School districts across Mississippi have approved an abstinence program for the school year that begins in August. The choices are abstinence-only or abstinence-plus, which includes information about contraceptives.
It still remains to be seen whether sex education will make a difference in the state’s high teen pregnancy rates.
I found out last week that some people weren’t aware that the Jackson Public School District offers summer school. It’s for students who failed to excel in their class work during the regular school year. This is a great opportunity for students to make up the needed credit that will help them to stay on track to graduate in four years.
A new workers’ compensation law goes into effect July 1, and it aims to significantly change the ability of employees to qualify for and receive workers’ compensation benefits.
More Mississppi residents will have to eat healthier and exercise if the state is ever going to lose its title as the “fattest” in America. The extra weight has led to high incidences of high blood pressure, diabetes, and other illnesses among Mississippi residents.
More Mississippians will have to eat healthier and exercise if the state is going to lose the title of “fattest” in America. The extra weight has led to high incidences of high blood pressure, diabetes, and other illnesses among Mississippi residents.
Homer Alexander Jr., faced numerous problems in school, but he didn’t let them deter him from his dream of becoming a high school graduate.
Alexander, a 21-year-old senior, will graduate this month after years of struggling academically.
Alexander started school later than most children, and he has been playing catch-up ever since.
Sometimes the framing of a story -- that is, the perspective that it’s written from -- can make all the difference in capturing the nuance of an issue. The Huffington Post has a strong example of this with a piece on the achievement gap between students of colors and their white peers.
Today is a day big on substance as the mainstream focuses on issues relevant to people of color, in place of the usual repertoire. The Huffington Post takes the lead.
Consider: A study shows that strategies to prevent obesity in girls needs to be different for blacks than for whites.
Fox Roots for Wisconsin Governor; MSNBC for Unions
Cleveland Anchor Leon Bibb Out of 6 p.m. Chair
Little Outrage at Prospect of Birmingham Cutbacks
Black Churches Demonstrate to Keep Pastors on Cable
Roland Martin on CNN Suspension, Building One's Brand
"60 Minutes" Has Difficulty Finding Correspondents
Romney Scuttled Affirmative Action Policies in Mass.
"Leon Bibb, one of the most familiar faces in Cleveland television news, no longer sits in the 6 p.m. anchor chair for WEWS Channel 5," Chuck Yarborough reported in a front-page story in Thursday's print edition of the Plain Dealer.
"The 67-year-old Emmy-winning veteran newsman has been replaced by Chris Flanagan, who also co-anchors Channel 5's 11 p.m. newscast with Danita Harris. The shift went into effect Monday.
"Sam Rosenwasser, Channel 5's vice president and general manager, said Bibb has been reassigned to do two new programs, 'Leon Bibb's Ohio' and 'Leon Bibb's Perspective.' He will continue to anchor the station's noon newscast as well as its Sunday morning news program, 'Kaleidoscope,' Rosenwasser said.
" 'Leon is still a very vital part of what we have here,' Rosenwasser said. 'We want to put a spotlight on what he has.'
"Attempts to reach Bibb, who was raised in Cleveland and began his career as a Plain Dealer reporter, were unsuccessful.
". . . Competitors reacted to the reassignment with surprise.
" 'This is a guy who's had a distinguished career,' said Dan Salamone, news director at Channel 19. 'I don't understand what that decision is about. I have a lot of respect for Leon. He's done it the right way, and he exudes Cleveland. He's a fantastic anchor and I'm just shocked.' "
"I've heard the questions all day," John Archibald wrote Tuesday in the Birmingham (Ala.) News.
"Why are people protesting the new printing schedule at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, but not at the Birmingham News and other affected cities?" Print editions would be published only three days a week.
". . . look at the nature of the cities.
"New Orleans has identity and pride. Birmingham has division and hostility.
"We can't get together to 'save' anything, because we can't agree that anything is worth saving."
Kyle Whitmire, editor of new media of Weld for Birmingham, listed other reasons, one harkening to the News' segregationist past.
". . . What’s clear to me is that the key to having a good newspaper and maintaining a good audience is knowing when to defy readers' expectations and when to live up to them. Historically, the News has done a poor job of doing either.
"The News spent decades building a bad reputation for itself. It defended segregation and was not willing to hold up a mirror to the city it covered. Slowly it moved to the right side of history, but when it did, it did so with reporting that was stripped of any voice or editorial latitude. In part, I think that was the News' way of defining itself against the Birmingham Post-Herald, which was a more writerly paper with stronger positions and a more distinct voice. That has changed too, but again, slowly. From the pages of the Post-Herald, Ted Bryant kicked ass years before the News would even let itself have a metro columnist.
"In many ways, the News is now paying for the sins of its fathers, and perhaps that isn't fair.
