Sportswriters Hail Dungy’s Moment

History Aside, Some Find the Big Game Lacking

Sports columnists of color hailed Tony Dungy’s milestone as the first African American coach to win a Super Bowl in columns Monday morning, though some followed by saying the rain-soaked game itself, in which Dungy’s Indianapolis Colts beat Lovie Smith’s Chicago Bears, 29-17, was wanting.

“In a league where it seems turds and scoundrels reign, Dungy is a beacon,” Mike Freeman wrote on CBS Sportsline.com. “He has been able to pull off something extremely rare in professional sports and that is to be both talented and well liked. Few people in life are both.”

In the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Bryan Burwell called Dungy’s “a journey fueled with boundless patience and staggered by heartbreaking family tragedy.”

Terence Moore, writing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, noted, “Nobody remembers the second man to walk on the moon. Plus, most U.S. presidents between George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are a blur. So the Bears’ Lovie Smith just became an asterisk while the Colts’ Tony Dungy sprinted into history as an exclamation point.”

To Jason Whitlock, columnist for the Kansas City Star, that wasn’t enough. “Hey, I’m happy for Dungy. He’s truly a fine human being,” he wrote. “No one in football deserved a championship more than Dungy. I respect and appreciate everything that Dungy stands for. He’s good for the game and a terrific role model.

“Having said all of that, if this [is] what nice guys have in store for professional football, I’ll pass. . . . Nice and Nicer turned the Super Bowl into a giant, wet, sloppy pillow fight. No one got hurt. Few were entertained.”

Tim Kawakami, in the San Jose Mercury-News, agreed: “I am pretty sure,” he wrote, “that the consensus is already forming: Other than Princeâ??s slick and solid halftime show and the very heart-warming sight of Tony Dungy being carried onto the field afterwards, this was a lousy, lousy, ugly, lousy game.

“Probably the least-great Super Bowl ever.”

In Monday’s New York Times, reporter Samuel G. Freedman, who is writing a book about football and civil rights at black colleges, reminded readers that, “Decades before Super Bowl XLI, with its history-making confrontation between African-American coaches, similar encounters took place every year. The setting was the Orange Blossom Classic, the unofficial but de facto championship game for the all-black colleges of the segregated South.

“From its inauguration in 1933 to the full integration of college football, the Orange Blossom Classic provided the showcase for such coaches as Eddie Robinson of Grambling, Jake Gaither of Florida A&M, John Merritt of Tennessee State and Earl Banks of Morgan State.”

Coca-Cola Co. paid tribute to the historical moment with an homage to Black History Month. An understated commercial showed the changing shapes of Coke bottles over time as milestones in black history appeared alongside.

The Indianapolis Star published two special 20-page sections, but the Indianapolis Recorder, the African American weekly, does not plan to come out again until Friday, a staffer said.

• Jerry Brewer, Seattle Times: Peyton trusts team, Rex teems with rust
• Bryan Burwell, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Colts’ victory washes away question marks
• Mike Freeman, CBS Sportsline.com: Dungy walks the walk, talks the (sincere) talk
• Rickey Hampton, Flint (Mich.) Journal: Dungy’s greatest successes are yet to come
• Jemele Hill, ESPN.com: Bunnies win the party race in Miami
• Roy S. Johnson, AOL Black Voices: Rhodes Finally Gets His Ring
• Tim Kawakami, San Jose Mercury News: Super Bowl XLI flash analysis: Good halftime, nice post-game, terrible everything else
• Terence Moore, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: A Super Bowl of firsts
• Deron Snyder, Fort Myers (Fla.) News-Press: Dungy an exception to coaches’ trend
• David Steele, Baltimore Sun: In eye of storm, Dungy calmly sails to victory
• Tim Smith, New York Daily News: Rex loses it in snap: For ‘da worst’ QB, it’s worst nightmare
• Jean-Jacques Taylor, Dallas Morning News: Bears’ Rivera blew Cowboys audition
• Jason Whitlock, Kansas City Star: Game was swimming in slop
• Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser blog, Washington Post: So, He’s Over the Hump. What’s Next for Manning?

