Blacks Just 1% of Financed Internet Start-ups So Far in 2010

Before presenting its charts, CB Insights reported, 'When we ask venture capitalists what gets them excited about the young, emerging and unproven companies in which they invest, we never hear about deals and dollars. Rather the first answer is frequently 'the team' or 'the founders.' '

Report Finds Asian Teams Secure the Most Funding

African Americans are dramatically underrepresented among the founders of Internet start-up companies, according to an analysis of the founders of private, early-stage Internet companies that raised their first round of institutional venture capital funding in the first six months of 2010.

The private investment research firm CB Insights found that whites were 77 percent of population but 87 percent of the start-up founders; Asians were 4 percent of the population but 12 percent of the founders; and blacks were 11 percent of the population but 1 percent of the founders. Native Americans barely registered, and "other races" accounted for 7 percent of the population. Hispanics were not listed; they are not a race.

Other findings of the first-ever Human Capital Venture Capital report, as summarized by Sherri L. Smith for BlackWeb2.0:

*"The majority of the black founders were part of an all-black founding team. As far as mixed raced founding teams, New York led the pack with 14% with California and Massachusetts bringing up the rear with a close 13%.

*"The median amount of funding secured by an all-black founding team was $1.3 million, compared to $2.2M for a racially mixed team, and $2.3M for an all-white team.

*"Asian teams secured the most funding with a median range of $4 million."

The report said that "nationally, South Asian and East/South Asian founders are funded to a similar extent."

"So what does this mean for burgeoning black techpreneurs with the next great Web breakthrough?" Smith wrote. "If you’re a younger company, New York’s Silicon Alley might be the best place to start your business. With an increasing population of young start-ups setting up shop, NYC is the best place for a fresh-[faced] talent to catch the eye of a potential investor. Overall, African Americans are still underrepresented in both the tech and entrepreneurial sectors."

Raising venture capital for media start-ups was a focus of the Eighth Annual Access to Capital and Telecommunications Policy Conference last month in Washington.

At a standing-room-only question-and-answer session at the conference, sponsored by the Minority Media & Telecommunications Council, three members of the Federal Communications Commission said minority communications entrepreneurs should be focusing on opportunities in new media, according to a report from John Eggerton of Broadcasting & Cable.

"All three commissioners also said access to capital was the top barrier to boosting minority participation," Eggerton continued. "The other side of that equation is that the opportunities in traditional media are on the wane, they suggested."

The commissioners were Robert McDowell, Meredith Attwell Baker "and, via a sometimes hinky video link, Mignon Clyburn."

Movement Grows to Boost Minority Broadcast Ownership

In the 17 years that the FCC's minority tax certificate policy was in effect — from 1978 to 1995 — the scant minority ownership of broadcast properties multiplied," Michael D. Berg, a veteran Washington communications lawyer, wrote Friday for TVNewsCheck, an online industry trade publication.

"The policy produced 364 tax certificates and 200 media transactions totaling more than $1 billion in value. That represented about two-thirds of all minority-owned stations.

"When the policy began, minorities owned about 40 of 8,500 broadcast stations. Over its lifetime, the policy helped raise that number to 333 — 290 radio stations and 43 TV stations. It also yielded 31 cable systems," wrote Berg, whose piece was titled, "Time to Revive Minority Tax Certificates."

"The policy encouraged the sale of broadcast and cable properties to minority-owned buyers by deferring sellers' capital gains taxes. Providers of capital to new minority companies also received tax incentives.

"But in 1995 Congress repealed the policy. . . . Since the repeal and passage the following year of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which paved the way for further consolidation of station ownership and narrowed opportunities for new entrants to the broadcast business, minority ownership has decreased by about 14%. That is despite the rapid growth in the percentage of minorities in the population. According to a Free Press study, in 2006 minorities composed a third of the population and owned less than 4% of TV stations and 7% of commercial radio stations.