". . . Great cities need great newspapers. It might not matter today whether newspapers are digital or print, but no city has become great without them.
"New Orleans realizes that. It’s time for Birmingham to realize that, too."
Solomon Crenshaw Jr., a Birmingham native, 32-year veteran of the Birmingham News and president of the Birmingham Association of Black Journalists, disagreed with Whitmire.
Crenshaw told Journal-isms by telephone that New Orleans has a relationship with its readers "that was baptized by Katrina," which gives it "a unique circumstance." The newspaper not only covered the catastrophe, it went through the ordeal along with readers.
Crenshaw said he had spoken to some Birmingham residents who are concerned about proposed cuts at the News, and that contrary to Whitmire's argument, voices at the News did speak out against ousted mayor Larry Langford, who was sentenced in 2010 to 15 years in federal prison. Langford was convicted on 60 counts of bribery, fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and filing false tax returns stemming from his time as president of the Jefferson County Commission.
About 35 demonstrators representing a coalition of 34,000 black churches marched in front of the Federal Communications Commission in Washington Wednesday, saying many viewers of faith-based television programs would lose access to them if the FCC lets expire a rule requiring cable systems to carry the shows.
"Unless it takes action, the FCC's so-called three-year-old 'viewability rule' is set to automatically expire on June 12," Doug Halonen explained Tuesday for theWrap.com.
"The rule ensures that all 58 million cable TV subscribers have access to local must-carry signals — not just the 46 million who subscribe to digital cable." The "must-carry" rule mandates that cable companies carry various local and public television stations within a cable provider's service area.
"Eliminating the viewability rule would severely undermine the viewership of independent, religious and foreign-language stations that rely on the regulation to reach all cable viewers, broadcasters say," Halonen wrote.
John Eggerton of Broadcasting & Cable reported late Wednesday that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is siding with the cable industry, not the broadcasters and churches.
"Cable operators will no longer be required to provide both analog and digital versions of must-carry TV station signals as of December 2012 if FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski gets his way, with low-cost converter boxes considered a sufficient vehicle for allowing analog customers to continue to view TV station signals," Eggerton reported.
Halonen's story explained, "The FCC originally adopted the rule in 2007 so that the millions of cable TV subscribers with analog TV sets could continue getting must-carry TV station signals after the broadcast TV industry switched from analog to digital transmission.
". . . The FCC originally set a three-year limit on the rule, assuming that most cable systems would also have switched completely to digital by this time. But about 12.6 million of cable's customers are still equipped with analog sets and could lose access to must-carry signals if the rule is allowed to expire."
The renewal issue pit broadcasters against cable operators. The black church group also demonstrated in front of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, which represents the cable industry.
In a news release, the Rev. Anthony Evans, president of the National Black Church Initiative, said, "we strongly believe that it is the job of the FCC to assure that minority church-based broadcasters should receive the same consideration as large cable operators. We strongly urge the Federal Communications Commission to extend the rule because many of our 15.7 million members will be directly and adversely affected by the FCC not extending the viewability rule. We plan to fight for our right to have comprehensive access to all cable systems whether it is analog, digital or hybrid systems. We plan to let our congressional representative know our position. We will use the full force of the Black Church to be heard on this issue."
Halonen's story added that "Liberman Broadcasting, a Spanish-language broadcaster that owns five TV stations, including KRCA-TV in Los Angeles, said elimination of the rule could result in the loss of 300,000 homes for EstrellaTV, or 4.3 percent of the audience for the company’s new Spanish-language network."
Roland Martin, CNN commentator and host of TV One's "Washington Watch With Roland Martin," among his other endeavors, said his attitude toward his recent suspension from CNN is "It happened, you deal with it and you move on." He also discussed building a personal brand, the Sunday television talk shows and the role of the black press in an interview Wednesday with Marcus Vanderberg of MediaBistro.
"Looking back, what are your thoughts now on your month-long suspension from CNN for your Super Bowl tweet about David Beckham?" Vanderberg asked.
"First of all, my thoughts were the same then — I was cracking on soccer and that's what I talked about," Martin responded. "It happened, you deal with it and you move on. My deal is, if you spend significant amounts of time freaking out and going nuts, you'll simply go crazy. My philosophy is very simple: You keep it moving."
Vanderberg also asked, "What's your secret to developing your brand?"
Martin replied, "Know exactly who you are. The second thing is you have to have no fear in being able to work it. Companies today will fire you, not renew your contracts and when it's gone, it's gone. So you're left with what, saying that I [used] to be with so-and-so and I [used] to work with so-and-so? I love this scene from the movie The Insider where Al Pacino says, 'Lowell Bergman, 60 Minutes, I wonder if my phone calls would get returned if I didn't have 60 Minutes after my name?'
