Articles Feature

UNC Trustees Vote Tenure for Hannah-Jones

by richard03449

Updated July 1

Journalist Wins After Contentious Saga, 9-4
McCammond Rejoins Axios as Political Reporter

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Demonstrators are removed from a closed session meeting of the UNC-Chapel Hill trustees Wednesday as they prepared to discuss and vote on tenure for Nikole Hannah-Jones. The demonstrators said they did not know that such personnel sessions are closed. (Credit: Julia Wall/News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.)

Journalist Wins After Contentious Saga, 9-4

“UNC-Chapel Hill trustees voted to approve tenure for distinguished journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones at a meeting Wednesday afternoon, bringing a resolution to the national controversy that has ensued over her hire,” Kate Murphy and Martha Quillin reported for the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C.

“In response to the vote, Hannah-Jones (pictured in file photo) said in a statement that she was honored and grateful for all the support she has received from students, faculty, colleagues and the general public over the past month,” Lauren McCarthy and Isabella Reilly reported for the Daily Tar Heel, the campus newspaper.

“ ‘Today’s outcome and the actions of the past month are about more than just me,’ she said in the statement. ‘This fight is about ensuring the journalistic and academic freedom of Black writers, researchers, teachers, and students. We must ensure that our work is protected and able to proceed free from the risk of repercussions, and we are not there yet. These last weeks have been very challenging and difficult and I need to take some time to process all that has occurred and determine what is the best way forward.’ ”

Amanda Becker reported for The 19th, “The board’s vice chair, R. Gene Davis Jr., who was among those who voted to offer tenure to Hannah-Jones, said that UNC ‘is not a place to cancel people or ideas. Neither is it a place for judging people and calling them names, like woke or racist.’

“ ‘In this moment at our university, in our state, and in our nation, we need more debate, not less. We need more open inquiry, not less. We need more viewpoint diversity, not less. We need to listen to each other and not cancel each other, or call each other names. If not us, who?’ Davis added in remarks after the 9-4 vote.  . . .”

Murphy and Quillin added, “Immediately after the decision, Susan King, dean of the journalism school, tweeted a statement welcoming the news.

“King said she knew that when the board reviewed Hannah-Jones’ dossier, it would recognize the strength of her tenure application.

“ ‘A thank you to the greater Carolina community of students, faculty staff and alumni who have stood by our school, the centrality of journalism to democracy, the ideals of the University and to Hannah-Jones herself. This outpouring of support has reinforced the very principles of the nation’s first public university and will carry us forward.’

“North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, in a statement after the vote, said, ‘UNC Trustees did the right thing today by offering tenure to award winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. Our students will benefit from exploring thought-provoking issues and our campus reputation will be enhanced, helping us keep and attract a diverse array of acclaimed scientists, researchers, doctors and scholars’.”

The Daily Tar Heel wrote, “Walter Hussman (pictured), the namesake of UNC’s journalism school, told the DTH earlier this month that he was concerned the school would become more closely aligned with Hannah-Jones and The 1619 Project than with his own core values of journalism.

“He expressed his concerns through emails to Hussman School Dean Susan King, Guskiewicz, Vice Chancellor for University Development David Routh and one trustee in September.

“In an email to the DTH on Wednesday, Hussman said he looks forward to meeting and discussing journalism with Hannah-Jones, and that he plans to continue supporting the school and advocating for the core values.

” ‘As I have said repeatedly, expressing a concern is the limit of what any donor should do in such a situation,’ Hussman wrote. ‘I respect that academic freedom requires that the authority for hiring faculty rests solely with the University.’ “

Murphy and Quillin also wrote, “Hannah-Jones, who is a Black woman, is to join the UNC-CH faculty Thursday as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media. However, she and her legal team had said she would not begin the job without tenure.

“The Board of Trustees had not previously offered Hannah-Jones tenure for the position, which other Knight chairs at UNC-CH have received. The board voted to do so at Wednesday’s meeting, which was triggered by UNC-CH Student Body President Lamar Richards making an official petition for a special meeting on this issue.

“Richards is one of two Black trustees on the board that’s making this decision. Ten of the 13 trustees are white men. . . .”

Becker continued for The 19th, “Hannah-Jones’ next steps were not immediately clear. . . .

“Hannah-Jones’ lawyers said UNC’s initial offer of a five-year contract, not tenure, reflected ‘race and sex discrimination and retaliation’ as well as ‘viewpoint discrimination’ in violation of state and federal laws. The latter was a reference to Hannah-Jones’ work on the 1619 Project, a ground-breaking series of essays, poems, graphics and visual art pieces she led at The New York Times Magazine that examined the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to the United States more than 400 years ago. . . .”