And some commented earlier last weekend:

• Monroe Anderson, Chicago Sun-Times: Spotlight teaches Tank a lesson
• Terry Foster, Detroit News: Dungy needs to win the Super Bowl — and deserves to
• Kenny Irby, Poynter Institute: Super Bowl XLI Coverage: A New Era With All the Comforts of Home
• Gregory Kane, Baltimore Sun: ‘Dirty’ Bears are bad guys tomorrow, not the Colts
• Deion Sanders , Fort Myers (Fla.) News-Press: No pressure at Super Bowl, just opportunity
• Stan Simpson, Hartford Courant: Coaches’ Way Of Life Truly Super
• Robin Washington, “News & Notes,” National Public Radio: Affirmative Action and The Super Bowl
• Michael Wilbon, Washington Post: In the NFL, A Historic First Arrives at Last

Thugs Shoot Up Dominican Newsroom

“We knew that when Alicia Ortega and her husband Fernando Hasbun decided to return to Fernando’s home town in the Dominican Republic to produce ‘American Style’ television news, it was going to be an adventure,” Hank Tester reported Monday for Miami’s WTVJ-TV. “It got pretty scary last Thursday night. Just before Alicia was signing on the 11 p.m. news, adventure arrived in the form of four gun-toting thugs who shot up the SIN newsroom.

“No one was hurt.

“. . . Recently SIN has been producing a number of stories on the drug trade.”

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Readers Favor Naming Duke Lacrosse Accuser

“Most readers don’t want The N&O to name complainants in sex crime cases. But most do want the paper to name the accuser in the Duke lacrosse case,” Ted Vaden, public editor at the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer, told readers on Sunday.

“That’s the somewhat anomalous reading I got from an informal, unscientific survey of News & Observer readers last week. A number of you responded to my column in which I said the paper should not identify the accuser, unless she herself is charged (That’s my opinion; N&O editors have not decided what to do.)

“I asked members of the Reader Advisory Panel two questions:

“1) Should The N&O identify the accuser if the case is resolved in favor of the Duke lacrosse players accused of sexual offense and kidnapping?

“2) Do you agree or disagree with the paper’s general policy of not naming complainants in sex crimes?

“Of the 177 who answered the first question, two thirds (113) said The N&O should name the accuser. One third (59) said don’t name her, and five weren’t sure.

“But nearly 90 percent said the paper should stick to shielding accusers’ names in sex cases. Of 156 respondents, 130 said don’t identify accusers, 12 said do, and 14 were ambivalent.”

• Kelly McBride, Poynter Institute: Duke Lacrosse Case: Should We Name the Accuser?

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NAMME to Honor Ed Bradley, Felix Gutierrez

The National Association of Minority Media Executives plans to honor the late Ed Bradley with its Robert C. Maynard Legend Award at its annual banquet March 29, and to present its lifetime achievement award to Felix Gutierrez, former senior vice president of the Freedom Forum and Newseum.

Gutierrez is now a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Southern California. His bio describes him as among the first scholars to focus on Latinos and media and the first executive director of the California Chicano News Media Association.

Bradley, the veteran CBS News correspondent, died Nov. 9 of leukemia. His photo dominates the cover of the latest issue of the National Association of Black Journalists’ magazine, the NABJ Journal.

NAMME, created in 1990, also plans to honor its founders, in addition to:

Amol Sharma, technology expert, Wall Street Journal, and India contributor, the Christian Science Monitor and CNN, who is recipient of the Catalyst Award for print; Curtis Crutchfield, news director of CTV 76 news in Prince George’s County, Md., Catalyst Award for broadcast; Retha Hill, CEO of BET.com and vice president for content development, BET Interactive, Catalyst Award for new media; Sreenath (Sree) Sreenivasan, dean of students, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and technology reporter for WNBC-TV in New York, Lawrence Young Breakthrough Award; and Dr. Mona Khanna, contributing medical editor, KTVT-CBS 11, Dallas/Fort Worth, award of valor.

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CNN Site Examines “State of Equality in U.S.”

For Black History Month, CNN.com is taking “a wide-ranging look at the state of equality in the United States today” in a special section, “Uncovering America: The Road to Equality,” CNN announced on Monday. The section launched that day at www.CNN.com/roadtoequality.

“The Road to Equality” features video and written commentaries on equality issues. The first is a video commentary from civil rights leader Dr. Joseph Lowery.

Other parts of the package include audio slide shows, divided along generational lines, showing how people on the street answer the question, “Has the U.S. achieved racial equality yet?” The site also has an “Equality Report Card” ranking the United States on political representation, business ownership and leadership, education, and media and entertainment. It features information about the kinds of businesses that populate streets named for Martin Luther King Jr., and their conditions and histories.

