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Jezebel Said to Miss Opportunity for Diversity
The failure to name deputy editor Dodai Stewart for the top job at Jezebel rankles for racial reasons as well as the perceived undervaluing of Stewart's personal and professional qualities, staffers and admirers say.
Emma Carmichael, editor of the Hairpin, was given the job.
"Stewart is one of the few women of color on Jezebel’s masthead and the longest-serving staffer at the site, having been hired by founding editor Anna Holmes shortly after the site launched in 2007,"Peter Sterne wrote Monday for capitalnewyork.com. "In the past year, she has also assumed a larger role in running the site, three people familiar with the site's internal workings told Capital."
Sterne also wrote, "But the decision to hand the site to a young white woman instead of Stewart — a black woman who has been working at the site since Carmichael was still in college — rubs some current and former staffers the wrong way, especially since the site has been criticized in the past for its handling of race issues.
"'I would not say that I think it is like a racist action, but it is kind of a missed opportunity,' one staffer said. 'The race thing would have been a really wonderful — just like to have a really well-established Black woman who is so good at her job running the site would have been great.'
"'But that's not the crux of what's disappointing about Dodai not getting the job,' the staffer added. 'She deserves it.' . . ."
Sterne added, "Gawker owner Nick Denton told Capital in an instant message conversation that Carmichael will bring a slightly different editorial direction for the site, though he declined to go into detail. . . ."
- Joel Johnson blog: Emma Carmichael, Jezebel's Next Editor-in-Chief (June 24)
- Luvvie, the Grio: Jezebel gets it wrong with new 'Editor' hire
Blogger for Redskins Quits After Old Tweets Surface
"Eight years after 'macaca,'Ben Tribbett has found himself in the middle of a second name-calling debate,"Michael Phillips wrote Tuesday for the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch. "This time, though, he's the one holding his tongue.
"Tribbett, a political blogger . . . abruptly resigned from a position with the Washington Redskins on Monday after two weeks on the job. He had been hired to defend the team against protest groups advocating a name change.
"The Oneida Indian Nation, a group funding the name-change movement, posted a series of online comments made several years ago by Tribbett at a casino that appeared to be derogatory to Native Americans.
"'Just took Chief for his last 300 (dollars),' Tribbett wrote on Twitter. 'I'd call it a scalping but that seems uncalled for.'
"Tribbett said the tweets were taken out of context. He said he was playing cards with a man wearing a Native American headdress, and that it was not meant as a broad generalization.
"Still, he resigned his position with the Redskins so as not to be a distraction to the team in its efforts. . . ."
- Chelsey Luger, Indian Country Today Media Network: Indian (yet not 'an' Indian)(June 26)
- Claudio Saunt, Slate: This Land Is Their Land
- Theresa Vargas, Washington Post: One Native American family with Redskins ties disagrees on whether name is offensive
Short Takes
- "After 18-years of hosting Fox 2's Morning Show, WJBK television anchor Alan Lee has decided to pursue a new path in life," the Detroit station announced on Tuesday. "On Tuesday, Lee announced his departure during the morning show while sitting on the anchor desk with show co-host Anqunette Jamison. Lee says he plans to continue with his life long dream of being a novel writer. In 2013 his first novella, Sandstorm, was published. Lee joined Fox 2 in 1996 and co-hosted the morning show with Sherry Margolis. His last day with Fox 2 will be July 31. . . ."
- "Texas Rangers first baseman Prince Fielder is one of six world-class athletes who appears nude on the July cover of ESPN The Magazine's Body Issue, but the response so far has been mixed,"Travis Reilly wrote Tuesday for the Wrap. "'The Body Issue is ESPN The Magazine's annual celebration of athletes' amazing bodies, where we stop to admire the vast potential of the human form,' says ESPN on [its] website, but many sports fans are expressing anything but admiration for how the 30-year-old slugger looks naked. . . ." However, Yesha Callahan wrote for The Root, "In honor of Fielder's positive body image, the husky population on Twitter, who are thick and proud, created the #HuskyTwitter hashtag . . . ." She noted that Fielder is listed at 5 feet 11 and 275 pounds.
- A two-day training session in which about 20 members of underrepresented groups write and publish op-eds began in Washington on Wednesday. The Global Policy Solutions Greenhouse is part of The OpEd Project's Public Voices Fellowship, a national initiative first piloted at Yale, Stanford and Princeton universities and now rolling out in partnership with top universities and foundations, according to Deborah Douglas, who facilitated Wednesday's session. Douglas is adjunct lecturer at the Medill School at Northwestern University and a former member of the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board. Two more sessions take place this summer.
- "With more than a billion Facebook interactions and 300 million tweets, the 2014 World Cup is likely to be the biggest social media event ever,"Nicole del Castillo reported Tuesday for Fox News Latino. "As the Round of 16 came to a close in early July, Facebook reported more than a billion Cup-related posts, comments and likes generated by 220 million users since the start of the tournament on June 12. The social network announced Monday that the 2014 Cup has already claimed the title of the largest event — sporting or otherwise — in Facebook history. . . ."
- "Weekend anchor Jacqueline Ortiz is leaving San Antonio's WOAI-KABB to become a full-time mom to her two kids,"Veronica Villafañereported Tuesday for her Media Moves site. "She had been at the station for the past 16 years. . . ."