Katie Robertson wrote for The New York Times, “A group of students, led by the campus’s Black Student Movement, showed up at the meeting on Wednesday in support of Ms. Hannah-Jones. U.N.C. Police officers were captured on video pushing some students away from the meeting room, in the Carolina Inn.

“After the video was posted online, Ms. Hannah-Jones said on Twitter: ‘It should have been communicated how this meeting would go, that tenure proceedings are always held in closed session, and an attempt made to de-escalate. Instead Black students were shoved and punched because they were confused about the process. This is not right.’

“Julia Clark, the vice president of the Black Student Movement, said in an interview that about 75 were in the group.

“ ‘The board put the police on Black students like dogs, literally put them on us like dogs, in front of media,’ Ms. Clark said. She added that an officer had punched her ‘“so hard that my mask fell off.’

“ ‘This university has repeatedly disrespected us, and they have shown us they don’t care about Black lives,’ she continued. . . .”

Alexi McCammond is to cover the 2022 midterm elections and the progressive movement.

McCammond Rejoins Axios as Political Reporter

Alexi McCammond is returning to Axios after her ill-fated appointment as editor in chief of Teen Vogue in March, a spokesperson for the site announced late Thursday.

Written in Axios style, the site issued this media advisory:

“1 big thing: Alexi McCammond is rejoining Axios as a national political reporter. She will cover the 2022 midterm elections and the progressive movement.

  • “ ‘Alexi McCammond is an accomplished journalist and professional. We’re excited and proud that she is returning to Axios,’ said Jim VandeHei, Axios co-founder and CEO.

“Get to know Alexi McCammond:

  • “Alexi McCammond joined Axios in early 2017 as a newsdesk editor and moved to covering politics and Congress. She also was a regular contributor to ‘Axios on HBO.’
  • “She was the first to report on former president Trump’s ‘executive time’ publishing three months of leaked private daily schedules, and the first to report the White House’s leaks to Congress during Democrats’ investigation into Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s security clearances.
  • McCammond received the 2019 Emerging Journalist Award from the National Association of Black Journalists and was named to the 2020 Forbes ’30 Under 30′ list.

“Please note she will have news in tonight’s Axios Sneak Peek newsletter and will appear on our Axios Today podcast tomorrow morning.”

Just days before she was set to begin the job, McCammond lost her position as Teen Vogue’s new editor-in-chief in March after an internal uproar over her decade-old tweets about Asians.

At the time, VandeHei tweeted, “You will always be part of the @axios family. @alexi [admitted] her mistakes, repented (years ago and again of late) and showed during her four years with us she was a strong woman with a big heart. She was a great colleague who often stood up 4 others. Sad outcome.”

In February, McCammond’s boyfriend, T.J. Ducklo, resigned as a White House press aide weeks after threatening a reporter who was asking about his relationship with another reporter.

In May, Versha Sharma, a managing editor at the news website NowThis, was named Teen Vogue editor in chief. [Added July 1]

‘Black Journalists Can’t Breathe’

Reporter Goes Public, Citing Mental Health
Does ‘Critical Race Theory’ Apply Beyond the U.S.?
UNC to Confront Hannah-Jones Issue Wednesday
‘Like Only a Local News Organization Can’
Black-Press Group Won’t Back Board on Expulsions
Ric Romo, a ‘Today’ Show Producer, Dies at 62
Spears Case Recalls Abuses of Women of Color
Freed U.S. Journalist Tells of Torture in Myanmar

Short Takes

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Reporter Goes Public, Citing Mental Health

“In an unvarnished, heartfelt denunciation of racist attitudes by the leadership of New Jersey Advance Media, which owns the Star-Ledger and NJ.com, a Black reporter is alleging a culture of hypocrisy and a corporate mission of appealing to white readers,” David Wildstein wrote for newjerseyglobe.com.

“ ‘Black journalists can’t breathe, and it’s become my mental health hell,’ said Tennyson Donyea, who took to Twitter on Thursday to give voice to his grievances, Wildstein wrote June 17. “ ‘This may be career suicide.  I may go bankrupt.  But after working in this industry for five years, it’s the hill I must die on for the sake of my Black sanity.’

“Three weeks ago, Donyea said a senior-level manager asked him what they could do to salvage his frustration.