"When you build your own brand, people will still return your phone calls regardless of the call letters or where you actually work, because they now know you and they trust you in what you have to say and what you're doing. That, to me, is the most important aspect when it comes to building your brand. If companies are able to have multiple revenue streams and have their hands in multiple pools of money, then why shouldn't the people who actually work for those brands be able to do the exact same thing?"
![President Obama in Osawatomie, Kan., with Steve Kroft of "60 Minutes." in December for Obama's 12th interview with Kroft. (Credit: CBS News)](http://mije.org//sites/default/files/resize/imagecache/full_column/Obama-Kroft-12-11-11-534x301.jpg "President Obama in Osawatomie, Kan., with Steve Kroft of "60 Minutes" in December for Obama's 12th interview with Kroft. (Credit: CBS News)")
Veteran "60 Minutes" journalist Steve Kroft, who, by his count, has interviewed Barack Obama a dozen times, discussed those interviews at the annual awards dinner of the New York chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists Monday, and also said it was difficult to find qualified applicants for "60 Minutes."
"The challenge for the show ahead is going to be finding replacements," Kroft said, according to Azi Paybarah, writing Tuesday for capitalnewyork.com.
". . . Noting the death of '60 Minutes' mainstays like Andy Rooney and Mike Wallace, Kroft said, 'We have to refill the talent pool and that's not that easy right now. We've been looking for someone to hire really as a full-time correspondent for a number of years and have had difficulty finding somebody that has all of the skills that we need in '60 Minutes' that wants to come work on the show, and kind of give up their life and to travel around the world."
"That's because 'so many people think they can make more money right now, you know, anchoring a talk show in the afternoon for one of the cable news networks and not having to leave,' he said. 'And so it's hard to find somebody who's got foreign experience, Washington experience, economic experience, who is pretty well-rounded, that is smart, that can do interviews.' "
"Mitt Romney scuttled the Massachusetts government's long-standing affirmative action policies with a few strokes of his pen on a sleepy holiday six months after he became governor," Andrew Miga reported for the Associated Press.
"No news conference or news release trumpeted Romney's executive order on Bunker Hill Day, June 17, 2003, in the deserted Statehouse. But when civil rights leaders, black lawmakers and other minority groups learned of Romney's move two months later, it sparked a public furor.
"Romney drew criticism for cutting the enforcement teeth out of the law and rolling back more than two decades of affirmative action advances.
"Civil rights leaders said his order stripped minorities, women, disabled people and veterans of equal access protections for state government jobs and replaced them with broad guidelines. They complained Romney hadn't consulted them before making the changes, snubbing the very kind of inclusion he professed to support.
". . . It wasn't until Deval Patrick, a Democrat who was the state's first black governor, took office in 2007 that the old policies formally were reinstated."
Meanwhile, "The Romney campaign announced Wednesday that its Latino outreach team, called 'Juntos Con Romney,' will be led by three Hispanic Republicans, all of whom said they will remain focused on a message about the economy," Elise Foley reported for the Huffington Post.
The three chairmen — Hector Barreto, former administrator of the Small Business Administration; Carlos Gutierrez, former secretary of commerce; and Jose Fuentes, former attorney general of Puerto Rico — join 14 others on Romney's National Advisory Board.
Roxane Gay, an author and assistant professor of English at Eastern Illinois University, "tasked my amazing, incredibly thorough graduate assistant, Philip Gallagher, with looking at every book review published in the New York Times in 2011, identifying the race and gender of the reviewed titles' authors," Gay wrote Wednesday for therumpus.net. "The project took fourteen weeks, with Philip going at it for about sixteen hours each week because the only way to find out the race of each writer was to research them. . . .
"We looked at 742 books reviewed, across all genres. Of those 742, 655 were written by Caucasian authors (1 transgender writer, 437 men, and 217 women). Thirty-one were written by Africans or African Americans (21 men, 10 women), 9 were written by Hispanic authors (8 men, 1 woman), 33 by Asian, Asian-American or South Asian writers (19 men, 14 women), 8 by Middle Eastern writers (5 men, 3 women) and 6 were books written by writers whose racial background we were simply unable to identify.
"The numbers are depressing but I cannot say I am shocked. The numbers reflect the overall trend in publishing where the majority of books published are written by white writers."
". . . Nearly 90% of the books reviewed by The New York Times are written by white writers. That is not even remotely reflective of the racial makeup of this country, where 72% of the population, according to the 2010 census, is white. We know that far more than 81 books were published by writers of color in 2011. You don’t really need other datasets to see this rather glaring imbalance."
