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Don Hewitt, 60 Minutes creator, dies

Award-winning CBS television executive Don Hewitt, who was executive producer of “60 Minutes” for some 36 years, has died. He was 86 and had pancreatic cancer.

Hewitt started his career in newspapers but spent most of his journalism life working for CBS television, according to the CBS News obituary. He directed the first television network newscast on May 3, 1948, and produced and directed CBS luminaries such as Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. Hewitt also directed coverage for the three networks (ABC, NBC and CBS) of the first televised presidential debate in 1960.

Hewitt was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1990. Visit this link for some fascinating video (including a clip of the debut of “60 Minutes” in 1968), photos and a timeline.

Robert Novak Dies

More than a year after being diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, conservative columnist Robert Novak has died.

Novak had been a commentator for CNN for 25 years, most often appearing as co-host of “Crossfire.”

According to CNN’s obituary of Novak, “In 2003, he found himself at the center of the scandal over the exposure of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, when he published a column revealing her CIA status days after her husband challenged a key Bush administration justification for the invasion of Iraq. The scandal ultimately led to the conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators probing the leak.”

Novak was 78.

AJC Moves Blog

Well .. at least they don’t plan to call it the Metro Atlanta Journal & Constitution., or some such name!  That was my first reaction today after seeing that the Atlanta Journal & Constitution is saying good riddance to its aging edifice on Marietta Street in downtown Atlanta.  And isn’t that just what downtown Atlanta needs, another abandoned building.  But it’s true.  The newspaper will shut down its Atlanta address next spring, and move to a news address at 223 Perimeter Center Parkway.  The newspaper said this move “provides scalability to match the company’s current needs and future growth.”   The initial move goes into effect in the first quarter next year and Cox Enterprises says it will be completed over a period of months.

The AJC, like every other financially failing newspaper in the country, is trying to figure out how to remake itself in every definition of the word.  Printing and production was moved to Gwinnett County and the paper has been struggling to transition from a print edition dropped at your driveway into an internet product.  The easy part is putting up the website.  The hard part is how to structure declining revenue against increasing expenses, the all-too-often told story of the American economy today.

My personal message is Best Wishes to everyone who’s still there and let’s hope they can make their moves work.  We certainly do not want to become the largest metropolitan city in America without a major newspaper and until somebody else creates one, the AJC is the last and only chance.  It will be weird not having them downtown.  But downtown itself is kinda weird as it struggles to maintain relevance with Midtown and Buckhead constantly nipping at Downtown’s heels.  If you think about Downtown without State Government, Georgia State University and CNN, there really wouldn’t be too much left.   Except for Underground Atlanta .. but I almost apologize for mentioning that! 

Mike Klein

APC Board Member

Colleagues Pay Tribute to Cronkite

Walter Cronkite’s funeral was today. I’ve been really fascinated and moved as I’ve learned more about his life and amazing accomplishments. The service today — and all who spoke about him — was a testament to the inspiration he has been to ALL journalists, in some way. Mr. Cronkite’s passing is a symbol of the “end of an era” in serious journalism. May he rest in peace, and may journalists of today AND the future remember his life and work, and strive in some way to emulate them.

AJC Names New Publisher

Today, executives of Cox Media Group announced the promotion of Michael Joseph to publisher of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Joseph has been with the AJC since April as president and general manager, and previously was president and CEO of Cox Ohio Publishing and publisher of the Dayton Daily News. He succeeds Doug Franklin, who will continue serving as executive vice president of Cox Media Group.

R.I.P. Atlanta writer Paul Hemphill

Atlanta author Paul Hemphill, a celebrated columnist for the Atlanta Journal and the author of a popular biography of Hank Williams, died today at the age of 73, from cancer that had spread from his mouth to his lungs.

According to his AJC obit:

As a columnist and author, Hemphill entranced readers chronicling the blue-collar South. He wrote about stock cars and country music, church burnings and church evangelists. His 15 books, including nonfiction work and novels, reverberated with all the twang and tears of a Hank Williams tune.

UPDATE: JKelly writes in the comments that Hemphill’s “memorial will be [held] at A.S. Turner & Sons in Decatur. Visitation is Tuesday July 14 from 6-8PM, and the service is Wednesday July 15 at Noon.”

In a 2005 profile of Hemphill, former Creative Loafing Senior Editor Doug Monroe opened with a moving anecdote of the talented writer:

Paul Hemphill lifts the chewed-up piece of Nicorette gum out of his mouth and sticks it in a paper napkin. This is a man who used to fire up 20 of those mean little nonfiltered Camels a day and now he chews pellets of doped-up gum. It is an indignity.

