August 13, 2007

Jason Fritz/ NABJ Monitor Audience members reach for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., on Friday at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Las Vegas. The NABJ audience includes public relations practitioners and other non-journalists.

"An Easy Story to Write and a Lazy Story to Write"

Now that the 3,130 people who attended the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Las Vegas last week have returned home, Sen. Barack Obama will have one test of how effective he was:

Will journalists keep raising the question, "Is he black enough?"

The first African American presidential candidate with a serious chance of winning made it clear at the convention on Friday that he is irritated by the question, thinks journalists who raise it are going after an "easy story to write and a lazy story to write," and that journalists should investigate how the phrase became a campaign issue in the first place.

Moreover, he offered views on a number of issues of concern to black people globally that demonstrated that, as an African American, he sees things differently from his white competitors.

As one example, both the junior senator from Illinois and Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., were asked whether the "dialogue on race" undertaken during the Bill Clinton administration should be revisited.

The former first lady told the Trotter Group of African American columnists that her husband's effort had been unfairly derided, and added that "race is still a very significant issue, for our own role in the world and where we are as a people. Perhaps the people are willing to have that conversation now," maybe at a grass-roots, community level.

Answering a question from Betty Bayé of the Louisville Courier-Journal, Clinton linked the need for racial dialogue to what she called American society's dulled nerve endings over coarsened language, exemplified by ousted radio host Don Imus's April slur against the Rutgers women's basketball team.

Clinton also called an apology for slavery a good idea, saying "we're living with the residue," but said she did not favor reparations.

By contrast, Obama said, "I'm more interested in taking action as opposed to talking about talking. Generally, there is hand-wringing and breast beating and not much follow-through" after such conversations, Obama said.

His very inauguration would change the discourse on race, he told questioner Vanessa Williams of the Washington Post, when all Americans see his wife, Michelle, as first lady, and their children, Malia, 9, and Sasha, 6, running around the South Lawn.

He jokingly referred to his wife as "Jackie O. from the 'hood," a reference to former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who was known for her elegance.

Obama said he'd rather have a conversation about the inequities in the criminal justice system, although he "could see the need for an expanded conversation about slavery, because I don't think we've fully acknowledged the cost.

"America is an ahistoric country" that does not see the connection between the violence that had been perpetrated on black people in the South and the violence today among blacks on the South Side of Chicago. "Violence passes down from generation to generation," he said.

The senator also wondered whether an apology for slavery coming from an African American president would "transform the country," the way it would if it were generated elsewhere.

The "black enough" question at first provided the springboard for a joke. Obama began his convention talk by saying, "I want to apologize for being a little late, but you guys keep asking whether I am black enough."

After an impish grin and a pause, he added to applause and laughter, "I figured I'd stroll in."

Later, he tried to analyze the question. "What it really does lay bare," he said, is a mentality that "if you appeal to white folks, there must be something wrong. And some of that is, 'is he keeping it real because he went to Harvard?' Part of it has to do with fear. We don't want to get too excited about the prospect" of an African American president "because we don't want to be let down in the end. My attitude is let's try it. Let's take a chance and see what happens.

"I expect to have to earn the votes of African Americans," he continued, but if people vote otherwise, "it certainly shouldn't be because we're confused about our real identities. That time is past."

At a session with the Trotter Group after the speech, Eugene Kane of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel asked Obama where he thought the "black enough" question came from and how much it bothered him.

It is a concern he does not hear from ordinary black people, Obama replied. "There's an aspect of it that's cynical. This issue has been stirred up and perpetuated by . . . I can't say by who, I'll let you guys investigate it.

"Think about it. Nobody asked if I was black enough when I was running for U.S. senator. They were happy to claim me. What happened? Did I change? What happened was, people said 'where did this guy come from and why is he breaking up the party?'

"It is an easy thing to write and a lazy story to write, and plays into the notion of black identity that I think is old. It's not something I spend a lot of time worrying about," or that his wife does. "We know who we are. They question is, does everyone else know who they are?"