(Credit: ProPublica)
"Last week, ProPublica, This American Life and Fundación MEPI produced in-depth stories about a father and son who'd been separated for nearly 30 years after a massacre at their Guatemalan jungle village," ProPublica reported on Friday. "Tranquilino Castañeda, now 70, believed his youngest son Alfredo — now called Oscar — was dead. On Monday, they reunited — and Castañeda met his grandchildren for the first time. (Story) (Video)
"Mira Lowe will be joining us as Senior Editor for Features," Manuel Perez, editorial director for CNN Digital, and Meredith Artley, vice president for CNN Digital, told staffers Wednesday. "Mira comes to us after working for the Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago as Editor-in-Chief at JET magazine . . . Before her move to Chicago, Mira had a very successful career at Newsday, where she played a variety of roles, including News Editor, Editor of the paper's Sunday lifestyle section, Editing Director for the METPRO copy-editing training program for minority journalists, and Associate Editor for Recruitment. . . . she will be bringing her talents to our team when she joins us later this month to help lead our Entertainment, Health, Living, Tech and Travel coverage!"
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NEW ORLEANS—Faced with unprecedented competition from 24-hour news channels, instant Internet updates and boisterous chatter on talk radio, the mainstream media have made mistakes when reporting on race-related events and issues.
The J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, in the amount of $30,000, will be given annually to aid in the completion of a significant work of nonfiction on a topic of American political or social concern. Recognizing that a nonfiction book based on extensive original research often overtaxes the resources available to its author, the project envisions the award as a way of closing the gap between the time and money an author has and the time and money that finishing a book requires.
The New York Times report on sexual abuse at an elite prep school and the growing battle between the federal government and the state of Florida over voter registration are followed on both the mainstream and ethnic sites. The Huffington Post reports that a court battle is looming over Florida’s effort to purge non-citizens from the voting rolls.
. . .
Northern Kentucky University’s Department of Communication, part of the College of Informatics, seeks a 10-month, full-time, non-tenure-track, renewable lecturer/student media adviser for the journalism program.
Requirements:
Soul of the South Releases Promotional Video
U.S. Prosecutors to Investigate "Leaks" to N.Y. Times
"A Disappearing Daily Ritual for Many"
Online Diversity Issues Mirror Those in Legacy Media
Op-Ed Print Editors Can Counter Poor Web Editing
N.Y. Daily News Confuses Cuban Flag for Puerto Rico's
Celtics-Heat Game 6 Gives ESPN a Ratings Spike
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday night appointed two top prosecutors to lead a probe into recent leaks about classified national-security operations, Evan Perez reported Friday for the Wall Street Journal, as Dean Baquet, managing editor of the New York Times, defended his paper's national security coverage.
"Ronald Machen, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and Rod Rosenstein, U.S. attorney for Maryland, will head the probe, Mr. Holder said Friday," according to Perez's story.
Baquet said Thursday in an interview with Michael Calderone of the Huffington Post, "Both the rise and use of drones, and the increased use of cyberwarfare, are the kinds of issues that we have a public service mission to surface so they can be part of a national debate.
"That's our job," Baquet said. "That's our primary job, to report things that should be part of the national discussion."
Calderone's story continued, "The controversy stems from two front-page Times stories last week.
"On May 29, reporters Jo Becker and Scott Shane wrote a 6,000-word piece delving into [President] Obama's hands-on role in counterterrorism operations, which was based on conversations with three dozen advisers and included details such as the existence of a set of 'baseball cards' containing information about suspected terrorists.
"Three days later, the paper ran a piece by David Sanger about how Obama had stepped up cyberattacks on Iran, an excerpt from his new book, 'Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power.'
" 'I reject the notion that they were leaks,' Baquet said, arguing that 'leaks' come with 'the implication they were access journalism and someone in the White House called up and said, "Let me give you something that makes the president look good."
"[Baquet] said that Sanger's piece 'had been in the works for 18 months,' while the Shane/Becker piece was reported over several months."
Sanger echoed Baquet's position Friday on "The Diane Rehm Show" on Washington's WAMU-FM, which is transmitted to other NPR stations.
"Lawmakers of both parties held a news conference Thursday calling for legislation to restrict the flow of leaks," Perez reported.
"With The Times-Picayune set to reduce its print schedule to three days a week, The Lens took a look at readers' rituals on Monday and Tuesday, two of the days that the paper will drop sometime in the fall," Bevil Knapp wrote in the Lens, which describes itself as "the New Orleans area's first nonprofit, nonpartisan public-interest newsroom, dedicated to unique in-depth reporting projects, as well as exclusive daily stories."
"Photographer Bevil Knapp set out across the metro area this week and provides this photo essay of scenes that will soon be a thing of the past early in the week." The photo essay was titled, "A look at a disappearing daily ritual for many."
How does the online world stack up against traditional media in racial and gender diversity?
"One yearlong look at the home pages of popular sites Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Slate and Salon (Nieman Reports, Fall/11) described a dispiritingly familiar world in which African-Americans are usually celebrities or athletes, Latinos appear primarily in sporadic immigration stories, and Native Americans and Asian-Americans go missing," Janine Jackson reported for Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.
