazine and author of 1999's "Forced to Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream," was not among them.

". . . At this critical point, and at every other critical point, Lincoln followed the people instead of leading the people," Bennett wrote of Lincoln's leadership on the 13th Amendment. "One reads everywhere, or almost everywhere, that Lincoln dragged his feet on this or that issue because the people were not ready. In fact, on the Thirteenth Amendment and the use of Black soldiers, the people marched on before Lincoln."

Eric Foner, who won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for history for "The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery," agreed. "The 13th Amendment originated not with Lincoln but with a petition campaign early in 1864 organized by the Women's National Loyal League, an organization of abolitionist feminists headed by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton," Foner wrote in a letter to the editor of the New York Times.

"Moreover, from the beginning of the Civil War, by escaping to Union lines, blacks forced the fate of slavery onto the national political agenda.

"The film grossly exaggerates the possibility that by January 1865 the war might have ended with slavery still intact. . . ."

On Friday, Hari Jones, assistant director and curator at the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum in Washington, was supportive of Spielberg in an unbylined blog post.

"The film is almost a documentary, and far more historically accurate than 50% of the documentary films I have seen on the Civil War," Jones wrote, disagreeing with those who would like to have seen Douglass. He also said, "The focus of the movie was on the passage of the 13th Amendment. Douglass did not have a role in getting the amendment passed in January 1865. His monthly had even ceased publication by then. . . ."

Peter von Buol, Maui Magazine: Maui's Civil War Hero

Monochromatic List of "Breakout" Political Writers

Politico's Dylan Byers unveiled "10 breakout political reporters of 2012" on Sunday, and none was a journalist of color.

Was that the fault of Byers or of the Washington press corps?

Byers included this caveat in his story: "The list includes reporters from the Mitt Romney press corps and none from the Barack Obama side, which is largely due to the fact that there were more veterans on the president's trail who had already made names for themselves. (For the obvious reasons, we've decided to leave off POLITICO reporters from the list, though more than a few came up for nomination.) Also omitted are the media personalities who, despite producing excellent work, had already gained national recognition in past cycles."

The composition of the Washington press corps periodically comes under scrutiny. In 2008, Unity: Journalists of Color Inc. and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University found that "Journalists of color make up 13.1 percent of the 495 reporters, correspondents, columnists and editors in the Washington daily newspaper press corps. That's an improvement over the last census four years ago, when just under 10.5 percent of the press corps consisted of minority journalists."

Then President Obama took office, and more black journalists were assigned to the new administration. At the Washington Post, the new Obama presidency coincided with a national desk newly led by Kevin Merida, with Terence Samuel as a political editor and Krissah Thompson, Perry Bacon Jr., Michael A. Fletcher  and Nia-Malika Henderson among its reporters. Bacon left the paper for the Grio, and Fletcher now covers the economy, but Vanessa Williams became a night political editor.

But Wayne Dawkins, a Hampton University journalism assistant professor, reported in the Diversity Factor, a subscription-only online journal, "As of 2009, the Washington Press corps was less diverse than the group that covered George W. Bush from 2001-08. Media downsizing wiped out experienced journalists of color who were prepared to compete for those top beats, meanwhile, cuts in state and local gov't and political reporting dried up the pipeline of new recruits."

Sonya Ross, an editor in the Associated Press' Washington Bureau and former White House correspondent who chairs the National Association of Black Journalists Political Journalism Task Force, told Journal-isms by email:

"We are very proud of the sharp, honest work of all of our task force members who covered the 2012 campaign, particularly NBC White House reporter Kristen Welker, CNN political producer Shannon Travis, NPR national digital correspondent Corey Dade and Juana Summers, a national political reporter for POLITICO.

"These folks may not be on this latest list, but they won't be invisible forever."

Perry Bacon Jr., the Grio: The death of Allen West-style politics

Cristina Beltran, NBCLatino: Latinos Šnot a political monolith but a coalition

Mary C. Curtis, the Grio: Is a diverse presidential ticket necessary for a GOP recovery?

Suzanne Gamboa, Associated Press: Black Voters Look To Leverage Their Loyalty To President Obama

Keli Goff, the Root: Will Obama Push a 'Black Agenda' Now?

Zachary A. Goldfarb, Washington Post: How fighting income inequality became Obama's driving force

Madison Gray, the Root: Hey, White Guys, It's Time to Share America

The Grio: Melissa Harris-Perry to Obama: pardon people, not just turkeys

David A. Love, Grio: GOP attacks on Susan Rice make for bad racial optics

Pew Research Center for the People & the Press: Young Voters Supported Obama Less, But May Have Mattered More

Edward Wyckoff Williams, the Root: Obama's Mandate to Help the Poor

Local TV Pay Not Keeping Up With Inflation

"A new study by the Radio Television Digital News Association and Hoftsra University found salaries at local television stations have been losing ground to inflation for the last ten years," Kevin Eck wrote Monday for TVSpy.