"As a result of these developments, right now in Congress, the FCC and the broadcast and cable industries there is new movement toward creating an updated tax incentive policy. . . . Late last month at the annual conference of the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (MMTC), Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) announced his intent to introduce new tax incentive legislation that addresses and remedies concerns about the earlier policy."

Berg is also the co-author of "FCC Lobbying: A Handbook of Insider Tips and Practical Advice."

3 of Color Among 58 Executives at Top Media Firms

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., "has released a 'Corporate Diversity Report' with the results of a survey of 537 companies that appeared in the Fortune 500 in 2009 and 2010. At the five media/entertainment/marketing companies that responded, says the report, 13 of the 59 board seats are held by women and 11 by minorities. On those companies' executive teams, 11 of 58 positions are held by women and three by minorities," Radio Ink reported on Thursday.

"Menendez said the purpose of the survey, which also looked at, among other industries, energy, financial services, telecommunications, and technology, 'is very straightforward — to gain a better understanding of what minority and female representation looks like on corporate boards, in senior leadership and in the procurement of goods and services."

In Washington, President Obama told young African leaders such as this one, 'young people are more prone to ask questions, why shouldn’t we have a free press?' (Video)

Obama Urges Young African Journalists to Seek a Free Press

"One out of 10 delegates participating this week in U.S. President Barack Obama's Young African Leaders Forum was a journalist," Mohamed Keita, Africa advocacy coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, wrote Friday.

"The forum, a U.S. initiative meant to spark discussions on the future of Africa in a year when 17 countries on the continent are celebrating 50 years of nationhood, did not overlook freedom of the press, as I witnessed in its final event on Thursday at Washington's museum of news, the Newseum.

"The venue for Thursday’s event, a conference center named after the publisher John S. Knight, was perhaps fitting after the forum’s Tuesday town hall meeting at the White House featured significant references to press freedom. Addressing 115 of the brightest and most enterprising 20- to 30-something leaders in activism, business, health, innovation and media in Africa on Tuesday, Obama singled out, among others, a Botswana journalist (Itumeleng Ramsden) for inspiring young people with her popular radio show, and a journalist from Ivory Coast (Aminata Kane Epse Kone) for championing the cause of Muslim women on her radio station. In a Q&A session, the president mentioned press freedom while praising the ability of youth to challenge the status quo.

" 'In some of your countries, freedom of the press is still restricted,' Obama said. 'There’s no reason why that has to be the case. There’s nothing inevitable about that. And young people are more prone to ask questions, why shouldn’t we have a free press?' "

The group also visited U.S. lawmakers.

Meanwhile:

*In South Africa, Mzilikazi wa Afrika, who wrote a series for South Africa's Sunday Times on alleged corruption by senior officials, was arrested and detained for 48 hours, the Associated Press reported on Friday. The South African National Editors Forum said such an arrest has been rare since the end of the apartheid era in 1994.

*Rwanda's Media High Council suspended some 30 news media as the nation prepared for Monday's presidential election, Reporters Without Borders reported. "Press freedom violations, including the jailing of journalists, the closure of news media and the murder of a newspaper editor a month ago, have intensified in the run-up to the election."

*Senior Eritrean Advisor Yemani Gebreab told Swedish daily Aftonbladet that the government had decided to 'move forward,' leaving imprisoned journalists in the eternal oblivion of indefinite detention, Mohamed Keita reported for the Committee to Protect Journalists. "Since a week after September 11, 2001, when the government of Eritrea threw into secret prisons journalists from its once-vibrant private press, the only certainty it has offered about the fate of the prisoners has been ambiguity."

*Alagi Yorrow Jallow, a 2007 Nieman Fellow who fled Gambia in 2005, wrote Wednesday for Nieman Watchdog, "Government actors regularly wage violence against private media outlets and journalists that publish articles deemed inaccurate or unfavorable to the junta. Such violence can take the form of harassment, detention at the hands of National Intelligence Agency officers, arson and destruction of property, arbitrary arrest, torture, and even murder. As a result, Gambian journalists have little choice but to practice self-censorship in their daily work." Jallow has been granted asylum in the United States.