Hemphill is at Manuel’s Tavern on a Tuesday night — government-in-exile night — with Democratic politicos, cops and ex-newspapermen. He’s at a big round table with his wife, Susan Percy, and a circle of friends. They’re passing around an early copy of his new book, Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams. They’re all pulling for it to be a hit.

Hemphill is 69, recovering from a stroke, his face pale and gaunt. But you look at the book cover and then at him. You can see a bit of the late Hank Williams in his new biographer. The resemblance is uncanny: Two boys rising up out of blue-collar Alabama, born 13 years apart, both with big ears, both 6-1, 150 pounds, with a tendency to shrink into the 130s when the booze kicked in. And, boy, did the booze kick in. Continue reading the article by clicking here.

Written by Doug Monroe and the AJC

CNNRadio Reporter Ed McCarthy Dies

Longtime CNNRadio correspondent Ed McCarthy died yesterday after battling cancer.

Before joining CNNRadio in 1986 as a news and business anchor, McCarthy was news director and co-host of a morning show at a Fort Pierce, Fla., radio station. He also was a weather anchor at a TV station there, and also was news director at radio stations in Stuart, Fla., and West Palm Beach, Fla.

On CNNRadio’s web page, a short obituary states, “Ed was more than a co-worker, but a friend who always had a smile and a story to offer. He will be missed.”

Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge OF Free Speech

Skokie, Illinois in the mid-to-late 1970s was a northwest Chicago suburb where nothing much ever seemed to happen. It was fairly typical in most regards with small frame homes in neat little rows on well kept streets.  Good jobs, good schools, and by some stretch of thought, fairly vanilla.

Then the neo-Nazis announced they were coming to town.

Skokie, Illinois to Frank Collin and his neo-Nazi National Socialist Party of America was “Jew Town.”  In fact, some estimates suggest one-in-six of all Skokie citizens were Holocaust camp survivors or related to survivors. They were raising families in a suburb that suddenly found itself catapulted into national headlines and a free speech constitutional debate that it never sought.

Skokie is one of those American stories that rage on during its time, then it begins to slip quietly deeper into the news background and ultimately, it threatens to disappear altogether.  Monday evening the Skokie story and several other thought-provoking glimpses into free speech in America will be showcased to a national HBO audience.

“Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech” is the newest documentary from Oscar nominee Liz Garbus, the creator of nearly twenty films and recipient of many international and national documentary awards.  “Shouting Fire” premieres at 9pm ET Monday.  The Oscar nomination was received for her 1998 film, “The Farm, Angola, USA”.

“Shouting Fire” is unique on several levels.  At 74 minutes, there is significant time for Garbus to explore free speech history at great length, and discuss the challenges posed to free speech in a post 9/11 world.   That “Congress shall make no law” that abridges free speech is explained from historical viewpoints by numerous scholars, and in real terms by people whose lives were, in some cases, nearly ruined when they were singled out

There are nationally prominent stories about a University of Colorado professor who was fired for his controversial writings and a Lebanese-American public school principal in New York who lost her job after news media reports portrayed her as a terrorist sympathizer in a post 9/11 world.

There also are somewhat less prominent stories.  An elderly couple was among some 1,800 who were detained and arrested for marching in New York’s streets during the 2004 Republican convention.  A California high school youth was suspended from school and questioned by police after he wore a shirt to school that said, “Homosexuality is Shameful.”

Throughout the documentary viewers will hear from some of the biggest names in legal land.  The prominent First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams, former Clinton special prosecutor Kenneth Starr and U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Richard H. Posner, along with onetime Marxist sympathizer turned conservative David Horowitz figure prominently.

But none is more prominent, and none makes a greater overall contribution to “Shouting Fire” than does Liz Garbus’ own father, Martin Garbus.  His own story is the fabric of legal legends, not the television lawyers show kind but the real kind. 

During a turbulent and high profile career Garbus has been at the center of some of the land’s most important cases, including the Pentagon Papers.  His clients list, an eclectic group, in part reads like a Who’s Who of Recent World History … including Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel and Andrei Sakharov, Nancy Reagan, Alger Hiss, Al Pacino, Sean Connery and hundreds more.

Thirty-two years ago, Garbus represented the National Socialist Party of America in Skokie.

There is a particularly powerful moment in “Shouting Fire” when Liz Garbus asks her father about the conflict he must have felt being a Jewish attorney who was defending the right of neo-Nazis to march in protest in a largely Jewish community.  His response is powerful as Martin tells his daughter he hated representing neo-Nazis as much as he loved defending free speech.

 Several courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, were involved in Skokie case hearings.  A final ruling came from the Illinois Supreme Court when it upheld the right of the neo-Nazis to hold their march.  But there never was any march in Skokie, Illinois.  Three marches were held in other Chicago area suburbs; the closest to Skokie was in Lincolnwood, just a few miles away. 