The "black enough?" story line gained currency last February after a "60 Minutes" interview with Obama that followed opinion pieces by such contrarian black writers as Stanley Crouch and Debra J. Dickerson, and in 2004, comments by his Republican opponent in the U.S. Senate race, Alan Keyes.

They argued that because Obama's father was from Kenya and his mother was a white woman from Kansas, that because he spent much time in his youth with his white grandparents and because had no slave ancestors, he is different from other African Americans.

However one responds to that argument, Obama's biological ties to Africa, claimed by no other presidential candidate, are evident in his comments about the continent. Asked in the Trotter meeting by Chicago columnist Monroe Anderson about China's expanding ties there, Obama referred to his own trip to his ancestral home a year ago.

"I recall having dinner with an African bishop in South Africa," the candidate told the group. "He said the pervasive presence of the Chinese is only matched by the complete absence of America."

The senator proposed a doubling of foreign aid as part of broader U.S. foreign policy.

He said that while China might be making gains in Africa at American expense, all is not lost there. "Personal diplomacy makes a difference," he said. "When I went to Kenya, tens of thousands of people lined the streets." After he and his wife took an AIDS test, it was estimated that half a million people there would follow suit, he said.

Obama made another global analogy when asked about economic development in inner cities: "If we have a World Bank to deal with world poverty, we can have an urban bank."

A question about the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, became an occasion to discuss the rest of the continent. "We've got places like this all through sub-Sahara Africa. We've got to have an African policy" that doesn't "just wait until all hell breaks loose" to act; one that includes health care, expanding trade and holding African leaders accountable, he said.

"Millions of people have died in the Congo over the last six years. If you ask millions of Americans about it, they wouldn't know a thing about it." He added that he viewed Africa's condition as a security issue.

After Clinton spoke the previous day, columnist Stan Simpson of the Hartford Courant told Journal-isms, "For me, the Obama campaign is so mundane. He tries to play it safe."

After hearing Obama, Simpson concluded that, like Hillary Clinton, Obama had "a great grasp of the issues. His intellect was very clear. . . . He was glad to be among us. You kind of sensed that."

Obama and Clinton were the only candidates in the Democratic and Republican fields to accept NABJ's invitation to speak, NABJ officials said, except for John Edwards, who was available only at a time that conflicted with another NABJ event.

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Obama Hoping for Change in "Rock Star" Story Line

Barack Obama as rock star? It's only the latest media story line about him, Obama told a meeting of African American columnists.

Julia Cheng Barack Obama, left, at Trotter Group meeting with Tonyaa Weathersbee of the Florida Times-Union and Les Payne of Newsday, seemed "glad to be among us," columnist Stan Simpson said.

"When the press starts paying attention to the substance of these arguments, the rock star label will fade and we'll be back to where we should have been in the first place," he said.

In a Friday speech before the National Association of Black Journalists and a follow-up meeting with members of the Trotter Group, the Democratic presidential candidate pledged to continue to provide access to the black press, gave examples of the kinds of stories he would like to see, flattered black journalists as producing the stories that help define his politics, and mourned slain Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey.

His aides said he had not yet developed a position on providing people of color with greater ownership of media outlets.

"The media develops a narrative and once the narrative develops, it's hard to break out of," the senator from Illinois said in response to a question at the Trotter session from Tonyaa Weathersbee of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. She asked what Obama thought of the "rock star" label.

"Initially it was, 'he can talk good . . . and has a pretty wife, but there's no substance,'" Obama said, even though he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, was at the top of his class at Harvard, and posted one of the more detailed health-care plans of the campaign on his Web site.

Now it's "shifted to, 'he's inexperienced' and he's short on foreign policy," he said.

Obama then defended his much-debated statement that he would meet with foreign leaders the United States finds repugnant, such as those in Iran. "We have refused to talk to Iran until they meet preconditions, which is what you talk about with Iran." With such a posture, "the world sees us as intransigent," he said.

The senator noted that the Washington Post on Thursday editorially defended another of his positions that met with criticism, that the United States should act to root out terrorists on Pakistani soil if Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the president, does not.

Obama began his speech by saying he had been in Oakland, Calif., the day before and helped a home health-care worker, Pauline Beck, serve her elderly charge as part of the Service Employees International Union's "Walk a Day in My Shoes" program.