"The study [PDF] tracked salaries at local TV stations over a five and ten year period. In the period between 2007 and 2012, while inflation rose by 12 percent, local TV pay rose by only 10.5 percent. The pay gap widened over a ten year period with inflation rising by 28 percent while salaries rose by just 21.6 percent."

"Between 2002 and 2012, the study showed only news directors (+35.9%), weathercasters [(+37%)], sports anchors (+28.6%), and assignment editors (+28.3%) beat the rise of inflation. The biggest loser over the ten year period were web and mobile writers (+13.3%). News assistants saw the largest drop (-3.1%) in pay between 2007 and 2012 compared to an inflation rate of 12 percent."

Hollywood Cover Should Be Beyond the Pale

"About a week ago the entertainment trade magazine 'The Hollywood Reporter' published its annual 'The Actresses Roundtable' cover story that featured leading actresses discussing the state of the industry. Now, a week later, any mention of the story on magazine's website is followed with comments criticizing the editors for only including white actresses," Jorge Rivas wrote Monday for ColorLines.

". . . .What's striking in 'The Hollywood Reporter's' case though is that diversity in the industry is an issue that makes it in to [its] stories regularly. They also understand the importance of the Latino market, and print stories ranging from Univision's record breaking ratings to Colombian actress Sofia Vergara being named the highest paid woman in television. But still she was nowhere to be found in 'The Actresses Roundtable.' Neither was Eva Longoria who came in at number three on the Forbes list of highest paid women in Hollywood. . . ."

Female War Reporters Have Advantage With Muslims

"Phoebe Greenwood was frantically filing her latest piece for The Telegraph in Gaza City earlier this week when she noticed something," Emma Barnett reported last week for the Telegraph in London.

"Sat in the main lobby of the Al Deira Hotel, which has become effectively become a big newsroom in the war-torn strip of land, Greenwood observed that all of the correspondents of the American, Australian, Spanish and British broadsheets writing around her were women.

"Jodi Rudoren (New York Times), Ruth Pollard (Sydney Morning Herald), Harriet Sherwood (Guardian), Ana Carbajosa (El Pais), Abeer Ayyoub (freelance Palestinian journalist) and Rolla Scolari (Sky Italia) have all been Greenwood's comrades during the latest troubles in the Middle East. On the job she has also been accompanied by Heidi Levine, whom she describes as a 'ridiculously tough war photographer' and worked alongside Eman Mohammed Darkhalil, an award-winning and heavily pregnant photographer.

"At the start of the latest Israel-Gaza conflict last week, Greenwood, a freelance reporter based in Jaffa, Tel Aviv, said the majority of the correspondents first on the ground were women and what's even better, it's no longer remarkable. . . ."

"However, interestingly, Greenwood reveals that women war correspondents do have a unique advantage because of their gender when reporting in Muslim countries. . . ."

David Carr, New York Times: Using War as Cover to Target Journalists

Patrick B. Pexton, Washington Post: Photo of dead baby in Gaza holds part of the 'truth'

More Blacks, Latinos Spend Holiday with Co-Workers

More African Americans, Hispanics and disabled workers planned to spend Thanksgiving with co-workers in or out of the office than did "non-diverse workers," according to a CareerBuilder online survey released last week.

Among African American workers, 26 percent said they planned to be with co-workers. Among Hispanics, the figure was 25 percent; disabled workers, 22 percent; Asians, 18 percent; and LGBT employees, 17 percent. "This compares to 16 percent of non-diverse workers," CareerBuilder said.

The survey was conducted nationally online by Harris Interactive© from Aug. 13 to Sept. 6 and included more than 3,900 workers.

"Seventeen percent of workers said they have to work on Thanksgiving, with hospitality workers the most likely to be on the clock," its authors added.

Delfin Carbonell Basset, voxxi.com: Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles and the first Thanksgiving dinner

Andrew Beaujon, Poynter Institute: Meet the journalism professor who called Thanksgiving a 'white-supremacist holiday'

Short Takes

"What happens when you agree to come on Fox News and then proceed to hammer the network for serving as a 'wing of the Republican Party?' Erik Wemple asked Monday for the Washington Post. "Answer: You don't stay on the air too long. Military expert Tom Ricks chatted today with Fox's Jon Scott about the Benghazi situation. Ricks was asked about how Sen. John McCain appears to be backing off of his criticism of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who made some much-criticized statements about Benghazi in a series of Sept. 16 interviews. Ricks: 'I think that Benghazi generally was hyped by this network especially . . .' "

"The media toll in Syria continued last week with the deaths of at least seven journalists," Roy Greenslade wrote Monday for his blog in Britain's Guardian newspaper. "State TV journalist Bassel Tawfiq Youssef was killed on 21 November in Damascus."