Meanwhile, as the month gets underway, columnists have begun writing about various aspects of black history:

• Lawrence Aaron, the Record, Hackensack, N.J.: Tracing Hamilton’s African heritage
• Issac J. Bailey, Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Sun-News: In February, examine racial equity
• Desiree Cooper, Detroit Free Press: Black Bottom neighborhood was not named for soil
• Les Payne, Newsday: A scholar-athlete still scoring points
• Eric Stringfellow, Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger: Even 40 years later, James Seale’s indictment necessary for equal justice

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Maya Angelou and Molly Ivins, “Identical Twins”

“Years ago there was a fundraising gala for People for the American Way in New York, and Molly Ivins was keynote speaker,” poet Maya Angelou wrote Friday in the Washington Post. “I was a loyal collector and serious Ivins reader, but I had not met the author.

“Another famous journalist, who was to have introduced her, had his flight canceled in a Southern city. Norman Lear, founder of the organization, asked me to introduce her. I did not hesitate. I spoke glowingly about Ms. Ivins for a few minutes, then, suddenly, a six-foot-tall, red-haired woman sprang from the wings. She strode onto the stage and over to the microphone. She gave me an enveloping hug and said, in that languorous Texas accent, ‘Maya Angelou and I are identical twins, we were separated at birth.’

“I am also six feet tall, but I am not white. She was under 50 when she made the statement, and I was in my middle 60s, but our hearts do beat in the same rhythm. Whoever separated us at birth must know it did not work. We have been in the struggle for equal rights for all people since we met on that Waldorf Astoria stage. We have laughed together without apology and we have wept when weeping was necessary.”

Ivins, “the columnist renowned for her Texas-size wit and her penchant for skewering the powerful on behalf of the little guy, was remembered Sunday by her friends and family in the way they said would suit her best: by throwing a huge party,” Patrick George wrote Monday in the Austin American-Statesman.

“Ivins died Wednesday at age 62 after a long battle with breast cancer. But there was more laughter than tears as people stepped to the microphone to share their favorite stories.”

• Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: A burr under apathy’s saddle

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The Vanessa Williams Whose Stage Is Journalism

“It’s happened to her for more than 20 years, ever since a certain someone became the first black woman crowned Miss America, while our colleague was embarking

on her reporting career,” Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts wrote Sunday in their “Reliable Source” column in the Washington Post.

“‘I would call someone and say, “This is Vanessa Williams from the Philadelphia Inquirer,” and they would say, “Ohh!

Are you the Vanessa Williams?!” No, I’m not Miss America!’

“Now that the actress-singer’s career is soaring again (via a starring role in ABC’s ‘Ugly Betty’), the journalist is getting warm wishes and autograph requests via her Post e-mail account.”

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Short Takes

• NBC’s Brian Williams plans to anchor Tuesday’s “NBC Nightly News” from New Orleans. “New Orleans needs it,” he said, according to Richard Huff, writing Monday in the New York Daily News. “If we, of all people, ever turn our backs on this story, we’re worthy of scorn and much blame.”
• In Boston, Dawn Hasbrouck has been named co-anchor of WBZ-TV News’ weekend newscasts at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. with co-anchor Ken MacLeod, the station announced. Hasbrouck was at WFSB-TV in Hartford, Conn.
• In Chicago, more than 200 people packed into a conference hall Thursday at the new 55,000-square-foot WVON-AM radio station headquarters at 1000 E. 87th St., formerly corporate headquarters for the Soft Sheen hair products company, Demetrius Patterson reported Friday in the Chicago Defender. “The significance of all of this is that here you have one of the few African American-owned radio stations — unfortunate that there are so few — that is still in operation and growing,” WVON’s radio talk show host Cliff Kelley said. “So many Black radio stations, after the so-called Telecommunications Reform Act, we lost.”
• Writing on Monday in TV Week, television-script writer Sylvia Franklin congratulated the Screen Actors Guild for the diversity shown in its recent awards. “The thing that’s most glaring about actors hiring diverse actors is the fact that writers don’t hire diverse writers. At least not that many,” Franklin wrote. . . . What do actors know that writers don’t?” Franklin co-chairs the Writers Guild of America’s Committee of Black Writers and is president of the Organization of Black Screenwriters.
• The Committee to Protect Journalists is releasing an analysis of international press conditions, “Attacks on the Press,” with a preface by CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “Journalists were killed and jailed for [their] work in growing numbers in 2006,” the Committee said. The report can be read online.