"It was the best three hours I've spent on this campaign," Obama said, telling the journalists, "You help to lift up the stories of people like Mrs. Beck."

Reporters should tell "specific stories" about the lack of affordable housing, of ex-convicts who can't find jobs and other social problems. He said he was present "not only as a candidate for president, not only as an African American . . . " but one who has a chance to "speak to people whose writing helps inform my politics."

Cheryl Smith, editor of the Dallas Weekly, asked Obama why he had reached out to the black press, with whom the candidate held a conference call early in the year, and whether he would continue to reach out if elected.

Naming three Chicago black newspapers —the Defender, the Crusader and the Citizen — Obama said that when he served in the Illinois legislature, those papers would cover issues he was working on that the mainstream press would not.

"My attitude is that if you were covering me when nobody wanted to cover me, then they should cover me when everybody wants to cover me. That attitude will continue when I'm in the White House," he said.

• Zettler Clay IV blog, Journalisticks.com: The Visit from Obama
  
  
• Eric Deggans blog, St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times: NABJ Postcard #3: What Is the Truest Image of Black America?
  
  
• Eugene Kane, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Clinton, Obama show clout in black community
  
  
• Michel Martin, "Tell Me More," National Public Radio: Black Journalists Tackle the 'Black Enough' Question
  
  
• Roland Martin, CNN.com: Obama: Enough with the 'black enough' talk
  
  
• Les Payne, Newsday: Could Hillary Clinton also be a 'black' leader?
  
  
• Gregory Stanford, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: A pair of candidates who get it
  
  
• Heather Wood, Huffington Post: Irresponsible Journalists of the Week: Tucker Carlson and his Whitewashed Panel Discussing "Blackness"
  
  

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Sandra Long Named Co-No. 2 at Philly Inquirer

Sandra Long, a deputy managing editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the highest ranking African American in the Inquirer newsroom, on Monday was named a co-managing editor at the newspaper.

Sandra Long

"Long and Mike Leary, an assistant managing editor at the Baltimore Sun, "will jointly rank as the No. 2 editors in the Inquirer newsroom, with Leary overseeing news-gathering operations and Long responsible for production-related activities. She will be the newsroom liaison with business operations," Bob Fernandez wrote in a story on the Inquirer Web site.

"Inquirer editor Bill Marimow made the announcement to the newsroom outside his office at mid-afternoon. Leary and Long replace Anne Gordon, who announced her resignation in late April as managing editor to join a private-investment firm," the story continued.

"'Both of them know a good story when they see one, and they both know a story that needs attention when they see one,' Marimow said when introducing Leary and Long to the staff."

Long, a former editorial writer at the old Philadelphia Bulletin who joined the Inquirer as a correspondent in 1983, is author of "In Sandra's Shoes," a blog on the Inquirer Web site in which she describes her fight with breast cancer, the story noted. "Following surgery and radiation treatment, Long said she beat the cancer. She is taking tamoxifen to prevent a recurrence. Long, 55, is a founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists."

NABJ lodged a protest in January when the paper undertook layoffs and black journalists were twice as likely to be laid off as their white counterparts.

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Jason Miccolo Johnson/NABJ Don King's receipt of a Sam Lacy Pioneer Award from the National Association of Black Journalists was debated among sportswriters. With him is Ron Thomas, who directs the sports journalism program at Morehouse College.

Decision to Honor Don King Proves Controversial

A decision by the Sports Task Force of the National Association of Black Journalists to honor boxing promoter Don King last week has prompted dissents from some sportswriters and a fierce defense from others.

"As chair I signed off on the selection of Don King as one of our Sam Lacy Pioneer Awards as nominated by our awards committee," Gregory Lee of the Boston Globe, chair of the task force, told Journal-isms. "Anything that has to do with Mr. King will always be surrounded by controversy. We in our own task force are having a lively debate on our listserve on King's selection. Regardless of what you may think of Mr. King, when you think of the sport of boxing and the city of Las Vegas you think Don King.

