2,400 in All Took Buyouts, Layoffs, ASNE Says

Gilbert Bailón

"Since 2001, newsrooms have lost an estimated 3,800 professionals, a 6.7 percent decline. But the largest loss came last year," the ASNE said in reporting its annual diversity census.

"The percent of minority journalists working at daily newspapers grew minimally to 13.52 percent from 13.43 percent of all journalists, according to ASNE," a news release said as the society opened its annual convention in Washington.

The figure had risen to 13.73 percent in 2006. The organization first set a goal of reaching parity with the percentage of people of color in the general population by 2000, then by 2025. In 2006, the general population percentage was 34 percent, according to the census bureau.

In a conference call as ASNE prepared to release its figures, the presidents of the associations of black, Hispanic, Asian American and Native Americans, plus their umbrella Unity organization, unanimously agreed that there is no way the industry will reach parity by 2025 at the rate it is going, Mark Fitzgerald reported Sunday for Editor & Publisher.

ASNE President Gilbert Bailón, editorial page editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, said in the release, "The numbers represent a dual reality: It's mildly encouraging that the minority percentage held steady despite difficult economic times that are causing many cutbacks. On the other hand, the total number of minority journalists employed at daily newspapers declined by nearly 300 people, which follows the pattern for the overall newsroom workforce. Such a trend will not help newspapers in their quest to reach parity with the minority population by 2025."

ASNE Diversity Chair Caesar Andrews, executive editor of the Detroit Free Press, said, "Certainly the slight percentage increase is better than the alternative, especially during another tough year with overall staff reductions. But if we're not able to accelerate diversity inside newsrooms, and if we miss opportunities to produce more compelling news coverage, then the challenge of connecting with changing communities becomes that much more difficult."

The ASNE figures, self-reported by newspapers, show a workforce of 52,598, consisting of 7,113 journalists of color and 45,485 whites. The journalists of color include 2,790 blacks, 2,346 Hispanics, 1,692 Asian Americans and 284 Native Americans.

The student convention newspaper, the ASNE Reporter, reported the 13.52 percent figure earlier Sunday, saying it had obtained a briefing book distributed at the ASNE Board of Directors meeting on Sunday.

• Tom Huang, Poynter Institute: Newsrooms Losing Color: Outflow Outstripping Newcomers
  
  
• Jerry Large, Seattle Times: Our layoffs are your loss too
  
  

Leonard Pitts Gives Speech After Death Threats

Leonard Pitts Jr.

"Pitts himself revealed the reason for the extra protection by campus security and off-duty Tacoma police officers hired by UPS: Both he and UPS had received e-mails threatening his life.

"Pitts' speech came off without incident, but many in the audience were stunned that such a thing could happen here.

". . . Pitts, whose columns appear in The News Tribune, is no stranger to threats. Last year, one of his columns so angered racists that he received many threatening e-mails, and his home address and phone number were published on a white supremacist Web site.

"In his speech Thursday, Pitts touched on the fact that many Americans fear for the life of Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama. Yes, Obama has also received threats, and the Secret Service began protection detail for him earlier than for the other candidates (excluding Hillary Clinton, who as former first lady has continued to have Secret Service protection).

"But Pitts said that fear is no reason for Obama not to run or for people not to vote for him. 'Living in fear is an oxymoron,' Pitts said."

The previous threats came after a June 3, 2007, column about the torture murder of a young white couple, allegedly by four African Americans, in Knoxville, Tenn. "My column took on white supremacists and far right bloggers who contend that this 'genocide' — their word — goes unremarked by news media too PC to report black-on-white crime," Pitts recalled for readers at the time.

• Greg Johnson, Knoxville (Tenn.) News Sentinel: The raw realism of race relations
  
  

Detroit Mayor Monitors Stories About Him — in Fla.

WDIV-TV Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, with his wife, Carlita, pleaded for forgiveness Jan. 30 from Detroiters and from his family after the scandal over romantic text messages.

"Our morning anchor in little ole Fort Myers, Florida, said the words 'Kwame Kilpatrick,' Forrest Carr, news director at WFTX-TV, a Fox affiliate, wrote Wednesday on an e-mail list for journalists. "Within 3 hours, a clip of that broadcast had been sent to 15 people on the mayor's team. (BTW, one of the e-mail addresses on the report appears to be the mayor's personal Blackberry.)

"Within an hour after that, his press secretary is on the phone, attempting to spin the coverage. Lest anyone missed the point: Kilpatrick is mayor of Detroit, Michigan. We are in Fort Myers, Florida. Detroit is the nation's 11th largest media market. Fort Myers is the nation's 63rd largest. Multiply this by 200, which is the approximate number of television markets, and you begin to get the idea of the magnitude of what today's call implies" about how many stations are being monitored.

