Three Memorable Headlines

New York Daily News: "Ford To City: Drop Dead."

New York Post: "Headless Body In Topless Bar."

The Black American (New York City), later renamed The New American in the early 1990s: "The White Lady And The Faggot." (This homophobic rant was in response to Diana Ross being kissed on the cheek by New York Mayor Ed Koch at her Central Park concert held either in 1982 or 1983.) For years it was rumored that Koch was gay and closeted.

I wish I had saved that front page. I'm sure the Schomburg Library in Harlem has that issue in its collection. 

According to Google A.I., The Black American used the headline, "The White Lady And The Faggot," to refer to James Baldwin and the white civil rights activist and author Lillian Smith in May of 1963. That may be true, but I remember it referring to Diana Ross and Ed Koch. Carl Offord, the paper's publisher, may have decided to recycle the headline years later.

A Tribute To CBS Newsman Bob Simon

RIP Bob Simon of CBS's Sunday night newsmagazine program, 60 Minutes.
A Los Angeles Times article about Bob Simon, who died recently in a car crash on the West Side Highway in New York, stated that "[h]e reported more than 200 stories for the '60 Minutes' program and its spin-off, '60 Minutes II.'" It might be good idea for CBS to put a few of these broadcasts on DVD so that 60 Minutes fans can once again enjoy his work. It would be a fitting tribute to his long and successful career in journalism.

Dolly Schiff's New York Post

I recently began reading The Lady Upstairs: Dorothy Schiff and the New York Post by Marilyn Nissenson (St. Martin's Press, 2007). So far it is a hard-to-put-down biography of the former owner of the once liberal afternoon tabloid.

At one time, it was my favorite New York paper until 1976 when Schiff (1903-1989) sold it to the media mogul Rupert Murdoch. He then turned the Post into a right-wing rag.

PBS To Air Documentary On Slain Mexican-American Journalist

Shortly after Mexican-American journalist Ruben Salazar's untimely death in 1970 at the age of 42, I received from the Los Angeles Times a booklet containing some of his columns for the paper. In the back of the booklet was the eulogy delivered by Times publisher Otis Chandler at Salazar's funeral.
Said Chandler: "He [Salazar] was a fighter, a firm believer that all men, regardless of color or language barrier, could, in the end, live together peacefully and productively in our city.


"But he knew that before this could happen," continued Chandler, "the Anglo community had to understand the basic problems in the minority communities."

The Los Angeles Times published an article (January 8, 2014) that reported that on April 29, PBS will air a documentary called Ruben Salazar: Man in the Middle. I eagerly await the broadcast of this documentary about a courageous and important journalist whose name and work should never be forgotten.

No doubt public radio's On the Media will do a segment on the documentary prior to its scheduled airdate.

Obama, Savior Of American Newspapers?

Voice of the People
New York Daily News
November 10, 2008

To The Editor:

The day following Barack Obama's historic victory, it was hard to find a newspaper. Maybe Obama will be a godsend for the ailing newspaper business.

Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith


This letter-to-the-editor was submitted via e-mail and was published November 14, 2008.

The Firing of Amsterdam News Editor Provokes Protest

Thursday, October 20 [1983] was a cold and windy day. But despite the weather 25 to 30 demonstrators, under the watchful eyes of a handful of uniformed cops, came out to carry picket signs and shout anti-Koch and anti-Amsterdam News slogans in front of the black weekly paper's offices in Harlem to protest the firing of  executive editor John F. Davis.

The firing took place on Friday, October 14 and is believed by many, including Davis himself, to be the result of an editorial response Davis wrote to an op-ed article by Mayor Koch in the same issue of the Amsterdam News. Koch, obviously attempting to pacify the black community, listed his administration's achievements and wrote off his poor relations with the black community to personal style. "...[C]omments and ideas," wrote Koch, "will make me a better mayor." Davis, taking the mayor up on his offer, wrote in an editorial: "The Koch problem is not one of style. Mr. Koch's problem is his abiding contempt for Black people and Black life. There are no words that can erase the memories of his gross insensitivity. We need deeds, we need to see changes in behavior and attitudes."