A Phenomenon That "Figures Little in the Debate"

"The article was largely buried in most newspapers, if run at all," columnist Edward Schumacher-Matos wrote Thursday for the Washington Post Writers Group.

"So many bodies of unauthorized migrants are being found in the Arizona desert this month, the Associated Press reported, that the Pima County Medical Examiner was stacking them like boxes of fish in a refrigerated truck.

"Forty bodies were found in just the first half of the month.

"Last year, 317 Americans died fighting in Afghanistan. Guess how many migrants, mostly Mexicans searching for work, died crossing illegally into America? The Border Patrol collected 422 in the last fiscal year, part of a rising trend.

"And most die in the desert. Here is how Luis Alberto Urrea, in his book, 'The Devil's Highway,' described what happens:

"Dehydration had reduced all your inner streams to sluggish mudholes. . . . Your sweat runs out. . . . Your temperature redlines — you hit 105, 106, 108 degrees. . . . Your muscles, lacking water, feed on themselves. They break down and start to rot. . . . The system closes down in a series. Your kidney, your bladder, your heart.'

"Yet these deaths figure little in the debate over immigration. There is faint sense of scandal, of tragedy or, certainly, of urgency to agree on a solution. The extremists rule, with one side calling for more enforcement and the other saying enforcement doesn't work.

"The former has the louder voice today, making it the bigger culprit, but the latter — humanitarian groups, for one — share in the blame. They seem not to find any enforcement policy they like, abandoning responsibility.

"The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, is caught in the middle, a Gulliver tied by Lilliputians and unable to take command of the fight."

Schumacher-Matos is a former editor and reporter with the New York Times and Wall Street Journal with extensive experience in Florida and Latin America. He writes pieces every other Sunday for the Miami Herald, "taking up issues in the news, answering questions from readers and critiquing how The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald handle topics of significance."

The Associated Press piece he referenced, by Amanda Lee Myers, showed up in only a handful of papers, according to a Nexis search. It did not make the comparison with Afghanistan deaths, as Schumacher-Matos did.

• Ruben Navarrette Jr., Washington Post Writers Group: Silent Immigration 'Reform' 
• Raul Reyes, USA Today: Arizona pols stoke immigration myths
• Albor Ruiz, New York Daily News: Join New York rally against Arizona immigration law and Jan Brewer
• Bob Ray Sanders, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: Fort Worth rancher changes mind on illegal immigrants 

President Obama hoped that his signing of financial-reform legislation Wednesday would dominate White House news, but the Shirley Sherrod affair eclipsed it. (Credit: Lawrence Jackson/White House)

Sherrod Affair Provides Fodder for Another News Cycle

President Obama and his aides made sure to note that the 24-hour news cycle and the failure of the news media to do due diligence was partly to blame for the embarrassing debacle in which black Agriculture Department staffer Shirley Sherrod was unjustly fired over an out-of-context tape excerpt that portrayed her as biased against whites.

Many in the news media asked themselves whether they had forgotten basic rules of the profession — and then reiterated them.

Commentators took the occasion to examine how difficult it was for the nation — and the administration headed by the first black president — to talk about race.

Some did anyway. The Albany (N.Y.) Times Union, for example, paired its editorial on the Sherrod affair with another about racist language used by local officials. The mayor of nearby Cobbleskill resigned, "unable to explain why he might have used one of the most racist words imaginable." The editorial recalled that "James Tuffey's downfall as Albany police chief came as he was accused of saying that a white college student murdered in 2008 'wasn't just some spook.' "

The National Association of Black Journalists was trying to secure Sherrod for its convention in San Diego next week.

A longer-than-usual syndicated column by Roland S. Martin, "The Perils of Race in the 21st Century," included this mea culpa: "Was I wrong in assuming that we had the full story of Sherrod at the outset? Yes. Was a snap judgment made based upon that? Yes. Has it happened before? Of course!"

