Friday, April 13, 2007

Check out this brassy clear voice on the Imess

I've just discovered, via a number of trenchant, brassy, and oh-so-cogent comments made on today's To The Point, Jasmyne Cannick, an African American woman blogger and political cauldron stirrer. Her point is: Imus, so what? Sure, the depraved should be deprived of a public, but who in the black community knows, or cares about, Don Imus? More importantly, Cannick pitches, it's the misogynists with currency, like Snoop Doggy Dog and 50Cent, who do the most damage. Oh, how she bewails the sisters bumping Snoop from their car windows, their young daughters captive in the back seat being primed for abuse in perpetuity!

The BLOG
(If you've got the stomach for it, check out the YouTube of a Snoop show. You'll see what Jasmyne means.)

Today's SHOW


NPR : CBS Radio Fires Don Imus in Fallout over Remarks

NPR : CBS Radio Fires Don Imus in Fallout over Remarks:

Background readings from the AP in a supplement, Rutgers v. Imus, this weekend at IMDiversity.com, plus commentaries by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Kam Williams, more at new Media, New Media and Communications Jobs & Readings section

Thursday, April 05, 2007

ASNE: Percentages of Women and Minorities in America's Newsrooms Declined

This week on the IMDiversity.com Career Center Home Page:

According to the American Newspaper Editors Association 2007 survey on the representation of minorities in U.S. news media, the percentages of minority and women journalists working in America’s newsrooms both declined in the past year. According to ASNE, it is only the second time since the survey started in 1978 that the percentage of minorities has declined.

In a year marked by news organization layoffs that were headlines in themselves, ASNE’s annual “census” found that the percentage of minorities fell to 13.62 percent, down from 13.87 last year. The percentage of women also dropped from 37.70 to 37.56 percent.

The percentage of minorities in supervisory roles at daily newspapers dropped to 10.9 percent, equal to the percentage from two years ago.

The downward trend holds true for student and entry-level employment as well. According to ASNE’s release, the percentage of minority interns stands at nearly 27 percent, “a number that has continued to fall as newspapers cut back” on internships.

The one silver lining in the report seemed to come from online media. ASNE’s census of daily newspapers for the first time counted full-time staffers who work entirely at online publishing activities by their companies. Among online media staffs, the percentage of minorities on staff was an estimated 16 percent, which helped make the drop in overall employment numbers seem less severe than they might have been.

See a fuller report at IMDiversity, ASNE Report Finds Percentage of Minorities in Newsrooms Declining, or view detailed data tables from the census at the ASNE website.