March 2, 2007; updated March 5
Fired Producer Settles Her EEOC Complaint
CBS News is losing its two major Latino correspondents. Jim Acosta started at CNN this week and Vince Gonzales, 2005 Broadcast Journalist of the Year of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists," is being shown the door.
 |
| Jim Acosta |
Meanwhile, Raylena Fields, an African American producer who had been at CBS News for 13 years and filed a complaint against the network with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after her firing, disclosed that she had reached a settlement with CBS in September.
Her complaint had painted an unflattering portrait of avuncular anchor Bob Schieffer, saying he had addressed a veteran African American correspondent as 'Hey, Boy,' and asked her to answer his phones. CBS had vowed to "vigorously defend itself." Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
Gonzales, 39, is a graduate of CBS' minority correspondents program, and has worked only at CBS. "Basically, I was told they decided to go in a different direction," he told Journal-isms.
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| Vince Gonzales |
"In one fell swoop, CBS News looks a little less like America."
Gonzales won his third News and Documentary Emmy Award in 2005, honored for Outstanding Investigative Journalism in a Regularly Scheduled Newscast for his reporting on the Enron scandal.
Acosta was originally based in New York and later relocated to the CBS bureau in Atlanta. Now in New York for CNN, he sent word through a CNN spokeswoman that he was not intereted in talking about CBS now that he no longer works there.
But Rafael Olmeda, president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, said, "Vince is a stellar journalist as is Jim, and they have a lot to be proud of with the work they've done over the years. You can't cover America without covering the Latinos in America, and these are people whose background lent them a perspective missing in their non-Hispanic colleagues."
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| Raylena Fields |
Olmeda said he hoped "one, that we see new Latino hires at CBS, and two, in the meantime, the reporters who remain see that that these stories are part of their mandate and responsibility."
Remaining at the network is Manuel Gallegus, a Los Angeles-based correspondent for CBS Newspath, the affiliate news service of CBS News, Eleanor Vega, Los Angeles bureau chief, and correspondents Kelly Cobiella and Bianca Solorzano. Gallegus has filed stories for the "Early Show" and weekend news programs and helped cover the Academy Awards.
["I would be very curious to see who they decided to replace the people they let go with," Gallegus said on March 5, and would hope that the new correspondents would be dynamic people who can bring different cultural interests to the programming at CBS News."]
CBS spokeswoman Kelli E. Edwards told Journal-isms, "We are not where we want to be in terms of diversity, but it is an important priority and something that we are committed to improving."
Sean McManus, who headed CBS Sports, was named in October 2005 to oversee CBS News as well and is said to be stepping up changes. The "CBS Evening News With Katie Couric" remains a distant third in the ratings, as Bill Carter and Jacques Steinberg reported Thursday in the New York Times. It "has lost about 120,000 viewers from the program that was led last year at this time by Bob Schieffer," they wrote.
Fields, who said she was "taking a respite," said she was happy with her monetary settlement. "I just needed to get on with my life an let go of all that insanity and move on," she said. "I'm glad I did it and I'd do it again under similar circumstances. I'm a very happy lady."
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Village Voice Editor Out After Diversity Comments
"David Blum, the editor in chief of The Village Voice, was fired last night after a six-month tenure," Julie Bosman reported Saturday in the New York Times."The firing followed a meeting on Wednesday at which staff members argued about a lack of racial diversity on the staff. Two who were there said that Mr. Blum made several comments that some found offensive.
“'The incident this week brought to a head concerns that the newspaper’s management had for a period of time,' said Maggie Shnayerson, a spokeswoman for the paper," the Times story said.
The Associated Press added, "Staff member Wayne Barrett said Blum responded to concerns in a way some may have construed as offensive or dismissive, although he said he was surprised that Blum was ousted.
"Shnayerson said that although the meeting was the 'catalyst' for Blum's dismissal, the real reason was differences in management styles.
“'David Blum is not a racist,' she said. 'It was not a decision that was reached in any kind of knee-jerk way. It was in response to concerns that had been growing. It's just an ongoing feeling that it wasn't working.'”
"Blum declined to comment Saturday," the AP said. [Added March 3]
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ABC Names Diverse Team to Cover '08 Campaign
ABC News has appointed a diverse group of "off-air reporters" to cover the 2008 presidential candidates."The off-air political team will report extensively from the campaign trail as they travel with the 2008 candidates and their spouses. Their reporting will appear on all ABC News broadcasts and platforms including ABC's political daily internet digest 'The Note,'" Wednesday's announcement said.
