Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media

Chapter Seven: The Kerner Legacy

S E V E N The Kerner Legacy Race matters. —Cornel West, 1996 If, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, one were to judge the news industry’s racial progress by the impressive titles held by African Americans, then it would score high marks indeed. In 1998, Mark Whitaker, a veteran Newsweek writer and editor and member of the National Association of Black Journalists, was named its editor, becoming the first African American at the helm of a major weekly news magazine. He joined a long line of firsts who broke the color barrier near the close of the century, including Bob Herbert, who in 1993 became the New York Times’s first African American columnist; and Robert McGruder, who in 1996 became the first African American executive editor at the Detroit Free Press. Around the country, African Americans were similarly poised to occupy top executive positions at major news organizations. The racial symbolism aside, few could argue that the hiring of someone like Whitaker was merely a case of affirmative action tokenism. Whitaker, for example, had been groomed all his professional life to take the reins of one of the nation’s most significant news magazines. He began as a Newsweek intern in 1977, while a student at Harvard. He graduated from Harvard summa cum laude in 1979, received a Marshall scholarship to Oxford, and was a Newsweek stringer in San Francisco, Boston, Washington, London, and Paris before he was hired for the international section in 1981. He continued to ascend at Newsweek, and for three years he was a managing editor and the first deputy to the magazine’s legendary editor, Maynard Parker. When Parker took a one-year sick leave, it was Whitaker who ran the magazine, leaving him perfectly poised to succeed Parker| 191 | when he succumbed to cancer in 1998. But in years past, Whitaker, like a long list of well-educated African Americans, would not, despite his qualifications, have been considered for such a post. Whitaker’s hiring also seemed to portend the nation’s multiracial future . As the product of a black father and white mother, both academics, he embodied the balance the news industry most needed. He effortlessly straddled two worlds: he played golf, was passionate about jazz, and had friends across the racial spectrum. And Whitaker was adamant about not being the “black” editor, placing his emphasis on technology and business coverage and appealing to younger audiences. “I have no plans of pushing an agenda, racial or otherwise,” Whitaker maintained in early 1999. “Obviously what Newsweek is about is covering the great issues of the day. A lot do have a racial dimension.”1 Early in his tenure, Whitaker, who as a correspondent had written a cover story titled “The Hidden Rage of Successful Blacks” had successfully pushed for the cover story “Black Like Who?” which examined the gap between the civil rights and hip hop generations. He also took credit for the hiring of a cadre of young African American writers and planned to continue placing an emphasis on minority hiring, but not for its own sake. “It enriches the content of the magazine,” he insisted. “To me it’s how you get smart stories.”2 In another significant barometer of change, the Federal Communications Commission, which once had to be ordered by a court to integrate the airwaves, was, beginning in November 1997, led by William Kennard , the agency’s first African American director who was at the forefront of the effort to diversify the broadcast media. Kennard had angered many on Capitol Hill for pushing a wide range of social policies, including free airtime for political candidates and adding a fee to telephone bills to finance public school wiring to the Internet. Senate appropriations chairman Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska, even suggested abolishing the agency because of Kennard’s policy positions. Kennard’s tenure nonetheless indicated the changing racial attitudes over three decades. In the newspaper industry minorities who near the close of the century comprised roughly 27 percent of the population, held 11.4 percent of newsroom jobs. This was a significant if disappointing increase from 30 years earlier when blacks held less than one percent of jobs, and other The Kerner Legacy| 192 | minorities were practically nonexistent in the industry. “The Newspaper Journalists of the ’90s,” a 1997 report published by the American Society of Newspaper...