Journal-isms was listed Friday among "Five awesome blogs about minority communities" by Columbia Journalism Review's Jennifer Vanasco. The others are New Civil Rights Movement, Feministing, 8 Asians, The Wise Latina Club and, as a side note, iamKoreAm.com.

Despite a decline in sales of O, the Oprah Magazine since she ended her daytime talk show, Oprah Winfrey is confident she will draw more younger fans because people want "what we have to say in this magazine about fulfilling your destiny, who you're meant to be, living your best life," Christine Haughney reported Monday for the New York Times. "That's the kind of product Ms. Winfrey predicts people, regardless of age, will continue to pay for."

"HBO in February will air a documentary film based on the life and career of multiple Grammy winning singer Beyoncé," R. Thomas Umstead reported Monday for Multichannel News. "The feature-length documentary film will air Feb. 16, 2013, and will offer unprecedented access to the private entertainer's life as well as her onstage performances, according to HBO officials. Beyoncé will serve as executive producer of the show."

"A popular Pakistani television journalist who incurred the Taliban's wrath by criticising it for trying to assassinate the schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai vowed on Monday to continue 'speaking the truth' after a bomb was found planted under his car," Jon Boone reported Monday for Britain's Guardian newspaper. "Police in Islamabad said the remotely controlled device was defused by bomb experts. It was discovered shortly after Hamid Mir, one of the country's best-known television presenters, returned to his parked vehicle from a hair appointment.'

Simeon Booker's book, "Shocking the Conscience: A Reporter's Account of the Civil Rights Movement," will be available from the University Press of Mississippi in April, Amber Larkins wrote in a profile of Booker for the American Journalism Review. "It is a history of Booker's 65-year journalism career, which explains how blacks went from being completely ignored in the mainstream press to being the focus of heavy coverage of the civil rights movement, and the role of Booker's civil rights reporting in Jet magazine." Booker is to be inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Black Journalists in January.

In Raleigh, N.C., Dick Harlow, market manager for WDCG-FM owner Clear Channel Media, apologized last week to the Greater Raleigh Merchants Association, which puts on a Christmas parade. The WDCG-FM float featured a black man dressed in a skirt with fairy wings, strapped to a harness that was suspended from the back of a tow truck, Brooke Cain reported Thursday for the News & Observer.

Rafael Olmeda, a former president of Unity: Journalists of Color Inc. who advocated the inclusion of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association into the coalition, wrote Monday that he is "less than thrilled with the options before us" for a new name: UNITY: Journalists of Color, UNITY: Journalists of Color & Diversity, UNITY: Journalists of Color & For Diversity. "The first one ignores NLGJA's presence entirely. The other two strike me as clumsy attempts to acknowledge NLGJA's presence as an afterthought." Members of the coalition partners are to vote on the name by Dec. 13.

In Congo, Reporters Without Borders and Journalist in Danger said Wednesday they were worried by the measures that the M23 rebel movement took with the news media after seizing Goma, the capital of the eastern province of Nord Kivu. "Since occupying Goma, the rebels of the 23 March Movement (M23) have seized control of the news media and are behaving as if they were media executives and editors," Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. "We remind them that it is not their job to decide the content of the news reports that the media carry."

"To mark International Day to End Impunity, Reporters Without Borders' partner organization in the Democratic Republic of Congo, JED, has published a statement drawing attention to the illegal detention of three journalists and the many abuses suffered by the media in the DRC. . . . Pierre Sosthène Kambidi, a journalist and editor with the TV station Radio Télévision Chrétienne (RTC), Fortunat Kasongo, owner of Radio Télévision Autonome du Sud Kasaï (RTAS), and John Mpoyi, technical director of the provincial affiliate of Radio Lisanga Télévision (RLTV), were arrested in August this year and have yet to be informed of the charges against them."

"Pakistani columnist Ardeshir Cowasjee was revered in his nation for exposing corruption, nepotism and mismanagement at all levels of government. He died this weekend at the age of 86," NPR said Monday in introducing a remembrance by Steve Inskeep. ". . . he wrote about all those basic things in the developing world that enrich people's lives when done properly and shorten people's lives when they're not," Inskeep said.

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Journal-isms is published on the site of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education (www.mije.org). Reprinted on The Root by permission.

T.J. Holmes Breaks Pledge Not to Use N-Word

CNN anchor-turned-BET host T.J. Holmes said Wednesday he had broken a pledge he made in an essay for the Grio in July: to stop using the N-Word.