“ ‘I told them we need town halls.  I told them the diversity committee needs to be independently moderated. But my biggest sticking point was, and still is, this: racism in leadership must go,’ he said.”

The activist group Free Press says, “While major news and media organizations like the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette are undergoing a long-overdue public reckoning with anti-Black racism within their operations, they are not the only ones who need to do so.”

“Among other things, Donyea said editors reminded him that he’s writing for predominately white readers.  The lack of reporters and editors of color at the Star-Ledger and other NJ Advance Media publications was conspicuous.

“He felt pressured to look the other way, but that stopped today.

“ ‘After years of dancing around for these people, I can say I would rather be dead, like the ancestors who jumped from the slave ships, than let these companies keep getting away with treating journalists of color the way they do,’ Donyea stated. . . .”

Journal-isms asked Kevin Whitmer (pictured), senior vice president for content, expansion and development at NJ Advance Media, which includes the Star-Ledger and nj.com, for his reaction. He said “no comment on personnel matters.”

However, Whitmer did reply Tuesday to a request for newsroom diversity figures. “We started reporting numbers at the end of [2018] and we were 91% white. So, yes, we have made progress but we need to do much more,” Whitmer said. “The staff is 84 percent White; 9 percent Black; 6 percent Hispanic . . . 1 percent Asian and 28 percent female.”

According to 2019 U.S. Census population estimates for Essex County, N.J., where the Star-Ledger is based, the racial breakdown is white alone, 48.9 percent; Black or African American alone, 41.9; American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 0.8 percent; Asian alone, 5.9 percent; Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander alone, 0.1 percent; two or more races, 2.4 percent; Hispanic or Latino, 23.8 percent; white alone, not Hispanic or Latino, 30.2 percent. “Female persons” are 51.9 percent.

The staff figures are imbalanced even when compared with the population of the entire state, which nj.com purports to cover: White alone, 71.9 percent; Black or African American, 15.1 percent;  American Indian or Alaska Native alone, 0.6 percent; Asian alone, 10 percent; Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander alone, 0.1 percent; two or more races, 2.3 percent; Hispanic or Latino, 20.9 percent;  White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, 54.6 percent.

Donyea has received support on Twitter from other journalists, but messaged Journal-isms Tuesday, “I’m currently on family and medical leave,” when he wrote his statement. “As I’m sure you can imagine all of this has taken a toll on my mental health. I’m awaiting legal advice.”

Chester W. Higgins, retired New York Times photographer and continuing Africanist, promotes his forthcoming book, “Sacred Nile.” In a blurb for Howard W. French’s “Born in Blackness,” author Sven Beckart asks, “What happens if we put Africa and Africans into the center of our thinking about the origins of the modern world?”

Does ‘Critical Race Theory’ Apply Beyond the U.S.?

The term “critical race theory” has been misused and weaponized so much by the right wing that its exact meaning is being lost. In general, however, it has been applied to the United States.

Howard W. French (pictured), an Africa specialist, journalism professor and former correspondent for The New York Times and The Washington Post, points out that societies anchored in racism exist not just on this side of the Atlantic.

French does so in his forthcoming book, “Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War,” due for October publication.

“In a sweeping narrative that traverses 600 years, one that eloquently weaves precise historical detail with poignant personal reportage, Pulitzer Prize finalist Howard W. French retells the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in America, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe’s dehumanizing engagement with the ‘darkest’ continent,” according to French’s website, repeating the publisher’s language .

“Born in Blackness dramatically retrieves the lives of major African historical figures whose stories have been repeatedly etiolated and erased over centuries, from unimaginably rich medieval African emperors who traded with Asia; to Kongo sovereigns who heroically battled seventeenth-century European powers; to ex-slaves who liberated Haitians from bondage. In doing so, French tells the story of gold, tobacco, sugar, and cotton  — and the greatest ‘commodity’ of all, the millions of people brought in chains from Africa to the New World, whose reclaimed histories fundamentally help explain our present world.”

Writing in January for the American Bar Association, Janel George explained that critical race theory “recognizes that racism is codified in law, embedded in structures, and woven into public policy. CRT rejects claims of meritocracy or ‘colorblindness.’ CRT recognizes that it is the systemic nature of racism that bears primary responsibility for reproducing racial inequality.”

UNC to Confront Hannah-Jones Issue Wednesday

“After more than a month of headlines, revelations, petitions and protests, the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees will meet Wednesday to confront the issue of tenure for Nikole Hannah-Jones,” Joe Killian reported Tuesday for NC Policy Watch.

