New Year to Find More Journalists of Color Out of Jobs

Published on The Maynard Institute (http://www.mije.org)

Source URL (retrieved on 01/01/2009 - 07:37): http://www.mije.org/richardprince/newsday-dumps-les-payne

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Newsday Drops Les Payne

December 31, 2008

New Year to Find More Journalists of Color Out of Jobs

Julia Cheng)" src="C:’Users’NARMER’AppData’Local’Temp’~p2b’Les_Pay.jpg" width=200 border=0>

Les Payne (Credit:
Julia Cheng)

Newsday, which had lauded Les Payne as one "whose groundbreaking work as a reporter, editor and leader influenced the breadth, scope and reach of Newsday journalism as much as any figure in our paper’s 65-year history" when he retired as associate editor in 2006, quietly dropped Payne’s column this week, one he had been writing for the Long Island, N.Y., newspaper since 1980.

Payne, fourth president of the National Association of Black Journalists, had for much of his Newsday tenure been the paper’s top-ranking black journalist, and as a columnist, had been nominated by the paper for a Pulitzer Prize. He won one in 1974 as a reporter as a key member of "The Heroin Trail" team.

The paper’s only public notice that Payne’s column was ending was a tag line at the end of Monday’s offering. It said, "This is Les Payne’s last weekly column; he will continue writing at ’Blog.lespayne.net,’ as he completes his biography of Malcolm X."

"Our industry is in a state of significant change and we made a decision not to carry a number of columns in the new year. Les’ leadership, voice and Pulitzer Prize winning journalism afford him an indelible place in Newsday’s living history." Newsday spokeswoman Deidra Parrish Williams told Journal-isms on Wednesday.

Payne wrote this to Journal-isms:

"Newsday has indeed taken this severance step to improve its op-ed page as it continues to cut down on space and staff. As a contract player, I trust my departure forestalled an even deeper staff cut at the paper.

"Since starting the weekly, syndicated column in 1980, I sustained it over the years while running Newsday’s national, foreign, health & science operations, and reviving its city paper as New York editor. After stepping away from my heavy Newsday editing duties two years ago, I’ve found more time to reflect and write the Payne column fitted for these changing times. It has been fun. I hit the streets and byways this year, sizing up the final days of Cuba under the Castro Brothers (thanks to DeWayne Wickham); and covering the domestic season of economic chicanery and the endless political campaign that finally ended.

"Along the way, we at NABJ roped in then-Sen. Barack Obama in Chicago this summer, and I managed to take the political pulse from as far west as Seattle and south to North Carolina, New Orleans and Atlanta.

"It has been a historic political year and I feel privileged to have chronicled my view of it for Newsday. My column generated a high volume of e-mail traffic — one recent two-month stretch, for example, averaged some 350 separate responses a week. I refrain from confirming H.L. Mencken’s observation that, "most people who write letters to newspapers are fools; intelligent people write in sometimes, but not often."

"I received a steady stream of quite intelligent letters from readers, some quite instructive. The computer has raised the level of discourse from the earlier days of crayon on postcards. Interactivity allows readers to attack the writer’s character, as well as grade his test papers."

Meanwhile, Katti Gray, who began writing a features column in 1999 and continued as a freelancer since taking a 2005 buyout, also saw her column cancelled. "This past Monday was the last of the columns, which began as a weekly installment but earlier this year became bi-weekly," she told Journal-isms. "That leaves Joy Brown as the only black columnist in the print edition of the paper, I believe. I’ve been asked to consider doing other freelance work for Newsday, and welcome the prospect of that."