“Shouting Fire” is by no means a slow journey through free speech law.  It is brisk, full of human emotion and stories are told by the participants.  Seventy-four minutes passes rapidly without any narrator and no script.  This is entirely a documentary told by people who lived the stories.  Those stories should cause anyone who watches to consider again the extents … and the limits … of what we today refer to as free speech.

 Written By Mike Klein, APC Board Member

Note:  Mike Klein is a former CNN Vice President and Georgia Public Broadcasting executive.  He was living near Skokie, Illinois when neo-Nazis announced they would march.

Michael Jackson…is there too much coverage?

The shocking and untimely passing of “king of pop” Michael Jackson yesterday has captured the world’s attention. But should the media be playing so much into it? The news has knocked Iran, healthcare, S.C. Gov. Sanford and even the death of 1970s icon Farrah Fawcett off of TV screens and Website homepages.

What do you think? Is MJ’s death worth the hype or should media organizations go back to “real” news?

Regardless, rest in peace, Michael Jackson. It’s OBVIOUS you will be missed.

Four Pulitzer Prize Winners Speak to The Atlanta Press Club

A robust discussion about journalists using pen and ink to document the American civil rights experience highlighted an Atlanta Press Club luncheon on Tuesday July 23 when four Atlanta based Pulitzer Prize recipients addressed seventy-five luncheon guests at The Commerce Club in downtown Atlanta.  The panel of Pulitzer recipients included two current journalists at the Atlanta Journal & Constitution, Mike Luckovich and Cynthia Tucker, and two former AJC journalists, Doug Blackmon and Hank KlibanoffBlackmon was honored with the 2009 Pulitzer for general nonfiction for his book “Slavery by Another Name:  the Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.”  Blackmon attacked the basic assumption that slavery ended with the Civil War.  The New York Times wrote that Blackmon’s book “describes free men and women forced into industrial servitude, bound by chains, faced with subhuman living conditions and subject to physical torture.”  All this well into the 20th Century.  Alabama, for instance, leased convicts to private businesses.  Blackmon is currently the Wall Street Journal’s Atlanta bureau chief.

Klibanoff, along with co-author Gene Roberts was honored with a 2007 Pulitzer Prize for their book “The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle and the Awakening of a Nation,” an examination of the role of media in the dynamic struggle for racial justice and civil rights.  Klibanoff is currently managing editor of “Cold Case Truth and Justice Report.”  Previously he was Atlanta Journal & Constitution managing editor.  Roberts is a former New York Times managing editor.  They collaborated for twelve years to create the book.

About their book, the New York Times Sunday Book Review wrote, “… the power of the pen and the camera has been memorable (in documenting the civil rights struggle).  Until now, however, no one has offered an in-depth analysis of how and why the news media came to play such an important role in the struggle for racial justice.”  In their book, the authors explained that black protest grew from within the black press, but it took the mainstream white press to show the rest of the nation what was happening in the South.

Luckovich is a two-time winner who earned his first editorial cartooning Pulitzer Prize in 1995 and his second in 2006.  Luckovich discussed his famous cartoon “WHY?” which inside the single word and the question mark included the handwritten names of some 2,000 American servicemen and women who lost their lives in the war that began after 9-11 terrorist attacks on the United States.  Luckovich is syndicated in some 150 papers nationally.

Tucker won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.  During her career as the AJC’s opinion section editor Tucker has been frequently critical of those in highly influential circles, including former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, who is now a convicted felon, and former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, whose controversial actions and comments eventually resulted in her ballot box ouster from the U.S. House of Representatives. Tucker will soon move to Washington to begin new work as the AJC’s national political columnist.  Atlanta’s scene will lose a journalist who never feared any fact or any person, as she freely thought about and commented on any issue, regardless of its political or racial stripes.

The next Press Club members’ event is on Thursday, June 25 when HBO will present a special showing of the documentary film “Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech.”  This is an invitation event for members of the Press Club and the Public Relations Society of America Georgia Chapter.  Time and location are 6:00 p.m. at the Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree Street N.E., Atlanta.  The next Press Club luncheon will host Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank on Friday, August 28.  Details about both events are located elsewhere on the Atlanta Press Club website.

Additional information about the books written by Douglas Blackmon, and Hank Klibanoff with Gene Roberts, can be obtained from the New York Times Sunday Book Review website. Mike Luckovich also donated an original cartoon for silent auction.  Luncheon guest Gene Greissman submitted the winning bid.

Tuesday’s luncheon was sponsored by the Cox Media Group.

Written by Mike Klein, APC Board Member