"As soon as I walk out of this room, I'm probably going to drop it 20 times before I get downstairs" [video] Holmes, 35, said on "The Breakfast Club" on New York's WWPR-FM, which calls itself Power 105.1. "I went through a thing about giving up the N-Word," but "I had to bring it back." Holmes agreed with one of the show's hosts, known as "Charlamagne Tha God," that "there's just certain folks you run into and there ain't no other word you can come up with . . . We all know it's a vile, it's a disgusting word and I don't think it necessarily should have a place."

He added, "We have normalized and sanitized the word in such a way. There's young white kids, they don't know anything about civil rights or struggle. All they know is they hear their favorite rapper using it all the time, so it must be all right."

In his Grio essay, Holmes had written, "Still, even if a younger generation of non-blacks doesn't fully understand the history of the n-word, everyone understands a general rule: we (blacks) can say it, and you (everybody else) can't. Beyond that, I really can't give you a good reason why I use it. I like saying it? It's the most accurate way of describing certain people? It's how I want to express my deep affection for my male friends? None of those reasons really fly.

". . . My problem has been that no one ever held me accountable for my, at times, gratuitous use of the n-word. So, while I can toil endlessly about who I do and don't mind saying the n-word, I never stopped to think that maybe there are people who don't want to hear that word from me. There are plenty of black people who don't want to hear fellow blacks use the n-word, but we give each other a pass. Stop."

BET announced last week that it is scaling back "Don't Sleep," the network's late-night, half-hour vehicle for Holmes, from half an hour Monday through Thursday to an hour once a week. Holmes said the talk show is aimed at 25-to-34 year-olds and that it would take time for viewers not used to watching BET to find it. "I didn't know where BET was on my cable lineup when they called and started talking about the show," Holmes acknowledged on "The Breakfast Club."

Rahiel Tesfamariam, Washington Post: Who's to blame for sleeping on 'Don't Sleep!'? Not the viewers. (Nov. 16)

Members to Vote on Restoring Longtime Name

The name "Unity: Journalists of Color" or a variation is likely to return as the name for the coalition of Hispanic, Asian American, Native American and lesbian and gay journalists if the Unity board adopts any of the recommendations to be circulated soon to members of those associations.

The coalition changed its name to "Unity Journalists" in April after it admitted the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, which warned that its members might boycott Unity's summer convention if the words "Journalists of Color" were not dropped from the coalition's name.

However, the name change prompted a backlash from many who said Unity was veering from its history and purpose. Among them were members of the National Association of Black Journalists, which left the coalition last year over governance and financial issues, and which Unity is trying to woo back.

"Here's the ballot being sent to eligible UNITY alliance group members starting this week," Janet Cho, a Unity board member from the Asian American Journalists Association, told Journal-isms by email on Wednesday:

"Dear UNITY alliance members:

"The UNITY Board created the UNITY Name Task Force to address our members' concerns about how our previous name, 'UNITY: Journalists of Color Inc.' was changed to 'UNITY: Journalists Inc.' without their input at our April Board meeting. The Board unanimously agreed to find a name that better reflected our expanded coalition.

"Thank you to the many members who submitted 107 ideas on UNITY's name. Based on your feedback, we are offering you three choices. Please select only the one name you think best represents the UNITY alliance:

"____A. UNITY: Journalists of Color Inc.

"____B. UNITY: Journalists of Color & Diversity Inc.

"____C. UNITY: Journalists of Color & for Diversity Inc.

"Please return your ballot before midnight EST Thursday, Dec. 13, so that the Task Force can present the results of this vote to the entire UNITY Board."

Cho added that 52 people submitted the 107 names to the UNITYname@gmail.com inbox, which Cho and Walt Swanston, the interim executive director, monitored. "Not all of them self-identified as members of a UNITY alliance group, but I can confirm that we got submissions from members of all five groups (NAJA, AAJA, NAHJ, NLGJA and NABJ).

"I asked each of the six UNITY Name Task Force members (including NABJ rep Benet Wilson) send their top three choices to Walt, and we chose the three finalists from the names in that pool.

"After the associations all vote by Dec. 13 and send their results to Walt, the Task Force will be making a recommendation to the UNITY Board (based on that membership vote) on what name to adopt. The board vote hasn't been scheduled yet, but will probably take place after that, in mid-December."

Although NABJ members will not have an official say, Wilson put together a poll on the name choices for NABJ. "Our votes will not count, but the results will be submitted for consideration," Wilson said.

Why People of Color Own So Few Broadcast Outlets

When the FCC reported last week that African Americans owned only 10 television stations in 2011, or less than 1 percent of the total, some Journal-isms readers speculated on the reason.

"Appears they simply may not consider owning TV stations to be profitable investments," wrote one. "Was it because of Affirmative Action or Diversity programs that they have 10??" asked another. "Maybe black investors have been spending their money elsewhere. Maybe TV stations in general aren't very profitable, or aren't worth the hassle," a third said.