The team includes black journalists Sara Amos, an associate producer for ABC News; Raelyn Johnson, an associate producer at ABC News Special Events; and Brandon Odoi, a production associate in ABC's Southern bureau in Atlanta.
Also named were Julia Bain, Kevin Chupka, Jennifer Duck, Jonathan Greenberger, Eloise Harper, Bret Hovell, Donna Hunter, Sunlen Miller, Jan Simmonds, Matt Stuart, Brian Wheeler and Zach Wolf.
A month ago, the National Association of Black Journalists called on "all major news organizations — print, broadcast and online — to assure that the diversity of America is reflected in their coverage teams."
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Publisher Withdraws Book by Kenneth Eng
The publisher of the most recent science fiction book by Kenneth Eng, the author of the "Why I Hate Blacks" column in AsianWeek newspaper, said Thursday, "We will immediately pull out his books from the market and ask our distributors to delete the title from their website." |
In a note to AsianWeek and to the Equal Justice Society, the editors also said they would work with Amazon.com to withdraw the book "Dragons: Lexicon Triumvirate." "We are absolutely stunned by the writing of Ken Eng," the message said.
"We apologize again. At the time of his book acceptance there was no indication that things like this would come up to the surface."
An editor at the publishing house said no more than 300 copies of the book would have to be recalled.
Meanwhile, about 80 people attended a forum in San Francisco's Chinatown on the controversy, hosted by New American Media.
"AsianWeek's Ted Fang said at least twice that the paper 'rejects racist views,'" Keith Kamisugi reported on the "Don't Speak for Us" Web site. "Funny how that sentiment wasn't in the email response I received from editor-in-chief Samson Wong, nor the paper's Monday statement — both saying that the printing of Eng's column was part of their covering the diversity of Asian America. It's only after [tremendous] pressure from civil rights organizations, elected officials, their readership and the public that they reject only now what they should have rejected from the start."
On Monday, Eng, confirmed for Journal-isms his age, 23, and that he lived in New York, but he has said nothing publicly since.
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Shilpa Banerji, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education:
UCLA Expert Challenges The Asian-American "Model Minority" Assumption
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L.A. Chung, San Jose Mercury News:
Blog-style column falls way short
[Added March 3]
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Brian Lewis, Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader:
Racism, sexism still exist, are often ignored [Added March 3]
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Sandip Roy,
New American Media: AsianWeek: A Lesson in Racism
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Debra J. Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle:
Why I hate race-baiting columns
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From a black woman in Beijing (Journal-isms message board)
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BET.com discussion board comments
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Kimchi Mamas blog comments
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CONTROVERSY: AsianWeek column on "Why I Hate Blacks" (South Asian Journalists Association Forum)
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More coverage, petition (dontspeakfor.us)
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2 Top Editors Leave Strapped Source Magazine
The Source magazine, the pioneer hip-hop periodical that is now owned by a group affiliated with Black Enterprise magazine, fired its editor-in-chief, Fahyim Ratcliffe, last week and its news editor, Chloe A. Hilliard, has resigned, Hilliard told Journal-isms.Its owners "are treating it as if it were a launch — the bare minimum — trying to cut any costs they can do without. The advertising just hasn't been there," Hilliard said.
"They just sent out checks for writers who wrote for the July issue. I got tired of lying to my writers, knowing it was a good chance they wouldn't get paid."
Hilliard told Journal-isms Ratcliffe had been let go to save money.
Jeremy Miller, the publication's CEO, did not respond to requests for comment. However, Source writer Slav Kandyba wrote on his blog Wednesday that Senior Editor Soren Baker confirmed that Ratcliffe and Hilliard had left.
"The future of the Source it looks like is in the hands of its financiers (or overseers, however you put it), the Black Enterprise/Greenwich Street Corporate Growth Fund, which is sponsored by Black Enterprise magazine and Travelers Group, a predecessor of Citigroup Inc., according to business newspaper The Deal," Kandyba wrote.
"The Fund has sustained the Source financially since ousting Mays and Benzino from the magazine last year, but how long that will go on is unclear," he continued, in a reference to Source founder David Mays and his longtime president Ray "Benzino" Scott.