"We, the task force, select people in the host city of the NABJ Convention who have made a significant impact in that community. Don King, along with the likes of Richard Steele, Greg Anthony and Reggie Theus, were honored for their work in the Las Vegas community." The references are to the boxing referee; the ESPN NBA analyst and former UNLV standout; and the Sacramento Kings head coach and former UNLV star.

Commentator Kevin Blackistone, formerly a columnist at the Dallas Morning News, was one of the naysayers on the Sports Task Force e-mail list.

"This is right up there with the NAACP nominating R Kelly for an Image Award or the SCLC considering awarding Michael Vick. An embarrassingly poor choice. I think it strains credulity to suggest Don King is emblematic of Sam Lacy," the legendary sportswriter who played a key role in the integration of baseball, Blackistone wrote. "A better selection from the boxing world, if that was a must being in Vegas, would've been Eddie Futch," the renowned boxing trainer, "as much a gentleman as a giant, posthumously."

A well-known commentator agreed. "This is about the dumbest thing I've ever heard, us giving Don King any kind of award. It's embarrassing. Seriously . . . and one named after Sam Lacy! It's inappropriate beyond words."

Chuck Johnson of USA Today took King's side. He told his colleagues, "In the two years that I've been covering boxing for USA TODAY, Don King has proven to be no different than any other boxing promoter I've encountered. What I'm hearing seems to be more of an indictment on boxing and based on a perception that the sport is filled with sharks and shenanigans. I'm not [here] to debate whether boxing has an underbelly. The sport is regulated state to state and when you don't have an omnipotent governing body, it's every man (or in this case, promoter) for himself.

"Don King is one of the sport's preeminent promoters and has been a powerful boxing figure since the Thrilla in Manila in the 70s. To dismiss his impact as a successful African-American businessman and a boxing pioneer is to totally dismiss boxing as a relevant sport."

King also owns the Cleveland Call and Post, a black press stalwart that recently has been hammering black city council members "on poverty, crime and other problems facing black residents," the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote in April.

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AP, Columnist Team to Create "Boot Camp"

"The Associated Press and the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies at North Carolina A&T State University have announced a partnership that merges two programs that will pair professionals and students in a series of boot camps," Gia Parker wrote Saturday in the NABJ Monitor, the student newspaper of the National Association of Black Journalists convention.

"For nearly 12 years, the AP ran a program called "Diverse Visions/Diverse Voices," which brought together a group of college journalists with professional journalists. The five-day program focused on teaching leadership and helping young journalists build skills they could take into newsrooms.

"But the AP, like many media outlets, faced financial challenges that forced them to cut the program.

"DeWayne Wickham, director of the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies, and Robert Naylor, director for career development at the AP, decided to expand the institute's program and preserve the AP's program.

Wickham is a columnist for USA Today and Gannett News Service.

"The boot camp is similar to a program run by the New York Times and Dillard University. Both programs are hosted at historically black colleges, and both are recruiting from pools of journalists who are NABJ members or HBCU students," the story said.

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Detroit Services Thursday for Chauncey Bailey

A memorial service and funeral Mass are scheduled in Detroit on Thursday for slain journalist Chauncey Bailey, who worked at the Detroit News as a staff writer and columnist from 1979 to 1992.

Oakland Tribune Chauncey Bailey

The service is planned for 6 p.m. at the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament, 9844 Woodward (near Boston). A memorial fund to benefit Bailey's son has been established. Contributions may be sent to: Chauncey Bailey Memorial Fund, c/o Bank of America, Creekside Branch, 1188 Galeria Blvd., Roseville, CA 95678

In a separate development, the 19-year-old handyman from Oakland, Calif.'s Your Black Muslim Bakery accused of assassinating Bailey denied Thursday that he confessed and claimed he was innocent in an interview with KTVU-TV in San Francisco.

However, Homicide Commander Lt. Ersie Joyner III of the Oakland Police Department vehemently denied suspect Devaughndre Broussard's allegations, saying the tactic was not unexpected and that suspects in other cases have tried to do similar things.