Friday's edition of the subscription-only tip sheet the Frontrunner attempted to summarize the news coverage of the preceding 24 hours:

"For a second day, the Shirley Sherrod story dominated national news coverage, with the President personally calling Sherrod and giving a TV interview in which he faulted USDA chief Tom Vilsack's handling of the controversy. Referring to Vilsack, Obama told ABC World News (7/22, story 2, 2:50, Leamy, 8.2M), 'He jumped the gun partly because we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles. And I told my team, and I told my agencies that we have to make sure we're focusing on doing the right thing instead of what looks to be politically necessary at that very moment. We have to take our time and think these issues through.'

"On TV, the story led ABC News and ran third and fourth respectively on the line-ups of NBC [Nightly] News and the CBS Evening News. The networks also ran follow-up pieces, and devoted a combined total of 12 minutes to the story, up from 11 minutes and 40 seconds the night before. National print outlets, meanwhile, continue to devote headlines (though not on their front pages) to recounting and analyzing the facts. Both on TV and print, the President's call to Sherrod is being generally described in positive terms, but analysts are still calling the story a political loser for the White House, as it distracts public attention from the President's signing of legislation to shore up the economy and instead places the spotlight on the divisive issue of race. . . .

"The AP (7/23, Jalonick) reports that Sherrod has not shied 'away from telling her story on television. She hopped from network to network' and let 'CNN film part of her call with Obama as she traveled the streets of New York City in a car.' . . .

"The New York Times (7/23, Stolberg, 1.09M) reports that in the aftermath of the Sherrod flap, Wade Henderson, president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and Charles J. Ogletree Jr., 'a Harvard law professor who represented [Henry Louis] Gates, suggested the president should now convene a national conference on race relations. Ward Connerly, a black conservative who leads an institute devoted to fighting racial preferences, endorsed the idea.' Axelrod, however, 'threw cold water on the notion, saying Mr. Obama has 'pressing matters that are significant to all Americans,' like the economy."

"The CBS Evening News (7/22, story 4, 2:15, Couric, 6.1M) reported that 'the Sherrod case has put a spotlight on the USDA's long history of discrimination against black farmers.' . . .

"Politico (7/23, Vogel, 25K) reports, 'An unrepentant Andrew Breitbart told POLITICO on Thursday that the Obama administration and its allies have manufactured a controversy over the video he posted of...Sherrod's speech to the NAACP as part of an orchestrated effort to take him down.'"

