MSNBC Makes Gains With Black Audience
The network grew its African-American viewership by 60 percent.
To Succeed, "We Had to Reflect the Country"
MSNBC ". . . enjoyed significant (around 20%) ratings increases across the board" in 2012, "but made astonishing gains with their already-large African American audience, growing that audience by 60.5% for the Mon-Sun 8pm-11pm period," Tommy Christopher reported Monday for Mediaite.
"MSNBC President Phil Griffin told me, in a phone interview, that he is 'thrilled' with that result, and that it 'says a lot about what we've been doing over the last few years.'
"In that same time period, CNN grew its black audience by 23.7% (from 131,000 in 2011 to 162,000 in 2012, 23.9% of their total audience), while Fox News' declined by 23.7% (38,000 in 2011 to 29,000 in 2012, 1.4% of their total audience), but MSNBC had more black viewers than both of those nets combined (from 177,000 in 2011 to 284,000 in 2012, 31.4% of their total audience).
"What's more impressive is that MSNBC attained 60% growth after being number one in that demographic last year, and the year before.
" 'This has been steady growth for us for some time,' Griffin noted. 'I think we made a commitment, we decided, that in order for this channel to succeed, that we had to reflect the country. This meant that we had to be part of the country in ways that the other channels weren't.'
"Part of that commitment, according to Griffin, is the 'look' of the channel. 'We have a diverse on-air group of people,' Griffin said, 'because that matters, and people want to know that we reflect their world. And it's not just a single show - [it's] across the board. You look at the guests every hour and we make sure that we have women, African Americans, everything, and I think to spend a day watching MSNBC is to see America as we have seen it.'
"That diverse array of talent, including hosts like Tamron Hall, Touré, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Rev. Al Sharpton, and ubiquitous contributors like Joy Reid, Goldie Taylor, Karen Finney, Prof. Michael Eric Dyson, [former Republican National Committee] Chairman Michael Steele, Eugene Robinson, and Jonathan Capehart, is an organic result of the network's editorial philosophy, rather than an end unto itself, says Griffin.
" 'It wasn't like we said "Oh, we have to have a diverse person on here and there," ' he said. 'We made a decision. We made a commitment in ideas, issues and everything - the audience followed, and that goes back to four or five years ago. As we grew, we recognized that it was the right thing to do. It's giving a voice to people in these kinds of programs who don't always get a voice. Our look is as diverse as any on mainstream TV. I'm incredibly proud of it. It's not like we decided 'We're going to increase our African American viewership by 60%,' but I'm thrilled that it happened, and it says a lot about what we've been doing over the last few years.' . . . "
An MSNBC spokeswoman was unable to provide figures for Hispanic and Asian viewership.
Wayne Bennett, the Field Negro: MSNBC OR BET?
Commentator's 30-Day Suspension Made Permanent
Rob Parker's 30-day suspension for comments he made on ESPN's "First Take" has become permanent, ESPN announced Tuesday.
"Rob Parker's contract expired at year's end. Evaluating our needs and his work, including his recent RGIII comments, we decided not to renew his deal," spokesman Josh Krulewitz said.
The announcement was made after Parker defended his comments once again on Detroit television Sunday, but Krulewitz told Journal-isms that the ESPN decision was based on his earlier "First Take" remarks.
In a story posted on the ESPN website, the network noted that during a Dec. 13 episode of "First Take" on ESPN2, Parker was discussing Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III's answer to a question about Griffin's role as an African American quarterback. "In questioning Griffin's 'blackness,' Parker cited that Griffin has a white fiancée and is rumored to be Republican."
Parker had said, "My question, which is just a straight, honest question, is ... is he a 'brother,' or is he a cornball 'brother'? He's not really ... he's black, but he's not really down with the cause. He's not one of us. He's kind of black, but he's not really like the guy you'd want to hang out with. I just want to find out about him. I don't know, because I keep hearing these things. . . ."
At first, ESPN said it was "conducting a full review." Then, on Dec. 20, the network said it had decided to suspend Parker for 30 days, tighten editorial oversight of the "First Take" show and was taking "appropriate disciplinary measures" against employees who played a role in allowing Parker's remarks on the air.
Richard Deitsch reported for Sports Illustrated on Tuesday that a "First Take" producer was suspended for a week. "Sources said other First Take behind the scenes staffers were disciplined," Deitsch wrote.
"With criticism of the show putting the network in a bad light, ESPN began enhanced editorial oversight on the program last week. Asked specifically what that oversight consisted of with the program, an ESPN spokesperson told SI.com on Tuesday that it meant active participation of ESPN's news desk in show planning meetings."
Parker did not keep silent during the suspension. He continued to work as a contributor to "Sports Final Edition," which airs Sunday nights on WDIV-TV, News Director Kim Voet told Journal-isms. He has been on the show since 1993.
James Jahnke reported in the Detroit Free Press Monday, "Asked on WDIV whether he could believe the force of the backlash, which resulted in a 30-day suspension, Parker said: "I can't believe it. Looking back on some of the comments, I can see where people could take it out of context and run with it. But the response and what happened over the past 30 days is just shocking."
"Parker said his comments were never meant to 'condemn the young man. RGIII is a great young man with a bright future. It was more about concerns, not condemning him.
" 'The one thing that I'm proud about being on that show, "First Take," for the last six years is that we are willing to tackle a lot of stuff that most shows won't even touch. I think it's important. I think we've done it in a really good way, and this is the first time, really, we've been in hot water.'
"Parker went on to say that 'you can't be afraid to talk about race. I haven't been my whole life ... that's what I bring to the table. I don't want to be a guy that's going to turn his back or run away from issues.' "
Parker could not be reached for comment after Tuesday's announcement that his ESPN contract was not renewed.
Heart & Soul Settling Dispute Over Back Pay
"It appears that the NWU has a settlement with the publishers of Heart & Soul magazine (H&S)," Barry Hock announced Wednesday for the National Writers Union. However, Larry Goldbetter, the union president, cautioned that nothing has been signed.
"We expect to have something signed by the end of the week," Goldbetter told Journal-isms by telephone.
Hock wrote, "NWU first got involved in this fight in October 2011. H&S focuses on health and wellness issues for black women -- unless, that is, you are one of the unpaid black women writers and editors who works there.
"H&S will sign a confession of judgment and pay the writers in six installments. The first payment was wired to an NWU member owed half the total amount and facing imminent foreclosure. As a result, she will keep her home. Another payment next week will keep another NWU member in her home.
"This is a big win and a good start to the New Year. It was made possible by the H&S writers themselves, who stuck together and kept organizing more writers to join the fight; the persistence of the NWU; and the UAW Legal Dept. closing the deal. As one writer said, 'Thanks [to] the whole NWU team! Your work is invaluable. I'm renewing my membership.' "
Journalist George Curry and his partners in Brown Curry Detry Taylor & Associates, LLC of Silver Spring, Md., announced in January 2012 that 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. Goldbetter told Journal-isms Wednesday that the figure now is 15 people owed $156,000.
Curry said in November that he had resigned as executive vice president/content and editorial director. Clarence I. Brown, president and CEO, and Patrick H. Detry, executive vice president, advertising, could not be reached Wednesday for comment.
Dean Orders Delay in FAMU Newspaper's Publication
Publication of the student newspaper at Florida A&M University, considered one of the best among historically black colleges and universities, is being "delayed" until Jan. 30, according to new Dean Ann Kimbrough of the School of Journalism & Graphic Communication, while she implements training for staff members.
"I did not do anything out of line," Kimbrough told Journal-isms by telephone on Wednesday. "There is nothing that I did that is not in keeping with our students' rights and privileges." She said "there had been neglect on the part of our administration" to ensure that students were sufficiently protected.
Students will continue working on the Famuan even though it will not be published, Kimbrough said.
Karl Etters, the student editor of the Famuan, had a different view. "I'm really hurt by it," he said of the delay. "This is my senior semester. Everyone is really excited to get started. It took the wind out of our sails. . . . We're being almost forced into opposing the administration." Etters noted that the delay would take place during President Obama's second inauguration and that some student journalists plan to be on buses to Washington.
Etters said he had talked with the Arlington, Va.-based Student Press Law Center, which advocates for student media.
"I'm frightened," Adam Goldstein, an attorney-advocate at the center, said of the development. "It really sounds like the dean is taking the position that the school can suspend publication for a month for no reason," he told Journal-isms by telephone. His organization issued a "news flash" on the development.
The publication delay is indirectly related to accreditation issues and to drum major Robert Champion's well-publicized hazing death in November 2011. "Investigations revealed many band members were not enrolled in the music course as required. Since then all student organizations on campus have come under more strict requirements," Jennifer Portman reported Wednesday in the Tallahassee Democrat.
Portman's story continued, "The publication postponement comes amid an ongoing review of the journalism school's student media outlets and associated student organizations, which revealed more than 20 of the roughly 100 various group members failed to meet grade-point and enrollment requirements last fall.
"Kimbrough, who came to FAMU as dean of the journalism school in August, said such requirements were in place but learned they weren't being followed after she ordered a check of student group member records from fall 2011 to fall 2012." She told Journal-isms that students are applying for the student newspaper positions because not all who were interested had a chance to do so.
". . . Such institutional control issues were among those flagged by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools last month when the accreditation body placed FAMU on a year's probation. State University System Chancellor Frank Brogan also recently pointed to the failure of FAMU personnel to enforce existing policies as contributing to deep-rooted problems at the university."
Moreover, "A Dec. 2, 2011, article in the student newspaper incorrectly stated senior Keon Hollis was one of four drum majors suspended in connection with Champion's death. Three days later, The Famuan posted a revised article on its website omitting Hollis' name and noting the fourth suspended student could not be identified. On Feb. 14, 2012, The Famuan published a correction, but the lawsuit noted it failed to say Hollis had nothing to do with Champion's death or the crime of hazing.
"Hollis' lawsuit, filed in Leon County Dec. 3 against the newspaper, university and its board of trustees, alleges the student newspaper failed to 'exercise ordinary care,' lacked a credible source for its information and failed to investigate what amounted to 'nothing more than unverified and unsubstantiated rumor and gossip.' The complaint contends Hollis' reputation was damaged by the implication he played a role in the hazing that killed Champion. No court dates have been set."
Andrew J. Skerritt, a veteran journalist who teaches journalism at FAMU, is no longer advising the Famuan, Kimbrough said. The change is "still a personnel issue" that took place "in another administration," she said, adding, "He's a stand-up guy."
Etters said he was "very, very upset" by Skerritt's departure as adviser. "Professor Skerritt has been my mentor since I've been at FAMU," he said. Skerritt has not responded to requests for comment.
N.Y. Times Blew Chance to Publish Famous King Letter
"Harvey Shapiro would have likely preferred to be remembered as a poet, and perhaps also as one of the better editors of the New York Times Book Review," Timothy Noah wrote Wednesday for the New Republic.
"But his Jan. 7 Times obituary plays up another aspect of his life of which I was previously unaware. It was Shapiro, then an editor at the New York Times Magazine, who assigned Martin Luther King Jr. to write his 1963 'Letter From Birmingham Jail,' [also called "Letter from Birmingham City Jail"] which today ranks as one of the preeminent literary-historical documents of the 20th century.
"The assignment would have assured Shapiro a place in magazine-editor heaven if the Times Magazine had published the result. But it didn't. Rejected, the letter ended up (under the headline, 'The Negro Is Your Brother') in the Atlantic."
". . . The Times, S. Jonathan Bass reports in Blessed Are The Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Eight White Religious Leaders, and the 'Letter From Birmingham Jail,' initially scheduled the letter for publication in late May. But first it wanted (in the recollection of King adviser Stanley Levison) a 'little introduction setting forth the circumstances of the piece.' Then it decided, no, what it really wanted was for King to 'write a feature article based on the letter.' Or, possibly, it wanted both. Before King had a chance to jump through these hoops, the New York Post (in those distant days a plausible rival to the Times) got a copy of the letter and published unauthorized excerpts, killing the Times's interest. . . ."
Addressing black journalists in 1984, King lieutenant Andrew Young used King's jailhouse letter to illustrate the power of the written word. He said at a convention of the National Association of Black Journalists in Atlanta:
"We give a lot of credit to the demonstrations in the civil rights movement. But those demonstrations wouldn't have meant a thing in Birmingham had it not been for the letter from a Birmingham jail," Young said. "It was the articulation of the ideas coming from that black community in an eloquent written statement by Martin Luther King, a statement that he wrote around the ridges of the New York Times. They wouldn't let him have any paper to write on, but they would bring the newspapers, so every day he would write on the margins of the newspaper and would get it out, and when he got through with that, he would write on the toilet paper that was left.
"And the secretary that transcribed it didn't have sense enough to keep it, because we are not appreciative of the written word. We don't understand that the pen is as powerful - more powerful - than the sword, still in this day and time."
David Griner, Poynter Institute: How KKK rally image found new life 20 years after it was published
Reporter Faults Paternalism After Haiti Quake
A reporter who stayed in Haiti for more than a year after its devastating January 2010 earthquake estimates that of the $2.43 billion spent on ostensible humanitarian relief by the end of 2010, a mere 7 percent actually made its way to Haiti, Justin Peters reported Wednesday in Columbia Journalism Review.
Peters reviews Jonathan Katz's "The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left a Disaster."
". . . Katz, a former AP correspondent, was the only full-time American reporter stationed in Haiti when the quake hit; he stayed for more than a year thereafter, reporting on the charitable aftershocks - as small donations were mishandled by ngos [non-governmental organizations], as big donations never materialized, and as the world gradually lost interest and left Haiti to fend for itself.
