Articles Feature

AP Catches Wave Capitalizing ‘Black’

by richard08433

Breakthrough National Coverage for Juneteenth
NPR Staffers Read Emancipation Proclamation
‘Middle-Aged White Guy’ to Exit in Philly
Diversity Drops Among Education Journalists
Rights Groups Target Facebook Advertisers
Petition Urges Naming School for Hunter-Gault
On Diversity, Good News and Bad as IRE Elects
. . . Half the Board Ignored the Warnings

Short Takes

Support Journal-isms

Dorothy Tucker, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, is interviewed on CBS News after a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter was removed from covering protests after posting a tweet on looting.

Homepage montage: Clockwise from top left: Blayne Alexander (NBC News), Trymaine Lee (MSNBC), Sara Sidner (CNN), Omar Jimenez (CNN), Fredricka Whitfield (CNN), Rachel Scott (ABC News), Jericka Duncan (CBS News), Alex Perez (ABC News), Antonia Hylton (NBC News) and Victor Blackwell (CNN). (Credit: Hollywood Reporter)

Breakthrough National Coverage for Juneteenth

The news media’s racial reckoning took an intense and extraordinary turn this week with a highly influential Associated Press decision to capitalize the “B” in “black”; unprecedented national coverage accorded Juneteenth, once a regional holiday; resignations by white editors who deemed themselves racially incompatible with the requirements of the job and what seemed like waves of black journalists coming forward or being asked to tell their stories.

“This is a historic moment in American history and in race relations. It requires us to re-examine our coverage and concentrate resources on the issues of race, ethnicity and identity that clearly deserve heightened attention,” said Marty Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post.

The Post announced “the creation of new roles designed to enhance coverage of the growing national discourse on race in this historic moment and beyond, including a Managing Editor for Diversity and Inclusion, a senior leadership position with responsibilities such as convening regular coverage discussions focused on race and identity and the identification and recruitment of candidates.”

More than a dozen newsroom positions are to be focused on race, according to the announcement, made after talks with the News Guild.

Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan revisited her tenure as editor of The Buffalo News, when her “bad news judgment hurt Buffalo’s black community. Ten years later, the lessons linger,” in the words of the headline.

Sullivan quoted black journalist Farai Chideya. “It’s our moonshot,” Chideya told CNN’s Brian Stelter on Sunday — “a rare chance to seize the historic moment and make long-overdue change happen in newsrooms where true diversity has never been achieved,” Sullivan wrote, paraphrasing Chideya.

Outside of newsrooms, community members were taking down Confederate statues and other symbols of racial oppression if officials weren’t doing so quickly enough. Monuments to racist newspaper publishers were among them. And corporation executives were announcing diversity initiatives and financial help to black institutions, such as Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, and his wife, Patty Quillin, donating $120 million to historically black colleges and universities.

Quaker Oats, owner of the 131-year-old brand of Aunt Jemima, announced it would change the product name in an effort “to make progress toward racial equality,”  Angela R. Riley and Sonia K. Katyal wrote in the New York Times.

“The brand had long capitalized on a romantic view of antebellum American slavery, even going so far as to hire an actual former slave to impersonate the character of Aunt Jemima at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair (marking the first time a living person was hired to impersonate a trademark).

“. . . the Mars corporation followed suit, announcing that its Uncle Ben’s rice products would similarly ‘evolve’ in light of recent events. Even Mrs. Butterworth’s pancake syrup, its bottle embodying a racist caricature of the shape of a black woman, is undertaking a ‘complete brand and package review.’ ”

“Baltimore photographer Devin Allen has landed his second cover of Time magazine, this time with a photo depicting a Black Trans Lives Matter protest on June 5 in downtown Baltimore,” Baltimore Fishbowl reported. (Credit: Devin Allen)

And at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “two black journalists . . . who told The New York Times that their bosses had unfairly kept them from covering protests against racism and police violence have taken steps to redress their complaints,” Rachel Abrams reported for the Times Tuesday.

“Michael Santiago, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, left the paper. And Alexis Johnson, a reporter, sued it. . . .”

Juneteenth warranted its own network television specials, though other reporters imprecisely described June 19, 1865, as “the day slaves were freed.” It was actually the day enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, belatedly received the word.

Because its stylebook is the bible in many newsrooms, the Associated Press’ rule change on “Black” ranks among The New York Times’ 1930 decision to capitulate to black pressure and capitalize the “N” in “Negro,” and the move to recognize in print the shift from “Negro” to “black” in the late 1960s.

“Use of the capitalized Black recognizes that language has evolved, along with the common understanding that especially in the United States, the term reflects a shared identity and culture rather than a skin color alone,” according to the AP stylebook change.


The AP decision was one of “hundreds” similarly made by news organizations in the span of barely more than week, Elahe Izadi wrote Thursday in the Washington Post.