• ABC News: 'GMA' Transcript: President Obama on Financial Reform, Elizabeth Warren and Shirley Sherrod
• Will Bunch, Huffington Post: The Story Behind the 1965 Killing of Sherrod's Dad
• Jonathan Capehart, Washington Post: Shirley Sherrod: 'Where are we headed?'
• Ta-Nehisi Coates blog, the Atlantic: On Lacking All Conviction
• Cary Clack, San Antonio Express-News: Learning to appreciate that which unites us
• Merlene Davis, Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader: It's time to move past Obama's skin color
• Paul Delaney on "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," WAMU-FM, Washington: Media and Racism (audio)
• Stephane Dunn, New Black Man: The Sherrod Effect
• Editorial, Albany (N.Y.) Times-Union: A casualty of hate talk ...
• Editorial, Los Angeles Times: Shirley Sherrod and a 'post-racial' America
• Editorial, Salem (Ore.) Statesman Journal: Lessons from the USDA-Shirley Sherrod debacle: Take time to learn the facts before judging others
• Editorial, Savannah (Ga.) Morning News: Sherrod firing: Drive-by shooting
• Matea Gold, Los Angeles Times: Bill O'Reilly apologizes to Shirley Sherrod for 'not doing my homework'
• Rick Horowitz, Huffington Post: The Shirley Sherrod Story: Breitbart Plays the Media Card
• Clyde Hughes blog, The Media: Why we suck! Shirley Sherrod and fairness
• Earl Ofari Hutchinson, syndicated: Black farmers are the real victims of USDA discrimination
• Institute for Southern Studies: The real story of racism at the USDA
• Bill Krueger, Poynter Institute: Bloggers Just As Squeamish Covering Race as Traditional Media
• Errol Louis, New York Daily News: Breitbart & Co. trash the truth: USDA official Shirley Sherrod was just the most recent casualty
• Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times: White House fails to stand up to GOP pundits
• Steve Myers, Poynter Institute: Shirley Sherrod Story Shows Waves and Undercurrents in a Media Tsunami
• Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Right words on race get harder to hear
• Michael O'Brien, the Hill: Black Caucus head: Government ‘held hostage’ by Fox and other media
• Richard Prince discusses Wednesday's column with Keith Murphy on XM Satellite/Sirius Radio: The Urban Journal (7/23 pt. 1)
• Richard Prince and Andy Carvin with Michel Martin on "Tell Me More," NPR: The Tricky Ethics Of Video In A YouTube Era
• Rem Rieder, American Journalism Review: The lessons of the Shirley Sherrod fiasco
• Rochelle Riley, Detroit Free Press: Shirley Sherrod, Fox, NAACP, USDA and Obama
• Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: Obama needs to stand up to 'reverse racism' ploy
• Tony Rogers, About.com: Lessons Journalists Can Learn From the Shirley Sherrod Video Fiasco
• Greg Sargent, Washington Post: Calling out news media in Sherrod flap
• Craig Silverman, Regret the Error: Breitbart’s Shirley Sherrod correction leaves much to be desired
• David Squires, Daily Press, Newport News, Va.: Amos & Andy without black face
• Elmer Smith, Philadelphia Daily News: Breitbart's a hack who doesn't know right-wing from wrong
• Mark Streeter cartoon, Savannah (Ga.) Morning News: Teachable Moments and Lessons Unlearned
• Jim Naureckas, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting: In USA Today, Breitbart's Old Lies Live On
  • E.R. Shipp, theRoot.com: Rangel Defiant
  • Alex Weprin, TVNewser: Charles Rangel Apologizes to Luke Russert Following Heated Exchange 
  • Wayne Dawkins, Politicsincolor.com: Vacation over; pressure Obama, docile African-American voters

Daniel Schorr Helped Give Credence to Rights Movement

Veteran newsman Daniel Schorr, a pioneer of broadcast journalism who was part of Edward R. Murrow’s legendary CBS team, died peacefully Friday after a short illness at age 93, his family informed NPR, the public radio network announced on Friday.

Journalists of color remembered Schorr in the context of his times and for the friendship he offered.

Schorr "was part of the generation of white reporters that gave credence to the movement by covering it fairly, meaning, shining light on the horrors of jim crow, voting denial & lynching, forcing white americans to finally confront those realities," Paul Delaney, a retired senior editor at the New York Times who was among the first generation of black reporters at the outset of the civil rights movement, said by e-mail. "Dan, along with Gene Roberts, Claude Sitton, John Herbers, Karl Fleming, Reese Cleghorn, Sandy Vanocur, Johnny Popham, Herb Kaplow, Fred Powledge & Jack Nelson, put rights issues on front pages of major papers & on the evening news, w/o much of the racist slant of most southern media," Delaney continued.

"I have soooo many stories of working with Dan Schorr but the main thing I got from him was that no matter who is on the other side of the table or microphone, they are to be treated with dignity," Doug Mitchell, chair of the Media Institute of the National Association of Black Journalists, wrote to the NABJ e-mail list. Sometime between 1989 and 1992, when he was Schorr's producer at NPR, Mitchell went with Schorr to meet former president Richard M. Nixon, whose administration had placed him on its "enemies list."

Schorr's manners were on display. "My parents taught me that. Dan's actions simply reinforced it," Mitchell said. "It was an honor to be his producer for the short time I was in that role."

Another former NPR colleague, Eugene Holley, told Journal-isms in a Facebook message, "I never told this to anyone. When I was an Intern at NPR on M St. my boss, Thurston Briscoe, gave me my first assignment: A Morning Edition arts feature on jazz pianist Kirk Lightsey, scheduled for airing on Jan. 1, 1987. I was in the editing booth the day before the air date — crashing, depressed, and angry because it wasn't coming together. I was near tears, and I was getting ready to quit, when Mr. Schorr appeared out of nowhere, and without saying a word, he put his hand on my shoulder, gave me a warm smile and gave me the confidence to go on... Thank you Mr. Schorr!