The Bay Area Black Journalists Association announced it is adding a $2,500 scholarship to honor Bailey. "I'm inviting NABJ chapters and anyone who knew Chauncey to make a donation to help fund the scholarship. Whatever money we raise will be matched here in the Bay Area by BABJA and anyone else who wishes to make a contribution," said Bob Butler, the association president, referring to the National Association of Black Journalists.

Donations may be sent to: BABJA, 1714 Franklin St. #100-260, Oakland, CA 94612, attn: Chauncey Bailey Scholarship. The organization's annual scholarship luncheon fundraiser is scheduled for Oct. 18.

More media outlets began to cover the story with editorials and pieces that discussed the significance of the killing in the contexts of journalism, recent violence and the history of black nationalism in Oakland.

• Brad Bennett, Broward (Fla.) Times: Chauncey Bailey: A martyr for freedom
  
  
• Editorial, Contra Costa Times: Killing of journalist an attack on liberty
  
  
• Editorial, Harrisonburg (Va.) Daily News-Record: A Man Of Courage
  
  
• Editorial, Seattle Times: Death of a journalist on the streets of home
  
  
• Editorial, Washington Post: A Journalist's Death
  
  
• Hazel Trice Edney, National Newspaper Publishers Association: After Murder of Popular Editor, NNPA Publisher Encourages Black Press to 'Step Up' Aggressive Reporting
  
  
• James Fanelli, New York Post: Unholy 'Journalist Slay' Biz
  
  
• Matthai Chakko Kuruvila, San Francisco Chronicle: Bean pies, power, sex and death at Oakland's Your Black Muslim Bakery
  
  
• Neil MacFarquhar, International Herald Tribune: Black nationalist institution in California goes down in bankruptcy and disquiet
  
  
• Askia Muhammad, Washington Post: Still Crazy After All These Years: A Recipe for Mayhem
  
  
• Morris W. O'Kelly, EURWeb.com: Change Our Mentality or Face Extinction
  
  
• Frank Sotomayor, Maynard Institute for Journalism Education: Bailey: A "spark" that inspired journalism education
  
  
• Karl Vick, Washington Post: For Some in Oakland, Editor's Death Shows Subversion of Black Activism
  
  

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Irene Morgan, Who Preceded Rosa Parks, Dies at 90

"Irene Morgan was feeling poorly the muggy July morning when her refusal to bow to bigotry would alter history," Carol Morello wrote in 2000 on the front page of a Sunday Washington Post.

"Still recovering from a miscarriage, she boarded a crowded Greyhound bus at a crossroads stop in Gloucester, Va., bound for Baltimore. She walked back to the fourth row from the rear, well within the section where segregation laws required black passengers to sit. She picked an aisle seat beside a young mother holding an infant. A few miles up the road, the driver ordered the two black women to stand so a young white couple could take their seats.

"But Irene Morgan said no, a bold and dangerous act of defiance and dignity in rural Virginia or anywhere in the South of 1944.

"Eleven years before Rosa Parks refused to cede her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Ala., city bus and sparked a new chapter in the civil rights movement, Irene Morgan's spirited and unflinching 'No' was a stick of dynamite in a cornerstone of institutionalized segregation.

"Her arrest and $10 fine were appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court by a young NAACP lawyer named Thurgood Marshall, resulting in a landmark 1946 decision striking down Jim Crow segregation in interstate transportation. She inspired the first Freedom Ride in 1947, when 16 civil rights activists rode buses and trains through the South to test the law enunciated in Morgan v. Virginia."

Irene Morgan Kirkaldy died at 90 of Alzheimer's disease Friday at her Virginia home, as Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb reported in the Washington Post and Richard Goldstein wrote in the New York Times.

Her death competed with that of entertainer and entrepreneur Merv Griffin, who died at 82 of prostate cancer, it was announced on Sunday. How many news organizations made room for both? Or returned this historic figure to the front page?

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Bernard Shaw Issues a Warning

August 11, 2007

Ex-Anchor Has Messages for White Males, Owners

Bernard Shaw, the veteran journalist who retired as CNN anchor in 2000, struck out at unnamed media owners who are "sabotaging the public good" with their "profit fixations," and, as he accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award Saturday night from the National Association of Black Journalists, warned white males that they ignore diversity at their peril.

