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Updated: Monday, December 24, 2007
Published: Wednesday, July 28, 2004 |
Bob Reid
1979-1981
By Gayle Pollard Terry
The "firsts" started early for Bob Reid.
At Miami-Dade Community College in 1966 he was elected the first black student government president of a predominantly white college in the South. That same year he became the first black reporter at The Miami Herald.
In 1968, less than a month after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he joined Miami's WTVJ-TV as the station's first black reporter-cameraman. In 1976, he became the first black network-bureau chief when he took charge of NBC News' Atlanta bureau.
And in 1979, Reid became not only the first broadcast president of NABJ, but also, at 32, its youngest leader. He inherited a nascent organization with no paid staff, no national office, no professional newsletter and a membership that fluctuated between 150 to 200, depending on who showed up at the national convention.
If Reid wanted things to get done, he had to do them himself.
If he wanted letterhead, he paid for it and was reimbursed by NABJ Treasurer Mal Johnson of Cox Broadcasting in Washington. If he wanted a newsletter, he wrote the stories and took the layouts to a local printer.
He juggled those NABJ tasks with the demands of his job as a field producer for NBC News - and his new marriage to actress Berlinda Tolbert, who played "Jenny" on "The Jeffersons." Their photo in Jet magazine made Reid a bit of a celebrity, even to the somewhat jaded journalists of NABJ. But his move to Los Angeles to be with his wife complicated communications with NABJ board members who lived in the Eastern and Central time zones.
In 1980, for the second consecutive year, NABJ held its annual convention in Washington, D.C. Predictably, the lack of organizational structure within NABJ led to problems. In an eerie coincidence, it began on the same weekend that The Washington Post published "Jimmy's World" by black reporter Janet Cooke. It was a sensational portrait of an 8-year-old heroin addict that was later proven to be a fabrication.
Reid's welcome address struck a critical note.
"We're in the last quarter of 1980," he said. "Twelve years since the assassination of Martin Luther King. Fifteen years since the Watts riot. Sixteen years since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Twenty-six years since Brown v. Board of Education. One hundred fifteen years since the Emancipation Proclamation," he declared. "It is 1980 and the issues (facing black journalists) remain the same."
There were also a host of logistical breakdowns.
"The 1980 convention in Washington was disastrous from an organizational standpoint," Reid recalled. "Some panelists didn't show up, and when contacted, said they had never been invited. We gave an award to Carl Rowan and he didn't show up. I was sitting there and I resolved that, dammit, we were never going to do this again. I had to find the time to focus on the business of the organization because that was not going to bemy legacy."
Strengthening NABJ organizationally became Reid's obsession in the remaining year of his presidency, even as he moved to a new job in charge of the investigative unit at KNXT-TV (now KCBS) in Los Angeles.
Reasoning that successful conventions were more likely to occur in cities with strong local chapters, he proposed a constitutional change to encourage local black journalists' organizations to affiliate formally with NABJ. He also proposed an amendment to set up a NABJ education foundation to solicit donations for scholarships. Though the treasury held only $5,000 to $6,000, he pushed for awarding a scholarship.
"There was no point in the organization existing if we weren't going to do some good," he said.
Another amendment would allow NABJ to set up a national office in a location other than Washington, D.C.
"I really thought we needed an office, but we weren't big enough or wealthy enough to support one. Either somebody would have to give it to us like a foundation or we would have to go to a major media organization."
A task force led by Vice President Jeanne Fox of the Detroit Free Press, along with NABJ Secretary Karen Howze, then of Gannett Newspapers, Parliamentarian Monte Trammer of the Free Press and a regional director, Ben Johnson, also of the Free Press, recommended establishing an office at a university, as other nonprofit groups had done.
With the help of Jay Harris, then at Northwestern University, Fox lined up financial support, and recommended Florida A & M University in Tallahassee. Reid supported the plan, but it was rejected at a business meeting at the 1981 Louisville convention.
In addition, Reid founded - and wrote most of the stories for - NABJ News, the predecessor of the NABJ Journal. He created what are now called NABJ's Salute to Excellence Awards for outstanding coverage of the black community. He said he wanted a merit award that would gain the stature of a Pulitzer or Peabody so organizations, in order to win them, would set out to cover the black community.
"There was some discussion of whether white journalists could win it," he said. "I felt strongly that they could. In my mind, I wouldn't feel upset if all the top awards went to white people. The most important goal was to get the white editors and all the media to think it was important enough to cover our community in an outstanding way that would receive recognition from NABJ. Then the awards would mean something."
The awards also helped to make the Louisville convention a huge success.
The journalist of the year award went to Robert C. Maynard, the first black publisher of a major metropolitan daily, The Oakland Tribune, where he was also editor; and to Max Robinson, Midwest anchor for ABC News and the first African American network anchor.
The lifetime achievement award went to Lerone Bennett Jr., author, historian and senior editor of Ebony Magazine.
Robinson also spoke at the awards banquet. At that same gathering, the first NABJ scholarship for $1,000 was awarded.
"The Kentucky convention," said Reid, "represented the start of the modern era of NABJ."
That convention attracted a large turnout and featured the first professional convention souvenir program book with advertisements. It also made money. The treasury held more than $9,000 when Reid turned over the organization to the next president, Les Payne.
Today, 20 years after he left office, Reid heads production for the Discovery Channel Primetime in Bethesda. He has won two national Emmys for documentaries.
"Sometimes looking at NABJ over the years is like watching your baby and wondering if it is going to be all right," said Reid.
His pioneering efforts to strengthen NABJ left the organization much better off than he found it.
Gayle Pollard Terry, an editorial writer for The Los Angeles Times, served as NABJ vice president from 1987-1989. |
Foreword
