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Updated: Monday, December 24, 2007
Published: Wednesday, July 28, 2004 |
Herbert Lowe Jr.
2003-2005
Essay by Jackie Jones
It took losing to make Herbert Lowe a winner.
In 2001, the rap on Lowe, then NABJ's vice president for print, was that he was unfocused and lacked a clear agenda for an organization facing a fiscal crisis. The former two-term national secretary admits he concentrated more on helping Will Sutton, the embattled, outgoing leader than on his own presidential campaign.
I prepared myself to govern instead of preparing to win, Lowe said. When I lost it was a huge shock. But the loss turned out to be a good omen.
As a member I saw how the organization was communicating with the membership, he said. I felt that NABJ was powerful and influential, but we didn't let people know what we were doing.
After healing his wounds, and supported by his wife, Mira, an editor at Newsday and NABJ committee leader, Lowe tried again. He reached out to friends and members who gave him a ton of advice on not just how to get elected, but to be a really effective president.
He listened. Too bad more of us don't do that, said Monte Trammer, president and publisher of The Star-Gazette in Elmira, N.Y., a close advisor to Lowe and finance committee chairman during his term. The former NABJ parliamentarian told the candidate to focus on one or two important issues, rather than compiling a list. Pick something you want to be proud of at the end, he said, and make sure the organization serves its members. For whatever reason somebody decides to join NABJ , they should be able to look back and say, My money was well spent.
Lowe came back with a two-pronged agenda aimed at making NABJ a year-round association, and less so convention-oriented, and also to take it back to its roots: Fighting for the hiring, development and promotion of black journalists and calling out those in and out of media who maligned them.
He sought the counsel of NABJ's past presidents and, after his election, had several speak to the board of directors and chapter leaders to provide insight and institutional memory.
Herb Lowe has proven to be a more effective president than even his optimistic supporters expected a t the outset, said past NABJ President Les Payne, the New York editor at Newsday, where Lowe works as a courts reporter in Queens.
Vernon Jarrett, our second president, was not the only one to warm to Herbs leadership, sensing in him not only a fire to move NABJ ahead, but also a will to keep it rooted, Payne said. Herb has focused his energy on keeping the graph line of black employment in media trending upward.
One of Lowe's best moments as president, several members said, was meeting with NBC News President Neal Shapiro in late 2004, after new Nightly News anchor Brian Williams said that journalists have bigger concerns than newsroom diversity. With Paula Madison, president of KNBC-TV (Los Angeles) and a former NABJ secretary, past NABJ President Sidmel Estes-Sumpter and former NABJ Vice President-Broadcast Sheila Stainback also at the table, Lowe pressed the network news president for increased commitment to diversity. Some say what Shapiro promised has yet to be seen, but many members applauded Lowe's just getting in the boardroom with him and taking a stand.
Lowe also achieved NABJ 365,that is, keeping NABJ before members and the industry daily.
The NABJ Web site was redesigned and regularly updated with news about the association and industry, and members received more frequent E-blasts. The long dormant Hall of Fame was resurrected and 17 new members inducted. The stagnant Salute to Excellence Awards ceremony was pulled from the convention and transformed into a wondrous fall gala.
NABJ also released a newsroom stylebook aimed at better coverage of black America; promoted a census of top black editors; earned and executed grants from the Ford Foundation, Knight Foundation and CNN; erased a $100,000 debt, improved its investment portfolio, and helped send 11 members overseas for international reporting experience.
Lowe's administration also managed to get all but three of its nearly 50 affiliated professional chapters audited, and the membership to adopt a constitutional amendment to reduce the board of directors from 19 to14 members after the 2005 election.
All that, the increased advocacy and the hugely successful Unity 2004 convention in Washington helped swell NABJ s membership to a record 4,700,or 43percent more than when Lowe took office. Many were proud when Ebony rushed to profile him and NABJ with a full-page magazine feature after Unity.
He said NABJ 365and he really did make that his mission, said Melanie Burney, the parliamentarian on Lowe's board, and like him a past president of the Garden State Association of Black Journalists. He definitely raised the profile of NABJ.
A Camden, N.J., native and Marquette University graduate who worked at five newspapers before Newsday, Lowe traveled from his home in Brooklyn extensively on behalf of NABJ often with his wife, who served as chairwoman of NABJ s 30th Anniversary Committee. He attended all eight NABJ regional conferences held during his term while also visiting chapters and representing the association at various events in more than 30 cities in 18 states.
Herb has made good on his campaign pledge to make the organization more activist, said Richard Prince, NABJ s longtime media monitoring committee chairman .He reached out to others within the organization, even those who opposed his candidacy, when warranted. He wanted to make NABJ 24/7 and seems to have achieved that.
Still, no presidents reign is untarnished.
Lowe earned criticism for his handling of a meeting with administrators at Hampton University over perceived intimidation of student journalists, and for pulling the 2006 convention out of Detroit.
Tensions between NABJ and Hampton were simmering after school officials confiscated copies of the Hampton Script after student editors refused to publish an administrators letter on the front page. A settlement was reached, but some students still felt intimidated on campus, saying it adversely affected their journalism training. Lowe led a NABJ delegation to Hampton to meet with the university's president, William Harvey, and communications school dean, Tony Brown, and others. The meeting went badly for NABJ, which refused to reveal its sources.
Although NABJ was criticized for going into the meeting unprepared,(Herb) was willing to put NABJ on the side of African-American journalism students who said they were feeling intimidated, Prince said.
Board members and many observers agreed that moving the 2006 convention to Indianapolis was tough, but necessary. Condace Pressley, Lowe's predecessor as president, took some of the blame.
My team announced the decision (to go to Detroit) before all the Is were dotted and the Ts crossed in the contracts and it wasn't in the best interest of our members and it was left for Herbs team to fix, she said.
Still, Lowe avoided the contentiousness that plagued other presidents.
Some have quarreled with Herbs choice of issues, such as early in his presidency, when NABJ denounced the Naples Daily News columnist who wrote his column in what he considered rap-talk, Prince said. But the idea there was to send a signal that NABJ is watching. The membership seems to have approved.
Lowe notes that the Naples papers editor publicly apologized after NABJ weighed in, just as a trade magazine did after the president complained when a cover story about children following parents into journalism ignored black journalists.
I'm pleased that we spoke out and took a stand and that led to some positive conversations, said Region III Director J. Elliott Lewis, a freelance broadcast journalist serving his first board term.
Lowe said of his administrations success: It wasn't just me. I had an extremely hard-working, extremely smart, extremely committed and together board of directors. On this board there was very little friction. It was not about who was in charge. Everybody bought into NABJ 365. |
Foreword