“The move comes after Lamar Richards (pictured), student body president at UNC-Chapel Hill and member of the school’s board of trustees, petitioned for a special meeting of the board to publicly deal with the controversy. Five other trustees joined in the petition effort, forcing a special meeting.

“There are enough votes on the board to approve Hannah-Jones’s tenure, sources on the board and at the UNC System level told Policy Watch this week. But members said they continue to face political pressure from the UNC Board of Governors, political appointees of the North Carolina General Assembly’s Republican majority.

“ ‘There have been discussions of financial settlements, of board members not showing up to the meeting and either preventing a vote or just not being on record even if the vote happens,’ one board member told Policy Watch Monday. . . .”​

‘Like Only a Local News Organization Can’

“All day long on Sunday, the Miami Herald homepage was dominated by a single all-caps word: ‘SEARCHING,’ ” Brian Stelter wrote Sunday in his “Reliable Sources” newsletter for CNN.  

“The searching continued around the clock at the site of the condo collapse in Surfside, Florida. But Sunday’s news coverage reflected the fact that there’s very little actual news to report. The cause of Thursday’s collapse is still unknown. The confirmed death toll is still relatively low and the catalog of missing persons is still gut-wrenchingly high. So ‘SEARCHING’ is the current status, as families search for some reason, any reason, to hold onto hope.

” ‘First we offer our condolences to the families and victims impacted by this unimaginable tragedy,’ Miami Herald exec editor Monica Richardson (pictured) said when I checked in with her on Sunday. She said the English-language Herald and Spanish-language el Nuevo staffs are working to cover the disaster through ‘words, images, video, interactives and with data.’

” ‘This is our South Florida community and we have a responsibility to keep the community informed,’ Richardson said. ‘It is our responsibility and our mission. This is a newsroom that went through coverage of Pulse and Parkland so they understand the pain. It’s hard work and exhausting work but we are here for the long haul. This is a historical moment for the country and we are digging to find answers and provide coverage like only a local news organization can.’ “

Richardson, formerly senior managing editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, became the Herald’s managing editor on Jan. 1.

Black-Press Group Won’t Back Board on Expulsions

The board of the trade organization representing the Black newspaper press voted 15-2 last Wednesday to expel three publishers who are taking the organization to court, but the more than 70 members of the National Newspaper Publishers Association at the virtual convention declined to ratify the board’s decision, Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., the NNPA president, confirmed for Journal-isms on Tuesday.

Chavis would not identify the two who voted no on the decision and described the membership vote as “split,” with a simple majority needed to pass. Some apparently believed that expulsion would mean further exposing the organization’s internal workings.

In 2019, NNPA was taken to court by its former chair, Dorothy R. Leavell of the Chicago and Gary (Ind.) Crusader, who asserted that Chavis and his allies worked behind the scenes to disqualify pro-Leavell publishers from voting for her re-election bid. She lost.

In May, the board secretary, Jackie Hampton, publisher of the Mississippi Link, notified Leavell, Amelia Ashley-Ward of the Sun Reporter in San Francisco and the California Voice, and Carole Geary of the Milwaukee Courier that the board intended to consider expelling them from NNPA at its June 23 meeting. The letter cited alleged offenses that it said “have threatened the welfare of the NNPA.”

Meanwhile, the NNPA “completed its historic virtual convention by unanimously re-electing its all-Black women executive board,” Stacy M. Brown, reported Monday for NNPA. All were unopposed.

“Houston Forward Times Publisher Karen Carter Richards earned a second term as the national chair of the NNPA.”

Also appearing virtually were President Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who spoke about the importance of vaccinations. Others included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Cedric Richmond, White House senior advisor and director of public engagement, Brown reported.

Darnella Frazier, the African American teenager who filmed former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin fatally kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, received the Ida B. Wells National Photojournalism Award.

Ten-time Grammy winner Chaka Khan was given the 2021 National Lifetime Achievement Legacy Award.

Ric Romo, a ‘Today’ Show Producer, Dies at 62

Ric Romo (pictured), a West Coast producer for NBC’s “Today” show, where he worked for more than 30 years, died over the weekend after a massive heart attack, his cousin, Gilbert Rios, reported on Facebook. Romo was 62.

“Today” reported on its website, “Ric’s work on the red carpet earned him a warm regard from many of the celebrities he met, including one Hollywood great who also became a great friend to him, the late acting and dancing legend Fred Astaire.

“As Carson Daly said on TODAY Monday: ‘He was a great storyteller; he was incredibly funny. Ric knew everybody on the NBC lot — they knew him — he knew the security guards and all the way up to Johnny Carson himself. He brought a smile to everybody’s face, literally just when Ric walked in the door.’ . . .”

