McGruder award winners selected
Published: October 13, 2005
Last Updated: October 13, 2005
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The Honolulu Advertiser
and the Argus Leader of Sioux Falls, S.D., have been named winners
of the fourth annual Robert G. McGruder Awards for Diversity Leadership.
The two newspapers will
be honored for outstanding leadership in newsroom diversity at a Thursday, Oct.
27, luncheon at the Associated Press Managing Editors association (APME) convention
in San Jose, Calif.
The awards are given by
APME and ASNE in partnership with
the Freedom Forum, which provides the funding. Each honoree receives $2,500
and a sculpture representing leadership.
“The Freedom Forum is pleased
that newsroom diversity efforts are thriving in states as different as Hawaii
and South Dakota, and in papers as large as The Honolulu Advertiser and
as small as the Argus Leader. We hope these smart and strategic leaders
will inspire others nationwide,” said Charles Overby, chairman, chief executive
officer and president of the Freedom Forum.
The winners represent communities
at both ends of the diversity spectrum.
People of color make up
more than 75 percent of the population in The Advertiser’s circulation
area. “The ‘aloha spirit’ is not a slogan for tourists, but a description of
the qualities that matter in Hawaii,” Publisher Michael Fisch wrote in his nomination.
At the newspaper, 53 percent
of the professional staff and 48 percent of the managers -- including all the
assistant managing editors -- are people of color. Awards judge Gilbert Bailón,
publisher and editor of Al Día in Dallas, noted that the newsroom employs
people of color throughout the organization.
Rick Rodriguez, executive
editor of The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee and an awards judge,
said, “I’m struck by the numbers -- by what they have been able to achieve.
There’s a real commitment to retain and build the staff.”
The Argus Leader
covers a mostly white population. While people of color make up 6.4 percnet
of the population of the newspaper’s circulation area, the percentage of minority
journalists at the newspaper is twice that.
Both the Argus Leader
and The Honolulu Advertiser make developing their own employees a priority.
The Argus Leader
helps to organize and run the annual Native American Newspaper Career Conference
at Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota that introduces Native high school and
college students to journalism. Publisher Arnold Garson, as chairman of the
South Dakota Newspaper Association's minority-affairs committee, has overseen
conference planning since its inception in 2000. The newspaper also hosts interns
from the Freedom Forum’s American Indian Journalism Institute at the University
of South Dakota, and some staff members serve as teachers for the institute.
The Advertiser, led
by Editor Saundra Keyes, looks to its internship classes for potential full-time
employees and has provided mentoring that helped newsroom clerks move into professional
positions.
"The Honolulu Advertiser
is more than making good on its mission to ‘provide a voice for all of the community,’”
said Suki Dardarian, an awards judge and deputy managing editor/metro of The
Seattle Times. “The mission permeates everything it does. Its staff is among
the most diverse in the nation -- in a community that is rich in diversity.
And the staff's appetite to learn more about that community, explore the nuances
of that diversity and improve its coverage is impressive.”
Awards judge Calvin Stovall,
executive editor of the Press & Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton, N.Y.,
noted that the content of both newspapers was outstanding.
The Advertiser provided
comprehensive coverage of a ruling by an appeals court that the admissions policy
of Kamehameha Schools to give preference to students of Hawaiian blood violated
federal civil rights laws. The newspaper also pays close attention to the details
of content. It ensures diversity in its weekly Ohana (family) page, and it changed
font styles to include diacritical markings in Hawaiian words. “A column we
added this Spring to explore the wildly popular Korean soap operas includes
frequent reflections on how the programs incorporate traditional Korean values,”
Fisch wrote.
In the Argus Leader’s
nomination, Garson and Executive Editor Randell Beck wrote: “We believe strongly
that the inclusive environment we have created in our newsroom has helped foster
a culture that aggressively covers issues but also seeks out opportunities for
explanatory journalism that informs readers and helps them understand how our
state’s diversity affects their lives.”
The newspaper has
written about overcrowding and related health problems on South Dakota reservations
and about the increasing number of women moving into tribal leadership positions.
The editorial page provided a community forum to debate the merits of a proposal
to halt the flow of refugees into the city. In 2003, the newspaper published
a yearlong series of special sections about the status of Native Americans 30
years after the uprising at Wounded Knee.
“Other newspapers can learn
from the Argus Leader’s work to build relationships with groups whose
voices traditionally have not been heard in their newspapers,” Stovall said.
“Native Americans hear their voices and see their faces in the Argus Leader
and know that the newspaper will cover important issues about them and of interest
to them.”
Other nominees were:
(over-75,000 circulation
category)
- Margaret Bernstein, reporter,
The Plain Dealer, Cleveland
- Douglas Clancy, assistant
managing editor/administration, The Record, Bergen County, N.J., and
the Herald News, West Paterson, N.J.
- Daily Herald,
Arlington Heights, Ill.
- Democrat and Chronicle,
Rochester, N.Y.
- Greg Moore, editor, The
Denver Post
- Otis Sanford, managing
editor, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn.
- The Mercury News,
San Jose, Calif.
- The News-Press,
Fort Myers, Fla.
- The Star-Ledger,
Newark, N.J.
(under-75,000 circulation
category)
- Alan English, executive
editor, The Times, Shreveport, La.
- Charles Pittman, senior
vice president/newspapers, Schurz Communications
- Kathy Spurlock, executive
editor, The News-Star, Monroe, La.
- Wausau (Wis.)
Daily Herald
- York (Pa.) Daily
Record/Sunday News
Judging the competition
were: Bailón, UNITY: Journalists of Color board member; Dardarian, APME vice
president; Susan Ihne, 2004 winner and executive editor, Asheville (N.C.)
Citizen-Times; Bennie Ivory, 2004 winner and executive editor, The
Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky.; Kate Kennedy, director/partnerships
and initiatives, Freedom Forum; Rodriguez, ASNE president; Sharon Rosenhause,
ASNE Diversity Committee chair and managing editor, South Florida Sun-Sentinel,
Fort Lauderdale; and Stovall, APME Diversity Committee chair.
Past winners of the McGruder
awards are:
- 2004: Bennie Ivory,
executive editor and vice president for news at The Courier-Journal
in Louisville, Ky., and Susan Ihne, then executive editor of the St. Cloud
(Minn.) Times
- 2003: Charlotte
Hall, then vice president/planning, Newsday, Long Island; and the Greeley
(Colo.) Tribune
- 2002: Don Flores,
executive vice president and editor, El Paso (Texas) Times;
and Jim Strauss, publisher, Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune
The Freedom Forum, based
in Arlington, Va., is a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to free press, free
speech and free spirit for all people. The foundation focuses on three priorities:
the Newseum, the First Amendment and newsroom diversity.
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