"The book is both a primer on how and why reconstructions fail, and an indictment of the benign paternalism that motivates donors, developers, and other do-gooders to impose their will on distraught places that they pity but don't bother to understand.
". . . Throughout, Katz questions the wisdom of entrusting the reconstruction to people who didn't live in Haiti, weren't personally affected by the earthquake, and would be on the first plane out when telegenic tragedy struck elsewhere.
". . . The Big Truck That Went By is, among other things, a testament to the value of journalists who are actually familiar with the countries they cover; of [searchers] like Jonathan Katz, who reject the oversimplified narratives that characterize so much of crisis journalism, and know that the more time you spend in a troubled place, the harder it becomes to understand. Shortly after the earthquake, he writes, foreign journalists played a game in which they attempted to describe Haiti in a single word. 'Diseased' was one entry. 'Violent' was another. Katz's response was different. 'I took the paper and wrote: HERE.' "
Notah Begay, Rare Indian on PGA Tour, Joins NBC
"The next time Notah Begay is inside the ropes on the PGA Tour, he'll be holding a microphone instead of a golf club," Doug Ferguson reported for the Associated Press Wednesday from Kapalua, Hawaii.
"Begay starts a new line of work this week at the Sony Open as a full-time member of the broadcast team for NBC Sports and Golf Channel. He will be a walking course reporter at Waialae Country Club.
"An opening was created when Dottie Pepper, who joined the board of the PGA of America, retired from NBC last year to pursue programs geared toward junior golf.
"Begay is a Navajo, the only full-blooded American Indian to play on the PGA Tour. He won four times on the Tour until his career was slowed by back injuries.
". . . A former teammate of Tiger Woods at Stanford, Begay has been devoting much of his time to his foundation that he established in 2005, providing health and wellness education for Indian youth. He hosts the annual NB3 Challenge at Turning Stone Resort and Casino in New York, which attracts Woods and other top players. . . ."
"Tita" Dioso Gillespie, Editor at Newsweek, Dies at 70
"Teresita 'Tita' Dioso Gillespie, a longtime editor at 'Newsweek' magazine, died on December 18 at the Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury, Maryland, after suffering several complications following a heart attack a few weeks ago," GMA News Online, which calls itself "The Go-To Site for Filipinos Everywhere," reported on Tuesday.
"She was 70 and is survived by her husband of 42 years, Brette Gillespie, a retired Navy officer.
"Ms. Gillespie was a trailblazer for Asian women - and Filipino women in particular - in the field of magazine editing. In its June 2000 issue, 'Filipinas' magazine gave Gillespie an Achievement Award for being the first Filipina to serve as 'Newsweek's' general editor, noting 'Gillespie belongs to a short list of top-caliber Filipino journalists who have increasing influence in the international print media.'
"She took her role as a pioneering Filipina editor in the U.S. seriously, speaking about her experiences at seminars and mentoring several Asian American journalists, including her nephew, John Dioso, who went on to become a managing editor of 'Rolling Stone,' 'Martha Stewart Living' and 'Us Weekly.' . . . "
"Django Unchained" and "Lincoln," two films addressing slavery, won multiple Academy Award nominations, Philip Yu reported Thursday for Yahoo News. "Django Unchained" was nominated for best picture, best supporting actor (Christoph Waltz), best original screenplay, best cinematography and best sound editing. "Lincoln" led with 12 nominations: best picture, best actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), best supporting actress (Sally Field); best supporting actor (Tommy Lee Jones), best director (Steven Spielberg), best adapted screenplay, best cinematography, best costume design, best film editing, best original score, best production design and best sound mixing. Denzel Washington was nominated for best actor for "Flight." [Added Jan. 10]
. . When Bridgette Lacy lost her state government job, she created a new career for herself [audio], writing an unemployment column for the News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina," Dick Gordon reported Tuesday for "Jobs in America," a series he began on his "The Story" radio program on American Public Media. Lacy has been a reporter in Binghamton, N.Y., and Raleigh, N.C., and has written fiction and battled a brain tumor.
Two weeks ago, the Journal-News published the names and addresses of handgun permit holders -- a total of 33,614 -- in the two suburban New York counties in which it circulates, Westchester and Rockland, and put maps of their locations online, Christine Haughney reported Sunday in the New York Times. Since then, "Personal information about editors and writers at the paper has been posted online, including their home addresses and information about where their children attended school; some reporters have received notes saying they would be shot on the way to their cars; bloggers have encouraged people to steal credit card information of Journal News employees; and two packages containing white powder have been sent to the newsroom and a third to a reporter's home (all were tested by the police and proved to be harmless). . . . "
Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy tied the "bad karma" that accompanies the name of the Washington Redskins NFL team to the team's playoff loss Sunday. "So, Washington football fans, how's that offensive team name and demeaning sports mascot working out?" Milloy wrote Tuesday. "Whooping and hollering as RGIII goes on a 'Redskins' warpath only to leave a trail of tears when his wounded knee gets buried at FedEx Field," he continued in a reference to quarterback Robert Griffin III. Meanwhile, D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray suggested that any deal to move the stadium within city limits would require a name change, or at least discussion of one, the Post's Mike DeBonis reported.
" 'Reportero,' which debuted Monday night on POV on PBS, follows a veteran reporter and his colleagues at Zeta, a Tijuana-based independent newsweekly, 'as they stubbornly ply their trade in one of the deadliest places in the world for members of the media,' " Kevin Roderick noted Tuesday for LAObserved. ". . . Watch the trailer below or stream the entire 55-minute film online until February 6."
In Pittsburgh, NewsGuild, also known as The Newspaper Guild-CWA, denounced Pittsburgh police Wednesday over an incident in which Jonathan Silver and Liz Navratil of the Post-Gazette "wrote a polite, professional email to the department's public information officer about a New Years' homicide/suicide and the police response to it. The email described what the reporters knew about the incident, followed by a detailed series of questions. Their response came via press release sent to 200 reporters: The chief's office would be making no statement about the investigation. Instead, police attached the full transcript of Silver and Navratil's email and all of their questions, revealing the extent of the reporters' own investigation." Diane Richard, the department's public information officer who was identified as having sent out the press release, did not respond to an email from Journal-isms.
In China, "Propaganda officials in the southern province of Guangdong have agreed to loosen some controls over an embattled newspaper whose struggle against censorship has galvanized free-speech advocates across China, according to journalists at the newspaper," Edward Wong and Jonathan Ansfield reported Wednesday in the New York Times.
"The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today has called on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU) to mobilize and address the security of journalists after the arrests and detention in communicado of a journalist in The Gambia," the federation said on Tuesday. "Authorities in The Gambia must reveal the whereabouts of journalist Abdoulie John and release him immediately. This journalist was literally kidnapped yesterday by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA). He is in grave danger since he has been undertaking never ending questionings at the NIA all these last two weeks."
The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA)-Swaziland Wednesday condemned the violent assault of Swazi Observer journalist Eugene Dube on Friday while he was covering a funeral in an area where the chieftancy was in dispute. When a deputy sheriff stopped the funeral, the mob began "meting out mob justice" to the deputy, then turned on the journalist, who was taking pictures. Soldiers came to his rescue.
"At least five independent bloggers were sentenced today to harsh jail terms in Vietnam, according to local and international news reports," the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday. The committee condemned the sentences and called on Vietnamese authorities to reverse the charges on appeal and release the bloggers.
"A radio journalist in Tanzania's western region of Kigoma was found dead on Tuesday with medical reports showing that he was hanged by unknown assailants," the Xinhua News Agency reported. "Police identified the journalist as 45-year-old Issa Ngumba working with an independent radio station called Radio Kwizera. . . . Observers in Kakonko said Ngumba's death might be connected to his report about a pastoralist, Imani Paulo, who was reported to have eaten parts of his shepherd's body."
"The International Press Institute's (IPI) Nepal National Committee today welcomed the decision of police in Dailekh, in mid-western Nepal, to prosecute suspects allegedly involved in the 2004 abduction and subsequent killing of Dailekh-based journalist Dekendra Thapa," the IPI said Tuesday. "Dailekh district police arrested five individuals all belonging to the then-Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)."
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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.
'Django Unchained' Action Figure Stokes Debate
Among journalists, reactions to the toys were mostly a version of "Oh, no, they didn't!"
Some Editors Failed to See No-Brainer Story
The controversy over Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained," in which slavery is the backdrop for a spaghetti Western, ratcheted up a notch over the weekend when freelance entertainment journalist Karu F. Daniels, writing in the Daily Beast, reported that the movie characters -- slaves and slavemaster -- are being marketed as action figures.
"Little White kids can play Calvin J. Candie and make Django and Stephen 'Mandingo fight' or they act like they're selling Broomhilda or just call them 'nigger' all day long. The possibilities are endless," Columbus, Ohio, blogger Jeff Winbush wrote on Facebook when he heard the news.
On amazon.com Monday, a customer reviewer identified as E. Tucker wrote:
"I have to say, I never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that, unlike myself, my kids would someday have the opportunity to re-enact America's slave trade the way my great-grandfather did! How exciting for them! Never mind those silly dolls showing racial equality and putting "black americans" (hah! is that the word we want to really use here?) in a positive light -- no! With this, my kids can experience first-hand what it might have been like to own their very own slave! . . . "
By Monday, Hassan Hartley of Chicago had started a petition on change.org asking Tarantino to "Stop the sale and distribution of 'slave' action figures." And in Los Angeles, "A coalition of civil rights and African-American community leaders," led by Najee Ali of Project Islamic Hope, planned a news conference for Tuesday calling for a national boycott of the action figures, EURWeb.com reported.
As news, the story was a no-brainer, right? Wrong, Daniels told Journal-isms. "This story shouldn't have been ignored -- especially by editors at mainstream outlets," he said by email. "i was even shocked. I pitched this two weeks ago to prominent 'news' outlets. so happy the Daily Beast editor (who's British) GOT IT." The British editor was Gabe Doppelt; Daniels wouldn't identify those who turned it down, saying he still does business with them.
Asked for comment, the Daily Beast provided this statement from Allison Samuels, the senior writer who edited the piece:
"An action figure made of a black man, real or fictitious is not something that happens every day so we felt it was well worth discussing. Given the controversy already swirling around 'Django' taking a deeper look at a doll based on a freed slave has certainly been of great interest to our readers on The Daily Beast."
Here's how the story made it online, as Daniels explained it in an email:
"I got a press release about the product line/partnership a few months before the movie came out, but seeing the actual images of them later on took it to another level. I didn't see the movie until after it opened. I'm no Spike Lee, but something about it didn't sit too right with me," Daniels said.
"And I like some of Tarantino's stuff and love the actors' works. But the idea of dolls -- which were put on sale a week before -- stirred something inside of me. Granted, there's an 'action figure' of the Brad Pitt character from 'Inglourious Basterds.' I saw that was selling for $700. But he wasn't a slave. Certain types of people can try to rationalize it how they want to, but the fact remains: none of those characters in Tarantino's other movies were slaves.
"If you want take [a] light and lively approach to the 'idea of these dolls,' Django could work (he was free, kicking ass and taking names throughout most of the movie. But Stephen and Broomhilda weren't. And that's not funny.)
"The radio silence about the dolls was quite jarring, to say the least. I'm always encouraged to pitch pieces that are 'broad' and 'timely' to editors. And you can't get no more broad and timely than this piece. Hollywood and the entertainment media have had a romantic love affair with this movie. People can form their own opinions why. So it's pretty obvious why some outlets wouldn't touch it. And The Weinstein Company spent a lot of dollars in advertising. But the facts are the facts. The dolls were made and marketed in tandem with a controversial movie about slavery."
In his Daily Beast story, Daniels wrote, ". . . Last fall, the National Entertainment Collectibles Association, Inc. (NECA), in tandem with the Weinstein Company, announced a full line of consumer products based on characters from the movie. . . . After repeated attempts to get someone to go on record about the collection, NECA spokesperson Leonardo Saraceni declined to make anyone available, would not comment and referred all queries to the Weinstein Company. No one at the Weinstein Company was available for comment by deadline and no one responded to questions posed."
Daniels continued for Journal-isms, "In a sense, I understand why publicists from the movie studio and toy company wouldn't speak, but getting some of our folks to talk was another ball of wax. I reached out to many talking heads, pundits and self-styled image experts, who I thought would've been perfect for the piece. All silent.
"At first I thought it was the holiday weekend. But it's 2013. People are more accessible than ever before. How do you think I corralled an Academy Award winner (Louis Gossett, Jr.) and a real, legendary image activist (Bethann Hardison). I was told by a black film expert that they couldn't talk to me for the piece because they didn't want to infuriate Harvey Weinstein.
"Another told me, 'oh, it's just a movie. It's just toys.' Contrast always makes a great story and I was really hoping for more of a reaction from some but it's like what Nick Charles (a former boss) used to say to me, 'everyone is always waiting for the shoe to drop.' And once the story finally went live on Sunday, the social networks were ablaze."
. . . Movie's Critics Say, "Oh, No, They Didn't!"
Among journalists, the most common reaction to the news of the "Django Unchained" action figures was a version of "oh, no, they didn't!"
Journal-isms asked some who had written or otherwise opined about director Quentin Tarantino's so-called "revenge fantasy" whether the existence of the action figures should change one's opinion about the movie and/or the phenomenon. They replied by email:
Amy Alexander, media writer
News of the "Django Unchained" 'action figures' creates a bad taste, doesn't it? Even if it is the case that the studio marketing division cooked up this 'tie in,' it still ultimately circles back to the creative team behind the film itself, in particular Tarantino. At the very least, it is in poor taste, considering the fact that the bondage of blacks is the main theme of the story. It does make you wonder who officially 'green-lit' such a dubious and insulting marketing strategy. And correctly or not, it feeds the escalating criticism of Tarantino as an out of control hipster who thinks he gets 'the Black Thing' but doesn't really.