Nyema Vernon Bernard Shaw said he was speaking in the tradition of Frederick Douglass.

"Journalists, hear me tonight," Shaw told an awards banquet audience at the NABJ convention in Bally's hotel in Las Vegas. "There are some owners in the business — bosses, parent companies — whose profit fixation and staffing directives and decisions sabotage the public good they profess to serve.

"They are turning the people's right to know into the people's fight to know," he said.

"Beyond this ballroom tonight, white males, wake up," Shaw continued. "Globally, you are an island speck in an ocean of color.

"The reins of power will weaken and so will your grip — if you do not faithfully support our nation's greatest strength, diversity.

"To you, caught in the middle, stay vigilant. You must stay strong."

Shaw emphasized the word "globally" in discussing his remarks afterward with Journal-isms, saying he was aiming at a worldwide audience. "What matters is that my words give hope" to people of various ethnic groups, he said. Shaw would not name the white males or the companies he was talking about. "People in the media know who they are," he said. "All you have to do is look at the numbers. They know who they are and we know who they are."

Shaw, 67, also said, "I was speaking for the historical record. I expect my words to resonate long after I'm dead." He said a speech accepting the NABJ's Lifetime Achievement Award deserved carefully chosen words. "That was in the tradition of Frederick Douglass," the first well-known black journalist, he said. "I was seeking to inspire, to inform and to light a fire under some asses."

Also honored during the program was Steve Capus, president of NBC News, who had said on Friday of ousted radio host Don Imus, "I'm not going to bring him back to MSNBC."

Capus received the Ida B. Wells Award, presented by NABJ and the National Conference of Editorial Writers, in part for his actions during the Imus affair in April, when the radio host described the Rutgers women's basketball team in racist and sexist terms. Capus ended MSNBC's simulcasting of the Imus show from CBS-owned WFAN radio in New York. CBS pulled the plug on Imus the next day.

"Whether he deserves another shot on somebody else's airwaves, someone else will decide," Capus said. "I'm not going to bring him back to MSNBC." He was responding to a question about a comment by "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert that he would return to Imus' show should it be reinstated.

The NBC News executive, who was also praised for appointing two African American vice presidents, Mark Whitaker and Lyn Pitts, said he was proud of the diversity-friendly culture at NBC. He noted on Saturday night that the GE African American Forum, part of the NBC Universal operation, had raised $100,000 for the NABJ scholarship fund, and that his network's commitment shows in its coverage.

Anchor Lester Holt is in Africa, looking at Zimbabwe border clashes and doing stories on South Africa and global warming, and Capus said reporter Ann Curry had made seven trips to Sudan in connection with the Darfur genocide crisis.

Shaw's honor was just one for CNN at the convention. The network also received the association's Best Practices award. In accepting that citation on Thursday, Johnita Due, who chairs CNN's Diversity Council, said Jim Walton, CNN Worldwide president, had become such a diversity advocate he had been referred to as "the first black CNN president."

As evidence of CNN's commitment, she pointed to CNN's coverage of the "Jena Six" case in Louisiana, where six young black men were charged with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit attempted second-degree murder after a white student was beaten and knocked unconscious at school; and the Aug. 2 slaying of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey. The coverage was enhanced by a black presence at the network, she said.

"We will not become complacent," said Due.

In declaring Black Entertainment Television the winner of the organization's Thumbs Down award, Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times, who chairs the NABJ's Media Monitoring Committee, Thursday cited not only BET's dearth of regular public affairs programming and its failure to broadcast live the funeral of Coretta Scott King.

He said the "College Hill" reality series distorted life at historically black colleges and that "Hot Ghetto Mess," retitled "We Got to Do Better," was an example of "the problematic images that BET continues to present."

"NABJ objects to the channel's perpetuation of harmful Black stereotypes due to the airing [of] hip-hop videos that often have misogynistic, materialistic and violent themes," the organization said in its convention booklet.

Despite that, BET News walked away with at least two of NABJ's "Salute to Excellence" awards, both for a discontinued Sunday morning show called "The Chop Up."