David Honig, whose Minority Media Telecommunications Council follows minority ownership issues and brokers ownership of broadcast outlets, provided an answer on Tuesday. He addressed television and radio ownership by Asian Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans as well.

". . . The real reasons for the decline in minority ownership are well known," Honig wrote.

"Access to capital. Advertisers' 'no urban' and 'no Spanish' instructions to ad agencies not to place ads on stations targeting customers they don't want patronizing their stores.

"Employment discrimination. Sampling deficiencies in radio ratings. The recession coupled with the 20:1 racial wealth gap. The loss of the 1978 Tax Certificate Policy that quintupled minority ownership until Congress repealed it in 1995. And the FCC's failure to consider nearly four dozen proposed remedial measures."

Honig wrote, "People of color -- 36% of the population -- own just 5.1% of commercial full power TV stations and 8.0% of commercial full power radio stations. The statistics by racial group and by type of broadcast service are generally either stagnant or declining, as they have been for the past 12 years.

"On the ground, the situation is even worse than the raw numbers suggest. Most minority-owned stations are small. They typically operate on inferior frequencies or from outlying transmitter locations. Thus, minority asset value in radio and television has hovered for years around the 1% mark, even though spectrum is a public resource like the national parks."

Honig called for FCC action on 47 proposed rule and policy modifications and initiatives that have been offered by a coalition of 50 national minority and civil rights organizations

He listed three examples:

Enabling AM broadcasters to migrate to new frequencies now used by TV channels 5 and 6; relaxing restrictions on foreign investment in domestic broadcasting to provide greater access to capital to American broadcasters, especially minorities; and allowing a broadcaster to own an additional station in a market when it brings into being an independently owned new voice through such "incubation" methods as providing financing.

Craig Aaron, Free Press: Why Is the Obama FCC Plotting a Massive Giveaway to Rupert Murdoch?

William Reed, Washington Informer: Where Did Black Radio Go?

Joseph Torres, New America Media/Free Press: FCC Abandons Diversity, Embraces Rupert Murdoch

Israeli Strikes Kill Three Journalists in Gaza

Two Israeli airstrikes killed three journalists in the Gaza Strip Tuesday. In Cairo, meanwhile, Egyptian protesters firebombed one of the offices of satellite broadcaster Al-Jazeera on Wednesday, according to news reports.

The actions took place before Wednesday's cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas, ending eight days of fighting that killed more than 140 Palestinians and five Israelis, NBC News reported.

"According to the cease-fire agreement: Israel will stop attacks on Gaza by land, sea and air and stop incursions and targeted assassinations; Palestinian factions will stop hostilities from the Gaza Strip against Israel; Israel will ease the movement of people and goods at border-crossing areas," NBC said.

The Associated Press reported that "Two of those killed were cameramen working for Al Aqsa TV, the centerpiece of a growing Hamas media empire, said station head Mohammed Thouraya. The two were driving in a car with press markings in Gaza City on Tuesday afternoon, shortly after wrapping up an assignment at the city's Shifa Hospital, Thouraya added.

"The station said the car was hit by a missile and broadcast the aftermath, with the vehicle consumed by flames. Thouraya said the bodies of the two, Mohammed al-Koumi and Hussam Salam, were badly burned.

"Later Tuesday, another Israeli missile killed an employee for Al Quds Educational Radio, a private station, said Ashraf al-Kidra, a Gaza health official. Mohammed Abu Eisha died when his car was hit in the central Gaza town of Deir el-Balah, al-Kidra said.

"Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, an Israeli military spokeswoman, said a preliminary investigation showed all three were Hamas operatives, but would not elaborate."

International press-freedom organizations criticized Israel.

"We're alarmed by the mounting toll on journalists in Gaza," said Sherif Mansour, Middle East and North Africa program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists. "Israeli airstrikes continue to put journalists in harm's way. This reflects the risks journalists face while reporting on conflict, especially in such a densely populated area."

In Cairo, "The protesters hit the studio overlooking Tahrir Square with Molotov cocktails, engulfing it in flames. In a televised interview from inside the gutted office, reporter Ahmed el-Dassouki said around 300 protesters approached the building before noon, shouting obscenities," the Associated Press reported.

"He said they set the place on fire, stormed the building, and looted the studio. 'They accuse our network of being biased and not objective,' he said. Many protesters had accused the channel of supporting the country's most powerful political force, the Muslim Brotherhood. . . ."