Amy Alexander website: Three Ways of Considering Tarantino's "Django Unchained"
Jelani Cobb, associate professor of history and director of the Institute of African American Studies, University of Connecticut
It doesn't change my opinion of the movie since I thought the film was exploitative of slavery in the first place. I do think this adds a new level of distaste. It should be fairly obvious that making slave action figures is problematic. That the studio didn't recognize this supports my belief that this director lacked the sensitivity to handle a project like this.
Jelani Cobb, the New Yorker: Tarantino Unchained (Jan. 2)
Jarvis DeBerry, columnist, NOLA.com | the Times-Picayune, New Orleans
In his book "Why Black People Tend to Shout," Ralph Wiley talks about taking a field trip from school -- I think it was to the circus -- and being sold a Confederate battle flag that he proudly waved all the way back home. When he walked into the house, his mother took a match and incinerated it.
I wish I had a story as dramatic, but I don't. I seem to recall a Hot Wheels car in my house -- OK, in my room -- that had the Confederate flag logo on it. It was the General Lee of "Dukes of Hazard" fame. I bring that up to say that I guess there's a history of regrettable images fashioned into toys.
I'm going to link to this email a column I wrote a while back not about toys but about play, and how even that can be fraught for black children.
I wouldn't necessarily mind the figure of Django being sold as an action figure, but if you sell Django, it would seem to me, you'd have to sell his nemeses. And in that, you're going to run into problems. Who's going to buy the white action figures? White children? And do we really want them to play the role of little budding slave owners? And if black children buy the white slave owner figures, then we got a whole 'nother problem on our hands.
I don't know that this information changes my mind about the movie itself. There's enough reason already to raise eyebrows at Tarantino. But it does make me shake my head and wish somebody had -- to borrow a line from Blazing Saddles -- cut this off at the pass.
Jarvis DeBerry, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune: 'Django' expresses an anger not every filmmaker can show (Dec. 31)
Tony Norman, columnist, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
I think I dislike the film even more, now . . . LOL! Action figures? Really? A Stephen doll? I know there's an unseemly nostalgia in some quarters for Jim Crow and slavery-related collectibles, but this is ridiculous. This is either a very elaborate joke or a sign that we're on the verge of losing our collective minds. This is what happens when we go out of our way not to talk about race. The conversation we should be having gets sublimated into soul sucking nonsense like this. Who will buy this? Irony-drenched white hipsters? Blacks with non-existent self-esteem? Clueless movie nerds? If nothing else avails itself, I'll write a parody column for Friday. Tomorrow's column is already written.
Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: 'Django' tells tale missing real slave history (Dec. 25)
Ishmael Reed, poet, novelist, cultural critic
It's like a virtual slave auction and shows that Weinstein and Co. will go to any length to make money from this vile film, which, like "Amistad," "Lincoln" and "Django Unchained" has blacks as onlookers, while whites debate their fate, when, without black direct action, there would have been no Emancipation. My idea for an action figure would be one showing [Jamie] Foxx carrying [Leonardo] Di Caprio and [Christoph] Waltz on his back, because they're getting all of the nominations, while, so far, Foxx and Kerry Washington are receiving none. This latest racist travesty is not unique in Hollywood, which makes you wonder why there has been no outcry about segregated Hollywood's receiving over $400 million in tax write-offs, while the latest figures show $10 billion in earnings.
Finally, the spin from Weinstein Co. is that this movie is similar to Tarantino's other mess, "Inglorious Basterds." Not so. In "Django Unchained," the leader of the state, "Hitler," is murdered. Foxx does not get to murder the prospective confederate president Jefferson Davis. That would have turned off southern audiences, who have had a veto over Hollywood content for decades. [W.E.B.] Du Bois, [Marcus] Garvey and Walter White would turn over in their graves to see this thing nominated for awards by the NAACP.
Ishmael Reed, Wall Street Journal: Black Audiences, White Stars and 'Django Unchained' (Dec. 28)
Touré, co-host, "The Cycle," MSNBC; contributor, Time magazine
I will never understand how Django action figures are somehow over the line for some people.
Touré, blog: Django Unchained is a heroic love story (Dec. 24)
Touré, "The Cycle," MSNBC: America is ready for 'Django Unchained' (video)
Jeff Winbush, blogger, Columbus, Ohio:
I broke down, woke up Saturday morning, grabbed my son and went off to catch a screening of Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino's mash-up of spaghetti westerns, blaxploitation films and revenge fantasies. I came out two hours and 45 minutes later feeling it wasn't Tarantino's best and it wasn't his worst. It was okay. Nothing more. It certainly never rose above pure escapist fare. I have no problem with junk food movies, but let's not pretend like Tarantino has anything new, fresh or original to say about race or slavery. He just knows how to kill the maximum number of cartoon bigots in the most graphic way possible.
However, the Django action figures go far beyond bad taste. It's not kitsch. It's not memorabilia. It's not a gag. It's making a buck off the backs of Black people and it's insensitive as hell at best and borderline racist at worst.
Tarantino's status as a White Hipster who is down with the brothers and sisters has been reaffirmed by the enthusiastic support of African-American audiences for Django Unchained. Goody-goody gumdrops for him. But he has no ghetto pass to profiteer from America's original Holocaust and even if it means I won't be considered one of the cool kids, I refuse to join the stampede to anoint Tarantino as some great thinker on the Original Sin.
He's not. He's just another race hustler.
Jeff Winbush blog: "Django" Is Solid Entertainment, But Lousy History (Jan. 6)
Jeff Winbush blog: Quentin Tarantino: Slave Profiteer (Jan. 7)
There's more:
Charles M. Blow, New York Times: Escaping Slavery
Rembert Browne, Grantland: Django, the N-Word, and How We Talk About Race in 2013
Kenya N. Byrd, BlackAmericaWeb.com: Django: More Than Just Another Slavery Movie
Rebecca Carroll, Good: 'Django Unchained': Quentin Tarantino's Misappropriation of the N-Word (Dec. 18)
Courtney Garcia, the Grio: Hollywood Unchained: Will the success of 'Django' spawn more slave epics?
Sherry Howard blog: The error of asking "Django" to save black people
Eugene Kane, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Slavery as fantasy in 'Django'
Daniella Gibbs Léger, Essence: 'Django': What If a Black Director Had Pitched It?
Newsweek: Tavis Smiley on Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained
Rashod Ollison, Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.: All the n-word outrage over 'Django' misses the point (Jan. 8)
Allison Samuels, Daily Beast: Spike Lee's Dissing of 'Django Unchained' Earns Both Ire and Indifference
Adam Serwer, Mother Jones: In Defense of Django
Freed Slaves Died by Thousands From Diseases
The commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation got underway around the nation on Jan. 1, but the humanitarian crisis created when the slaves were liberated escaped most accounts.
"As former slaves left their places of servitude behind, they entered a world of freedom, but also a war zone devastated by disease, poverty and death," Jim Downs, an associate professor of history at Connecticut College, wrote Sunday in the Sunday Review section of the New York Times.
"More soldiers, as Ric Burns’s recent documentary, 'Death and the Civil War,' reveals, died of disease than from battle. Slaves became exposed to the same outbreaks of dysentery, smallpox and fever that decimated Union and Confederate ranks, and they died by the thousands: an estimated 60,000 former slaves died from a smallpox epidemic from 1863 to 1865.
"There were no protections, no refugee programs or public health services, in place to help freed slaves ward off the disease that plagued the Confederate South. As one 19th-century reformer observed, 'You may see a child well and hearty this morning, and in the evening you will hear of its death.' . . . "
Downs is author of "Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction."
Ta-Nehisi Coates, the Atlantic blog: The Myth of Harriet Tubman
Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Slavery is key part of riveting U.S. history
Darryl E. Owens, Orlando Sentinel: 150 years after emancipation, blacks are bound by their own chains
RTDNA's Foundation to Honor Twitter as News Source
The Radio Television Digital News Foundation plans to honor the online micro-blogging service Twitter with its First Amendment Award at the 23rd Annual First Amendment Awards Dinner on March 14 in Washington, the foundation announced on Monday.
"The award honors an individual or organization that has played a significant role in dissemination of news and information. Notable examples of Twitter's growing role include natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy, tragedies like the Connecticut and Colorado mass killings, as well as coverage of major world events like the Arab Spring revolts. Social media has added a new and important dimension to information dissemination and Twitter has been in the forefront of those efforts," the announcement said.
Mike Cavender, RTDNF executive director, said in the announcement, "It's difficult to quantify the impact that Twitter has on news dissemination not only here, but all around the world. Millions of people turn to Twitter as an instant source of information, especially in times of crisis. We're proud to honor this organization for its support and defense of our First Amendment freedoms.”
Twitter has a special appeal to African Americans. The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project reported last year, "More than one quarter of online African-Americans (28%) use Twitter, with 13% doing so on a typical day."
However, a survey released Monday by Technorati Media found that only 15 percent of the consumers it polled ranked Twitter among its "most trusted information sources."
The rankings were:
Online news sites (New York Times, CNN), 51%
Facebook, 32%
Retail sites (Amazon, Walmart), 31%
YouTube, 29%
Blogs, 29%
Google+, 26%
Groups/Forums, 24%
Online magazines (People, Motor Trend), 22%
Brand websites (Honda, Nike), 21%
Twitter, 15%
Fox Nation, Fox News Latino Play to Different Bases
"Fox Nation and Fox News Latino are once again selling different versions of the same story to pander to conservative audiences while simultaneously attempting to court Latino readers," Hilary Tone reported Thursday for Media Matters for America.
"As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the Obama administration announced Wednesday that it would create an easier process for undocumented immigrants who are relatives of American citizens to apply for permanent residency in the United States. . . ."
Fox News Latino: Obama Plans to Push Immigration Reform By End of January
Ruben Navarrette Jr., Washington Post News Media Services: Scholarships for illegal immigrants (Dec. 30)
Ruben Navarrette Jr., CNN.com: If I offended demanding DREAMers, I'm not sorry (Dec. 28)
N.Y. Times Public Editor Takes Up "Objectivity"
Within a few days of becoming Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times, Jodi Rudoren ". . . sent some Twitter messages that brought criticism, and had people evaluating her politics before she had dug into the reporting work before her," Margaret Sullivan, New York Times public editor, wrote on Nov. 28.
"Jeffrey Goldberg, writing in The Atlantic, summarized them: 'She shmoozed-up Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian activist who argues for Israel's destruction; she also praised Peter Beinart's upcoming book ('The Crisis of Zionism') as, 'terrific: provocative, readable, full of reporting and reflection.' She also linked without comment to an article in a pro-Hezbollah Lebanese newspaper." The headline on Mr. Goldberg's article was, 'Twitterverse to New NYT Jerusalem Bureau Chief: Stop Tweeting!' "
". . . Now The Times is taking steps to make sure that Ms. Rudoren's further social media efforts go more smoothly. The foreign editor, Joseph Kahn, is assigning an editor on the foreign desk in New York to work closely with Ms. Rudoren on her social media posts."
The issue of how neutral to appear is one that has long separated the black and alternative presses, which stress advocacy journalism, from the mainstream media. But it is an issue for the mainstream media as well, and Sullivan returned to the subject in her Sunday column.
"Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor, believes that traditional notions about impartial reporting are fundamentally flawed," Sullivan wrote. "For starters, he thinks journalists should just come out and tell readers more about their beliefs.
" 'The grounds for trust are slowly shifting,' he told me recently. 'The View from Nowhere is slowly getting harder to trust, and "Here's where I'm coming from" is more likely to be trusted.'
"Pushing back are editors like Philip B. Corbett, The Times's associate managing editor for standards. 'I flatly reject the notion that there is no such thing as impartial, objective journalism -- that it's some kind of pretense or charade, and we should just give it up, come clean and lay out our biases,' he said. 'We expect professionals in all sorts of fields to put their personal opinions aside, or keep them to themselves, when they do their work -- judges, police officers, scientists, teachers. Why would we expect less of journalists?'
"Neither of these thoughtful journalists, though, is black-and-white on the subject. . . . "
"The Sports Journalism Institute is set to welcome its 20th anniversary class this summer in Columbia, Mo.," the institute annnounced on Monday. "A group of six men and six women (four African-Americans, four Latinos, three white females and one Asian-American) make up the Class of 2013, which will be in residence at the University of Missouri School of Journalism from May 31-June 8, after which students will move on to internships around the country. . . . "
Hundreds of people gathered outside the headquarters of a newspaper company in southern China on Monday, intensifying a battle over media censorship that poses a test of the willingness of China's new leadership to tolerate calls for change," Edward Wong reported for the New York Times. "The demonstration was an outpouring of support for journalists at the relatively liberal Southern Weekend newspaper, who erupted in fury late last week over what they called overbearing interference by local propaganda officials."
"A paparazzo who took photographs of the daughters of President Barack Obama walking along a Hawaiian beach last week made a big mistake -- at least, in the eyes of the Oval Office," Celebuzz reported on Monday. "Because as soon as the images of Sasha and Malia were sent out to news outlets around the world, the photographer received an official letter from the White House telling him to immediately stop their release, Celebuzz has exclusively learned."