The Saturday night program also saw Dean Baquet, who returned to the New York Times in March as Washington bureau chief after battling over financial cutbacks with the Tribune Co. as editor of the Los Angeles Times, accept an award as Journalist of the Year.

"If I could make one request," Baquet said, "let's stop gazing at our own navels" and focus on why we became journalists. Rather than spend all of our time focusing on our own problems, Baquet said, we should remember that we have to cover two wars, economic upheaval, political turmoil in our cities, and a presidential election unlike any we've seen in a generation.

• Michel Martin, "Tell Me More," National Public Radio: Wisdom Watch: Bernard Shaw
  
  
• Juan Williams, "Morning Edition," National Public Radio: 'BET' Gets Thumbs Down Award From Journalists
  
  

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2 Somalis Assassinated as NABJ Honors Their Union

While the leader of the National Union of Somali Journalists was in Las Vegas Saturday being honored by the National Association of Black Journalists, two of his constituents were assassinated.

One was Ali Iman Sharmarke, owner of the HornAfrik Media Company, who was killed after his vehicle hit a roadside bomb that was remotely detonated. The other, Mahad Ahmed Elmi, the director of Capital Voice, Horn Afrik's second FM station, was shot dead by two men armed with pistols, according to the Shabelle news service in Somalia.

"HornAfrik's broadcasts have criticized both the government and the Islamic militants who have been trying to topple the administration through a bloody insurgency," Mohamed Olad Hassan reported for the Associated Press.

"There was no immediate indication of who had killed the men. Deputy police commissioner Abdullahi Hassan Barise said the men were targeted because of their jobs at the independent radio station."

Omar Faruk Osman, secretary general of the journalists union, told Journal-isms he had spoken to one of the victims just 20 minutes before he was killed.

Osman came to the convention to accept the Percy Qoboza Foreign Journalist Award on behalf of the union.

"Freedom of the press is an uncommon liberty in Somalia, a country ravaged by internal warfare and repressive regional authorities seeking to gain control of the region's territories," the NABJ's convention booklet said. "The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) has earned a reputation for exposing press freedom infringements, campaigning against repression of journalism and pushing for the release of detained journalists while advocating for journalists' rights."

John Yearwood, the NABJ treasurer and world editor of the Miami Herald, who hosted Osman at the convention, said he would urge NABJ to observe a moment of silence at its gospel brunch on Sunday.

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Broadcaster Ciara Elected to Lead NABJ

August 10, 2007

Aaron Morrison/NABJConvention.org Barbara Ciara listed her priorities as hiring, retention and professional development. Her overriding vision is for "training for the new technology."

Norfolk, Va., Anchor Wins Over Cheryl Smith, 310-278

Barbara Ciara, managing editor and anchor at WTKR-TV in Norfolk, Va. and vice president/broadcast of the National Association of Black Journalists, was elected president of the association on Friday, defeating black press advocate Cheryl Smith, 310-278.

Ciara, who has worked as an investigative reporter, photographer, producer and assignment editor in a career of more than 25 years, said her top priorities would be hiring, retention and professional development.

It was the third run at the job for Smith, executive editor of the Dallas Weekly and a former NABJ board member. The race provided a clear contrast in styles between Ciara, the television anchor and member of the current board, and Smith, who touted her grass-roots ties and said she had been described as "the Harriet Tubman of NABJ," the nation's largest organization of journalists of color.

In other contested races:

• Ernie Suggs, the incumbent vice president/print and a reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, defeated New York-based Meta J. Mereday, a former associate member of the board and senior editor of Equal Business Publications, 414 to 165, to win reelection.
  
  
• Kathy Times, investigative reporter at WVTM-TV, Birmingham, Ala., won over Shannon Powell, reporter/anchor at WAVY-TV in Portsmouth, Va., 419 to 142, for vice president/broadcast.
  
  
• For secretary, Deirdre Childress, weekend editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, defeated Russell LaCour, copy editor/paginator at the Tulsa (Okla.) World and a regional representative on the board, 333 to 236.
  
  
• For parliamentarian, Tonju Francois, editorial producer at CNN en Español in North Miami, Fla., beat Victor Vaughan, national photo editor at the Associated Press in New York and a regional representative on the board, 306 to 246.
  