Agence France-Presse: Egypt's Al-Jazeera office attacked

Max Fisher, Washington Post: 9 questions about Israel-Gaza you were too embarrassed to ask

Jillian Kestler-D'Amours, Inter-Press Service: Assault Provokes Support for Hamas in West Bank

Askia Muhammad, Washington Informer: Israeli Aggression in the Holy Land

Reporters Without Borders: Three journalists killed in deliberate attacks by Israeli planes

Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: In Gaza, status quo won't do

Nour Samaha, Al Jazeera: Gaza journalists defiant in face of attacks

The Telegraph, London: Chilling live tweets as windows shatter around journalists in Gaza City

Radio Host Suspended After Racist Obama Post

"Perhaps another case of a radio host not thinking before using Social Media," RadioInk reported on Wednesday. "And clearly a sign of how quickly you can get into trouble and jeopardize your job when emotions take over logic. WNWS is in Jackson, TN and host Bill Way . . . is off the air after he made a Facebook post about President Obama that a lot of people took offense to. Here's a portion of the Way FB post.

" 'A short message to Obama voters. To vote for him with a 9.2 unemployment rate, $16,000,000,000 in debt and an israeli war, a pimp walking prez married to cheetahs daughter...expect what you will most certainly get. bye bye medicare. hello homeless.. I love America except for the idiots.' Way apologized for his comments but it was too little too late. The NAACP quickly jumped in and criticized Way.

"General Manager Larry Wood told the local newspaper he learned about the comments Way made on his personal Facebook page. 'In no way do they reflect the positions or thoughts of any of us at WNWS-FM. We certainly don't condone the comments from Bill and appreciate his public apology. We're discussing his comments and apology. Considering the gravity of the situation, for now, by mutual agreement, Bill is taking a few days off.' "

In another incident, the Independent Record in Helena, Mont., reported, "Our copy desk made an error in judgment in editing the Sunday 2A Associated Press story about President Obama's trip to Asia and his place of birth. One of the copy editors inserted the term 'allegedly' born in Hawaii in the story thinking the other copy editor would catch it, he didn't. It was a poor attempt at humor and a poor decision, but was not intended to be printed in the paper. Those responsible have been disciplined."

Perry Bacon Jr., the Grio: The death of Allen West-style politics

Michael Barbaro, New York Times: After Obama, Christie Wants a G.O.P. Hug

Thomas Bishop and Andy Newbold, Media Matters for America: Following GOP Loss, Rush Limbaugh Downplays His Influence On Republican Party

Mike Cavender, Radio Television Digital News Association: Perception is Not Always Reality

Ta-Nehisi Coates blog, the Atlantic: The Limits of Political 'Reporting'

Eric Deggans blog, Tampa Bay (Fla.) Times: Will conservatives criticizing President Obama over Common tackle Marco Rubio's love of gangsta rap?

Agustin Fuentes, HuffPost LatinoVoices: Race No, Diversity Yes: A Suggestion for Obama's Second Term

Sam Fulwood III, Center for American Progress: Race and Beyond: A New Strategy for the Republican Party

Justin Hanson, WMC-TV, Memphis, Tenn.: Radio DJ off the air for posting offensive comments to FB page

Timothy Karr, Free Press: Don't Believe the Spin. Dark Money Won.

Zerlina Maxwell, the Grio: How long will the right's recent love affair with minorities last?

Patrice Peck, the Grio: Biracial versus black: Thought leaders weigh in on the meaning of President Obama's biracial heritage

Leslie Pitterson, Ebony: Susan Rice: Sonia Sotomayor 2.0?

Michael E. Ross blog: Black turnout: How'd the GOP get it so wrong?

Tracie Simer, Jackson (Tenn.) Sun: NAACP objects to Bill Way's comments

Alex Weprin, TVNewser: Greta: Administration Still 'Trying To Punish' Fox News

Armstrong Williams blog, the Hill: Strength in unity

NPR's Norris on Leave for Her "Race Card Project"

In October 2011, Michele Norris, a co-host of NPR's "All Things Considered," told colleagues she had to leave the show until the presidential election was over.

"I need to share some news and I wanted to make sure my NPR family heard this first," she wrote. "Last week, I told news management that my husband, Broderick Johnson, has just accepted a senior advisor position with the Obama Campaign. After careful consideration, we decided that Broderick's new role could make it difficult for me to continue hosting ATC. Given the nature of Broderick's position with the campaign and the impact that it will most certainly have on our family life, I will temporarily step away from my hosting duties until after the 2012 elections."

But Norris later decided to go on book leave and work on her passion.

"My sabbatical was crafted to extend through the end of January — after the inauguration," Norris told Journal-isms by email on Wednesday. "I have been working on The Race Card Project during this time off the air. Hope you've had a chance to check it out: www.theracecardproject.com. What started out as a small experiment has turned into an incredible archive of people's attitudes and experiences with race and identity. There are now more than 12,000 archived submissions from every state and several entries from far flung ports including South Korea, Abu Dhabi, Dublin, Brisbane, Cairo, Brussels, Bangalore and Finland.