As Inauguration Day approaches, the editors of Essence magazine have produced a commemorative book, "A Salute to Michelle Obama" (Time Home Entertainment, Inc.), the magazine announced on Monday. The soft-cover version is on newsstands; the hardcover is to be available Tuesday. The book, edited by Patrik Henry Bass, editorial projects director, features an introduction by Editor-in-Chief Constance C.R. White and tributes from author Dr. Maya Angelou, life coach Iyanla Vanzant and "First Grandmother" Marian Robinson.
"The Pittsburgh Police Department on Sunday put out a press release that included two Post-Gazette reporters' email to the department with several questions for a story they were working on," Jim Romenesko reported Monday on his media blog. "Diane Richard, the department's public information officer, tipped other news organizations off to the P-G's investigation when she sent the release to about 200 journalists."
Robin Givhan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion writer who learned last month she was being laid off from Newsweek and the Daily Beast, has the lead piece in the Washington Post Style section on Tuesday, a lengthy one on inaugural gowns. While the online version does not identify Givhan as a freelancer, the print-edition version says "special to the Washington Post,' Post spokeswoman Kris Koratti told Betsy Rothstein of FishbowlDC. [Added Jan. 8]
". . . Word on the Street is believed to be Baltimore's first street newspaper," Yvonne Wenger reported Sunday in the Baltimore Sun. "Attempts have been made in the past to circulate news about homelessness and poverty, but the previous efforts came in the form of newsletters in the 1980s."
"Comcast executive VP David Cohen will receive the Champion of Digital Equality award at the upcoming Minority Media and Telecommunications Council Broadband and Social Justice Summit on Jan. 16 in Washington," John Eggerton reported for Broadcasting & Cable. "Cohen, who heads up policy for Comcast, is being cited for 'visionary leadership in promoting minority entrepreneurship; universal broadband access, adoption and informed use; diversity; and success in America's most influential and important industries.' . . . "
Marianna Kay Siblani, executive editor of the Arab American News for the last 28 years, died on New Year's Day after a long struggle with breast cancer, Oralandar Brand-Williams reported from Dearborn, Mich., for the Detroit News. "During her time at The Arab American News, she was a powerful voice and an advocate for Arab and Muslim Americans on local and national issues," the Arab American News added.
" '2013 starting off with a bang! Newsweek printed its last issue and with that came layoffs and buyouts. I took a buyout, What's next? Who knows. But it's exciting,' wrote María Elena Fernández on her Facebook page," Veronica Villafañe reported Monday in her Media Moves column. "Her departure from The Daily Beast comes less than 2 years since she was hired as senior entertainment reporter. Prior to joining the now struggling publication, María Elena spent 12 years as an entertainment reporter at the L.A. Times."
In Miami, "WPLG reporter Johanna Gomez has switched broadcast mediums," South Florida TV News reported on Monday. "As of today she's part of the DJ Laz Morning Show on 106.7FM, which is also heard [throughout] the country. You'll be able to hear her weekdays from 6am to 10am. In a Facebook and Twitter post late last night Gomez announced her move . . . "
"The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on authorities in India to refrain from pressing charges against a media group that televised an interview with the companion of the Delhi rape victim who died last week," the committee said Friday. "The December 16 case has garnered global attention. . . . New Delhi police said they would charge the broadcaster under section 228(A) of the Indian Penal Code, which deals with the disclosure of identity of victims of certain crimes, including rape, according to The New York Times. . . ."
". . . Mexico is one of the most dangerous places to commit journalism, due to the impunity of drug syndicates," Judith Matloff reported for Columbia Journalism Review. "More than 80 journalists have been killed and 16 kidnapped over the past dozen years, because they wrote about the activities of warring gangs. Many reporters have gone into hiding, and still more have been silenced by fear. Desperate for help, a loose network called Journalists On Foot (PDP) began to reach out to Colombia colleagues for tips, and over the past couple of years, seasoned experts . . . have flown over to meet with reporters across Mexico. . . ."
"Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly has drawn the ire of at least one member of Hawaii’s congressional delegation," the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Friday. "U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa says the conservative talk show host owes Hawaii and all Asian-Americans an apology for his characterization of the isles' population. . . . 'You know what’s shocking?' O'Reilly said. 'Thirty-five percent of the Hawaiian population is Asian, and Asian people are not liberal by nature, they’re usually more industrious and hard-working.' "
"South Sudan has arrested two state broadcast journalists for failing to ensure coverage of a crucial speech by President Salva Kiir, a government official said on Sunday, prompting an outcry from an international media watchdog," Reuters reported.
"Every year, the American Dialect Society nominates and then votes on a word of the year, and for 2012 it's 'hashtag,' " Dieter Bohn reported Saturday for theverge.com. "It beat out other nominated words like 'YOLO,' 'Fiscal cliff,' and 'Gangnam style.' The ADS' chair of the New Words Committee, Ben Zimmer, said that the word was a 'ubiquitous phenomenon in online talk' in 2012. . . ."
Gene Demby, a black journalist who has just joined NPR as a reporter covering ethnicity and race, made his first on-air appearance last week in a "Morning Edition" segment last week on the decline of Kwanzaa. "I think you're supposed to say the name of the principle of the last day of Kwanzaa," Demby told host David Greene. "I'm not sure what that Kwanzaa principle is. But I think Happy Kwanzaa is a sufficient response for a salutation." NPR Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos wrote Monday, "There is nothing wrong with a journalist not knowing something. But in a two-way with a reporter, that unknown is usually about a fact that is not public or is unconfirmed. In this case, however, Demby was presented not just as a reporter, but also as an expert and -- crucially here -- a personal example." The lack of knowledge offended some listeners.
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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.
Critic Wesley Morris Departs Boston Globe
Veteran journalist joins the new highbrow sports and pop culture website Grantland.
Pulitzer Winner to Devote More Time to Grantland Website
Wesley Morris, the African-American film critic for the Boston Globe who won a Pulitzer Prize last year, is leaving for Grantland, the ESPN-affiliated sports/pop culture website that specializes in longform journalism, his Globe editor told staffers Thursday night.
"I just didn't have a reason to say no any longer," Morris told Journal-isms by telephone on Friday. Morris had already been writing for Grantland, and this presented an opportunity to write about film for the site full-time, he said. Moreover, "I can do my job from anywhere. That's very appealing."
Globe Editor Martin Baron started this week as executive editor at the Washington Post and was replaced by Brian McGrory. "Things are changing," Morris said of the Globe. "This seemed like a pretty good interval to try to think of things I wanted to do."
A memo from Douglas S. Most, the Globe's deputy managing editor/features, began, "There are so many reasons why it's difficult to write the words: Wesley Morris is leaving us.
". . . For a moment, forget about the writing. The superb, brilliant writing. Wesley's presence in our world has been about so much more than just his wonderful film criticism and insightful takes on pop culture," continued the memo, published on the Jim Romenesko website.
"Wesley is a true friend to so many of us. We love him for his infectious sense of humor, his generous heart, and of course his marvelously snappy sense of fashion, as he bounds in from the Red Line wearing one of his many stylish caps. . . .
"Wesley is leaving us after 10 years to write for Grantland, where he has had a column on style in the sports world and will write on film and other cultural subjects."
Morris' move was announced on Facebook and Twitter last Friday afternoon by Bill Simmons, founder of Grantland, Stephen Silver reported that Friday for the Technology Tell website. The Grantland name honors legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice.
Morris "had written occasionally for Grantland since its launch last year, writing a column about athletes' wardrobes called The Sportstorialist. The 37-year-old Philadelphia native and Yale graduate joined the Globe in 2002," Silver reported.
"Grantland splits its coverage about evenly between sports and popular culture, but has not ever employed a full-time film critic. A rival site, the Gawker Media-owned Deadspin, runs a regular movie review column by Tim Grierson and Will Leitch."
Last year, Grantland snagged Jonathan Abrams, another well-regarded black journalist, then in the sports department of the New York Times.
Simmons launched the site in June 2011 with Malcolm Gladwell, the New Yorker magazine writer and author and one of the most commercially successful black journalists, as a consulting editor.
Morris said he planned to remain on the East Coast, but not necessarily in Boston. His departure from the Globe depletes the number of film critics of color at daily newspapers. Remaining are Lisa Kennedy of the Denver Post and Rene Rodriguez of the Miami Herald. Craig D. Lindsey was laid off at the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., two years ago but continues to write about film, as in this review of Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained."
When he won his Pulitzer last year, Morris said it was important to have "everybody in on the conversation."
"I will say this," he told Michel Martin on NPR's "Tell Me More." "You know, Margo Jefferson and Robin Givhan and I are three African American people who've won this prize and I think that we have won it for doing work that is beyond the purview of race, but is not unaware of it and is willing to take it into consideration.
"I think that what it actually says to me — it's something that I've been thinking a lot about with this Trayvon Martin situation — which is that it's really important to have everybody in on the conversation. It's really important to have everybody looking at things and perceiving things and have other people listening to what other people are seeing. . . ."
CNN Exec's Job Is "Building Diverse Slate of Anchors"
CNN, under fire for the lack of diversity among its prime-time anchors, hired a "key talent development executive to help build a diverse slate of anchors," Eric Deggans writes in his new book, "Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation."
A CNN spokeswoman identified the executive as Amy Entelis, hired in January 2012 to a newly created position of senior vice president, talent and content development for CNN Worldwide.
In listing her credentials, the announcement noted, ". . . ABC News President Roone Arledge recruited Entelis for her first management role with a mandate to develop women and minorities for on-air positions."
In August, Entelis hired Ramon Escobar, a veteran of the Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo, as vice president of talent recruitment and development for CNN Worldwide.
To date, no anchors of color have surfaced during CNN's prime-time schedule.
Last month, Jeff Zucker, the former NBC executive, was named president of CNN Worldwide, and any high-profile assignments are likely awaiting development of Zucker's strategy to lift CNN from its third-place ratings among the cable news channels.
In July 2011, Kathy Y. Times, then president of the National Association of Black Journalists, said that she and Bob Butler, NABJ's vice president for broadcast, raised the prime-time issue with then-CNN President Jim Walton. Walton delegated the task to Mark Whitaker, the African American former Newsweek editor who became CNN executive vice president and managing editor. Six months later, Whitaker hired Entelis, who reports directly to him.
Whitaker told Eric Deggans, media critic for the Tampa Bay (Fla.) Times, "that CNN's challenge is finding journalists who can deliver a point of view and personality on news stories without being partisan or overly political," Deggans wrote in his book.
"A lot of training that journalists of all colors get, say in local news or a certain kind of news, doesn't really translate that well anymore into being host of a primetime show. You have to have a point of view, you have to have personality, conduct a lot of interviews and be spontaneous . . . that's a very, very high bar for any anchor, no matter what their color," Whitaker was quoted as saying.
New Unity President Voted for "Journalists of Color"
The new president of the Unity alliance disclosed Friday that he was the third vote for returning the Unity Journalists coalition to its previous name, "Unity: Journalists of Color."
In the emailed balloting last weekend, 12 Unity board members voted for "Unity: Journalists for Diversity," three for "Unity: Journalists of Color," and one board member did not vote.
Tom Arviso Jr. of the Native American Journalists Association, publisher of the Navajo Times in Window Rock, Ariz., explained his preference for "Journalists of Color" by telephone.
"I think it's really just a reflection of who we are as Unity. I still believe in why the organization was started," he told Journal-isms. "Its message was to advocate on behalf of all the minorities . . . in my heart and my mind, I still feel strongly about the name.
"There's still a lot of members of Unity who still like the name 'Unity: Journalists of Color.' "
Despite his preference, Arviso said, "I accept and will respect" the board's choice, "Unity: Journalists for Diversity."
The other two votes for "Unity: Journalists of Color" came from Janet Cho of the Asian American Journalists Association and Peter Ortiz of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Cho, Ortiz and Arviso voted in April against changing the coalition's name from "Unity: Journalists of Color" to "Unity Journalists" to accommodate the wishes of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association.
Arviso said then, "I felt that we had enough time before the UNITY conference in August for us as board members to go back to our members and seek their input on this issue."
In an advisory vote that ended last month, the NAJA members' vote was "UNITY: Journalists for Diversity," 49, or 67 percent; "Unity: Journalists of Color and Diversity, 14, or 19 percent; "Unity: Journalists of Color," 10, or 13.7 percent. NAJA has 232 members, Rhonda LeValdo, president, said.
Milton Coleman Retiring From Washington Post
Milton Coleman, who joined the Washington Post as a Metro reporter in 1976 and mastered its newsroom politics well enough to become, as deputy managing editor, its highest ranking black journalist, is leaving the newspaper.
"The end of 2012 also brought an end to Milton Coleman's remarkable run in this newsroom," Shirley Carswell, who succeeded Coleman as deputy managing editor, wrote Post staff members on Thursday. Coleman "thought he was going to slip out quietly this week. But we couldn't let him go out like that . . ., " she continued, announcing a newsroom celebration for next Thursday.
Coleman, 66, stepped out of the day-to-day running of the newsroom in 2009 to concentrate on leading the American Society of News Editors and then the Inter-American Press Association. He continued to run the Post newsroom from time to time as part of a rotation of top managers.
Coleman is a 1974 graduate of Columbia Graduate School of Journalism's summer program for minority journalists, which evolved into the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.
He has said that his obituary is sure to include high up the furor that erupted when he reported in 1984 that Jesse Jackson, as a Democratic presidential candidate, had uttered the words "Hymie" and "Hymietown" to refer to Jews and to New York. The revelation, deep in a story written by another reporter, led to death threats and a discussion of whether Jackson's preceding the remarks by saying, "let's talk black talk" meant the comments should not have been used.
Coleman responded to the criticism in Atlanta in a speech at the 1984 convention of the National Association of Black Journalists, saying, " . . . Our job is not to censor news and distort reality for black people, but to offer all we can to broaden their horizons. The people can make up their own minds."