"As far as I know, the magazine is now edited by Baker and Executive Editor Ryan Ford, both of whom are based in Los Angeles," Kandyba wrote.
Ford told Journal-isms he was unable to comment.
Hilliard said businesses had been reluctant to advertise because "bad relationships with the prior owners left a sour taste."
A federal jury in Manhattan ruled in October that the Source, Mays and Scott had to pay $14.5 million "to a former top editor who described a raunched-out workplace where executives watched porn, smoked pot and called female employees "b------," as the New York Daily News reported at the time.
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Ex-Source Editor Starts Site for Journalists
"JOURNALISTICKS.COM, a new online community for journalists of color, is a user driven site created to serve as a space for journalists to promote their work, discuss media, culture, news and search for jobs," Chloe A. Hilliard, who left the news editor's job at the Source, announced this week."The online community will provide a one-stop shop for media companies to find young, talented writers, editors, producers, broadcasters and web reporters of color. JOURNALISTICKS.COM will fill a void in the cyber world that had long been overlooked.
"As a young journalist there wasn't a place for me to go and talk to my peers," Hilliard said.
"In addition to serving as a pool for employers, JOURNALISTICKS.COM will be a platform to showcase journalists' work with all content on the site generated by its users. Other features on JOURNALISTICKS.COM include SOAPBOX, a message board where users can post their clips for review and feedback as well as discuss freelance opportunities and tricks of the trade," the release said.
"JOURNALISTICKS.COM aims to merge journalists of color from broadcast, radio, online, magazine and newspaper journalism, create a network and promote good journalism."
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Lou Ransom Named to Edit Chicago Defender
Lou Ransom, managing editor of the New Pittsburgh Courier and a veteran journalist who has worked in both the black and mainstream press, has been named executive editor of the Chicago Defender, the newspaper announced in Friday's edition. |
| Lou Ransom |
Ransom, 53, succeeds Roland S. Martin, who said in December he would not renew his contract when it expired this month. He was replaced on an interim basis in January by Glenn Reedus, who most recently headed a public relations firm.
In Editor & Publisher Thursday night, Mark Fitzgerald reported that one of the only two full-time general assignment reporters at the paper, Mema Ayi, resigned along with Martin.
"Kenon White, the young graphics artist who last spring created the bold new look of the Defender, is also leaving," Fitzgerald wrote. "His last day is Thursday, he said in an interview earlier this week.
"In addition to laying out the paper, White maintained the paper's Web site and posted its podcasts and recently added video."
"I enjoyed myself," White was quoted as saying. "I love the paper, and I'm always going to love the paper. I've learned a lot while I was here, and I got to do things people didn't think I could do. I've covered everything from pillar to post. I wish it would have worked out better, but there's no sense beating a dead horse."
Ransom was optimistic. He told Journal-isms, "there are 1.2 million black people in Greater Chicago. There are that many stories. I want us to reconnect with the people of Chicago and be their black paper."
Asked how he could cover the area with only one full-time reporter, he said, "We'll get more money. I think some of the resources that were there were not used very well. Some people were in the wrong positions. They were not asked to do their best stuff."
Both the New Pittsburgh Courier and the Defender are owned by Real Times, Inc., a group of African American businessmen. Ransom has worked at papers ranging from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, where he was a community reporter, editorial writer and then worked as a business-desk staffer; to the National Leader, a short-lived attempt at a black-oriented, Philadelphia-based national newspaper; to Johnson Publishing Co., where he said he "wrote all the sports that was in Jet for six years."
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L.A. Times Drops Only Black Op-Ed Regular
Erin Aubry Kaplan, the only African American columnist in the Los Angeles Times opinion page rotation, is losing her weekly column, Kaplan confirmed on Friday."Yes, it's true — i'm out of the columnist rotation. i have four more to write, and then i'll be a contributing editor, contributing a piece a month or so. if all goes well," she said in an e-mail.
Kaplan, a native Angeleno whose columns, often on local subjects, ran on Wednesdays, was hired in November 2005 from the L.A. Weekly and became the paper's first African American op-ed columnist in 25 years.
Asked about Kaplan's departure, Editorial Page Editor Andres Martinez would say only, "All that's been announced so far is that Ron Brownstein is moving to op-ed page."