"It captures the conversation you know is out there but rarely hear expressed out loud — and most often with the author signing their name. And now that I have been cycling back and interviewing those who have submitted 6 word essays, I have found that those six words are often just the beginning of an incredible story."

Wanda Lloyd Stepping Down as Editor in Montgomery

"Wanda Lloyd, executive editor at the Montgomery Advertiser since 2004, is retiring as the newspaper's executive editor early next year," the Alabama newspaper reported on Tuesday. "She has been an editor with Gannett, the Advertiser's parent company, since 1986 -- except for a 3 1/2-year break when she was the founding executive director of a journalism education program at Vanderbilt University just prior to moving to Montgomery."

". . . Lloyd has led the transition from a primarily print-centric newsroom to a 21st Century newsroom that embraces the technological changes prevalent across today’s media industry."

". . . Lloyd's leadership in journalism includes serving on the boards of directors of the Alabama Press Association and the Alabama Associated Press Media Editors. She also serves on the journalism advisory boards at Auburn University, Alabama State University and Savannah State University, and she has served on similar advisory boards at Virginia Commonwealth and North Carolina A&T universities. She served for six years as a board member of the American Society of News Editors."

Lloyd told Journal-isms by telephone that she wanted to "figure out what my passions are." She said she had identified them as working with young journalists and diversity issues. Lloyd said that the news industry had veered away from diversity as a priority and she wanted to help it find its way back.

She said she planned to stay in Montgomery but can move if necessary, preferably elsewhere in the Southeast.

"Showbiz Journalism Even More Shallow Than I Thought"

Since resigning as a New York Times film critic in 2004, Elvis Mitchell has continued to host "The Treatment," a popular weekly syndicated public radio show from KCRW-FM, an NPR affiliate in Santa Monica, Calif.

In an interview with Richard Horgan of FishbowlLA, Mitchell indicated his newspaper days are behind him — the workload of a film critic for a daily has become "shattering," he said. Mitchell also bemoaned the failure of show-business writers to pick up on the comments on race made by actor Joaquin Phoenix in an interview with Mitchell.

"It kind of makes me think that as a kind of superficial forum and endeavor, showbiz journalism is even more shallow than I thought it would be," Mitchell said.

Horgan asked, "Would you ever consider, if the opportunity arose, returning to the ranks of a daily newspaper film critic?"

Mitchell laughed and replied, "The workload for a film critic today is just so Herculean.

"They're writing reviews, they're blogging and they're doing extra things for the Web. And, with movies that are based on books, you want to at least give the book a thumb-through and prepare. Add in film festivals and I'm not sure how people in the profession can keep up with it today. It's just shattering now, the workload."

Horgan also asked, "Your October Interview magazine conversation with Joaquin Phoenix got a large amount of media pick-up thanks to his comments that film awards season is 'total bullsh*t and the worst-tasting carrot.' What was your take and experience of the feedback you got after this interview?"

Mitchell replied, "I was astonished that this got so much reaction. There is a pretty lengthy part of the conversation that is about race, which I thought was as worthy if not more so as to what he was saying about awards season. That he walked away from a movie because he wasn't happy with the way it was being handled, and he thought there was this inertia that plays on this really antiquated attitude towards people of color in the movies.

"And, so far as I can see, almost nobody picked that up. I thought that would have been the thing that had people really jumping. It kind of makes me think that as a kind of superficial forum and endeavor, showbiz journalism is even more shallow than I thought it would be."

Thanksgiving Brings Out the Joy and Pain

"I told a college schoolmate last week that I'd just opened a book and found a scrap piece of paper with her email address scrawled on it," Jarvis DeBerry wrote Wednesday for NOLA.com and the Times-Picayune in New Orleans.

"The other side was printed with an address in Little Rock, which let me know that she'd given me her contact information at the wedding of another college friend who got married in that city more than a decade ago.

"She said 'wow' at the thought that I would have something so insignificant from so long ago. I, on the other hand, was thinking 'wow' at the thought that I have anything from so long ago.

"The overwhelming majority of my book collection was destroyed. When I made it into my house a month after Katrina the sodden heap of books on the floor was as depressing a sight as any. But this book -- a Polish reporter's travel writings during four decades covering Africa -- had survived."

Thanksgiving brings an annual challenge for newspaper columnists to say something fresh. The headline on a remembrance by Bob Ray Sanders of the Star-Telegram in Fort Worth, Texas, might provide a theme for many of them: "Thanksgiving Day brings joy and pain."