However, there was no unanimity on whether “white,” “brown,” “yellow” or “red” should also be capitalized.

“As a global news organization, we are continuing to discuss within the U.S. and internationally whether to capitalize the term white,” the AP said Friday. “Considerations are many and include any implications that doing so might have outside the United States. We will have a decision within a month.”  

The National Association of Black Journalists said this month, “NABJ also recommends that whenever a color is used to appropriately describe race then it should be capitalized, including White and Brown.”

CNN agreed. “When referring to the racial categories of Black and White, CNN style is changing to capitalizing both words,” wrote Tim Langmaid, vice president and senior editorial director, in an evening email to staffers, Lindsey Ellefson reported Thursday for The Wrap.

“ ‘Both words denote a racial or ethnic identity and therefore should be upper case when referring to a person, community, culture, etc., in the same way CNN capitalizes other descriptors of race, ethnicity and shared identity, including African American, Native American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian, Asian American, African, and other terms,’ he explained. . . .”

NJ Advance, publisher of the Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., said no to a capital “W” for “white.” Outside “of the white supremacist movement, we did not find a widespread expressed desire by anyone to uppercase ‘white.’ ” Editor Kevin Whitmer wrote Tuesday.

That could be because people in power aren’t as invested in what others call them, as the late historian Sterling Stuckey wrote in his 1987 book, “Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America.“

As quoted in this space a week ago, Stuckey wrote, “The final resolution of the names controversy is not likely to come until African peoples as a whole have won freedom, a development inevitably linked to their status in America.”

NPR Staffers Read Emancipation Proclamation

One of the many observances of Juneteeth, the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned they had been freed, was a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation Friday on NPR’s “Morning Edition.”

“Executive producer of Morning Edition Kenya Young (pictured) pulled together a group of NPR’s African American hosts & correspondents to read the Emancipation Proclamation on Morning Edition today in celebration of Juneteenth, like we do every year with the Declaration of Independence on July 4th,” NPR spokeswoman Isabel Lara messaged Journal-isms.

“Lincoln’s words are read by weekend All Things Considered host Michel Martin, Morning Edition host Noel King, It’s Been A Minute host Sam Sanders, NPR Music’s Rodney Carmichael, NPR Politics Juana Summers, newscast host Dwane Brown, All Things Considered host Audie Cornish, Here & Now host Tonya Mosley, National reporter Brakkton Booker, newscast host Korva Coleman, Code Switch host Gene Demby, Midwest correspondent for NPR Cheryl Corley, White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe, TV critic Eric Deggans and senior producer Walter Ray Watson.”

‘Middle-Aged White Guy’ to Exit in Philly

“Philadelphia Magazine editor Tom McGrath (pictured) will step down at the end of the summer, telling his staff the publication needs to evolve and the company should hire a replacement who isn’t ‘a middle-aged white guy,‘ ” Justine McDaniel and Julie Shaw wrote Tuesday for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“His departure — which he described in a memo to employees as partly a personal decision and partly an attempt to bring about change — comes amid the national reckoning over systemic racism that has gripped the nation since the May 25 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. It followed a newsroom-wide teleconference last week about diversity at the magazine after tweets from former senior editor Fabiola Cineas (pictured, below) called out the company’s inaction on improving diversity.

“ ‘I’ve given almost every ounce of energy I have to this job for the last decade, and at the moment I’m not sure I have enough in my tank to do the job as well as it needs to be done,’ McGrath, 56, wrote in a message to staffers on Monday. ‘But I also have in my head the column that our colleague Ernest Owens wrote last week, noting that real change in our world will only come about when some power is redistributed.’

“On Tuesday, the magazine’s editorial staff called on its parent company, Metrocorp, to enact a plan to hire and retain employees of color, diversify leadership, audit past coverage, and represent black Philadelphians in coverage, among other steps. . . .”

McGrath “was in charge when the magazine stirred outrage with a 2013 cover story titled ‘Being White in Philly’ that was widely denounced as racist, and then again in 2015 when it ran a cover image without any black students on a guide to city schools. Both times, after community criticism, McGrath pledged to diversify the magazine’s staff. . . .”

Diversity Drops Among Education Journalists

“Education journalism is losing the talented journalists from diverse racial backgrounds that it desperately needs. With these losses, education journalism loses the chance to change the stories it tells and the ways it tells them, “”Alexander Russo reported Thursday for the Poynter Institute.

“Now in its fifth year, The Grade’s 2020 newsroom diversity roundup includes some bright spots. Education journalism is somewhat more racially diverse than journalism overall. A few hires and promotions are cause for celebration. The racial diversity numbers are improving here and there.

“But bright spots and incremental progress aren’t really good enough anymore — if they ever were. . . .”

