Political Motives or Legitimate Boycott? p.

By: Tony Case

Political Motives or Legitimate Boycott? p.
Black politicians launch boycott of Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle
but one boycott organizer is publisher of a competing weekly
SOME BLACK ELECTED officials in Augusta, Ga., say the city's only daily newspaper has portrayed them as "clowns, buffoons and criminals" on its editorial pages. They have accused the paper of perpetuating the economic and political disparity between blacks and whites and have blasted its management for not hiring and promoting minorities.
So, last month, the Augusta branch of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials, an organization to which many of the disgruntled belong, launched a reader boycott of the Augusta Chronicle.
Fliers were distributed all over town, urging residents to send "a message that we won't condone their incessant attacks on the black community and black elected officials by continuing to support their newspaper."
But those who run the 83,000-circulation newspaper say the group's allegations simply are not true. They maintain that they do not discriminate in editorials or in hiring, and that clearly the protest was organized to divert attention from the paper's investigation into a local sidewalk scandal.
The Chronicle has reported that the county government spent $1.54 million for alleged shoddy workmanship by employees of a temp agency owned by state Sen. Charles Walker.
Not only does the senator, who is a past chairman of the GABEO Augusta chapter, run the Speedy Temporary Employment Service. He also publishes a black weekly newspaper, the Augusta Focus, which has attacked Chronicle publisher William S. Morris III in its news columns.
Recently, an article on Page One of the Focus accused the Chronicle of launching a "smear campaign" against Walker and alleged that Morris' interest in the development of a downtown park was motivated by greed, not the public good. The piece contained some disparaging references to Morris, including a sidebar headed "The Silver Spoon" that detailed his rise in the family empire and a photo caption that read "The Honorable Mr. Morris."
Morris Communications, which is based in Augusta, operates 12 daily newspapers and four weeklies in Alaska and throughout the South.
Chronicle general manager Julian Miller says that the boycott has had little effect on the paper. Only 49 subscriptions were canceled in the month since it was started.
Even a staffer of the Focus, who asked not to be identified, admitted that the community's response to the boycott "has been not as strong as first expected, but we're in an organizational phase and we're pulling it together."
He maintained that the effort has succeeded in promoting the Focus, as well as Augusta's other black paper, the weekly Metro County Courier.
The GABEO Augusta chapter had defined "developing alternatives to the majority media" as one of three purposes of the boycott, along with forging unity in the black community and sending a message to the Chronicle.
The organization said in a statement, "In this age of burgeoning electronic technology . . . there is no need to be held hostage by a hostile and insensitive media conglomerate no matter how well financed it is."
Miller said that the Chronicle was warned that a boycott would be organized if it did not stop its investigation, "but there's no way a newspaper can do that."
The paper has not acknowledged the boycott editorially but did run a story denying the allegations hurled at it.
The charge that the Chronicle does not hire blacks for management posts is false, according to executive editor Dennis Sodomka, who maintains that he and his colleagues have worked to improve both the hiring and coverage of minorities.
The Chronicle newsroom is 13% minority, Miller said, which, according to a recent study by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, beats the national average of 10.25%.
Currently, no minorities fill news management posts, Sodomka related, but only because two black women editors and one Hispanic woman editor who had worked for the paper were hired away by other news operations.
The editor called the boycott "politically motivated" and said he was "surprised that it came up at time when the paper is making great strides and people in the community say they really appreciate what we're doing."
The Chronicle, he says, has increased coverage of women, minorities and youth?three groups that many newspapers have focused on in recent years.
"We've got a way to go. We're not perfect. It's a constant education process . . . and it's not a quick fix. Newspapers have spent decades getting into the fix we're in, and it's going to take decades to get out of it."