"In all the years I've done news for a living (and there have been 28 of them) I have never, ever, EVER been contacted by an out-of-town newsmaker of any kind— politician or otherwise— with a complaint about coverage. She told me, quite proudly, that she and her communications team monitor local newscasts ALL OVER AMERICA (her words) for stories about Kilpatrick. And obviously, if she doesn't like what she sees, she calls."

Carr told his Florida viewers about the episode on Thursday. Joe Swickard of the Detroit Free Press followed up on the story on Friday. He said the mayoral spokeswoman, Denise Tolliver, "said she didn't know what the service costs Detroit taxpayers, 'and if I did, I wouldn't tell you.'"

Carr told Journal-isms on Thursday, "We did run a story about this last night in the Cape Coral/Fort Myers market — and in the course of doing so, we admitted that the story was a bit one-sided, and in an attempt to fix that, presented some of Ms. Tolliver's comments." WFTX-TV had received the story from the Fox affiliate in Detroit, and simply did a voiceover.

Text messages obtained by the Free Press show Kilpatrick lied under oath in connection with a police whistle-blower case that cost the city $8.4 million to settle. A judge on Friday gave Kilpatrick permission to travel anywhere in the country on city business without prior authorization, but if the mayor travels out of state for personal reasons, he must file a motion for a hearing before a judge, the Free Press reported on Saturday.

• Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald: Detroit mayor: 'You should be ashamed'
  
  

Radio One Buys Black Planet, MiGente, AsianAve

"We will be the clear number one in the African-American online space," said Alfred Liggins III, Radio One's CEO and president, in a news release.

With more than 20 million members, Community Connect is the fourth most visited U.S. social networking property, Radio One said, citing a January report from Hitwise, which calls itself "the leading online competitive intelligence service."

BlackPlanet.com, owned by five Asians, according to AdAge.com, is the second-most popular Web site aggregating the black audience online, according to AOL Black Voices, which says it is No. 1.

"This acquisition is another example of Radio One, Inc.'s continued strategy of diversification outside of the radio broadcasting space in order to deliver a more holistic approach to targeting African Americans," the Radio One announcement said, noting it had purchased Giant, a magazine targeting urban consumers, and has an interest in the TV One cable network, which targets African American adults. "This acquisition gives Radio One a strong foothold in the ever growing social networking and multicultural online space."

Community Connect president and founder Ben Sun will continue to run the company, the announcement said.

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A Conversation on Race

MSNBC "Meeting David Wilson" made its debut on MSNBC on Friday night, as well as before an audience of 1,000 at Howard University. David Wilson, a filmmaker from Newark, right, told the story of meeting David Wilson, a BBQ restaurant owner, left, on the North Carolina farm where the restaurant owner's ancestors owned the filmmaker's. After their filmed conversations on race, "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams moderated a series of conversations with opinion makers on racial issues that was broadcast live on MSNBC. Media images glorifying European beauty standards took hits as contributing to black self-esteem issues. The principals in the film, NBC President Steve Capus and other NBC executives came to Howard's Cramton Auditorium for the occasion.

• Sylvester Brown Jr., St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Civil discourse shouldn't be impossible
  
  
• Michael H. Cottman, BlackAmericaWeb.com: MSNBC's 'Meeting David Wilson' a Provocative Look at Race, Racism — and Redemption
  
  
• Eugene Holley, Jr., TheBlackWorldToday.com: Meeting David Wilson
  
  
• Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: Talk about race must be both ways
  
  

From the GAO: 3 Factors Limiting Minority Ownership

Whether one believes the remedy is a change in media-ownership rules depends on whether one is a "business stakeholder" or a "nonbusiness" one, the GAO said.

In a report dated March 12 but released Friday, the GAO, which reports to Congress, said the two other factors limiting ownership are "a lack of easy access to sufficient capital for financing the purchases of stations" and "the repeal of the tax certificate program — which allowed for the deferral of capital gains taxes on the sale of broadcast outlets and thereby provided financial incentives for incumbents to sell stations to minorities."

The agency said it interviewed 102 industry officials and experts, in addition to officials from the FCC, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and trade associations.

"Both business and nonbusiness stakeholders who expressed an opinion on a previously repealed tax certificate program supported either reinstating or expanding the program to encourage the sale of broadcast outlets to minorities," it said. The FCC has urged Congress to reinstate the program.