Rights Groups Target Facebook Advertisers

“Several American civil-rights groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and the NAACP, are encouraging big advertisers to pull spending from Facebook Inc. to protest what they say is the company’s failure to make its platform a less-hostile place,” Deepa Seetharaman reported Wednesday for the Wall Street Journal. (paywall). (Pictured: Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg)

“The campaign, announced Wednesday, comes after years of private discussions between these groups and Facebook, which the activists say have amounted to little change in the way the social-media giant enforces its policies around hate speech and misinformation. The groups took out a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday urging advertisers to pull their spending on Facebook for July.

“ ‘Today, we are asking all businesses to stand in solidarity with our most deeply held American values of freedom, equality and justice and not advertise on Facebook’s services in July,”’the ad says. ‘Let’s send Facebook a powerful message: Your profits will never be worth promoting hate, bigotry, racism, antisemitism and violence.’

“Facebook has invested heavily in recent years in workers and technology to guard against election interference and better police its platforms, which has resulted in sharp gains in the removal of hate speech and other objectionable content. . . .”

In 1961, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, above, and the late Hamilton Holmes became the first black students to integrate the University of Georgia. (Credit: PBS)

Petition Urges Naming School for Hunter-Gault

Two University of Georgia alumnae are circulating a Change.org petition to rename the school’s Grady College of Journalism & Mass Communication after veteran journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault, David Hackett and Megan McDonald wrote Monday for Sarasota magazine.

As of Saturday, the petition had more than 8,500 signatures.

“According to the petition, Henry Grady (1850-1889), the journalist and orator after whom the college is currently named, has long been heralded in the Georgia education system as a progressive Southern leader.

“But Grady’s tenure at the Atlanta Constitution resulted in headlines like ‘Lynching Too Good for the Black Miscreant Who Assaulted Mrs. Bush: He Will Be Lynched.’ And in his famous ‘New South’ speech in 1886, Grady said, ‘The supremacy of the white race of the South must be maintained forever and the domination of the negro race resisted at all points and at all hazards — because the white race is the superior race.’ …”

Hackett and McDonald also wrote, “In 1961, Hunter-Gault was the first black student to integrate the University of Georgia. She later became a star reporter with The New Yorker and the first Harlem bureau chief for The New York Times. In the 1990s, she worked for PBS [NewsHour] and as the Africa correspondent for NPR and CNN, covering the democratic transformation of South Africa under Nelson Mandela. . . .”

When Gwen Ifill’s alma mater, Simmons University announced in 2017 that it would name its College of Media, Arts and Humanities after the late PBS journalist, it apparently became the first majority-white college to name a school after an African American journalist.

Meanwhile, “Colorado Mesa University will be removing the name of Walter Walker, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan and a former publisher of the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, from its soccer and lacrosse stadium,” Dan West reported June 13 for the Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, Colo.

On Diversity, Good News and Bad as IRE Elects

Cheryl W. Thompson of NPR was elected board president of Investigative Reporters and Editors in 2018, becoming the organization’s first African American leader in its 43-year history. She was re-elected in 2019. But she was not re-elected by her fellow board members over the weekend, 7-6. Jodi Upton, IRE treasurer, professor at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School and a former USA Today editor, is to succeed her.

A separate election among the membership produced seven new members, including African Americans Kat Stafford of the Associated Press, Mark Walker of the New York Times Washington bureau and Mark Rochester, editor-in-chief of Type Investigations

IRE member James V. Grimaldi of the Wall Street Journal tweeted, “History was made tonight for the preeminent U.S. journalism organization @IRE_NICAR  when the membership elected  the first majority female board with the most African Americans ever. . . .”

But Grimaldi tweeted later, “Sadly, the bad news is that the board elected an all-white executive committee. Given what’s happening in our country today, that’s pretty sad.”

 

Andrea Fuller, an Upton supporter, called Upton “a hard working lady data journo badass . . . She is TIRELESS. She has ASHEVILLE ties. What else do you want?”

Thompson tweeted, “So proud that @kat__stafford  @bymarkwalker and  @mjrochester were elected to the
@IRE_NICAR board tonight. Look forward to serving with them. #yallrock!” but also, “Already missing @NorbertoSantana on the @IRE_NICAR board. He was the lone Latino voice who kept it real. Our loss. Glad to call him my friend.”

. . . Half the Board Ignored the Warnings

The prospect of an all-white executive board was raised before the IRE vote, according to Mark J. Rochester (pictured), who became a new member of the board.

Rochester messaged Journal-isms on Sunday:

“In the 40+ years since the founding of IRE, only a handful of African American journalists had ever been elected to the board of directors.

“An historic election witnessed the membership advance three Black members to the board, bringing the total to four, including Cheryl W. Thompson, who was not on this year’s ballot.