Coleman was city editor in 1981 when Janet Cooke, a young black reporter deceived her editors (including Bob Woodward, who was assistant managing editor/metro) with a hoax about an 8-year-old heroin addict. The story won a Pulitzer Prize, which Cooke had to return. The scandal became part of journalism history, though it was eclipsed two decades later by the Jayson Blair fabrication scandal at the New York Times.
In his report on the Cooke scandal, ombudsman Bill Green described Coleman as "a rangy, tall man," and added, "His quietness is deceptive. He pursues news as though it's his quarry, and admiring colleagues regard him as highly competitive. When he sits, he sprawls. He likes to work in a vest."
In May 2009, when Coleman stepped down as deputy managing editor to become senior editor, then-executive editor Marcus Brauchli recapped the positions he had held. "Milton was first promoted from metro reporter into management as assistant city editor and then city editor in 1980. He went back to reporting on the national staff for a stint before he was named AME/Metro in 1986. He became Deputy Managing Editor in July 1996, and in that role has been a mentor, advisor and leader to so many here, including us.
"Milton has accomplished much in his career, and he has done a huge amount for our profession beyond these walls, too," Brauchli's memo continued. "He has judged prize competitions and worked with groups promoting journalism education. He is an officer of the Inter-American Press Association, a member of the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Multicultural Media Executives and, of course, the American Society of News Editors. He has been an ardent advocate of the vitally important role of diversity in our newsroom and industry."
When the noted African American historian John Hope Franklin died in March 2009, the Post was one of the few papers to accord him front-page treatment. Coleman was running the Post newsroom that week.
Coleman learned Spanish using an immersion method, became liaison to the Post-owned Spanish-language El Tiempo Latino and eagerly tackled the job of working with Latin American journalists in IAPA.
Helen T. Gray, Longtime K.C. Star Editor, Retires
Helen T. Gray, the Kansas City Star's longtime religion editor, retired on Friday.
"It's time," Gray told John Landsberg of Bottom Line, a Kansas City website, saying that she will not only retire from the paper but also plans to relocate to New Jersey to attend to her 91-year-old mother, Landsberg reported on Dec. 17.
"I need to do this," she said.
" 'Helen is the closest thing to a saint that any newsroom has ever had,' says former reporter/editor Jim Fitzpatrick who retired in 2006 after a 37-year career at the paper and currently operates the jimmycsays.com blog," Landsberg continued.
"In the midst of a gritty stew of anxiety, hand wringing, newsroom politics and back biting, Helen presented a picture of peace and goodwill when she would occasionally drift into the second-floor newsroom, from the arts and letters labyrinth on the third floor. Her departure will be a great loss to Kansas City. But, as usual, she’s going where she believes God wants her to be."
Gray was said to be the second black person hired in the Star's newsroom. In 2005, the Kansas City Association of Black Journalists described her as the longest-working journalist of color in the Kansas City area. The group also inducted her into its Hall of Fame. Gray was a first-place winner in religion category of the Kansas Press Association's writing competition.
As a 20-year-old senior at Syracuse University, Gray dated the late Syracuse running back Ernie Davis, the first black player to win the Heisman Trophy, as Robert W. Butler wrote for McClatchy Newspapers in 2008 and William Nack wrote for Sports Illustrated in 1989.
Edward M. Eveld, Kansas City Star: Retiring religion editor Helen T. Gray looks back on her years at The Star (Jan. 5)
Houston Police Arrest Anchor's Accused Stalker
"Houston police have arrested a man charged with stalking KPRC-TV anchor and traffic reporter Jennifer Reyna, authorities said," Mike Glenn reported Wednesday for the Houston Chronicle.
"An HPD spokesman said police investigators captured Christopher Olson, 38, about 10 a.m. Wednesday at his apartment in Webster. . . .
"Olson was at the Harris County Jail later Wednesday with bail set at $80,000.
"Police said Olson had been trailing after the popular local news figure since mid-September. . . . Olson's apparent infatuation with Reyna has been ongoing for several years. In addition to the latest rash of stalking incidents, HPD investigators said he ignored a May 2007 court order for him to have no contact with her.
"Olson also drove his car through the front door at the news station on two separate occasions in May 2007, causing several thousands dollars in damages. . . ."
A 2009 story identifies Reyna as "a proud member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists."
"Ghastlier Horrors" Supersede Journalists' Agony
"When four journalists linked to a British media institution were bundled-up and jailed on frivolous espionage charges by Liberia's dictator Charles Taylor, the world barked," the New Democrat of Monrovia, Liberia, wrote Monday in an editorial headlined, "Woes Of The African Journalist."
"Nelson Mandela sent pleading messages to the 'strongman', a man he had once lavishly entertained as a visiting, fellow African president. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, always keen on not missing an opportunity to champion good causes for media and public attention, stormed the CNN pleading the men's case. International media institutions threw their influence behind the men. The arrests became a global media sensation which human rights organizations were just too happy to exploit for the needed headlines.
"Now that four poor Liberian journalists working for an obscure media outlet have been grabbed on an identical charge and dumped into a madman's dungeon, their plight remains the reserve of their families and a few media organizations with human rights agendas. The jailed men are Africans. Their agony makes no news on a continent buried in ghastlier horrors.
"Caught firmly in the clutches of intolerance and senile tyranny, the African journalist continues to pay the thankless price for independent thinking. From Sierra Leone to Algeria (where at least 69 journalists have been killed since 1993), Angola, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, etc., the story of the African journalist is the basically same: summary executions, arbitrary arrests, closure of media outlets, economic deprivation, and exile. Africa has registered one of the highest numbers of killed journalists in recent times. . . . "
Committee to Protect Journalists: Nigerian journalists freed, but equipment still held
Patrick Foster, USA Today: Kristof to take student on reporting trip to Africa
Reporters Without Borders: Journalist convicted — it's time to decriminalize press offences (Dec. 28)
The brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old physiotherapist on a bus in Delhi, India, has outraged a nation, prompted worldwide looks at crimes against women, and led to Sunday's front page, at right, in India's Hindustan Times.
"It is that time of year again for lists and the first one to catch my attention, in a negative light, was the Sports Business Journal's list of The Most Influential People in Sports Business," Kenneth L. Shropshire wrote Monday for the Huffington Post. "To be clear, the authors did not do anything wrong. What that list reaffirms is that although Blacks dominate on the field of play in most sports we are woefully absent from the highest levels of sport on the business side. What is particularly striking about this most influential list is that of the fifty individuals there is only one Black person, DeMaurice Smith, way down at slot number 42. . . ." Smith is executive director of the National Football League Players Association.
"The Online News Association today announced the appointment of Benét Wilson, eNewsletters/Social Media Editor, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, to its 2013 Board of Directors," the ONA announced on Friday. Jim Brady, ONA president, told Journal-isms by email, "ONA has held back one board seat to address diversity for the past few years now. Rob King from ESPN.com served last year, but he had to step down because of time constraints, so the seat was open again this year, and the board voted to appoint Benet, who has been an avid ONA supporter and volunteer for years. We also had three women leave the board this year, and only one was elected, so Benet's appointment also helped address that deficiency."
". . . For blacks, our fortunes have exactly reversed," Los Angeles writer Erin Aubry Kaplan, a former Los Angeles Times columnist, wrote Thursday for Southern California's KCET public television, discussing the Times. "In 1992 the Times showed a flurry of interest in what was happening in black neighborhoods besides mayhem; that interest faded like a trend, pushed aside by economic realities and a burgeoning Latino population that was remaking South Central demographically and politically. The black story became one of simply holding on, not exactly a sexy topic or arresting visual that would appeal to editors. . . . " Times spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan told Journal-isms, "We don't have comment on Erin Aubry Kaplan's personal reminiscence."
"Eric Ludgood is out as news director for WGCL, the Meredith owned CBS affiliate for Atlanta," Kevin Eck reported Thursday for TVSpy. "Ludgood had been assistant news director at WGCL before leaving for three months in 2010 to work as news director for WNCN in Raleigh, NC. He returned to WGCL as news director in February 2011 replacing Steve Schwaid."
"Fox News Channel's Hispanic-targeting website Fox News Latino is adding Hernán Rozemberg as its senior editor," Alex Weprin reported Friday for TVNewser. "Rozemberg had been a senior correspondent for National Public Radio, on its 'Fronteras: The Changing America Desk.' That desk focused on issues like border control and immigration. . . ."
"According to journalist and educator Miguel Perez, 2013 is a very important year for the United States — it's the 500th anniversary of the nation's discovery," the Latina Lista blog reported on Friday. ". . . Ponce de León was looking for that elusive 'Fountain of Youth' when he ran into some land and christened it Florida in April 1513. Yet, instead of crediting Ponce de León with discovering the United States, historians only gave him credit for discovering the state of Florida. . . ."
"After last year's hugely successful SAJA Editors Challenge (11 top editors across the country challenged all of us to help raise $20,000 for SAJA scholarships), we are now launching the SAJA Broadcast Challenge," the South Asian Journalists Association announced on its website. "Some fabulous current and former broadcast folks have come together to create a challenge grant for SAJA members and friends. Their special pool of money will match, dollar-for-dollar, all donations made, up to a total of $7,500. We have till Feb 1, 2013 to complete this challenge! Ali Velshi, chief business anchor, CNN, helped launch this at SAJA Gala Dinner in DC this year. . . . "
"Houston film reviewer Jake Hamilton, who has a segment called 'Jake's Takes' on Fox 26 Morning News Extra, has received a positive reaction from viewers after he refused to say the 'n-word' on the air, at the provocation of Samuel L. Jackson," Dana Guthrie reported Thursday for the Houston Chronicle.
". . . In the 'media' industry — a category that includes television, movies, print journalism and music, there were 5,641 layoffs in 2012 compared with 7,720 the year before, amounting to 27 percent fewer announced layoffs year over year," according to the firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Paul Bond reported Thursday in the Hollywood Reporter.
"When I looked at the state of reporting on mental-health issues after the Newtown, Conn., shootings, I saw a forbidding landscape," Andrew Beaujon wrote Thursday for the Poynter Institute. "John Head sees improvement. When he started reporting on mental health for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the turn of the century, a diagnosis or even a suggestion that a violent person was mentally ill 'was end of story,' he said in a telephone interview. 'That explained it. . . . ' "
"As the editor of the fledgling literary journal, The American Reader, Uzoamaka Maduka, a 25-year-old Princeton graduate, is proof that even in this iPhone age, some paper-based dreams have not died," Amy O'Leary wrote Wednesday in the New York Times. "Bright young things, it seems, are still coming to New York, smoking too much and starting perfect-bound literary journals. . . ."
"The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by a series of investigations into independent Egyptian newspapers on accusations of insulting the president or reporting false news," the press freedom organization said on Thursday. "Some newspapers and media professionals face formal charges in connection to their critical reporting, according to news reports. . . ."
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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.
Black Writers' Varying Views of 'Django'
For each one of the film's virtues, prominent African Americans have found a vice.
"Quentin Tarantino's 'Django Unchained' has become embroiled in the second major controversy of awards season," Steve Pond wrote Wednesday for the Wrap. "The director's liberal use of the N-word, and his temerity in tackling the issue of slavery, has drawn fire from some prominent African-Americans and impassioned defenses from others.
"Like the turmoil stirred up by the depiction of CIA-sponsored torture in Kathryn Bigelow's 'Zero Dark Thirty,' the 'Django' fuss has been caused by a filmmaker tackling a hot-button issue.
"Ishmael Reed wrote at Speakeasy . . . that the movie 'was the talk among blacks during two Christmas parties that I attended,' comparing African-Americans who said they wanted to see 'Django' to 'When Time Ran Out: Coming of Age in the Third Reich' author Frederic Zeller, who said that as a child he applauded the Aryan characters in pre-World War II German cinema.
" 'Django,' he wrote, is an 'abomination' that distorts history: 'It's a Tarantino home movie with all of the racist licks that appear in his other movies.'
"On The Root, . . . writer Hillary Crosley said she was one of only about 10 African Americans who attended a screening of the film that was followed by a Q&A with Tarantino moderated by director Peter Bogdanovich.
" '[A] black woman interrupted their conversation, saying, "A lot of black people are not going to like this movie. I'm about to have a heart attack,'" wrote Crosley, who defended the film. 'Then a few audience members began to heckle Tarantino from the balcony, shouting: "This is bulls---." ' Tarantino, she said, offered to speak to the hecklers later.
"The movie has become both a flash point and a free-for-all, and the issue is particularly sensitive among African-American viewers -- not a large audience for the film, but a key one for principals like Jamie Foxx, who plays the title role.
" 'If this movie does what it does and black people hate it, that doesn't do nothing for me,' Foxx said on BET. 'Because I feel like the reason I exist is the black audience.' "
Released on Christmas, "Django Unchained" ranked second in weekend box office receipts, behind "The Hobbit."
Black writers were of several minds. Every point raised in a given discussion -- that "it's only a movie," that it's really a love story, that it's like a cartoon, that the use of the 'n' word is historically accurate -- could find someone taking an opposing position.
On Facebook Wednesday, Darren Sands, 29, a digital producer/reporter at Black Enterprise, garnered amens when he wrote, "Django commentary by most of the black intelligentsia cannot, for all of its brains and gifts of critical analysis, fathom a fantastical film with an artistic license ... so the analysis comes off as drivel; baseless assumptions about what is lost on our conscience and about what is acceptable and accurate about a bygone era that we must hold dear lest we embarrass our ancestors. Please. At worst, it's grandstanding for attention. At best, it's not knowing how to have a good time at the movies."