". . . without explicit recognition of how sponsors and owners narrow the range of acceptable content (in ways and for reasons that can, in fact, be racist), and without honest reckoning with the differing definitions we all carry about what news matters, covering 'stories of importance' to underrepresented communities will remain an 'on paper' priority."
Jackson questioned special sites dedicated to people of color. "Even done well, the 'special section' model invites questions. Are they places for those generally marginalized to speak authentically, without filter? Or do they unnaturally barricade perspectives, like the Women's Pages of old, with their implication that the rest of the paper, the 'real' news, concerns only men? . . .
"The answer might be that spaces created by and for people of color, or women, or any community can be a vital part of a healthy, varied media landscape, but are not a substitute for forums where these perspectives intersect and interact, as they do in life. . . . most people don't want to talk only to themselves, or to never be challenged. They do want to participate in arenas where they, and the issues they care about, are respected, not devalued or erased."
". . . The Internet is filled with poorly edited opinion pieces by writers who are burning to express themselves and are not going away," this columnist wrote Friday for the Association of Opinion Journalists, formerly the National Conference of Editorial Writers.
"When the Columbia Journalism Review recently asked about demographic diversity on op-ed pages for a late May article, I thought not only about op-ed pages, but about young writers on the Internet. The two need each other.
". . . It's sometimes said that news organizations had more of an opportunity to diversify when the economy was stronger and newspapers weren't competing with more modern technologies. These days, 'doing more with less' seems to be the rule.
"AOJ can do the next best thing, however: It can give the gift of editing.
". . . We might not be able to hire, but there are other ways to make our products more inclusive. Let's think about what we can do with freelancers.
"And let's give the gift of editing!"
"Employees of The Daily News apparently could use a brush-up on world flags," Christine Haughney reported Thursday for the New York Times.
"In Thursday's paper, the newspaper, which is a sponsor of this 
weekend's Puerto Rican Day Parade, published an ad promoting the parade that shows the New York Giants football player Victor Cruz smiling and standing underneath the Cuban flag.
" 'Talk about an oops. That is one big oops,' wrote the Web site Latino Rebels. 'We just called the newspaper and they told us that they will be printing a correction tomorrow, but that no statement has been issued.'
"A spokesman for The Daily News issued an apology by Thursday afternoon.
" 'As the presenting media sponsor, the Daily News apologizes to the Puerto Rican, Cuban and other Latino communities as well as parade sponsors who were offended by our honest mistake,' the spokesman said. 'It will be rectified in tomorrow’s paper.' "
The outcomes during the Eastern Conference finals have stumped at least one commentator, ESPN's Stephen A. Smith, right. (Video)
"The nail-biting Eastern Conference Finals battle between Boston and Miami has earned ESPN an 8.2 overnight rating for Game 6," Sports Media Watch reported Friday.
"That's a 49 percent increase from the Magic-Celtics Game six in 2010."
The series stumped at least one commentator. ESPN Boston reported, "After flip-flopping between writing the Celtics off (before the conference finals) and then conversely [calling] the series 'over' for Miami prior to Game 6, ESPN NBA analyst Stephen A. Smith has officially thrown his hands in the air when asked for his prediction for Saturday night's Game 7.
" 'I'm taking the fifth,' Smith says in the SportsCenter video above. 'I've been wrong this entire series. I have nothing to say, I plead the fifth. I don't know what they're going to do, I just know I'll be there.' "
The Sports Journalism Institute graduated its 20th class Friday in Columbia, Mo. A group of seven men and four women (seven African Americans, two Asian Americans and two Latinos) were in residence at the University of Missouri School of Journalism from June 1 to 9, after which students move on to internships around the country. They are placed at Associated Press Sports Editors member newspapers, ESPN.com, MLB.com and the Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile, 12 students, including 11 of color, were to graduate Saturday from the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute's 11-day Multimedia Scholars Program. Schools represented in the program at the John Seigenthaler Center at Vanderbilt University are Bennett, Grambling, Hampton, Howard, Louisiana Tech, Michigan State, North Carolina A&T, North Carolina Central, Northern Alabama, Northwest Missouri State and Xavier (La.). Eleven of the 12 are to intern for eight weeks at six newspapers owned by Schurz Communications Inc.
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Stressed teens, wrongful convictions, student debt, military suicides and the famous protest at the 1968 Olympics are all part of the mainstream report today. Celebrities and crime news help round out the rest. Here’s a look: The Daily Beast and The Huffington Post report on a spike in military suicides . . .
Differing decisions on what to emphasize can be seen in today’s coverage of the Tony Awards. Audra McDonald won her fifth Tony Sunday night -- joining the company of Angela Lansbury and Julie Harris – but her accomplishment isn’t worthy of special homepage notice in the mainstream.