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Raspberry Wins $1.5 Million Grant for Project
William Raspberry, who retired in 2005 as a syndicated Washington Post columnist so he could raise money for a project in his native Mississippi without being placed in a conflict of interest, has won unofficial approval for a $1.5 million grant for the project from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.The Kellogg board authorized the money for the Baby Steps project, an early childhood education initiative in Okolona, Miss., that Raspberry founded and funded with his own money, Tom Springer, a senior editor at the Kellogg Foundation, told Journal-isms on Friday.
"We plan to expand our early-childhood education efforts for the parents of my hometown to include the major day-care centers and the public elementary school," Raspberry said. "Mississippi leads the nation in several negative health categories — including obesity and hypertension — so we will be adding a major health component."
"Naturally I'm ecstatic," said Raspberry, who now teaches at Duke University. The grant covers 2007 through 2010.
"Baby Steps was not conceived as an experiment, but if it is as successful as I hope, it could point the way to doing something to reverse the tragic slide of our children into ignorance and economic uselessness. It may also help disabuse America of the notion that the remedy is to improve governance, increase teacher pay or raise standards. All of these things are worth doing in their own right, but they are not where education has gotten off track. What is? The fact that parents (who love their children) don't know — and aren't being taught — how to get them ready for learning. And they aren't being taught that academic exertion can change their lives.
"The overall effort is designed to prevent the academic failure among the children of low-income before it starts by getting the parents to understand again the magic of education in changing the life trajectories of their children. What we hope is to create in one town — with implications for communities across America — a positive culture for learning."
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Obama Had Slaveholder Ancestors, Report Says
"Many people know that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's father was from Kenya and his mother from Kansas," David Nitkin and Harry Merritt reported Friday in the Baltimore Sun."But an intriguing sliver of his family history has received almost no attention until now: It appears that forebears of his white mother owned slaves, according to genealogical research and census records.
". . . An Obama spokesman did not dispute the information and said that the senator's ancestors 'are representative of America,'" the story said.
"'While a relative owned slaves, another fought for the Union in the Civil War,' campaign spokesman Bill Burton said last night. 'And it is a true measure of progress that the descendant of a slave owner would come to marry a student from Kenya and produce a son who would grow up to be a candidate for president of the United States.'"
The Sun said it retraced much of the work done for an ancestry report compiled by William Addams Reitwiesner, who works at the Library of Congress and practices genealogy in his spare time.
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Al Sharpton Jr., Los Angeles Times:
My link to Strom Thurmond
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FOX News Tries To Paint Obama As Black Militant Pagan (Newshounds)
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Liberia Closes Newspaper for a Year
The government of Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who won goodwill a year ago as the first female president in Africa after years of corruption and war in her country, has directed that a newspaper be closed for a year.Monrovia's Inquirer reported on Wednesday that the minister of information, Lawrence Bropleh, said the paper "had violated the Liberian constitution by publishing a porno photo, thereby violating the Press Union of Liberia code of ethics and the rules that govern the accreditation process for newspaper[s] by his Ministry."
The Press Union of Liberia challenged Johnson-Sirleaf "not to allow her government to slide into repression but to give chance to the judiciary process to function if there has been a violation by the paper."
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The Analyst, Monrovia:
Media Groups Want Newspaper Ban Lifted
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Sebo Daniels, the Inquirer, Monrovia:
Justice Justifies Closure of Newspaper
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Short Takes
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"Wayne State University's Journalism Institute for Minorities program
is getting a new name in post-Proposal 2 Michigan," Kristen Jordan Shamus
reported
Thursday in the Detroit Free Press. "The institute, which this year includes 20 students and
offers scholarships and help securing internships and jobs at newspapers, in
broadcasting and in public relations, will soon be called the
Journalism Institute for Media Diversity, officials said. The institute was founded in 1984 with
the help of editors from the Free Press and the Detroit News. A statewide constitutional ban on
affirmative action in government hiring and at state universities took effect in
December.
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FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate told a Media Institute
lunch crowd in Washington Wednesday that one of her goals was to push the FCC, Congress, and
industry to do more to encourage media diversity, John Eggerton
reported
Wednesday in Broadcasting & Cable.
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"Last year, almost 18,000 media employees lost their jobs — the biggest
group of layoffs since the dotcom bubble burst in 2001," Anne Becker
wrote
Monday in Broadcasting & Cable. Her piece examined the effect on the news outlets and on the
remaining employees.