Spears Case Recalls Abuses of Women of Color

“Among the many shocking revelations made by Britney Spears on her conservatorship while appearing virtually before a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, there was this. She said those overseeing her are forcing her to remain on birth control,” Lulu Garcia-Navarro said Sunday on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday.”

Garcia-Navarro’s guest, author, journalist and medical ethicist Harriet A. Washington (pictured) replied, “Well, frankly, I was surprised. I don’t follow entertainment news very closely, but I suppose what surprised me was to hear about this befalling a young WASP woman of means because although involuntary sterilization is – sounds shocking, it’s actually something that has been practiced very widely in this country.”

Washington continued, “Buck v. Bell in 1927, it’s important to note, was never overturned. In that ruling, the Supreme Court argued that it was perfectly acceptable to force sterilization on a woman because of her low intelligence, her alleged low intelligence, and that it’s better for all the world, you know, to prevent the birth of more low-intelligence children.”

Washington also said, “And I think we have to remember that in the 1980s and ’90s, 85% of the women who were forced to have Norplant implanted — it’s a contraceptive that rendered a woman infertile for a period of at least five years. This was forcibly implanted in Black and Hispanic women.

“And why? As part of a court sentence. Women who had been brought up to court were told by judges, OK, you can go to jail for eight years, or you can have Norplant implanted and be on probation — Norplant or jail. So in that case, the rationale had to do with controlling their behavior. And I wonder if indeed what we’re reading is actually true, then that’s certainly something I would consider in this scenario.”

Freed U.S. Journalist Tells of Torture in Myanmar

“Myanmar security forces punched, slapped and beat a U.S. journalist and kept him blindfolded for more than a week of interrogation, he said after being deported to the United States following over three months in detention,” Matthew Tostevin reported Sunday for Reuters.

“Nathan Maung (pictured), 44, editor-in-chief of the online news platform Kamayut Media, was detained on March 9 in a raid and freed on June 15. He said his colleague Hanthar Nyein, who remains in detention, had been tortured more harshly, as had other people he met in prison.

“A junta spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on the account by Nathan Maung, which echoes those of some of the thousands of others who have “been detained since the army overthrew elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1.

“The junta has said detainees are being treated in accordance with the law.

” ‘The first three to four days were the worst,’ Nathan Maung told Reuters in a telephone interview from Virginia on Friday.

” ‘I was punched and slapped several times. No matter what I said, they just beat me. They used both their hands to slap my eardrums many times. They punched my cheekbones on both sides. They punched my shoulders. I was not allowed to stand up. My legs were swollen. I could not move anymore,’ he said. . . .”

Short Takes

Sanjay Gupta is hosting for two weeks on “Jeopardy!.”

  • “Colleagues often asked me about the similarities between being a TV journalist and guest hosting ‘Jeopardy!‘” CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who is guest-hosting for two weeks, wrote Sunday. “Truth is, there aren’t many. In much the same way that an ophthalmologist and orthopedic surgeon are both doctors, you probably wouldn’t see the eye doctor for your broken leg. The same was true for ‘Jeopardy!’ Yes, they are both TV jobs, but they are also entirely different. I even had to unlearn some TV journalist habits to really get into the groove of the show. For starters, I was blown away by the incredible speed at which the game is played. . . . The goal was to tape five shows a day. That is 305 clues. One every 15 seconds.”

  • Jovita Idár and Jesús Colón will be posthumously inducted into the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Hall of Fame “for dedicating their lives and careers to advocating for the fair and accurate representation of Latinos in news,” NAHJ announced. “Both champions of Latinx storytelling, they will be honored at the 2021 Hall of Fame Gala on the evening of Saturday, July 17. A native of Laredo, TX, Jovita Idár was born into a family that exposed injustices such as the lynchings of Mexican-Americans through her father’s Spanish-language newspaper, La Crónica. . . . Jesús Colón, born in Puerto Rico in 1901, raised awareness through his writings about the hardships he faced and his identity as a Puertorriqueño. In the late 1920s, Colón founded a Spanish language newspaper, but he would go on to write in both Spanish and English throughout a career that spanned more than four decades. . . .”