By contrast, in a piece posted Wednesday by the New Yorker, Jelani Cobb, 43, recalled teaching a course on American history at Moscow State University and being confronted by Russian students questioning Tarantino's portrayal of World War II in "Inglourious Basterds."
In that film, ". . . The movie's lines between fantasy and the actual myopic perspectives on history were so hazy that the audience wasn't asked to suspend disbelief, they were asked to suspend conscience," wrote Cobb, an associate professor of history and director of the Institute of African American Studies at the University of Connecticut. "With 'Django Unchained,' Tarantino's tale of vengeful ex-slave, what happened in Russia is happening here.
". . .The film's defenders are quick to point out that 'Django' is not about history. But that's almost like arguing that fiction is not reality -- it isn't, but the entire appeal of the former is its capacity to shed light on how we understand the latter.
". . . It seems almost pedantic to point out that slavery was nothing like this. The slaveholding class existed in a state of constant paranoia about slave rebellions, escapes, and a litany of more subtle attempts to undermine the institution. Nearly two hundred thousand black men, most of them former slaves, enlisted in the Union Army in order to accomplish en masse precisely what Django attempts to do alone: risk death in order to free those whom they loved. Tarantino's attempt to craft a hero who stands apart from the other men -- black and white -- of his time is not a riff on history, it's a riff on the mythology we've mistaken for history. . . . "
Saladin Ambar, HuffPost BlackVoices: Django's Djumbles
Rodney Barnes, HuffPost BlackVoices: Lincoln, Meet Django: Slavery's Latest Films Are Controversial, But Not Why You Think
Cecil Brown, CounterPunch: Hollywood's Nigger Joke
Anthea Butler, the Grio: Does 'Django Unchained' get the history of slavery right?
Christopher Alan Chambers website: The Posthumous Journal of Dangerfield Newby ("The Real Django")
Javier David, the Grio: Does 'Django Unchained' make slavery safe for the masses?
Jarvis DeBerry, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune: 'Django' expresses an anger not every filmmaker can show
Editorial, Washington Informer: Foxx's Django Deserves High Honors
Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Root: Tarantino 'Unchained,' Part 1: 'Django' Trilogy?
Keli Goff, Huffington Post: The Racial Slurs in 'Django' Aren't Racist But the Racial Violence May Be
The Grio: Spike Lee calls 'Django Unchained' 'disrespectful', even though he hasn’t seen it
Terry Gross, "Fresh Air," NPR: Quentin Tarantino, 'Unchained' And Unruly
Erin Aubry Kaplan, Los Angeles Times: 'Django' an unsettling experience for many blacks
Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: Tarantino blows up the spaghetti western in 'Django Unchained'
Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: 'Django' tells tale missing real slave history
Ishmael Reed, Wall Street Journal: Black Audiences, White Stars and 'Django Unchained'
Sergio, Shadow and Act: Boston Globe Film Critic Likens Samuel L. Jackson's 'Django' Character To Black Republicans
Tanya Steele, Shadow and Act: Tarantino's Candy (Slavery In The White Male Imagination)
Jeff Winbush blog: "Django" is Tarantino Unchained
Jordan Zakarin, Hollywood Reporter: Samuel L. Jackson Insists Reporter Say N-Word in 'Django Unchained' Interview (Video)
Al Jazeera Expands With Purchase of Current TV
"Current TV, the small cable news channel that was co-founded by former vice president Al Gore, has been sold to Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based media company," Joe Flint reported Wednesday for the Los Angeles Times.
"The acquisition gives Al Jazeera, which is funded by the Qatar government, the opportunity to establish a footprint in the United States, where it already has an English-language version of its Qatar service -- called Al Jazeera English -- but only limited reach.
"Just buying Current does not guarantee instant distribution, however. Time Warner Cable, which offered Current in roughly 10 million of its homes, is dropping the channel. Without Time Warner Cable, which is the largest distributor in New York City and Los Angeles, Current TV is in only about 50 million homes."
Is "White Knuckle" Like "Flesh"-Colored Bandages?
The front page of Saturday's Washington Post carried a subtle reminder that the inventors of the English language -- and most of today's arbiters -- have a certain skin tone as a frame of reference.
"Street racers put their terror on tape," it said, followed by "White-knuckle stunts by D.C. area group 'a tragedy waiting to happen.' "
What does the term "white knuckle" mean? Yahoo's Answers site's "best answer": "The act of clenching your hand shuts off the blood flow to your knuckles, so they turn white. You clench your hand on a steering wheel or roller coaster bar when you are scared. So, white knuckles = scared."
But what if your skin isn't the shade that turns white? It could put you in the same category as those who are "tickled pink," but not really, become "red-faced" or once were given "flesh"-colored Band-Aids that didn't match their particular flesh.
Last year during Black History Month, Mark Jacob and Stephan Benzkofer of the Chicago Tribune compiled "10 things you might not know about skin color."
"Crayola once had a color called 'flesh,' which was the color of Caucasian flesh," they noted as their second point. "After complaints from civil rights activists, 'flesh' became 'peach' in 1962. A similar controversy involved 'Indian red.' Crayola said the color was based on a pigment found near India, but some thought it was a slur against native Americans, so the company solicited consumer suggestions for a new name. Among the ideas: 'baseball-mitt brown' and 'crab claw red.' But 'chestnut' was chosen in 1999."
Journal-isms asked Liz Spayd, a managing editor at the Post, about the "white knuckle" headline. She replied by email, "...i think of 'white knuckled' as a common term for something that pumps up anxiety and fear. i've never heard the concern you raise about it."
Crayola didn't give up on crayons that mimicked skin tones; it adapted to a multicultural world. Its website now says, "Crayola Large Multicultural Crayons come in an assortment of skin hues that give a child a realistic palette for coloring their world. These thick crayons are easy to grip -- perfect for little hands. The crayon colors are: black, sepia, peach, apricot, white, tan, mahogany and burnt sienna. Each crayon is 4" long and 7/16" in diameter."
Unity Officially Picks "Journalists for Diversity"
"Over the final weekend of 2012, UNITY Journalist's board of directors voted to change the organization's name to UNITY: Journalists for Diversity," outgoing Unity President Joanna Hernandez reported Monday on Unity's Facebook page.
George Kiriyama, departing Unity representative of the Asian American Journalists Association, and Michael Triplett, president of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, reported the emailed vote as 12 for "Unity: Journalists for Diversity," three for "Unity: Journalists of Color" and one not voting.
Hugo Balta, president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, wrote, "Mekahlo Medina, Yvonne Latty and I voted as the majority of our members did: Unity: Journalists for Diversity. Peter Ortiz voted for Unity Journalists of Color."
Separately, Janet Cho of AAJA told Journal-isms she voted for "Unity: Journalists of Color" and Michaela Saunders of the Native American Journalists Association said she chose "Unity: Journalists for Diversity." Cho had previously voted against the change from "Unity: Journalists of Color" and Saunders had abstained.
There were a actually two votes, Hernandez explained to Journal-isms by email.
"An extra step was added to the process because the board wanted to ratify the name-change vote via a motion.
"The original step was that the board of directors would vote on the name via ballot, which they did, and that is where 12 voted for the name UNITY: Journalists for Diversity, 3 voted for UNITY: Journalists of Color, and 1 board member did not vote.
"So after the board received the results of their name-change vote, Sharon Chan, UNITY VP at the time, put forth a motion (seconded by then-Secretary Patty Loew): I hereby respectfully move that: UNITY Journalists change its name to UNITY: Journalists for Diversity.
"The tally for the motion was 9 yes, 1 no, and 6 board members did not vote.
"UNITY will not be releasing how individual board members voted."
The name of the coalition became an issue after the National Association of Black Journalists left the alliance in 2011 over financial and governance issues, and Unity invited NLGJA to join.
In December, members of NAHJ, AAJA, NAJA and NLGJA -- the four journalism associations in the reconstituted Unity coalition -- each voted to replace "Unity: Journalists of Color" with "UNITY: Journalists for Diversity." The final decision was then made by the Unity board of directors.
Tom Arviso of NAJA succeeded Hernandez this week as Unity president.
Cornish to Remain NPR Co-Host; Norris Returns
"NPR News is announcing new appointments for three of its newsmagazine hosts: Michele Norris returns from a leave of absence to take on an expanded new role as a host and special correspondent; Audie Cornish will stay on as co-host of All Things Considered; and Rachel Martin anchors the week as host of Weekend Edition Sunday," the network announced on Thursday.
"Norris returns to the air fulltime in February; Cornish and Martin have been serving as interim hosts of their respective programs."
"Taken together, these three represent the journalistic depth and power of NPR News,' Margaret Low Smith, senior vice president of NPR News, said in a release. "We're incredibly lucky to have such gifted journalists. Each of them has extraordinary range and the ability to connect with audiences in meaningful ways. I'm looking forward to this next chapter for all three."
The announcement continued, "As host and special correspondent, Norris will produce in-depth profiles, interviews and series, and regularly guest host NPR News programs. One of her focuses will be 'The Race Card Project,' an initiative to foster a wider conversation about race in America that Norris began after her 2010 family memoir The Grace of Silence. . . ."
Cornish replaced Norris as co-host of "All Things Considered" in November 2011 while Norris took a one-year leave from her hosting role. Norris' husband, Broderick Johnson, had accepted a senior adviser position with President Obama's reelection campaign. The move kept an African American woman in the co-host slot. Cornish had begun hosting NPR's "Weekend Edition Sunday" just two months earlier. [Added Jan. 3]
Rhonda Lee Hair Critic Said He Had Dementia
Emmitt Vascocu, the viewer whose questioning of meteorologist Rhonda Lee's short Afro hairstyle helped set in motion events that led to Lee's firing, wrote on his Facebook page in October that he was brain damaged.
"To all in ciber land (cq)," Vascocu wrote in an Oct. 29 posting.
"I have Dementia an also brain damage to my temprealobe. so in saying this if i say something that hurts someone bare in mind that i have this problem.For this is not a good thing ive lost alot of good memoreys.it effects my spelling it effects my mood and many othier things.
"So there it is i ecept that i a a major problem an my othier conditions. But im Blessed By Jesus Christ to still be here to see all of my children to become groun an to see my 9 grandchildren grow."
On Oct. 1, Vascocu wrote on the Facebook page of KTBS-TV in Shreveport, La., that "the black lady that does the news is a very nice lady.the only thing is she needs to wear a wig or grow some more hair. im not sure if she is a cancer patient. but still its not something myself that i think looks good on tv. what about letting someone a male have waist long hair do the news.what about that (cq)."
Lee responded on the same page the same day, in part, ". . . "I am very proud of my African-American ancestry which includes my hair. . . ."
She was fired on Nov. 28, the station said, for responding to viewers in violation of the station's social media policies. The case created an uproar, with most siding with Lee.
In a Christmas posting, Jack Hambrick, identified as former television reporter with KPRC-TV in Houston, WFTV-TV in Orlando, WFOR-TV in Miami and WSFL-TV in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., charged that "Lee launched her media crusade by humiliating and assaulting the character of Emmitt Vascocu, a 57-year-old white KTBS viewer, whom she knew full well was mentally ill.
"Lee had known it for two months before she was fired. . . . "
" 'Hi Emmitt. Thank you for the heartfelt response. I’m very sorry to hear about your Alzheimer disease,' Lee wrote to Vascocu on October 7 in a private message on Facebook.
"But evidently, Lee's sympathy evaporated after she was fired by KTBS on November 28. She brought out the long knives for Emmitt Vascocu," Hambrick wrote on the Digital Texan, a website of which he is publisher and editor.
Asked her response, Lee messaged Journal-isms, "I have seen the article and this 'investigative piece' really doesn't warrant a comment."
However, Lee, who is 37, later responded to Hambrick's statement that she had exaggerated the amount of time she had been in the business. "I never said I was forecasting at a TV station since I was 12. I'm not sure where he got that information. I have always maintained that I been in the business since I was a teenager -- which was 25 years ago," she said.
Pumza Fihlani, BBC News: Africa: Where black is not really beautiful
Ava Thompson Greenwell, Huffington Post: Power to the People: Hair Texture and Gender Matter to TV News Audiences
Ex-Journalist in Thick of It as Emancipation Is Hailed
When the Emancipation Proclamation went on display at the National Archives in Washington for three days ending New Year's Day, and 150th anniversary commemorations were similarly held around the country, A'Lelia Bundles, former journalist, was out front.
Bundles, a former director of talent development for ABC News and producer for ABC and NBC News, became chairman and president of the board of the Foundation for the National Archives a year ago. She is also the biographer of entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker, Bundles' great-great-grandmother.
"The things that we learned in elementary school and high school about the Emancipation, was not quite the whole truth," Bundles said Tuesday on NPR's "Talk of the Nation." "In fact, only the slaves who were in states that were in rebellion, where Lincoln actually really had no jurisdiction, were technically freed. But it did open the door and create a wedge for freedom to finally come with the 13th Amendment."
J. Freedom duLac reported in the Washington Post, "On Sunday, as the Emancipation Proclamation went on display, several hundred people were lined up outside the Archives, trying to avoid becoming human statuary in the raw winter wind."
Bundles explained to Journal-isms by email, "I joined the Foundation for the National Archives board in 2006, having been invited at the recommendation of Cokie Roberts, my former ABC News colleague, who was familiar with my writing and research on Madam C. J. Walker. Through the years I'd done research at the National Archives (officially known as NARA for The National Archives and Records Administration), so generally was familiar with the institution, but not with the Foundation.
