Black journalists ponder pitfalls p.10

By: Tony Case

FORMER NATIONAL Association of Black Journalists president Sidmel Estes-Sumpter has followed with great interest the colossal media mergers of late.
As she watched the televised news conference to announce Disney's takeover of ABC/Capital Cities, the Atlanta TV news producer realized these deals had something in common besides the control of airwaves and printing presses: They were made by "nothing but a bunch of white men."
Estes-Sumpter says she's bothered that African Americans haven't been involved in the high-level negotiations shaping the country's communications landscape ? and she thinks her fellow black journalists should be too.
"White men are the power brokers in this industry," she told NABJ conventioneers last month. "They are the ones controlling what you and I see, hear and feel every day. Disney and ABC/Cap Cities. Westinghouse and CBS. Even my homeboy Ted Turner, trying to eat up everything he can get his little hands on.
"Where are we?" she demanded
to know. "Are we at the table? No.
I have yet to see a black man or a
black woman with any role in these megadeals that have been going down."
Institutional racism exists, says Estes-Sumpter, and those who don't believe it are "deluding themselves."
The dearth of African Americans calling the shots in the media business had NABJ members wondering about the future of blacks in the profession.
Estes-Sumpter, saying she has seen too many budding black journalists who were convinced that a little talent and a smile would put them on the fast track to success, offered this advice to starry-eyed youngsters: "If you don't have the fire in your belly, then get out, because you won't make it."
Estes-Sumpter got in the door of WAGA, where she rose from assignment editor to executive producer, not because she graduated from Northwestern University or because she had been a TV reporter in Guam or even because of her winning smile ? but because her father had for years served lunch to a WAGA executive.
"I literally talked myself into a job, and I got myself into the general manager's office because my father was a waiter," she related. "This is what black folks have to do. This is the path."
Louisville Courier-Journal associate editor Mervin Aubespin also cautioned that success in the news business doesn't come easily.
"Let me warn you something my young friends. You don't move up in this business unless you stand for something," he said, referring to the need to support minority hiring. "You're not going anywhere unless you're bold enough to tell that station manager or news editor what he isn't doing right and what he is doing right. You'd better get in this battle, because you're going to lose it if you don't."
Albert Fitzpatrick noted that when he went to work at the Akron Beacon Journal in the 1950s, he was the only African American among some 600 employees. When he retired from the paper a decade ago, the news department was 17% minority.
Fitzpatrick reminded novice journalists that this advancement wasn't accidental.
"In this industry, power does not want to relinquish power," he maintained. "You can be the best at what you do, but unless you can figure out a way to grab some of that power, you're not going to be successful."