“During a live webcast of the membership meeting, some IRE members who were watching warned against changing the board’s top leadership position, stressing the need to stay the course of growth, financial stability and increased diversity that Thompson had overseen the last few years. The industry upheaval caused by COVID-19 and nationwide protests were further cited by members, as well as newly elected board member Mark Walker in nominating her for the presidency, and myself supporting the nomination.

“But roughly half the board decided to ignore those warnings. Jodi Upton, who had been board treasurer, also was nominated for the role. With two contenders, board procedures called for a secret ballot, conducted via web form, with the vote ending 7-6 for a new board president. None of the Black board members was nominated for the vice president, treasurer or secretary offices. I declined nomination for an “at-large” executive committee appointment, which is not defined in the IRE bylaws. . . .”

Short Takes

  • Raynard Jackson (pictured), a black Republican operative who enjoys skewering “liberals” but displays shaky command of the facts, has been dropped by the National Newspaper Publishers Association, which syndicates his column to its member black newspapers. Jackson’s columns “have not met the standards that NNPA requires,” Benjamin F. Chavis, president and CEO of NNPA, told Journal-isms on Thursday. The telephone conversation followed a column in which Jackson denounced “radical liberal journalists like Joy Reid from MSNBC, Don Lemon from CNN, [and] Roland Martin, who are putting more poison into the black community than any drug dealer – who are killing more black folks than any white person with a sheet over their face.” Previously: “Why Do Outlets Still Run Raynard Jackson?“

  • “Roxanna Scott (pictured) has been named managing editor for sports at USA TODAY, the newspaper reported Wednesday. “A former president of the Association for Women in Sports Media, Scott has spent the last year as an assistant managing editor for USA TODAY Sports and managing editor of Golfweek, a website and magazine that provides golf coverage for the USA TODAY Network. Scott has directed coverage of six Olympic Games at USA TODAY. . . .”

Artwork accompanying piece on Jason Whitlock on Outkick.com

  • “I’m a Christian American. God and country,” sports commentator Jason Whitlock wrote Monday, updated Tuesday from his new home, Outkick.com. “At age 53, those two words define me. They explain my decision to partner with Clay Travis and Sam Savage in an effort to turn Outkick.com into a powerful media platform, a national distiller of truth, humor and fun. I do not know Clay and Sam’s religious beliefs. I’ve never asked. I likely never will. Outkick is not and will never be a religious platform. It will be the premier destination for the analysis of sports and society at large. . . .” Dallas Jackson wrote for Outkick in June 15, “Whitlock most recently spearheaded FOX Sports 1’s studio show ‘Speak For Yourself,’ the fastest-growing show in sports television. Whitlock previously worked at ESPN and the Kansas City Star. His work in Kansas City from 1994 to 2010 earned him national recognition. . . .”

  • At Newsday, Calvin Lawrence Jr. (pictured) has been promoted to the new newsroom role of director of community affairs and newsroom development. “Calvin will lead Newsday’s ongoing efforts to strengthen and grow our connections with Long Island communities while also directing our newsroom recruiting and training. A staff announcement said, “He rejoined Newsday in 2018 after more than 10 years as Online News Editor for ABC News. In his previous 18 years at Newsday, Calvin’s jobs ranged across our newsroom: Assistant Managing Editor, National Editor, Editorial Writer, Deputy City Editor, Assistant LI Editor and Copy Desk Editor. . . .”

 

Wall Street titans are pumping thousands of dollars into the campaign coffers of Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, right, who is challenging Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York’s Democratic primary .

  • “Beginning immediately, Jamie Stockwell (pictured), a deputy National editor who grew up in south Texas, will expand her role to include Race/Related, as the acting editor,”  New York Times National Editor Marc Lacey announced Monday. “Jamie, whose grandparents immigrated from Mexico, joined The Times two years ago from The San Antonio Express-News, where she was the managing editor and launched a number of newsletters and other ventures aimed at connecting with readers. . . .”

 

The March on Washington Film Festival and the SNCC Legacy Project are presenting “Making Eyes on the Prize: Reframing the Civil Rights Movement,” via webinar on Tuesday, June 23, at 6 p.m. Eastern time. “A screening of short clips from Eyes on the Prize will be followed by a conversation with those who helped shape that 14-hour series. The discussion will focus on how Eyes on the Prize helped change the narrative of the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement, more accurately reflecting its grass-roots foundation and highlighting the critical role of women and young people in ways that impact organizing today,” Judy Richardson, associate producer on the original series and activist with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, messaged.


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Richard Prince’s Journal-isms originates from Washington. It began in print before most of us knew what the internet was, and it would like to be referred to as a “column.” Any views expressed in the column are those of the person or organization quoted and not those of any other entity. Send tips, comments and concerns to Richard Prince at journal-isms-owner@yahoogroups.com

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