N.Y. Times Spurred Investigation of Rangel in '08

"A House ethics panel’s ruling that Charlie Rangel violated congressional rules is big news all around today, as it should be," Holly Yeager wrote for the Columbia Journalism Review. "But it’s worth noting that The New York Times got this ball rolling with some pretty good, old-fashioned, investigative journalism, and disappointing that other media organizations aren’t acknowledging that in their coverage.

"The hard work from the Times on the Rangel beat started a little more than two years ago. . . .

"The NYT did a lot of hard work on this story. Giving the paper credit isn’t just about good manners, or about making it easy for readers to understand exactly how all this got started and what’s an original bit of reporting and what isn’t — though we’re definitely in favor of all of that.

"It’s about supporting other organizations when they take on difficult, and risky, projects, and the hard work of good journalism. After all, with risk should come some reward."

Pitts: Mosque Near Ground Zero Reaffirms U.S. Values

The career of syndicated Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. took off after Sept. 11, 2001, when he wrote a column on the terrorist attacks that drew more than 26,000 e-mails and was posted on the Internet, chain-letter style. "You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard," Pitts wrote, addressing the terrorists. He went on to win a 2004 Pulitzer Prize.

So it is of interest that Pitts came down this week on the side of those who want to build a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero, an idea that has drawn outrage.

"Yes, putting that building in that place might be painful and provocative," Pitts wrote on Wednesday, "but it would also be a reminder of the very values the terrorists sought to kill. And we seem to need that reminder more everyday."



Howard Dodson, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, participated last weekend in the Harlem Book Fair. He plans to retire in 2011. (Video) (Credit: C-Span)

Scholar Calls for More Black History, Not Less

Increasingly each February, African American columnists have taken to debating the idea of Black History Month, especially since the 2008 election of President Obama and the supposedly "postracial" era that ushered in. Howard Dodson plans to retire next year as director of New York's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. On his radio talk show Wednesday, Michael Eric Dyson, the Georgetown University professor, asked Dodson, "What do you think about this move to get rid of black history?"

Dodson replied:

"What we think we know about American history, a significant percentage of it is false. Not only [does] the black community need to be, if you will, interrogating its past, and bringing its voice to the definition of what is American history, but many of the other groups, including many of the white ethnic groups, are actually voiceless in the contemporary writing of American history.

"There's this magical thing that happens in these two major periods in most of the textbooks, where you have whites coming in from Europe as Irish, Italian, etc., and during the Colonial period and during the late 19th century, they arrive and they are recognized for the people that they are. And then they mysteriously become 'white,' and somehow or another they cease to be Irish, Italian and all of the rest of that. And anybody in their right mind knows that economic and political and social power in America is organized on the basis of race and ethnicity, and so any American history that doesn't tell that story is not telling the truth.

"The same thing is true about the black experience. If we understand the truth about the black experience, what people claim to be the interpretation of American history has to in fact be rewritten and rethought, and contextualized.

"I'll say this for your audience. One of those basic demographic facts that insists that we do some rewriting: Between 1492 and 1776 and (for) roughly the first 300 years of what we call the European colonization of America, 6½ million people crossed the Atlantic, and settled in the Americas — North, Central and South America and the Caribbean.

"Of those original pioneering 6½ million people, only 1 million of them were European. The other 5½ million were African. And the history that we have of, not just of the United States but of the Americas, does not reflect that demographic fact. And until the truth is told about those, if you will, pioneer people — those pioneer African people, and their role in shaping, defining the culture and character of the Americas, we're living a bunch of lies.

"And I just feel that not only should black history continue, there needs to be more of it. And quite frankly, black history should be called a defining element in determining the character of American history if we are going to have what we call a true history. It's time that we redouble the effort."