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From the President
 Anita K. Parran
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Whew! The 11th Annual KCABJ Media Awards program is over, and we can now take a short breather! Many thanks to all of you who worked tirelessly and generously to help make it all come together.
Specifically, thanks to our executive board: Crystal Lumpkins, Joi Preciphs, Tanyanika Samuels, Lewis Diuguid and Benita Williams. While Glenn Rice was unable to attend the program because he had to work that Saturday, I know that our ex-officio member of the board was with us in spirit.
I would be remiss to not also thank those additional ''hands on deck'' (and their significant others) who also pitched in for set-up and tear-down on Nov. 16. Kia Breaux and I made a last minute run to pick up a few more treats, and I really appreciated that help! Thanks also Jenee' Osterheldt for her help at setting things up and to Kevin Morris for the additional sweets at our ''Afternoon Delight!'' I understand that the sweet potato pie was no less than fabulous!
Most of all, I appreciate the support of KCABJ members who attended. It was good to see April Jackson, Steve Penn, Mara Williams, Malecia El-Amin and Pete Wilkerson. I am comtemplating sending the membership a survey so that we can evaluate the success of the dessert venue. Our next regularly scheduled meeting is at 11 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 23 at the AARP offices on the Country Club Plaza, and I am anticipating many comments regarding the awards program.
Our next main event will be the Holiday Celebration (a.k.a. party). Look out for more news on this annual blowout!
Student Appreciates KCABJ Workshop
KCABJ member Portia Turner gave the keynote address to more than 100 people at the 11th Annual KCABJ Media Awards Ceremony, praising the organization for what it taught her and the other nine graduates last summer at Rockhurst University. What follows is Portia's speech:
''The KCABJ 2002 Journalism Workshop was an unforgettable experience. It seemed like the longest two weeks of our lives.
''The workshop was challenging. It caused my class to rise up to the high expectations of Mr. Diuguid, Mr. Rice, Ms. Samuels, Ms. Lumpkins, Ms. Parran and the other members of KCABJ. As students we are thankful for the opportunity to have learned about journalism and the importance of people of color in this field. We gained useful information that will last us a lifetime. The workshop taught us about the real world of journalism by allowing us to explore it for ourselves, as if we were professional journalists. We were given daily assignments with real stories to cover for the print portion of the workshop. As in the real world of journalism, we had to work hard to get stories completed before the deadline because incomplete work was unacceptable.
By the end of the first week, we had a whole new respect for reporters, editors and those involved in producing newspapers. I have stressed the intensity of the print training of the workshop, but it was also rewarding and fun. The second week of the workshop gave us a view of the world of broadcasting. We were excited about shadowing reporters and conducting our very own mock newscast. When we visited the newsroom, here also we gained a realization that broadcast journalism isn't as easy as it looks.
I can truly say that this workshop has given us a new perspective on the field of journalism -- both print and broadcast. From the 2002 workshop participants, we thank you KCABJ, sponsors and parents for your commitment, investment and support. God bless.''
KCTV-5 Gets Thumbs Down Award
The Kansas City Association of Black Journalists gave its 2001-2002 Thumbs Down Award to KCTV-5. In 2002 the on-air diversity at the television station suffered a setback when a weekday anchor position held by an African-American broadcast journalist since the early 1990 was ''deleted,'' KCABJ President Anita K. Parran told the audience at KCABJ's media awards ceremony.
KCABJ initiated correspondence last spring with upper management of the station and its owner, Meredith Corp. But such efforts yielded either unsatisfactory or no responses. Parran announced the 2002 Thumbs Down recipient Saturday, Nov. 16 during the 11th Annual KCABJ Media Awards Ceremony at the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center, 3700 Blue Parkway.
The backsliding in diversity by the station has the potential to negatively affect the accurate coverage of African-Americans and other people of color in Greater Kansas City and distort the image the community receives of those individuals. That does irreparable harm overall to the media's credibility. The station took the action to move Dee Griffin from a weekday anchor spot to a weekend anchor position at a time when the racial and ethnic diversity in this community and in America is increasing, not decreasing.
Unfortunately the media nationwide in its hiring and promotion of minorities continue to exhibit an unjustified reluctance to keep up with these changing demographic trends. That goes against the Kerner Commission report after the riots of the 1960s, recommending that the media nationwide hire more journalists of color to ensure a more accurate portrayal of minorities, their accomplishments and the issues and challenges they face.
The KCABJ Thumbs Down Award annually goes to a Kansas City area media personality or company for setting back the image of African Americans or other people of color in Greater Kansas City. This award is balanced against the honors KCABJ annually gives to area journalists and the media for enterprise reporting, photography, art, commentary, advertising and new media about people of color. The Executive Board of the Kansas City Association of Black Journalists takes great care in naming the Thumbs Down recipient, requiring specific documentation.
KCABJ prefers not to bestow its infamous Thumbs Down Award on any media or persons in the media. There have been years in the past when no Thumbs Down Award was given. The organization gives the Thumbs Down Award when it is merited. KCABJ hopes that by pointing out significant problems in the profession it can push the press toward positive change, which will benefit the entire Greater Kansas City community.
KCABJ Scholarships
Scholarship winners are graduates of the Summer 2002 KCABJ Urban Student Journalism Workshop at Rockhurst University. They are among the 10 high school and college students metrowide who completed the intensive two-week program in print, broadcast and convergence journalism.