Theory Holds Bias Could Cost President Key States
Biden to Speak Next Week at NABJ Convention
Robin Roberts to Have Bone Marrow Transplant
Rap About Shootings Becomes Op-Ed Piece
"Talent Is Out There" Among Investigative Reporters of Color
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will address members of the National Association of Black Journalists at NABJ's convention next week in New Orleans, NABJ announced on Monday.
The appearance by the vice president, scheduled for Wednesday, is usually a sign that the president will not be present, since Biden is a surrogate for President Obama. Obama addressed the NABJ convention in 2007 and the Unity convention in 2008, both times as a presidential candidate.
Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to the president, is scheduled to address the convention on Saturday night.
Mitt Romney, the putative GOP candidate, was invited to the NABJ convention, but it could not be learned whether he plans to attend the NABJ convention or that of Unity, which is scheduled for Aug. 1-4 in Las Vegas.
Robin Roberts, left, told the"Good Morning America" audience that her sister, Sally-Ann Roberts of WWL-TV in New Orleans, right, would donate bone marrow for a transplant. ABC News Anchor Diane Sawyer is at center. (Credit: ABC News) (Video)
"As many of you know, five years ago I beat breast cancer," Robin Roberts announced Monday as she co-hosted ABC's "Good Morning America." I've always been a fighter, and with all of your prayers and support, a winner.
"Sometimes the treatment for cancer can cause other serious medical problems. Today, I want to let you know that I've been diagnosed with MDS, or myelodysplastic syndrome. It's a disease of the blood and bone marrow and was once known as preleukemia.
"My doctors tell me I'm going to beat this — and I know it's true.
"If you Google MDS, you may find some scary stuff, including statistics that my doctors insist don't apply to me. They say I'm younger and fitter than most people who confront this disease and will be cured. . . .
"Today, I will start what is known as pre-treatment — chemotherapy in advance of a bone marrow transplant later this year. Bone marrow donors are scarce and particularly for African-American women. I am very fortunate to have a sister who is an excellent match, and this greatly improves my chances for a cure.
"I received my MDS diagnosis on the very day that 'Good Morning America' finally beat the 'Today Show' for the first time in 16 years. Talk about your highs and lows! Then a few weeks ago, during a rather unpleasant procedure to extract bone marrow for testing, I received word that I would interview President Obama the next day. The combination of landing the biggest interview of my career and having a drill in my back reminds me that God only gives us what we can handle and that it helps to have a good sense of humor when we run smack into the absurdity of life.
"Bottom line: I've been living with this diagnosis for awhile and will continue to anchor GMA. . . ."
An op-ed by Prometheus Brown, also known as George Quibuyen, turned into a song and video performance about Seattle violence. (Credit: Seattle Times) (Video)
"We've recently had a rash of shootings in Seattle," Sharon Pian Chan, associate opinions editor/digital at the Seattle Times, told Journal-isms by email, saying she was inspired to write "after reading your essay on the need to develop minority opinion writers."
"A series of gang related shooting deaths in south Seattle, then a non-gang related shooting in which a man opened fired at a cafe and killed four people, then killed another woman downtown as he was on the run.
"We asked Prometheus Brown, a member of the Blue Scholars, to write an op-ed for us on the shootings. It turned into a song, and we ran the lyrics in our Sunday opinion section with a QR code that linked to an online video of him performing the song.
"Prometheus, also known as George Quibuyen, is Filipino American and he lives in south Seattle. While the Blue Scholars are from Seattle, they are a nationally known group. We want to show the community that things are changing in the opinion section, and this was a way to reach more diverse readers in a format they related to. Music has a long history of social commentary, and this piece spoke to our readers in a way that no news story could."
The Prometheus piece begins:
"Never heard of this, city getting murderous —
"occupation dangerous like Philippine journalists.
"Crazy and deranged they describe him in the same pages
"that would call him terrorist, if not for the melanin deficiency.
"Gang problem bigger than just juvenile delinquency.
"Gangs is survival if environments is grimy.
"To begin with — speaking of which, let's be consistent —
"Today is called a tragedy, yesterday a statistic. . . ."
Editorial Page Editor Kate Riley added by email that the video "was shot by our intern Aaron Levinsky. The song lyrics were packaged with an oped by two academics discussing the mass shooting and how more gun control won't dissuade a mass murderer — a well written, well-reasoned oped.
"Then there was Mr. Brown's song, which was good medicine for a city hurting. All heart, all irony, all painful truths. Especially poignant [are] Brown's comments about people being upset about the mass murder in the northend, perhaps more so than they were about those in Rainier Beach. Maybe yes, maybe not. But he also has a moment where he acknowledges the music is influential. The words are powerful, but the video really makes these moments. . . ."