Wilbert Tatum, the paper's board chairman who owns 30 percent of the Amsterdam (co-owners John Procope owns 35 percent and John Edmonds, a friend of Davis's, as well as the one who hired him two years ago, owns 35 percent) in a letter to Davis stated that it became necessary "to terminate your employment with the New York Amsterdam News due to the severe economic pressures we are presently undergoing."

Davis, in a written statement, pooh-poohs Tatum's economic explanation as "nonsense." He goes on to say: "The Amsterdam has had severe cash flow problems ever since my association with it. The simple truth is that Mr. Tatum wants to silence the anti-Koch voice of the Amsterdam News for personal reasons. He has in every way possible interfered in editorial matters. His attempt to provide Koch with a forum in the black community was and is an outrage to me. I do not dispute the right of Tatum and Procope to determine the editorial policy of their paper. I do, however, challenge their right to represent their actions as in the best interest of black people. Ed Koch is one of the most anti-black political figures on the political landscape in America today. It is a measure of their own contempt for black New York."

Even though Tatum in a signed editorial claimed that "management wholeheartedly supports the views expressed in the Davis editorial" and that "[o]n numerous occasions during the last year Mr. Koch's administration has been justifiably criticized," Jack Newfield of the Village Voice, one of the picketers, believes "Tatum is trying to bring the Amsterdam into the Koch office." In fact, Village Voice writer Joe Conason reported that "Tatum...denied that his outside business interests had influenced his decision" to get rid of Davis. But then in the next line Conason mentions those "outside business interests" and creates the question of whether Tatum has a conflict of interest in the termination of Davis's tenure as editor: "He is the second largest shareholder in Inner City Broadcasting, whose cable TV subsidiary holds part of a franchise to wire Queens; he is a senior vice-president of HIP, which has health insurance contracts covering city workers; and he is developing a parcel of real estate on the Lower East Side, plans for which require Board of Estimate approval." It should be pointed out that the mayor sits on the board.

Co-owner John  Procope, writes Conason, "also has a reason to placate the mayor." Despite the fact that his insurance company's contracts with the city "have been terminated because of abuses alleged by the Department of Investigation, his agency wasn't permanently barred from doing business with the city." And Procope, Conason continues, "still sits as a mayoral appointee on the Industrial and Commercial Incentives Board."

According to Jitu Weusi of the National Black United Front, one of the organizers of the protest, the circulation of the paper had increased under Davis's editorship by 58,000 copies. However, Davis does not believe "there is any real way of determining that. One of the problems of the Amsterdam News is they don't know what their circulation is. The union drivers who distribute the paper oftentimes don't return the copies that are not sold. They fill in an affidavit to indicate they got it [the paper] back from dealers. The Amsterdam News doesn't have anybody going around to spot check those affidavits to find out if those returns are accurate. They don't really know what their circulation is other than what they estimate from the drivers. But I would say that there probably was an increase up to the period of the strike."

The strike earlier this year lasted six months and was called because management wanted the employees--Newspaper Guild members--to take a cut in pay and agree to personnel layoffs. The workers felt management should also make some sacrifices. The New Alliance, a progressive newspaper, in a recent story on the Davis firing described the hiring of Davis with his "militancy and progressive outlook on domestic and international affairs" as a good arrangement "until August 1982, when Tatum, backed by a third partner, John Procope, took over the running of the [Amsterdam] News and started to wreck the carefully nurtured plans of Edmonds and Davis to make the [Amsterdam] News a successful political and financial venture."

However, the New Alliance's praise of Davis was non-existent during the strike when, says Davis, "they wrote vicious columns against me. Totally without a shred of fact as though somehow I was the owner of the paper, [as if] I was doing the negotiations. I didn't have a thing to do with the negotiations. I crossed the picket line and went to work because I have a job. For me to go on strike meant for me to resign my job."

Davis, who is 43 years old and a graduate of the New School for Social Research and Rutgers Law, calls Tatum's "plea of poverty...[a] plea of mismanagement." For example, says Davis, "They voted John Procope's $25,000 severance pay. Whoever heard of paying an owner $25,000 in severance pay?" (There was a chuckle in his voice.)

The Voice's Newfield called Davis's editorial writing "the most eloquent and inspiring and insightful writing in the city" which, in the words of Jitu Weusi, "gave a sense of pride and direction to the Amsterdam News" despite the fact that as executive editor he earned an annual salary of $25,000, a tiny sum compared to what other editors in the city earn.