  
• Christopher Nelson, a communications major at Loyola College of Maryland in Baltimore, defeated Charles Taplin, a communication major at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., to become student representative on the board, 69 to 47.
  
  

Gregory Lee Jr., senior assistant sports editor at the Boston Globe, a former board secretary and chair of the NABJ Sports Task Force, ran unopposed for treasurer.

Some 32 percent of the organization's 1,798 full-time members voted, and 9 percent of the 1,213 eligible students cast ballots, according to the elections committee. The election saw the organization's most extensive use of the Internet, allowing members to vote online until 5 p.m. Pacific time on Friday.

After the results were announced at the end of a banquet at the association's convention, which continues at Bally's hotel in Las Vegas, Ciara hugged Smith, who was seated on the dais, and told members that toward the end of the campaign, the two women made a pledge "to work together to make a better NABJ," regardless of who won. "We were both ladies during the process, we didn't have to get witchy, and now we'll be like sisters," Ciara said.

As vice president/broadcast, Ciara often took the lead in formulating the organization's position on broadcast matters.

In 2006, when a survey from the Radio-Television News Directors Association showed that an increase in minority journalists in TV newsrooms came almost entirely from an increase in Hispanics and Asian Americans, she said in an NABJ statement, "The question is, what will the radio and broadcast industries do with these numbers. I hope this survey is not an indication that the broadcast industry is just trading one race off for another instead of making a true effort to really diversify our nation's newsrooms."

During the campaign, Ciara said she had improved ties with the Meredith Corp., the company that in 2005 fired the head of its broadcast operation, Kevin O'Brien, for remarks criticizing African Americans. At the time, Ciara called O'Brien the true definition of "a power bigot."

After Ciara worked with Paul Karpowicz, who succeeded O'Brien as president of Meredith's Broadcast Group, more than 100 student NABJ members applied for a Meredith program in which students spend a week working in the newsroom of KPHO-TV in Phoenix, she said. The students spend time with reporters, producers, editors, videographers and instructors from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Ciara also said at a candidates forum in Washington that "the stats went up, up, up" on black professionals employed at Meredith.

Asked then for her overriding vision for the organization, she answered, "For me, it's training for the new technology."

Ciara will preside over an organization that moved from a deficit of $468,249 last year to a projected surplus this year of $100,215, outgoing president Bryan Monroe and Treasurer John Yearwood said earlier Friday at a business meeting.

Monroe said membership, which had declined, had rebounded to more than 3,714, and that attendance at the convention exceeded 3,000.

Among those inducted into the NABJ Hall of Fame Friday night was John L. Dotson Jr., a board member of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and former publisher of the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal, who in 1974 ran the Michele Clark Program at Columbia University, a precursor to the Maynard Institute.

There, one of his students was Chauncey Bailey, the editor of the Oakland Post who was slain on Aug. 2. "Chauncey was always feisty, looking to challenge whatever he was exposed to. Now he's dead, evidently for getting too close looking into gang violence in California. I hope there will be others to take up this mantle," Dotson said. He said he hoped "NABJ will find a way to honor him."

Dodson also offered this advice: "Don't let the same thing happen to news on the Web that happened to newspapers. There is still time to get on that elevator going up. Do what you can do to get on that elevator."

Others inducted into the NABJ Hall of Fame were Xerona Clayton, an Atlanta broadcaster who is founder, president and CEO of the Trumpet Awards Foundation Inc.; Mervin Aubespin, the first African American news illustrator at the Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal, its first black reporter and a former NABJ president who was described as mentor to thousands; and Jim Vance, longtime anchor at WRC-TV in Washington.

• Renita Burns, NABJ Convention Online: Ciara Elected President
  
  

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Richard Prince's Journal-isms originates from Washington and is published Monday, Wednesday and Friday. (Full disclosure: Richard Prince works part-time at the Washington Post and is editor of the Black College Wire.) It began in print before most of knew what the Internet was, and it would like to be referred to as a "column." For newcomers: The words in blue (on most computers) are links leading to more information. The Web site BugMeNot.com provides passwords and user names to some registration-only news sites.

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