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"News & Notes," the daily National Public Radio program hosted by Farai Chideya, has been chosen
as the broadcast home for the upcoming StoryCorps Griot oral histories of African Americans
starting this spring, the network announced. The StoryCorps Griot initiative plans to visit nine
cities over 12 months to collect nearly 2,000 oral histories of African Americans. In addition, "News &
Notes" began a month-long series of conversations with women in positions of national and local
power on Thursday.
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"Maybe it was the umpteenth coke-dealing anthem or soft-porn music video. Perhaps it was the
preening antics that some call reminiscent of Stepin Fetchit," Nekesa Mumbi Moody
wrote
Friday for the Associated Press. "The turning point is hard to pinpoint. But after 30 years of
growing popularity, rap music is now struggling with an alarming sales decline and growing
criticism from within about the culture's negative effect on society."
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New York's City Council on Wednesday "approved a resolution urging New Yorkers to stop using the
N-word, joining a nationwide movement seeking to reject the notion that the racial slur can be
redefined and reclaimed," Emi Endo
reported
in Newsday on Wednesday. "The symbolic ban, which carries no legal weight, was approved 49-0."
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"A state legislator whose district is home to thousands of Caribbean
immigrants wants to ban the term 'illegal alien' from the state's
official documents," Bill Cotterell
reported
Friday in Florida's Tallahassee Democrat. "'I personally find the word "alien" offensive when applied
to
individuals, especially to children,' said Sen. Frederica Wilson,
D-Miami. 'An alien to me is someone from out of space.'"
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Cole Wiley, a student at Harvard Law School and son of the late writer Ralph Wiley,
wrote
a column in his father's old space on ESPN.com about Black History Month, "Let us be wary of
celebrating too much."
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At Washington's John A. Wilson building, home to city agencies, the press room is to be dedicated
on March 12 with a plaque in honor of Maurice Williams of Howard University's WHUR-FM, killed
in the building 30 years ago next week, David Nakamura and Theola Labbé
reported
Thursday in the Washington Post. Former mayor Marion Barry, then and now a city councilman, was wounded in the same incident.
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Colleagues, friends and family of Phyllis T. Garland
plan to remember and celebrate her life on March 19 at 6
p.m. at Columbia University's GSJ Lecture Hall, 116th Street and Broadway in New York,
Wayne Dawkins wrote in the March edition of Black Alumni Network Newsletter. As of Feb. 16, $60,220 of the needed
$100,000 was pledged to establishing a permanent Black
Alumni Network scholarship in Garland's name, Dawkins wrote. Garland, pioneering journalist and
retired professor at the school,
died
in November at 71.
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Abolitionist and editor Frederick Douglass was the first black reporter allowed into the Capitol
press
galleries, and his role as a pioneering journalist was honored Tuesday when the committee of
reporters that controls access to the galleries dedicated a plaque and portrait, the Associated
Press reported. Douglass was a member of the congressional press galleries from 1870 to 1874.
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"Univision's channel 41 in New York pulled its largest audience ever
for its 6 p.m. Spanish-language TV news program in the February 2007
sweeps period. The newscast also beat out English-language TV stations
WNBC, WCBS-TV and WNYW in the key news audience group, adults 25-54," Media Buyer Planner
reported.
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"For a third week, the story of Anna Nicole Smith topped the cable and
radio talk shows, getting 22% of the airtime," John Eggerton
wrote
Friday in Broadcasting & Cable, reporting on figures from the Project for Excellence in
Journalism's
talk show index for Feb. 18-23.
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"Tabloid is a matter of tone, not a matter of subject," Jonathan Klein, CNN U.S. president, said
in a
column
by Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times on Tuesday that defended the Anna Nicole Smith
coverage. "My
watchword here is to not waste the audience's time . . . When there's
big breaking news, you jump on top of it . . . But we don't have to
live for the immediate ratings bump."
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"When Univision began broadcasting a show three
years ago about the misadventures of 11-year-old identical twin girls
who swapped identities after discovering they had been separated at
birth, it characterized the episodes as educational programming for
children," Stephen Labaton
reported
in the New York Times on Feb. 24. "That decision is expected to cost Univision, the nation's largest
Hispanic network, $24 million in what would be the largest fine the
Federal Communications Commission has ever imposed against any company."
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