  • “Three journalists with Al Jazeera who were tear-gassed during a protest in Ferguson, Missouri, after Michael Brown’s death in 2014 have settled a lawsuit with the county whose SWAT team fired the tear gas,” Jim Salter reported Thursday for the Associated Press. The Al Jazeera America journalists — correspondent Ash-har Quraishi, producer Marla Cichowski and photojournalist Sam Winslade — were preparing for a live broadcast when the St. Charles County SWAT team officers fired tear gas toward them. The county agreed to pay $280,000.

  • “We started to cover the Keystone XL Pipeline and its predecessor Keystone I in our newspaper, Native Sun News Today, 13 years ago,” the Native Sun News in South Dakota editorialized. “Our ace reporter Talli Nauman (pictured) saw the Lakota people’s opposition to it, and she has been writing news about the resistance to these and other pipelines as it has grown ever since. South Dakota’s mainstream media didn’t have a clue until Talli began explaining it to them. Because of her journalistic efforts, Native anti-pipeline leadership gained worldwide coverage. And now, along with so many Lakota people in struggle, Talli’s groundbreaking work is vindicated with the Canadian TC Energy Inc. oil giant’s decision to cancel construction. . . . “

  • Boston Review is proud to name Nia T. Evans and Nate File its inaugural fellows for Black Voices in the Public Sphere, a fellowship initiative designed to prepare and support the next generation of Black journalists, editors, and publishers,” the publication announced June 21. “Recognizing aspiring Black media professionals who demonstrate an interest in exploring the publishing world and a commitment to enlarging the landscape of ideas in the media, this program provides fellows with training, mentorship, networking opportunities, and career development workshops. With the guidance of Boston Review editors and professional mentors, fellows will also develop projects to be published online or in print. . . .”

 

“I asked him, ‘Can you shoot some pomegranates for me?’ What he came back with stunned me,” the former Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl recalled of Mr. Yanes’s cover photo for the January 2000 issue,” The New York Times wrote. “No one romanced food the way he did. He made food sexy and gorgeous.” (Credit: Romulo Yanes/Condé Nast, via Shutterstock)


  • “Edna Schmidt (pictured) has died. She was 51,” Veronica Villafañe reported Sunday for her Media Moves column. “Despite numerous posts by friends and colleagues on social media, there is currently no official cause of death. But multiple posts and reports indicate she died in Puerto Rico. Schmidt was the founding co-anchor of Univision Chicago’s newscast. She worked in the Windy City 10 years before stepping up to Univision network, where she would become weekend anchor and later, move to the late weeknight newscast. . . .”

  • “The National Press Photographers Foundation (NPPF) is pleased to provide a $15,000 annual fellowship to honor the memory of Michel du Cille, a dedicated photojournalist who died while covering the Ebola crisis in Liberia,” the foundation has announced. “Our goal is to encourage photojournalists to cover topics of great importance in today’s changing world.” The foundation began accepting applications on Monday.

  • “We’re thrilled to announce that Tariro Mzezewa (pictured) is joining National to cover the South alongside Richard Fausset and Rick Rojas,” National Editor Jia Lynn Yang told New York Times staffers on Friday. “Tariro, who joins us from Travel, will be based in Atlanta, where she will help us stay on top of one of the newsiest regions in the country and bring a focus on covering Black life in the South. Since joining Travel in 2018, Tariro has shown a flair for spotting utterly unique stories. She has written about tour companies that cater to Black women looking for love; about how cities tell the story of slavery to tourists; and about safari companies not caring for African travelers. . . .”

  • “As a TV newscaster, Shelbey Roberts (pictured) is used to reporting crime. But not first hand,” Phil Luciano reported Monday for the Journal Star in Peoria, Ill. “Earlier this month, the 26-year-old called 911 after returning home to find a ransacked mess. Burgled, her apartment had been torn apart, with belongings and furniture upended and disarranged throughout. . . . Though initially rattled and angered, Roberts has since found an insightful upside to her first in-your-face experience with lawbreaking. She said she has learned a deeper compassion for crime victims, especially those she encounters as a reporter. . . .”

  • In 2000, Brazilian photographer Alexandro Wagner Oliveira da Silveira was hit by a rubber bullet fired by the police as he covered a demonstration. He was blinded in his left eye, Júlio Lubianco reported June 16 for LatAm Journalism Review. “Last week, the Supreme Court (STF, for its acronym in Portuguese), the country’s constitutional court and the last stop for legal cases in the country, recognized that he is entitled to compensation from the State.” Silvera is skeptical his case will fully be resolved, Lubianco wrote under the headline, “Journalists who lost eyesight after being injured covering protests face long court battles.” “Silveira’s skepticism is justified by the 21 years of a costly, arduous and exhausting legal battle.”

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