The Washington Post commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in on Monday, and although there was little ethnic diversity among the journalists in attendance,
investigative journalists of color are making their mark, according to Manny Garcia, executive editor and general manager of El Nuevo Herald and president of Investigative Reporters and Editors.
Garcia told Journal-isms in an email:
"The number of investigative journalists of color has increased, and that is a very positive sign. First, I see it at the university level, where there is a hunger by students to dig into institutions. I also have seen a change for the better in some news organizations, and I see it at the non-profit level. I see the change mostly across beats, municipal governments, school boards, cops, immigration.
"I routinely get calls from news editors looking to hire investigative journalists of color, so I think there is an awareness by those newsroom leaders that if they really want to cover their communities credibly, they need a diverse and aggressive team on the beat or on projects.
"Still, despite the advances, we are not where we need to be as an industry, especially with our changing demographics. We don't have nearly enough journalists of color on I-teams — whether as investigative reporters or editors. The talent is out there.
"I see the successes in our newsroom where a diverse group of watchdog reporters has uncovered everything from child trafficking in Haiti and the Dominican Republic to illegal campaign contributions in the local mayoral races."
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists is sorting through its 168 lifetime members, many of whom voted in the last NAHJ election two years ago, and disqualifying as voters those whose principal means of support is not "earned in the gathering, editing, or presentation of news," Anna Lopez Buck, NAHJ interim executive director, told Journal-isms by email on Sunday.
"Lifetime members that didn't meet the qualifications should not have been voting in the past. That was a mistake that no one caught," she said.
In the 2010 election, Michele Salcedo beat Hugo Balta for president, 137 to 124, a margin close enough for lifetime members to have affected the outcome. Lopez Buck said she had not yet determined how many lifetime members are ineligible to vote.
The culling of the lifetime membership list prompted a robust exchange on NAHJ Facebook pages over the weekend, coinciding with Saturday's deadline for seeking NAHJ office. Balta, a coordinating producer at ESPN, and Russell Contreras, an Associated Press reporter who is NAHJ vice president/print and chief financial officer, are seeking the NAHJ presidency.
Members speculated about the political leanings of lifetime members who would be purged and the motives for and desirability of purging them. They said some had signed nominating petitions with signatures that might no longer be valid.
"Lifetime members can vote if they qualify as an academic or regular member," Lopez Buck said. "Lifetime membership is not one of the 7 classes of membership as defined in the NAHJ bylaws. It was created in 2002/2003 as a fundraising tool, and a way to increase membership.
"In order for all Lifetime members to vote or hold office there would have to be an amendment passed by the membership and then it would be reflected in the bylaws.
"The bylaws state that a regular member's [principal] means of support must be earned in the gathering, editing, or presentation of news. . . . Check out our bylaws at http://nahj.org/nahj-bylaws/
"Lifetime members that didn't meet the qualifications should not have been voting in the past. That was a mistake that no one caught.
"In fact, in previous years I contacted the NAHJ office during election cycles informing them that I was receiving nomination requests and an electronic ballot when I shouldn't have. My calls and emails went unanswered. I am a lifetime member. Should I be voting[?] no. I'm not a working journalist or an academic as defined by the bylaws.
"I can't say if there were invalid signatures submitted in the past. I wasn't working with NAHJ from July 2003 - June 2011."
Suzanne Gamboa, campaign manager for the Contreras slate, did not respond to a request for comment.
Balta said by email, "I've been reading many of the FB exchanges in regards to some lifetime members not being eligible to vote. I will be making inquiries like many other members. The communication (specifically the process for candidates and voters alike) has been inconsistent. I believe that is what's causing some of the angst (for members). The Elections committee along with the NAHJ leadership should have communicated or clarified the information in the bylaws, etc. in advance of the nomination process."
Manuel De La Rosa, vice president/broadcast, said in an email, ". . . nobody asked our executive director to do this. she's just doing her job and I am glad we are cleaning up this mess and only allowing the people who are eligible to vote in elections to vote."
Elizabeth Zavala, a lifetime member who is a content editor for MultiBriefs, the publishing subsidiary of MultiView, Inc., based in Irving, Texas, said by email, ". . . Because I work for an online media company that does association-branded eNewsletters, I'm probably not considered a regular lifetime member anymore. I'm probably considered an associate lifetime member by our bylaws. Those bylaws were written a very long time ago, and they probably need to be re-invented like all of us are re-inventing ourselves in this new media world.
"But I'd rather NAHJ continue to shore up its finances before we rewrite membership categories. Getting the organization financially stable and on comfortable footing is more important because to me, it gets us closer to meeting the mission of NAHJ, the betterment of its members and journalism overall because of it."
Zavala is a former editor and reporter at the Dallas Morning News and at the Star-Telegram in Fort Worth.