The KCABJ Roy Wilkins Scholarship has been awarded annually since 1987. It is named after a former editor of The Call, Roy Wilkins, who also served as head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People during the Civil Rights Movement.
The winner of the 2002 KCABJ-Roy Wilkins Scholarship is Morgan Neal. She receives $2,000 in savings bonds for college. She is a sophomore at the Barstow School.
The Laura R. Hockaday KCABJ-Kansas City Star Scholarship goes to Myeisha Greene a junior at the Paseo Academy. The scholarship carries Hockaday's name. Until she retired in 2000, Hockaday was the longtime society editor of The Kansas City Star. Hockaday has received numerous awards for making her work inclusive of the racial, ethnic, gender and other diversity in Greater Kansas City. Greene is the recipient of a $1,000 college scholarship from The Kansas City Star.
The third award is the KCABJ-Nancy Diuguid Scholarship. It is annually funded by KCABJ Treasurer Lewis Diuguid and named for his mother, who died in 1994 of Alzheimer's disease. She had longed to be a journalist, but such career options were mostly closed to young black women in the 1950s. The winner is Kara Edgerson, a senior at Ruskin High School. Edgerson is the recipient of a $500 savings bond for college.
A fourth KCABJ scholarship went to Portia Turner, a junior at Notre Dame de Sion High School. She received a $500 savings bond.
Each scholarship award was based on the students' performance during the workshop.
KCABJ President's Award
This honor goes to the area journalist who has done the most to further the interests of the Kansas City Association of Black Journalists. This also is an individual who selflessly gives of his or her time, talent and resources to benefit other journalists of color in Greater Kansas City. KCABJ President Anita K. Parran has picked Stan Austin for the 2002 KCABJ President's Award. Austin is Kansas City content/operations manager for Knight Ridder Digital and a longtime member of KCABJ. Austin, a former vice president/print of KCABJ, has done significant work in establishing a Web site for KCABJ at www.kcabj.org and maintaining it for the 21-year-old organization. He also did significant work in the 1980s to help restructure KCABJ, build up the student journalism workshop and establish KCABJ as an affiliate of the National Association of Black Journalists.
Other 2002 KCABJ Media Awards recipients:
News From Elsewhere
The Executive Board of the National Association of Black Journalists decided at a meeting in October in Arlington, Va., to cut its ties to the Chicago Association of Black Journalists. The action ends a relationship that dates back to 1976.
NABJ has picked the recently formed group headed by NABJ founder and former president Vernon Jarrett as the NABJ affiliate chapter in Chicago.
Despite NABJ's decision, the Chicago Association of Black Journalists with more than 300 members plans to continue to operate as an independent organization of journalists and media related professionals, said Louis Byrd III, president of CABJ. He said the group plans to maintain its programs and workshops benefiting its members and the community. It also plans to continue to train young people for the profession of journalism.
The Associated Press in September quoted New York Times Managing Editor Gerald Boyd, saying the war on terrorism has forced journalists to become experts on such topics as bioterrorism. Boyd, a member of NABJ and a University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism graduate, said journalists also must ask tough questions about countries that are allies with the United States in its fight against al-Qaida.
''We have to understand and explain the context,'' Boyd said at the Associated Press Managing Editors annual four-day meeting in Baltimore. ''There's no doubt it's harder to get information.''
Some people are less than happy about journalists seeking answers. ''They feel it's unpatriotic to raise those issues,'' Boyd said.
At that same meeting of the top editors of the United States, Kweisi Mfume, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said editors need to be more committed to diversity. Despite the increases in hiring, the industry has failed to meet its goal of having the percentage of minorities working in newsrooms equal the percentage of people of color in the population, Mfume said in the AP story.
''The fact is at many newsrooms there is diversity fatigue,'' Mfume said. ``When it comes to fighting for market share, there is no sign of fatigue.''
Yet in the AP story, APME President Caesar Andrews, editor of Gannett News Service, said the newspaper industry has made progress in hiring minorities. But he agreed that more needs to be done. ''I would like to see the urgency turned up,'' Andrews said.
Mfume said his comments ''were not a condemnation as much as a wakeup call.''
In a survey released in April, the American Society of Newspaper Editors reported that minorities held 12.1 percent of newsroom jobs in 2001, up from 11.6 percent in 2000. In 1978, ASNE found that people of color held less than 4 percent of the newsroom jobs though they constituted less than 25 percent of the U.S. population. Today minorities are 30 percent of the U.S. population. ASNE's goal is to have journalists of color hold 30 percent of newsroom jobs by 2025. However, the percentage of people of color in the overall population continues to increase, which will mean newspapers will have to intensify their efforts to recruit, hire and promote minority journalists to keep up.
The union that represents hundreds of newsroom, commercial and advertising employees at The Washington Post was staging a ''byline strike'' in October to protest what it said was the newspaper's unwillingness to offer a fair contract, The Post reported.
News You Can Use
If you have written or produced a compelling story on race and ethnicity in the last two years then The Columbia Graduate School of Journalism invites you to compete in its fifth annual ``Let's Do It Better!'' workshop program. Newspaper stories, projects and portfolios can be sent in reprints, tear sheets or mounted on legal size paper. Please include a disk copy in Word format. Tapes should be on VHS with a transcript. Complete application forms must include a short bio or resume. For more information check out http://www.jm.columbia.edu/workshops.
KC People
2002 Kansas City Association of Black Journalists
P.O. Box 32744, Kansas City, Mo. 64111