The FCC voted in December to relax its rules to allow for cross-ownership by one company of a broadcast outlet and a newspaper in the same market under certain circumstances, as AdAge.com has noted Opponents are working to have Congress overturn the ruling.

The GAO said, "Most business stakeholders expressing opinions on various media ownership rules were more likely to report that they should be relaxed or repealed. In contrast, nonbusiness stakeholders who expressed opinions on the rules were more likely to report that the rules should be left in place or strengthened."

While the new rules would generally allow such acquisitions in top markets and generally disallow them in smaller markets, it grants the FCC the ability to easily make exceptions.

The media advocacy group Free Press has said that while racial and ethnic minorities make up 34 percent of the U.S. population, they only own 7.7 percent of full-power radio stations and 3.15 percent of television stations.

However, the GAO said, "more accurate, complete, and reliable data would allow FCC to better assess the impact of its rules and regulations and allow the Congress to make more informed legislative decisions." It recommended that FCC take steps to improve the reliability and accessibility of its own data on race, gender and ownership.

U.S. Military Not Releasing AP Photographer

Bilal Hussein

"Lt Cdr Kenneth Marshall said the order related to only one of the charges against Mr Hussein," the BBC reported on Friday.

"Cdr Marshall said: 'An amnesty panel has concluded that one of the charges is covered by amnesty; a separate panel considering the other charge has not yet announced its conclusion.'

"He added: 'By its own terms, the Amnesty Law does not purport to compel release of detainees in [US] detention facilities.'"

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Rev. Jeremiah Wright in Norfolk: No Media Questions

"Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to ask it.

"Since cable news in particular has annoyed Wright with its coverage of video snippets of his sermons on the Web, Wright, preaching April 13 at Bank Street Memorial Baptist Church in Norfolk, declined to take questions from all media. Rising to deliver 'Trouble Don't Last Always,' Wright announced he would share a statement instead. He asked a handful of us journalists to stand yet a second time to identify ourselves and had an usher hand us his statement. The media release was useless concerning the Barack Obama firestorm.

"Since I was on deadline, the following is the result of what we journalists do when we're told 'no comment.' We go with what we have and interpret. . . ."

• Mary C. Curtis, Charlotte (N.C.) Observer: Governor of Kansas: It's Obama's time
  
  
• Bob Herbert, New York Times: A Different Kind of Election
  
  
• Gregory Kane, Baltimore Sun: Offensive foot in pastor's mouth
  
  
• Askia Muhammad, Final Call: Hillary Clinton stands by attack on pastor
  
  
• Angela Tuck, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: The Wright stuff, or, more about bias or lack thereof
  
  
• Ron Walters, National Newspaper Publishers Association: The Attack on Black Theology
  
  

Conglomerate Launches Black Search Engine

Johnny C. Taylor Jr., CEO of the initiative, told Journal-isms he was interviewing candidates for managing editor and editor-in-chief and "a couple of people are NABJ members," referring to the National Association of Black Journalists. The site will also use freelance journalists, he said.

"It is not a site. It is not a portal. There's nothing out there that's going to be like what we're doing," he said.

On Friday, the company unveiled its product: "the first-ever search engine catering specifically to African American interests, RushmoreDrive.com, as the Web site The ClickZ Network reported.

The story does not say what became of the involvement by journalists, but Taylor is quoted as saying that at first, "A search engine was the farthest thing from our minds."

But after conducting focus groups with African Americans across the country, "We discovered that the number one activity blacks did online was search for information, while numbers two and three were searching for jobs or searching for and consuming news," Taylor said in the story. "So we decided to create a product that was first a search engine that delivers more relevant results [for the black community], but could also be a resource for jobs and news."

• Faye Anderson blog: Meet Me on RushmoreDrive
  
  
• Jeff Jarvis, buzzmachine.com: The segregated web
  
  
• Mike Street, Sheila Street and Everett Street, GreasyGuide.com: Review: Rushmore Drive . . . Discover Less Here
  
  
• Bob Tedeschi, New York Times: Beaming Online Services Toward Blacks
  
  

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10,000 Scholars Say Terrorism, Islam Don't Mix

It would seem to be news, then, if 10,000 Muslim scholars from across India, including those representing the madrasses, met and declared, "Killing of innocents is not compatible with Islam. It is anti-Islamic."

Such a meeting did take place on Feb. 25 in Deoband, India, and a State Department spokeswoman told Journal-isms last week that the department sponsored the meeting.