"I rarely have problems with the players I cover," says Shalise Manza Young. (Credit: Boston Globe) (Video)
A first-person story by Shalise Manza Young, who this fall will begin her seventh season as a beat writer covering the New England Patriots, highlighted a special section on diversity in Sunday's Boston Globe.
". . . I rarely have problems with the players I cover. Sure, I've been around for seven years, so I'm a familiar face to many of them. A majority of NFL players are African-American, and the sad fact is that many of them were raised by single mothers who worked tirelessly to make sure their sons had what they needed. In some ways, I think I am viewed similarly. I am there to do my job, and I work hard at it; I've proven that I can be trusted. I talk to them about more than X's and O's — I learn about their wives and children, and what makes them tick off the football field.
"Sometimes they'll tell me things that they might not tell a male reporter, maybe because of some macho attitude or being afraid of being viewed a certain way, or perhaps I just asked a question a man wouldn't think to ask.
"Those often bring about the best days, when the trust I've built up leads to my breaking a story, or when I produce a profile of a player who's been written about a hundred times before, but through my eyes, his story has new details and readers get a different perspective."
Tuesday marks the 10th anniversary of the day that "Journal-isms" debuted in this space, having previously existed only on the printed page.
It began about 1991 as a catch-all column of briefs in the NABJ Journal, which was then a newspaper of the National Association of Black Journalists that Richard Prince was co-editing. It continued there for seven years.
Jackie Jones picked up the sequence of events in a 2011 piece for BlackAmericaWeb.com that refers to Dori J. Maynard, president of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education:
" 'When the Internet came along,' Prince said, 'Dori Maynard was looking for something to draw traffic to the Maynard Institute [site], and it's gone from these little briefs to a full-blown column.'
"Among mainstream journalists, a column by media critic Jim Romenesko has become a staple about the news industry. In many ways, Journal-isms serves a similar purpose, only for and about people of color.
" 'That's why we started it, actually,' said Maynard, president of the journalism training institute based in Oakland, California. 'I was so disturbed by Romenesko. There was [rarely] any notice of people of color.' "
Today, many sites aggregate news items about the news business, but only one is devoted to diversity concerns. Thanks to Dori J. Maynard, Bill Elsen, Roberto Delgado and the other colleagues who have posted, edited and supervised Journal-isms for the Maynard Institute, to our partners at theRoot.com, and to the multiracial audience who, with their tips, comments and criticisms, have made it a success.
"Lorenza 'Lori' Rodriguez, 
a Texas journalist who in 1971 became the first Hispanic editor of the University of Texas newspaper [The] Daily Texan and later a longtime reporter and columnist for the Houston Chronicle, was found dead Thursday at her Houston Heights home," Allan Turner reported Friday for the Chronicle. "She was 62.
" 'Lori was a star in the Latino community,' said Marcario Ramirez, a Houston Hispanic activist and businessman. 'Because of her writing about our culture and tradition, she was admired. … She put our community on the roadmap — in a positive way, for the most part. Our hearts weep for her.'
"Houston City Councilman James Rodriguez called her a 'trailblazer.'
" 'There were not many Latinas covering politics for major newspapers,' he said. "She was a very aggressive, fair and balanced reporter who took the time to develop relationships in this city and cover the growing number of Latino politicians and elected officials.' "
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Join acclaimed science- fiction author Ayize Jama-Everett as he delves into the history of the pulp genre and considers its relationship to literature, gender, and race.
Date: Thursday, June 21, 2012
Time: 12pm
Kabacoff Room
Hilton Riverside
2 Poydras Street
New Orleans, LA
Fox roots for Wisconsin governor — MSNBC for unions; Cleveland anchor Leon Bibb out of 6 p.m. chair; little outrage at prospect of Birmingham cutbacks; black churches demonstrate to keep pastors on cable; Roland Martin on CNN suspension, personal brands; "60 Minutes" has difficulty finding correspondents; Romney scuttled affirmative action policies in Mass.; whites wrote 90% of books reviewed in N.Y. Times; reunited after nearly 30 years (6/6/12)
Soul of the South releases promotional video; U.S. prosecutors to investigate "leaks" to N.Y. Times; "a disappearing daily ritual for many"; online diversity issues mirror those in legacy media; op-ed print editors can counter poor Web editing; N.Y. Daily News confuses Cuban flag for Puerto Rico's; Celtics-Heat Game 6 gives ESPN a ratings spike; now they're heading for internships (6/8/12)
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Theory holds bias could cost president key states; Biden to speak next week at NABJ convention; Robin Roberts to have bone marrow transplant; rap about shootings becomes op-ed piece; "talent is out there" among investigative reporters of color; NAHJ's non-journalist lifetime members losing vote; Journal-isms marks 10th year as online column; "Lori" Rodriguez, Houston columnist, dies at 62 (6/11/12)
Montgomery to take his spot
In Knoxville, Tenn., "
