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Updated: Wednesday, November 7, 2007 Published: Thursday, July 20, 2006

PRESIDENT'S CORNER LINKS Past Messages President's Biography Letter to the FCC On Minority Media Ownership

As we prepare for NABJ's 31^st Annual Convention and Career Fair in Indianapolis, coming up Aug. 16-20, we can reflect on all the great journalism we've seen from NABJ members over the past few months and how important it is to keep focused on our core issues: journalism and the journalists who do it.

In Indy, that conversation will continue as we learn how to honor our traditions while inventing the future of journalism using technology, entrepreneurism, leadership and core journalistic skills.

We will learn about the impact of technology and the Internet in sessions such as "Finding Your Niche Online" and 'Web Design 101." But, it is the journalism carried over those wires that matter. We will focus on new journalists and mid-career veterans in sessions such as "Out of the Gate: Surviving the First Five Years of Journalism" and 'So You Want to be a News Director."We will examine the world of Media Entrepreneurs with a plenary and sessions such as 'Me, Inc.: How to Run Yourself as Your Own Media Business," as we learn how to control and extend our journalist voices. We will look at the State of Black Leadership in the W.E.B DuBois Lecture, a story told through our journalism. We will hear from New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin and reflect on aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and it will be the journalism done in the Gulf region that will highlight the discussion.

We will see our educators working together to discover new ways of teaching journalism, we'll see our associate members learn how to work better with veteran journalists, and we'll see our students gain real-world experiences working on our convention TV, radio, online and print projects.

And throughout it all, we will be reminded of the power and importance of our journalism, and the critical need to make sure our voices are a strong part of the collective choir that sing the song of America.

In the past few months, we have seen that importance played out on the pages and screens of the nation's media.

We saw the power and impact of the ongoing Washington Post series on 'Being a Black Man." This historic series -- told in print and online, with audio, video, photographs and text – has emerged as required reading for anyone interested in the complex evolution of African American men in our society. It has the authenticity and accuracy that only comes from the voices of black men telling the stories of black men.

NABJ members were intimately involved in the project – including former journalist of the year Kevin Merida, the project's lead editor; writers Darryl Fears, Michael Fletcher, Robert Pierre, Hamil Harris, Tamara Jones and Will Haygood; and editors Joe Davidson, Marcia Davis and Sydney Trent. The largely black project team spent the past few months huddling around cubicles, conducting informal discussions about the lives they led and the world they lived in. It was their story, but touched on experiences shared by many others. In fact, The Post's managing editor, Phil Bennett, was a major champion of the project and helped make sure it made it into the paper – and online – with their voices intact.

We saw the struggles and triumphs of the solid, gumshoe investigative reporting done by NABJ parliamentarian Melanie Burney, an education reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer, as she uncovered allegations of unusually high elementary school test scores in the Camden School District. Her tenacious reporting showed how administrators may have been pressured to rig test results and reap huge personal bonuses. Burney herself became the target of a few angry members of the black community as her aggressive reporting began to focus on the conduct of the districts superintendent, who also was a soror. Nevertheless, she pressed on and uncovered the largest education scandal in recent New Jersey history. That superintendent resigned in June.

We saw how the interests and perspective of a single, black, network producer at CNN – NABJ member Eddie Williams, III – last month led to a compelling segment on CNN Saturday about the incendiary 'N-word." Williams, who had been following the debate about the use of the word in culture, music and entertainment, had heard about a woman who had founded a Web site, www.abolishthenword.com . He then pulled together not one, but three segments that repeated throughout the weekend debating the use and relevancy of the acidic word, segments that had an authenticity of voice and freshness of perspective that only diverse viewpoints can bring.

We saw how our own Trymaine Lee and the staff of the New Orleans Times Picayune walked away with this year's Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for their honest, urgent coverage of the devastation after Katrina – joining the team in Biloxi and The Post's Robin Givhen in Pulitzer honors. Because they were of the community, they covered the community during a time of crisis from an intimate, truthful point of view. They wrote about 'us," not 'them."

And we saw where the industry continues to fall short. A recent study commissioned by the Associated Press Sports Editors showed that nine out of ten of America's sports writers and editors are white and most are men. While this comes as little surprise to most who read a newspaper or work in a newsroom, it reinforces the need for a more diverse workforce covering an overwhelmingly diverse topic – sports. Most professional and collegiate athletes – the bread and butter of the sports pages – are black and brown, yet most of those covering them, portending to give insights into their lives and understand their motivations, are not. Do they 'get it?"

And we also saw where the journalism and the journalists mattered – but not quite enough –with the demise of Knight Ridder and the recent drama around the Tribune Company.

As I and many of my colleagues at KR join the ranks of the unemployed with this month's sale of the company to McClatchy, we are reminded how critical it is for newspapers and the media to continue to be relevant to demanding readers and choosy consumers (many of whom are young and diverse). If they don't, they will die.

Despite the fact that Knight Ridder papers were champions of journalism – with 85 Pulitzer Prizes to prove it – and touted some of most diverse newsroom staffs in the nation, that was not enough to overcome the rapidly changing demographics and interests the new America demands today. Circulation – and revenues – fell as readers turned elsewhere for their news and information. We peddled fast, but, clearly, not fast enough.

And now, the barbarians are at the gate of Tribune Company. With not nearly as commendable a record on diversity in the newsroom – in the last ASNE diversity survey, Tribune turned in the 10^th highest performance of major media companies – Tribune is fending off its own shareholder call to break that company up as well, having to cope with rapidly shifting consumer demand for television and print and evolving demographics in some of the nation's largest, and most diverse, markets: New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.  We'll watch to see how this story ends.

So I look forward to seeing you in Indy in August. Pre-registration is closed, but you can still register on-site to take advantage of the excellent workshops, seminars and plenaries.  There is also a handful of hotels rooms left, so act now to secure your place in our journalistic history.

Yours in service,

NABJ President