Rhode Shore, the spokeswoman, was responding to a question that arose after Gerald M. Feierstein, the department's principal deputy coordinator for counterterrorism, told a delegation from the National Conference of Editorial Writers on March 31 that, "To the extent that the press does cover the war on terrorism," it covers the 15 percent he called "kinetic — things blowing up and people getting killed. You're missing the 85 percent that will make the difference in whether we succeed or don't succeed."

But if the Feb. 25 development was little noticed in the Western media, that was not the case elsewhere.

Writing March 10 in the New Straits Times in Malaysia, where Islam is the official religion, Mahendra Ved reported, "This is the first time that an Islamic institution has so strongly condemned violence in the name of religion. Coming as it does from scholars and religious leaders held in high esteem in the community, it will be difficult for hotheads to challenge these statements."

"'It is for the first time that representatives of more than 4,000 madrasah and all prominent Islamic institutions of the country have unanimously condemned acts of terror and all types of violence,' said Maulana Khalid Rasheed . . . a key member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board executive.

"He hoped that the conference edict would have its desired impact on India's neighbours, especially Pakistan, where suicide and terror bombings have left hundreds dead."

On the Indian Web site twocircles.net, Yoginder Sikand wrote Saturday, "The anti-terrorism meetings show that the Muslim religious leadership is fast waking up to the need to reach out to an audience beyond that of their own followers, in particular to non-Muslims and to explain their stance to them."

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Short Takes

• Dorothy Gilliam, the retired Washington Post columnist and former

  Dorothy Gilliam

  president of the National Association of Black Journalists who has been a longtime advocate for high school journalism and scholastic press rights, is to receive the second annual Diversity Award from the Journalism Education Association, a national scholastic media teachers organization based at Kansas State University. Gilliam, a board member of the Maynard Institute, founded the Prime Movers program at George Washington University, working with high school journalism students.
  
  
• Police arrested U.S. freelance photographer James Buck, a journalism student at the University of California's Berkeley campus, and his Egyptian interpreter, Mohammed Saleh Ahmed Maree, on Thursday in Mahalla, Egypt, and took them to the nearest police station, where they were both detained, Reporters Without Borders reported. "After being threatened and intimidated by policemen, we were taken at around 2 a.m. (local time) to see a prosecutor, who ordered our release," Buck told the organization. "As we left the police station, we were arrested again without any explanation. The authorities released me two hours later but my interpreter is still held. Buck refused to leave the police station without his assistant and threatened to go on hunger strike. The police insisted that he leave and told him they were going to transfer Maree to another police station in the town."
  
  
• In Zimbabwe, the trial for New York Times reporter Barry Bearak and a British national accused of practicing journalism without accreditation will be held on Monday, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported on Saturday.
  
  
• "Executive Editor Bob Ashley of the Durham (N.C.) Herald-Sun, which has been criticized by some for its coverage of the Duke University lacrosse case, said the newspaper should have realized sooner the charges were false." Joe Strupp wrote Thursday for Editor & Publisher. "Two reports on Ashley's speech at the University of Kentucky on Wednesday quoted the editor as admitting his paper was late in determining the case had no merit."
  
  
• Gayle Pollard Terry, former Los Angeles Times editorial writer; David Peterkin of ABC News; Zubeida Jaffer of South Africa and Shahabadeen Karim of Canada have been named to the new board of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Alumni Association. A'Lelia Bundles chaired the task force and transition team that created the new board this year and last. Wayne Dawkins, Frances Hardin, Rebecca Castillo and Marquita Poole Eckert were among the committee members.
  
  
• "Amy Gross is retiring as the longtime editor of O, The Oprah Magazine, a spokesperson there confirmed. Gross, 65, whose retirement was first reported by the New York Post, won't be leaving immediately; she plans to stay on until a replacement is found," Lucia Moses reported Friday in MediaWeek.
  
  

• Gopal Raju

  "Veteran journalist Gopal Raju, founder of India Abroad; IANS news service and the Indian American Center for Political Awareness — and the editor and publisher of three other newspapers — died in New York earlier today," Sree Sreenivasan reported Thursday on the Web site of the South Asian Journalists Association. The Indo-Asian News Service, which Raju founded, wrote: "An institution builder, he founded the India Abroad newspaper, the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS), the Indian American Foundation (IAF) and the Indian American Center for Political Action (IACPA). At the time of his death, he was the publisher of the weekly newspapers News India-Times, Desi Talk and Gujarat Times."
  
  
• "Bryant Gumbel has punted on his duties as the play-by-play voice for the NFL Network's eight-game primetime package," Mike Reynolds reported Saturday for Multichannel News. "Gumbel, who was criticized for his delivery, announced Thursday that he was resigning from his duties as the play-by-play announcer of Thursday and Saturday Night Football."
  