"NARA is the repository for the records of all federal agencies (from military records and census records to Congressional documents and treaties) and the White House. In addition to the main building in DC and another large building in College Park [Md.], it oversees more than 40 regional facilities and the presidential libraries.
"As a federal agency, its budget is determined by Congress and it can not raise private funds. As a result, the Foundation was created as a private sector partner to raise funds for exhibitions, online educational materials, publications, programs and other initiatives to assist the National Archives in increasing civic literacy and making the records of the agency more accessible to the public."
"I became chairman and president of the board of the Foundation for the National Archives in January 2012 and will serve a three year term."
Martha M. Boltz, Washington Times: The Civil War: The Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln, a great emancipator or great colonizer?
A'Lelia Bundles, The Root: Slave's Letter Reveals Pace of Freedom
Ta-Nehisi Coates, the Atlantic: The Wholly Misunderstood Emancipation Proclamation
Jenée Desmond-Harris, The Root: Emancipation Proclamation: Up Close
Eric Foner, New York Times: The Emancipation of Abe Lincoln
Keli Goff, Nieman Journalism Lab: A new window on race (Dec. 21)
Annette John-Hall, Philadelphia Inquirer: An underground story no more
Allison Keyes, "Weekend Edition Saturday," NPR: 'Watch Nights,' A New Year's Celebration Of Emancipation
Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Slavery is key part of riveting U.S. history
Leonard Pitts, Miami Herald: Race is the stupidest idea in history
Frank Reeves, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Few were confident of Lincoln signing 'edict of freedom' for slaves
David M. Shribman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: On America's most important New Year's Eve, Lincoln found our better angels
Alicia W. Stewart, CNN: Years later, myths persist about the Emancipation Proclamation
WTTW-TV, Chicago: Early Chicago: Slavery in Illinois
John Yoo, Fox News: The Emancipation Proclamation's unforgettable lesson about presidential power
N.Y. Rifle Association Urges Boycott of Gannett
"The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association is calling for a nationwide boycott of the advertisers of the suburban New York newspaper that published online maps revealing names and addresses of people with pistol permits," Mackenzie Weinger reported Monday for Politico.
"The association on Monday announced it was urging people to stop patronizing any business who advertises with Gannett -- the White Plains-based Journal News' parent company -- until the map is removed. On Dec. 22, the Journal News published interactive maps showing the pistol permit holders in the state's Westchester and Rockland counties. The decision sparked an uproar among conservatives and gun rights advocates, but the paper says it will continue adding names to the map."
Separately, the Journal News hired armed security guards to man the newspaper's Rockland County headquarters in West Nyack, Dylan Skriloff reported Tuesday for the Rockland County Times.
In addition, state Sen. Greg Ball and two Putnam County officials said that they would refuse to release the names and addresses of residents with pistol permits, data requested by The Journal News, which sought the records under the state Freedom of Information Law. John W. Barry of the Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal quoted Robert Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Government, saying the law is clear. "The name and address of any gun licensee are public," he said.
Charles D. Ellison: Politics, race cloud gun control debate
Gregory Ferenstein, TechCrunch: Journalists' Addresses Posted In Revenge For Newspaper's Google Map Of Gun Permit Owners (Dec. 26)
Jeremy Gorner and Robert McCoppin, Chicago Tribune: Police: Chicago ends 2012 with 506 homicides
Chip Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle: Oakland: Happy new year means less crime
Jerry Large, Seattle Times: To vanquish the bad, first study the good
Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: NRA vs. common sense
Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: Stop the gun madness
Bob Ray Sanders, Star-Telegram, Fort Worth, Texas: My diet informs my social commentary
Reporter Was Activist in Wilmington 10 Case
When North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue Monday pardoned the group known as the Wilmington 10, accused of firebombing of a white-owned grocery store in a black neighborhood in 1971, Cash Michaels celebrated. He was more than simply a journalist covering the case.
"I was coordinator of The Wilmington Ten Pardons of Innocence Project, which was a special justice outreach effort of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) and the Wilmington Journal newspaper, for which I am a staff writer," Michael messaged Journal-isms on Wednesday. "This was an historic accomplishment for the civil rights movement (I'm told), and huge victory for the Black Press!"
Michaels also thanked his supporters on Facebook. "Yesterday was overwhelming, especially, after waiting all morning, to finally get a call from the Governor herself, telling me what she was going to do, but I had to keep it to myself for 15 minutes," he wrote. "Needless to say, I naturally told my wife and Kala, and they made sure I didn't tell anybody else until the Governor's Office made it public.
"These last seven months since we filed the pardon petition papers have taught me a few things for sure -- FIRST, that whatever you do that's worthwhile, you must do it by GOD. I've seen things happen during our campaign that could only be His work, things that that didn't happen when we wanted, but certainly when we needed them, the NY Times editorial for one. -- SECOND, the incredible teamwork and partnerships we created, especially with the NCNAACP, the NAACP, Change.org and others.
"My job was to know what to do, and when to do it. But I had incredible wisdom and talent from the great people working with us, and I'm eternally grateful to them. Teamwork is a jewel, in my book. And FINALLY, the scariest part of this whole experience was knowing that six human beings, and the families of four who had deceased, trusted us, and were counting on our efforts, to bring justice and truth to the fore. It was hard work just to earn that trust. Once earned, it was even harder to build on, because the way forward was not easy. GOD allowed us to stay focused on what this cause was all about from the very beginning, and because of that, and His blessed guidance, we were able to make HISTORY!
"So thank you, everyone. We have a few loose ends to tie up, but now I can go back to being only a journalist and troublemaker. I'll never, ever forget this experience, and the many lives we touched with it.
"And I'll never forget a courageous Governor, whose heart has always proven to be pure when it comes to issues of justice."
Editorial, New York Times: When Justice Grinds Slow
"Former CNN anchor T.J. Holmes, who left the network a year ago to join BET was back on cable news today, on MSNBC," Chris Ariens reported Saturday for TVNewser. "MSNBC tells us Holmes is doing some holiday fill-in work for them, today sitting in for Alex Witt." Holmes tweeted on Saturday, "To clear this up: last 'Don't Sleep' episode of 2012 was last wk. Look forward to it in 2013. But, u can see me other places, like #MSNBC." He returned to MSNBC on Sunday.
"When I moved to Tegucigalpa last March several friends back home in Spain wanted to know why," Alberto Arce reported from Honduras Sunday for the Associated Press. "The big story was in Egypt, Libya and Syria; what was I planning to do on the other side of the globe? 'Bear witness,' I said, 'to the most violent place in the world, to a country in crisis.' I am the only foreign correspondent here, with no press pack to consult on questions of security, or to rely on for safety in numbers. I fall back on instincts honed in war zones, but they are not always sufficient when you are covering a failing state."
NBC News Wednesday denied a widely distributed story by RadarOnline.com that said, "Former TODAY co-anchor Ann Curry has formally asked her NBC bosses to let her out of her contract with the Peacock network so she can formally accept a position at CNN, where her old boss, Jeff Zucker, will officially take over the fledgling news channel in February." NBC spokeswoman Megan Kopf told Journal-isms, "There is no truth to this story."
Jet magazine, whose cover more often than not seems to feature an entertainer or similar celebrity, devotes its first cover story of 2013 to 17-year-old Jordan Davis, the latest victim of Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law. " 'Standing Our Ground' written by acclaimed journalist Denene Millner . . . exposes yet another murder of a young Black male just months after Trayvon Martin was also killed in Florida," Tonya Pendleton wrote for BlackAmericaWeb.
"The Senate Tuesday approved the renomination of FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn, this time for a full five-year term retroactive to July 1, 2012, when her current term expired," John Eggerton reported Wednesday for Broadcasting & Cable.
"While the U.S. Congress has been kicking the can down the road and inching closer to the fiscal cliff, the word gurus at Lake Superior State University have doubled-down on their passion for the language and have released their 38th annual List of Words to be Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness," Detroit's WDIV-TV reported on Monday. [Italics added.]
"Reporters Without Borders is shocked to learn that the Gaza Strip's Hamas-led government has banned Palestinian media and journalists from cooperating with the Israeli media because of the latter's 'hostility,' " the press freedom group said on Wednesday. " 'Offenders will be prosecuted,' the Hamas government said in a 25 December press release announcing the prohibition."
"Myanmar said Friday it will allow private daily newspapers starting in April for the first time since 1964, in the latest step toward allowing freedom of expression in the long-repressed nation," Aye Aye Win reported for the Associated Press.
"MundoFox, the new U.S. Spanish-language broadcast network launched in August by Fox International Channels and the RCN Television Group (RCN) of Colombia are have signed WGEN Miami," TVNewsCheck reported on Monday. "WGEN takes over the Miami MundoFox affiliation from the previously announced low-power WJAN-CD."
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2012's Greatest Diversity Hits
A look back at the memorable moments of the last 12 months.
Diversity's Greatest Hits, 2012
1. Neither GOP Nor News Media Looked Like America
2. Social Media Can Mean Trouble: Ask Martin, Whitlock, Lee or Williams
4. Unity Coalition Changes Course
5. New NAHJ Leadership After Brutal Campaign
7. Fellowship Breakthrough at Stanford
8. NBC News to Pay Its Interns
9. Milestone: White Births No Longer a Majority
10. Newhouse Papers Cut Back on Print Editions
Most Popular "Journal-isms" Columns of 2012
A year in the quest for news media that look like America.
1. Neither GOP Nor News Media Looked Like America
When the presidential campaign of 2012 finally ended with the reelection of President Obama, among the Election Day surprises was the demographic composition of the losing Republican base.
". . . When it comes to audience, the American newspaper industry looks a lot like the Republican Party," Ken Doctor wrote two days later for the Nieman Journalism Lab. "Consequently, its business reversals parallel the deepening Republican national electoral woes. The newspaper audience looks remarkably like the arithmetic that put Mitt Romney on the losing end Tuesday and is forcing Republicans to self-assess how to move forward. . . . The daily industry is doing okay with older, white people — mildly overperforming in print, digital, and combined.
"Among all other ethnic groups except Asian-Americans — off the charts with high overperformance for online news usage — newspapers are underperforming. They, like Mitt Romney, aren't getting their share of the fastest growing population slices in the U.S. . . ."
Perhaps not coincidentally, the news media underestimated Obama's ability to turn out the very groups underrepresented in the news media.
In October, the 4th Estate, a nonpartisan project to aggregate data around the 2012 elections, showed that more than 93 percent of front page articles on the presidential election were written by white reporters.
During the presidential debates, white journalists asked the questions. When the journalist of color organizations protested, the commission agreed to forward their questions to the debate moderators, but none were asked.
Univision's televised forums with Obama and Romney in September provided the only comparable forum for journalists of color to grill the candidates. Under questioning from moderators Maria Elena Salinas and Jorge Ramos, Obama acknowledged " . . . my biggest failure so far is we haven't comprehensive immigration reform done . . ."
Mainstream news organizations undertook enterprise reporting on one of the biggest issues for people of color: the attempt to restrict their votes through voter ID laws. In July, the Associated Press found that under such laws valid votes had been tossed, and in August, the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University found that the rationale for such laws — election fraud — was infinitesimal. Still, thoughtful assessments of the record of the nation's first black president — and the role that race might have played during his presidency — were far outweighed by coverage of the horse race.
Racism hit home for one member of the media. Patricia Carroll, an African American CNN camerawoman, was assaulted with peanuts and called an animal by two attendees at the Republican National Convention. The perpetrators were never identified.
CNN correspondent Soledad O'Brien won plaudits for holding interviewees' feet to the fire as they tried to spin the facts.
2. Social Media Can Mean Trouble: Ask Martin, Whitlock, Lee or Williams
News organizations rushed to embrace social media as a way to publicize their brands, but were not always prepared for the controversy that might result. For journalists of color, many of the controversies had racial overtones.
In February, CNN suspended commentator Roland Martin indefinitely over tweets that the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation denounced as anti-gay. Martin denied that the tweets were homophobic but acknowledged that they were intended to be "over the top." Some Martin supporters framed the issue as white gays vs. a black journalist. Martin's suspension was lifted after a month.
FoxSports.com columnist Jason Whitlock apologized in February for what the Asian American Journalists Association called an "unnecessary and demeaning tweet" about NBA phenomenon Jeremy Lin's private parts.
Joseph Williams, who joined Politico in 2010 as deputy White House editor after five years as deputy bureau chief of the Boston Globe's Washington bureau, left Politico in June. On MSNBC, Williams had suggested that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney was comfortable only around white people. The conservative website Breitbart.com ran the video and flagged a series of tweets from Williams that made fun of Romney. "After rummaging through some 3,000 tweets, they cherry-picked ones designed to prove their flimsy case: that I was biased against Romney, a racist against whites and a representative of my employer's slant against conservatives," Williams wrote.
Sunni Khalid, managing news editor at the Baltimore NPR affiliate WYPR-FM, was reportedly suspended for posting a comment on Facebook about U.S. policy toward Israel. A reader characterized it as inflammatory. In March, Khalid was fired.
In December, the story of Rhonda Lee, a black female meteorologist, went viral after she was fired from the ABC affiliate in Shreveport, La., because she responded on the station's Facebook page to a viewer who questioned her short Afro hairstyle. The station said the response violated its social media policies.
At its annual convention in August, Michele Salcedo, president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, asked a student journalist to stop live tweeting the board's deliberations. Nadia Khan, who was reporting for the student convention news project, was told that she could stay but not live tweet. She left. On their first day on the job, the NAHJ's new leaders voted 6-5 to reverse the no-tweeting policy.