- In San Antonio, "KSAT anchor Isis Romero was unable to continue reading a story Monday, overcome by emotions as she told viewers of the San Antonio ABC affiliate of an infant badly injured in a fireworks accident. Romero, who is expecting a child, apologized on her Facebook page for becoming overwhelmed by the news,"Mark Joyella reported for TVSpy.
- Washington Post local columnist Courtland Milloy angered bicyclists far and wide when he wrote Wednesday, "It's a $500 fine for a motorist to hit a bicyclist in the District [of Columbia], but some behaviors are so egregious that some drivers might think it's worth paying the fine.""Wash Cycle did the dirty work of correcting each and every one of Milloy's erroneous statements,"Tanya Snyder wrote for usa.streetsblog.org.
- "Last Wednesday, NPR education team blogger Anya Kamenetzcomplained on Twitter that 'only the white guys get back to me' when reaching out to diverse sources,"Jim Romenesko reported on his media blog on Tuesday. "After being criticized for the tweet, Kamenetz said that 'I take personal responsibility [for the tweet and] I don’t think it should reflect on my employer.' But it does, says a just-released NPR memo. It reminds the public radio staff to always ask before posting something: 'Is it helping my journalism, or is it hurting my journalism?' . . .”
- C-SPAN2 broadcasts live from the Harlem Book Fair starting Saturday at 11:45 a.m. Eastern, re-airing at midnight. Topics include the state of African American literature; multicultural book publishing; a conversation with Tracey D. Syphax, author of "From the Block to the Boardroom"; "Achieving Our Country: James Baldwin and American Morality"; and the Black Arts Movement. On Saturday at 10 p.m. and Sunday at 9 p.m. and midnight, "AfterWords" features Jason Riley, Wall Street Journal editorial writer and author of "Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make it Harder for Blacks to Succeed." It is hosted by April Ryan of American Urban Radio Networks.
- "Philadelphia's WHYY is taking a solutions-based approach to its new collaborative, multiplatform community journalism project, which explores urban decline and renewal in the Keystone State,"Erica Sweeney reported Tuesday for NetNewsCheck. The project examines day-to-day life in Pennsylvania, where four of 10 residents live in areas declared financially distressed. "A staff of seven has been hired and partnerships with three other stations — WESA in Pittsburgh, WPSU at Penn State and WITF in Harrisburg — have been established. Pittsburgh's WQED is an associate partner. . . ."
- Jackie Jones, who left a 30-year career in newsrooms to start a career coaching business, tells clients, "Stepping out on faith is fine, but stepping out on faith with a plan is even better,"Ann Brown wrote July 3 for the Network Journal. Jones chairs the Department of Multimedia Journalism at Morgan State University.
- "A Palestinian working for a local news agency in the Gaza Strip was killed on Wednesday night by an Israeli strike on a car full of journalists, according to multiple reports from the war-torn region,"Jack Mirkinson reported for the Huffington Post. "Hamdi Shihab, who was apparently working as a driver for news agency Media 24, was killed in a car marked 'TV.' . . . "
- In Mexico, "The senate has just approved the 'Secondary Law on Telecommunications' that President Enrique Peña Nieto's government proposed on 24 March," Reporters Without Borders reported. The organization said it was "alarmed by the speed with which the bill is being adopted because some of its articles threaten freedom of information. The bill provides for content surveillance, the right to block telecommunication services, prior censorship of news and information that could endanger national security, and an unequal distribution of licences between commercial, state-owned and community broadcast media. . . ."
- Since three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped on 12 June, and their bodies discovered 18 days later, "Many journalists have been targeted by the Israeli army. Others have been arrested arbitrarily. And security forces have been conducting raids on media offices," Reporters Without Borders said Tuesday. "RWB urges the Israeli military to allow news professionals, whether Palestinian or foreign, to carry out their work freely and safely. . . ."
- "Marzieh Rasouli, an Iranian journalist who writes mainly about literature for reformist newspapers and her popular blog, Three Days Ago, was taken into custody on Tuesday at Evin Prison in Tehran to begin serving a two-year sentence for taking part in street protests in 2009 and publishing what the authorities called antistate propaganda,"Robert Mackey wrote Tuesday for the New York Times. "The verdict, which she learned about in a phone call on Monday, also calls for her to receive 50 lashes. . . ."
- Referring to the Western Sahara colony of Morocco, "Spokesman of the Red-Green Alliance Party in the Danish Parliament, MP Christian Juhl, has expressed 'profound worry' for tens of Saharawi activists, journalists and protestors having detained by Moroccan authorities without a court order following peaceful protests calling for the Saharawi people's right to self-determination, held on 30th June 2014 in El Aaiun, capital of Western Sahara," the Sahara Press Service reported on Wednesday.
- "The repressive effects of Ecuador's one-year-old communications law can be seen in a regulator's decision to fine a newspaper just days after the daily said the law was the reason it was shuttering its print edition," the International Press Institute said on Wednesday. It also said, "The fine followed HOY's June 29 announcement that it was ending its print edition due to 'an environment adverse to the development of a free and independent daily publication' . . ."
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