  
• "A media watchdog group Thursday blasted BET and MTV for airing music videos with explicit adult content that reach a large audience of children and teens during the day," Linda Moss and R. Thomas Umstead reported for Multichannel News. "In its 21-page 'The Rap on Rap' report, the Parents Television Council said it found a deluge of what it characterized as 'offensive/adult content' in the three music-video shows it monitored on BET and MTV during periods in December and March."
  
  
• Mirthala Salinas, the television reporter who left her job after a romantic relationship with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told Los Angeles magazine that she sees the affair as a "learning experience" — and had no idea it would have such great consequences. She apologized for her actions and revealed that she reached a legal settlement with Telemundo KVEA-TV Channel 52 when she quit her job last year, David Zahniser reported Thursday in the Los Angeles Times. "I regret hurting people," said Salinas, who now is a co-host of the Los Angeles talk radio show "Hoy Por Hoy" on W Radio XETRA 690-AM. "But I think that we should learn from every experience. That's what makes us better human beings."
  
  
• "When I first heard that one of AAN's highest ranking executives had used the n-word to jokingly refer to a deceased friend of his, I assumed his friend was black and was shocked," Donna Ladd of the Jackson (Miss.) Free Press wrote for her publication's April 18 edition, referring to Mike Lacey of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. "When I learned that the friend was white, I was just as appalled. The issue, to me, is not who he was talking about; it was about his use of the most notorious white supremacy label as a flippant term of endearment. Even more puzzling to me is why Mr. Lacey, or other white men, would even consider doing such a thing considering the baggage that word continues to carry for so many Americans, black and white."
  
  
• Abbey Makoe, who came under fire for his involvement in South Africa's Federation of Black Journalists' decision to bar white reporters from a meeting addressed by Jacob Zuma, president of the African National Congress, has resigned as the South African Broadcasting Corp.'s political editor after a mere eight months in the job, the Johannesburg Star reported on Saturday. Makoe "flatly denied his departure from the SABC had anything to do with the recent developments around the FBJ," the newspaper said.
  
  

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Feedback: Smiley Should Go Back and Study King

Todd Steven Burroughs, Ph.D.
Freelance Researcher/Writer-At-Large
http://whosemedia.com/drums/
Hyattsville, Md.
April 13, 2008

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Feedback: Insecurity and Manufactured Controversy

Debra Payne
Columbus, Ohio
April 13, 2008

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Feedback: Tavis Should Not Quit

This is how so many of us were led by Jim Jones. I give Obama credit for his education and his accomplishments. We as black people need not be so eager to follow the crowd and should look at all aspects of this candidate. Ask yourself: blacks give him so much support, but do you ONCE hear him say, what he will do on the CIVIL RIGHTS tip?

Also please stop comparing him to Dr. King, PLEASE!

Tavis I understand!

Gina Robinson
San Diego, Calif.
April 13, 2008

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Feedback: Smiley Should Read These Comments

So as he takes his very public leave from the Joyner show amid a lot of "please don't go" and "brother, we are not hating on you" comments that should not be taken seriously, his ego is wounded because of his own arrogance. He would do well to read the substance of the critical and I think dead-on-the-mark comments made by a cross-section of professional journalists and average run-of-the-mill folks like me. To parrot his own words back to him, for those of us to whom much is given, much is expected.

We expect those in the media who would be critics to accept and expect criticism and to have the "cajones" to say "my bad," fix it and move on. If Tavis truly believes there is a service in speaking up for those who are not heard, do so, but never confuse it with speaking for, something I know he and Tom frequently don't get right.

My message to Mr. Smiley: Mr. Obama is running for office as the president of the United States. He will be measured by the people based on their yardstick: Is life going to be better, for me, my family, my friends and their relatives, and is this nation going to be safer and more prosperous than it has been under the current administration's past eight years?

If I am convinced, either way, he will or won't be the president of the United States. My skin color and his won't matter at the end of Nov. 4, 2008. He has to account to Americans.

Eli Toney
Colonel, United States Army (retired)
Williamsburg, Va.
April 14, 2008

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Feedback: Not Running to Lead Black America

We must remember, if he is perceived as the Black president, white America will not vote for him. We cannot put him there by ourselves!

Judy Bortell
Ovilla, Texas
April 14, 2008

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More letters on Tavis Smiley

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.) It began in print before most of us 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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View previous columns.

• Diversity's Greatest Hits, 2007
  
  
• For the Journalist's Bookshelf
  
  
• 11 More for the Journalist's Library
  
  
• Five Minutes With Richard Prince (Newspaper Association of America, 2005)