ESPN, too, reversed course. In March, citing the network's social media policies, ESPN warned staffers who tweet not to post photos of themselves wearing hoodies in solidarity with Trayvon Martin, the unarmed 17-year-old black Florida youth slain in a confrontation with a neighborhood watch volunteer. After two days, ESPN " . . . decided to allow this particular expression of human sympathy," but its decision was not universally praised. The Poynter Institute's Kelly McBride wrote that ESPN was right the first time.
The Feb. 26 shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black Florida teenager, galvanized African Americans and ultimately the nation as it slowly reached public consciousness via the efforts of black journalists and black talk radio.
First came the debate over racial profiling, then the polarization. In April, media writer David Carr wrote in the New York Times, "All over the Internet and on cable TV, posses are forming, positions are hardening and misinformation is flourishing. Instead of debating how we as a culture are going to proceed, an increasingly partisan system of news and social media has factionalized and curdled."
The controversy over Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, which essentially allows a person who feels threatened to shoot, prompted investigative reporting. In June, the Tampa Bay (Fla.) Times found that people who killed a black person walked free 73 percent of the time, while those who killed a white person went free 59 percent of the time. In addition, the law "is being used in ways never imagined — to free gang members involved in shootouts, drug dealers beefing with clients and people who shot their victims in the back," the newspaper reported.
In December, George Zimmerman, who said he shot Martin in self-defense, sued NBC for airing a 911 call he claims was edited to portray him as a racist and predatory villain.
"Besides NBCUniversal Media, defendants in the suit include Lilia Rodriguez Luciano, an NBC correspondent based in Miami, and Jeff Burnside, a Miami-based reporter, both of whom were reportedly fired over their Zimmerman coverage. It also names Ron Allen, an NBC correspondent . . . , " Tim Molloy reported for the Wrap.
4. Unity Coalition Changes Course
The Unity alliance held its first convention without the National Association of Black Journalists in Las Vegas in August, the smallest Unity conference since its first in 1994. The coalition also fell $200,000 short of its sponsorship goals, having sought $1.25 million.
NABJ left the coalition in 2011, citing financial and governance issues. Unity then invited the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association to join. NLGJA, in turn, urged the coalition to drop "Journalists of Color" from the group's name. Without consulting their constituents, the Unity board members quickly complied, 11 to 4 with one abstention. Joanna Hernandez, the Unity president, said at the time, "I got teary-eyed. I was immensely sad" after the vote. "I did urge them not to take a vote now," she told Journal-isms, but said she was told she had no choice but to allow one.
As a result of the name change, opposition to rejoining Unity hardened within NABJ, which won support for its view even from some members of the groups that remained in Unity. The two men credited with the idea for Unity, Will Sutton of NABJ and Juan Gonzalez of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, said separately that they disapproved of the name change. "UNITY has lost its way," Gonzalez wrote. DeWayne Wickham, who as NABJ president in 1988 convened the first joint meeting of the boards of NABJ, NAHJ, the Asian American Journalists Association and the Native American Journalists Association, said of the change, "I think it amounts to a final divorce decree. . . . "
NLGJA brought 115 people to the Unity convention, Unity board members said, compared with the 2,386 registrants that NABJ attracted to its own, separate conference in New Orleans. Unity registered 2,385 people, compared with 7,550 attendees at the 2008 Unity convention in Chicago on its final Sunday, though that figure includes sponsors and others who were not registered. No presidential candidates appeared at the Las Vegas gathering. Then-candidate Barack Obama had been in Chicago.
In December, members of the four journalism associations in the reconstituted Unity coalition each voted for "UNITY: Journalists for Diversity" as the name to succeed "Unity: Journalists of Color," as more members said they were pleased to have NLGJA in the coalition. The Unity board has not announced its final choice.
5. New NAHJ Leadership After Brutal Campaign
It's unlikely that any of the journalism associations ever saw a campaign like this year's for the leadership of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Attack videos appeared even when there was only one declared candidate for NAHJ president. The target of the videos was candidate Russell Contreras, an Associated Press reporter who was NAHJ's chief financial officer and vice president for print. Contreras claimed credit for helping to return NAHJ's finances to the black, but the organization's leadership had developed a reputation among many for secrecy, bullying and vindictiveness, qualities the attack videos highlighted.
Hugo Balta, a coordinating producer at ESPN, eventually joined the race and won the election, receiving 154 votes, or 61 percent, to 95 for Contreras, or 31 percent, according to the NAHJ tally.
Balta promised a change in tone from the previous two years. "The NAHJ leadership will be clear and inclusive. We will have an open-door policy to have the voices heard and respected," he said in his acceptance speech.
Among Balta's first acts was arranging for NAHJ to join the Radio Television Digital News Association and the Society of Professional Journalists at the annual Excellence in Journalism Conference in 2013 in Anaheim, Calif. Balta also sought to have the questions from journalists of color included in the presidential debates even though only white journalists were chosen to moderate.
The latest newsroom census from the American Society of News Editors showed 1,650 Hispanic journalists at dailies, a decline of 443 over 10 years.
In theory, the employment picture for Latino journalists should be looking up, as major media companies continue to seek their share of the growing Hispanic market. ABC News and Univision News are jointly planning a new news and lifestyle network and hired Miguel Ferrer, the onetime managing editor of the English-language HuffPost LatinoVoices and Spanish-language Voces sites, as its first executive producer, digital. In August, MundoFox was launched. It is a joint venture between Fox International Channels (FIC), News Corp.'s international multimedia business, and RCN, the leading Latin American television network and production company.
The loss of journalists of color in newspaper and online newsrooms outstripped the decline of journalists overall in 2011, according to the annual diversity census of the American Society of News Editors, released in April.
"The total newsroom employment at daily newspapers declined by 2.4 percent in 2011, while the loss in minority newsroom positions was 5.7 percent," ASNE said. Ronnie Agnew, who co-chairs ASNE's Diversity Committee, said in announcing the results, "It's not just the numbers that are going down, there's a nuance that's going to be missed . . . with the shortage of people" lost to "this wonderful, wonderful profession."
One slice of the pie drew the attention of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, which studied the opinion pages of the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. "Latinos were granted less than half a percent of the op-ed bylines over the two-month study period — writing two columns in the Times, one in the Wall Street Journal, and none in the Post. None of these papers has a Latino among their staff columnists," it said.
In the broadcast news media, the latest survey from the Radio Television Digital News Association and Hofstra University reported, "As far as minorities are concerned, the bigger picture remains unchanged. In the last 22 years, the minority population in the U.S. has risen 10.4%; but the minority workforce in TV news is up 3.7%, and the minority workforce in radio is up 0.9%."
Would-be journalists received mixed news. A survey of 2010 graduates of the nation's journalism and mass communication programs showed that "once again faring worse than anyone in the job market were racial and ethnic minority graduates, according to the University of Georgia's James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research.
Last year, however, "There was . . . a notable rise in the percentage of minority graduates in 2011 who found full-time work — 58.7%, up from 49.9% a year earlier. Even so, that rate of hiring lags well behind the non-minority level of 69.9%," the researchers reported in August.
Advocates of broadcast ownership by people of color looked to the Federal Communications Commission to address bleak numbers. In November, the FCC reported that as of 2011, whites own 69.4 percent of the nation's 1,348 television stations. That's up from 63.4 percent in 2009, when there were 1,187 stations.
While white ownership increased, most minority ownership decreased. Blacks went from owning 1 percent of all commercial TV stations in 2009 to just 0.7 percent in 2011. Asian ownership slipped from 0.8 percent in 2009 to 0.5 percent last year. Latino ownership increased slightly, from 2.5 percent to 2.9 percent.
7. Fellowship Breakthrough at Stanford
Was it intentional that seven of the 13 recipients of the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University announced in May would be people of color?
"I don't know if 'intentional' is the right word," James R. Bettinger, director of the program, told Journal-isms then by email. "We worked very hard to broaden our outreach to journalists of color, especially those involved in untraditional news media ventures, and I would say we benefited from that."
The Nieman Fellowship program at Harvard University announced an incoming class with no African Americans, two self-identified Hispanics, an "Asian-American and white/Caucasian."
Suzette Hackney, a staff writer at Detroit Free Press and an African American, became the sole U.S. journalist of color in the Knight-Wallace Fellows program at the University of Michigan for the 2012-13 academic year.
8. NBC News to Pay Its Interns
NBC News is planning to pay its interns starting in the spring of 2013, a well-placed source at the network told Journal-isms in November. The decision addresses 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.
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.
The change at NBC News comes none too soon. In December, Steven Greenhouse reported for the New York Times, "Charlie Rose and his production company have agreed to pay as much as $250,000 to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by a former unpaid intern who claimed minimum wage violations.
"This is the first settlement in a series of lawsuits brought by unpaid interns who asserted that they had suffered minimum wage violations. Other such lawsuits have been filed against the Hearst Corporation and Fox Entertainment — both companies deny that they failed to comply with wage and hour laws regarding their interns. . . ."
Meanwhile, in December, veteran journalist Will Sutton was named director of the Dow Jones News Fund's 10-week business reporting internship program. In April, while a visiting professor at Grambling, Sutton offered an 11-point plan for adding diversity to business journalism ranks. "For far too many, it's the equivalent of a four-letter word," Sutton wrote of diversity.
Separately, ABC News announced a Fellowships in Diversity Program "to attract and develop aspiring journalists from diverse backgrounds for a rigorous and rewarding year-long opportunity."
However, the New York Times Student Journalism Institute, in which African American and Latino students have been trained by reporters and editors from the Times, the Boston Globe and regional newspapers of the Times Co., announced in August it was cutting back from twice a year to annually.
9. Milestone: White Births No Longer a Majority
U.S. Census figures released in May showed that white births are no longer a majority in the United States. As of July 1, 2011, 50.4 percent of the nation's population age 1 or under was either Hispanic or a race other than white.
The story led the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Dallas Morning News and the South Florida SunSentinel, among others. It was on the front page of such papers as the Denver Post, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Courier-Journal in Louisville and the Salt Lake Tribune. But it was missing from the front pages of the majority of newspapers, according to an informal survey of front pages displayed by the Newseum.
"We have a problem on our hands when the groups that have the least access to economic opportunity are becoming the majority," Jennifer Wheary wrote for the progressive think tank Demos. "Creating opportunity for Americans was already a priority, but our demographic future makes it an immediate imperative."
The Census Bureau additionally reported in December, "The U.S. is projected to become a majority-minority nation for the first time in 2043. While the non-Hispanic white population will remain the largest single group, no group will make up a majority."
Asian Americans took particular note of a Pew Research Center report in June. "Asian Americans are the highest-income, best-educated and fastest-growing racial group in the United States . . . Asians recently passed Hispanics as the largest group of new immigrants to the United States. The educational credentials of these recent arrivals are striking. . . ," it said.
In a statement from the Asian American Journalists Association, AAJA National President Doris Truong said, "Pew's research reinforces the importance of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders as a segment our society that newsrooms need to pay attention to. It was disappointing to see a lack of diverse perspectives — especially from major news networks — in covering this story."
10. Newhouse Papers Cut Back on Print Editions
On Friday, the Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., announced staffing for the newspaper and the PennLive.com website as the print edition moves to a Tuesday-Thursday-Sunday publication schedule beginning next Tuesday.
The Patriot-News is owned by Newhouse Newspapers, which announced in May that it would stop printing a daily paper at the Times-Picayune in New Orleans and its Alabama newspapers, then said it would end the daily distribution of the Patriot-News and the Post-Standard in Syracuse, N.Y.
Newhouse papers in other markets, such as Cleveland and Newark, were waiting to learn their fate. In Cleveland, the Newspaper Guild — the union that represents about 170 people in the newsroom — decided to try to influence the corporate decision with a campaign called "Save The Plain Dealer," Ted Diadiun, the paper's reader representative, reported in November.
In June, the Poynter Institute's Steve Myers wrote, "The Times-Picayune reported that 84 of 173 people in the newsroom were laid off, a loss of 48.5 percent. According to a list I assembled (based on conversations with multiple people in the newsroom) 14 of 26 African-Americans in the newsroom lost their jobs — a 53.8 percent cut. That includes editors, reporters and administrative personnel."
At the Birmingham (Ala.) News the same month, it appeared that diversity was also taking a hit.
"I'm the only black business writer," Roy Williams told Journal-isms then as he ticked off the losses, including his own job. "The only two black editors. All five black zone reporters. All three black copy editors. The only black editorial writer, who has been here 30 years.
"It hit us really hard."
A few black journalists have reported being hired under the new arrangement. In September, Alabama Media Group hired Janita Poe as community hub director in Montgomery, overseeing day-to-day operations of the Montgomery area newsgathering team. Marshall A. Latimore said in December that he would be designing for the Birmingham News, Huntsville Times and Mobile Press-Register, relocating to Birmingham.
Christina Mele, American Journalism Review: Battling to Stay Daily
Most Popular "Journal-isms" Columns of 2012
Source: Google Analytics
1. CNN Camerawoman "Not Surprised" by Peanut-Throwing (Aug. 30)
2. Fired Over Facebook Posting (Dec. 10)
3. CNN Suspends Roland Martin Over Tweets (Feb. 8)
4. Essence Shifts White Male Managing Editor (April 20)
5. "What Are You Doing? Are You Out of Your Damned Mind?" (Aug. 29)
6. CNN Lifts Roland Martin's Suspension (March 12)
7. Done in by Facebook and Flipping the Bird? (March 21)
8. Politico Loses Its Sole Black Reporter (April 8, 2010)
9. NPR Loses Another Black Male Voice (Jan. 16)
10. Wall St. Journal Intern Out After Fabrication Charges (June 27)
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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.