Annette John-Hall, Philadelphia Inquirer: Giving thanks for Faith Chapel

Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald: After profound grief, a nation's profound gratitude for Thanksgiving

Barry Saunders, News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.: Maybe we should try a little turkey tenderness

Wendi C. Thomas, Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn.: Homebound senior citizens need our help for the holidays

Clinton Yates, Washington Post: Thanksgiving 2012: Celebrating our city, Thursday afternoon football...and the right to protest it all

Short Takes

". . . information distributed through social media or other services like cloud-based computing is much more readily accessible to law enforcement officials than information kept in a newsroom or a personal computer," the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press editorialized. "And authorities have not been shy about making demands for it. Think of the implications for how you maintain information about sources and research for stories."

Dame Babou, whose "Africa Time" radio show is broadcast on both WPAT 930-AM in the New York area and on Sud FM in Senegal, was the subject of a profile Wednesday by Seth Maxon in Columbia Journalism Review. ". . . Nearly 20 years on, Babou employs four correspondents in Senegal, two in New York, and individual correspondents in France, Benin, Ivory Coast, and Mauritania," Maxon wrote.

"This is the time of year when many advertising agencies offer help to the homeless through efforts like creating pro bono campaigns and matching donations that employees make to charities. For an agency in Nashville, helping the homeless has been a year-round mission," Stuart Elliott wrote Monday in the New York Times. "The agency is the Buntin Group, which works with a nonprofit organization in Nashville, The Contributor Inc., that has published a so-called street newspaper named The Contributor since November 2007."

"Much like her former 106 & Park co-host Terrence J (now co-hosting E! News), Rocsi Diaz has managed to fall up career-wise after leaving BET," Marcus Vanderberg reported Monday for FishbowlLA. "Diaz will make her Entertainment Tonight debut on Monday night, co-hosting alongside Nancy O’Dell."

Lynn Walsh, investigative producer at WPTV in West Palm Beach, Fla., offered "6 Things to Do When They Just Won't Call You Back" in an essay Wednesday for the Radio Television Digital News Association. They are: "Speak directly to the person involved," "use social media," "show up in person," "use public records laws," "tell the public" and "confront them."

In Chicago, Lester and Stefan Holt will make their first appearance as a father-son anchor team on Friday in a special post-Thanksgiving newscast, WMAQ-TV reported. Stefan Holt, 25, joined WMAQ as a morning show anchor in 2011. Lester Holt began hosting NBC's "Weekend Today" show in 2003. He also anchors the "Weekend Nightly News" for NBC and leads the news magazine program "Dateline."

In Indianapolis, "Veteran WRTV-TV Channel 6 media personality Stacia Matthews said she is leaving the Indianapolis station after a 23-year run," the Indianapolis Business Journal reported on Monday. "Matthews said in an e-mail that her last day at WRTV will be Nov. 30. She said she'll start Dec. 3 as a public relations manager for the Indiana Spine Group."

The Associated Press Media Editors reported Friday it had selected "Traditions," the Arizona Republic's multimedia project on the state's large number of American Indians, as the winner of its "Great Idea of the Quarter." It also chose the Detroit Free Press' "Project Prom" and The Oklahoman's "What's It Like" as winners of the "Innovation of the Quarter."

Native American writer Tim Giago wrote Monday that "this year will mark my 34th year of writing a weekly column . . . . To bring about change simply through the written word has proven to me that the pen is mightier than the sword," Giago wrote, saying, "this should be the real test of any writer."

"For about two years now, Mount Pleasant (Mich.) Morning Sun readers with delivery complaints have been sent to a call center in the Dominican Republic — and often not getting satisfactory results," media blogger Jim Romenesko wrote Tuesday. Editor Rick Mills "credits Journal Register CEO John Paton for trying the outsourcing, seeing that it didn't work, and then going back to the old way."

"Last November, CNN's Soledad O'Brien explored Silicon Valley through the eyes of eight African-American entrepreneurs," Janel Martinez wrote last week for Black Enterprise. "All participants of the inaugural NewMe Accelerator class, the Black in America: The New Promised Land – Silicon Valley cast invited viewers into their journey as startup founders competing in an industry comprised of less than 1% of entrepreneurs that look like them. BlackEnterprise.com caught up with the tech innovators to see what they've been up to one year later." Anthony Frasier of Newark, N.J., "continues to power his award-winning gaming site TheKoalition.com and co-founded another startup called The Phat Startup, which merges hip hop and entrepreneurship."

Jim Guest, president of Consumers International, joined the group's council members and Africa consumer groups to officially open CI's permanent new home on the African continent, the group said on Wednesday. Onica Makwakwa, who left the executive director's job at Unity: Journalists of Color to become CI head of Africa, said, "This is a big step for consumer groups in Africa. It's an opportunity to unite the consumer rights movement and use our collective voice to bring real positive change. CI will be here to support and grow the movement." Consumers International is based in Pretoria, South Africa.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Journal-isms is published on the site of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education (www.mije.org). Reprinted on The Root by permission.