According to one source, whose statement was later confirmed by Davis , he does not intend to return to the Amsterdam News even if the boycott and petitioning are successful in getting him reinstated. He does not wish to continue in journalism and is considering job offers outside of the field.

"A newspaper," writes Earl Caldwell, in the New York Daily News, "when at its best, is a powerful vehicle. When it is independent and with leadership that is not afraid, it can lead people." John Davis was providing that leadership in his editorials. Unfortunately for the paper and the black community his forum was snatched away from him because, says black labor leader John Butler, president of the Hospital Workers Union, Local 420, "he don't bow to Mayor Koch, he don't dance with Mayor Koch, he tell it the way it is."

This article was originally published in the Guardian newspaper (New York) in 1983.

Note: John Davis, a black gay man, wrote an editorial in the Amsterdam News supporting the passage of a gay rights bill by the City Council.

Alex Haley Journalism Scholarship Created By Playboy Magazine

Thirty years after Alex Haley conducted an interview with jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, which inaugurated the Playboy magazine interview series, the Chicago-based Playboy Foundation has created the Alex Haley Playboy Interview Scholarship in Magazine Journalism. The scholarship would provide financial assistance to minority students at the University of Tennessee who are either enrolled as full-time undergraduate upperclassmen or master's degree candidates at UT's journalism school.

One student each year will be selected to receive the $5,000 scholarship which will be awarded on the basis of three criteria: academic performance (the students must have a 3.0 grade point average as the minimum, equivalent to a B), professional promise, and financial need. Along with the scholarship is a paid summer internship in Playboy's New York office. However, says Cleo Wilson, the foundation's executive director, the student will be responsible for providing his or her own housing during the internship. Applications for the scholarship must be submitted to the university by January of each year. The recipient will start the internship in June and will be given the scholarship the following September.

Haley was the author of the famed Roots family saga, which later became a classic television miniseries. At the time of his death earlier this year, he was an adjunct professor at the University of Tennessee's Knoxville campus. He is regarded by Christie Hefner, Playboy Enterprises chairwoman and CEO, as "the closest to the soul of the Playboy Interview."

Others interviewed by Haley for the magazine include American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell, Malcolm X, and Quincy Jones.

This article was originally published in the New York Amsterdam News (October 31, 1992).

Bill Cosby Outfoxes The Supermarket Tabloids

The following is a letter-to-the-editor I sent to Entertainment Weekly magazine. I wrote it on January 26, 1997. I remember an editor calling me to say they were considering using it. Apparently they changed their minds.

Dear Editor: Bill Cosby is a brilliant tactician. Knowing that the supermarket tabloids would try to dig up some dirt on his son [Ennis], possibly putting a gay spin on his murder, Cosby forestalled such attempts (for awhile, anyway) by suggesting that they put up reward money for the capture of the murderer ("Power of the Son," Issue #364, Jan. 31). And the tabloids took the bait. Bravo, Bill Cosby!

The Tireless Al Sharpton

The following is an unpublished letter I sent to The New York Times Magazine. I wrote the letter on March 8, 2000.

Dear Editor:

I wish there had been a "What Do You Do All Day?" profile of the ubiquitous and indefatigable Rev. Al Sharpton in your special issue concerning the new American worker ("The Way We Work Now," March 5). It would have revealed how, on a typical day, he is able to manage his time well enough to be in so many places, taking part in so many demonstrations without having to clone himself or risk burn out.

A Few Words From Pete Hamill

"You can go into a bookstore for Sarah Palin's book and say, 'Here's a book by Melville' that you haven't read yet. And you'll buy both of them.

"Amazon.com isn't the same as going down an aisle. The same as record stores. You'll go for Billie Holiday and you buy Gustav Mahler as you're going out the door." --Pete Hamill, from "Pete Hamill Talks About Newspapers, Fiction, and Life with Keyboard and Pen" by Mark Bialczak, The Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY), December 6, 2009.

I recently went to Borders to buy Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns which is about the Great Migration of Southern blacks to the North and West. I didn't buy another book but I did browse the shelves. What a joyful experience that was!