Now that it’s held two memorial services for Daniel Pearl, The Wall Street Journal is planning a more permanent tribute to its slain journalist. This summer, The Journal, in conjunction with the Free Press publishing house, will release an anthology of Pearl’s reporting, The New York Observer reported. The book will be edited by Pearl’s friend and WSJ reporter Helene Cooper and will include 50 of his pieces from his time in the United States and abroad. His widow, Mariane, will write the introduction. All profits will go to the Daniel Pearl Memorial Trust established by Dow Jones, the paper’s parent company. Pearl, 38, who was on assignment in Pakistan for The Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped Jan. 23 and killed in February, according to The Associated Press. On March 22, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the alleged mastermind of the kidnapping, was charged with murder in a Pakistani anti-terrorism court, along with 10 accomplices.
R.W. Apple Jr., 67, who has covered wars, revolutions, presidential elections and other world and national events for The New York Times for nearly 40 years, has been appointed associate editor at The Times. Executive Editor Howell Raines announced the appointment in February, saying it was effective immediately. For the past five years, Apple served as chief correspondent of The Times. In his new role, Apple will remain based in Washington and will travel widely to write about the arts, culture and food and wine, as well as foreign and domestic affairs, politics and other subjects. Raines said that the title of associate editor at The Times has traditionally been special, outside the regular chain of newsroom command and that it has been held by a number of distinguished journalists, including Charlotte Curtis, Harrison E. Salisbury, and Tom Wicker. “The title connotes a senior status of a special sort, as a writer, editor and a kind of resident sage on journalism,” Raines said.
John Carroll, editor and executive vice president of the Los Angeles Times, has been elected chairman of the Pulitzer Prize board. Carroll, 60, first joined the 18-member board in 1994. As the new chairman, he succeeds Louis Boccardi, president and CEO of The Associated Press, who held the position since last May and will remain on the board as a member, Editor & Publisher reported. Carroll began his journalism career in 1963 as a reporter for the then-Providence (R.I.) Journal-Bulletin. After nine years at The Baltimore Sun, he took over as editor of the L.A. Times in 2000. Columbia University, which administers the annual Pulitzer Prize awards, announced Carroll’s appointment in March.
The New York Times in March named Roger Cohen as its foreign editor, formalizing a position Cohen has held since he became the acting editor in September. Cohen, 46, joined The Times in 1990 after working as a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. He served The Times as Berlin bureau chief, a Paris correspondent, Balkan bureau chief and European economic correspondent before being named deputy foreign editor in August. He became acting foreign editor the next month when then-foreign editor Andrew Rosenthal was promoted to assistant managing editor, The Associated Press reported.
Florida House Speaker Tom Feeney has banned a Palm Beach (Fla.) Post reporter from the House floor for what he called disruptive behavior. The newspaper criticized the decision as punishment for a negative story. Feeney said the reporter, Shirish Date, had pushed two of his aides, The Associated Press reported. “In the Florida House we feel that it’s important that everybody behave … in a non-threatening way, in a non-disruptive way,” Feeney said March 15. “Members of my staff don’t deserve to be harassed verbally, but especially they don’t deserve to be harassed physically.” The Palm Beach Post said it believes the banishment is a reaction to a story Date wrote that criticized one of Feeney’s aides, rather than a response to his pursuit of the aide after a news conference a day earlier. Feeney said the story had nothing to do with his decision, according to the AP.
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who admitted copying passages from other works in one of her best-selling books, has withdrawn from judging the Pulitzer Prizes, The Associated Press reported. Pulitzer board administrator Seymour Topping said that Goodwin “decided not to participate” in the April meeting when the board met to choose the 21 prizes for journalism work done last year. In a March 3 letter to board chairman John Carroll, Goodwin said “[b]ecause I am so distracted by the media focus on my work, I do not feel capable of giving the considerable time needed to make the proper judgments.” Topping said it was the first time any board member had withdrawn under such circumstances and no replacement would be named. Goodwin acknowledged in January that “The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys,” released in 1987, contained passages that closely resembled prose from three other books. She said the copying was accidental and settled privately with one of the authors soon after publication. Goodwin won a Pulitzer for her 1995 book “No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II.” She has been on the Pulitzer board since March 1999.
Hall of Fame announcer Ernie Harwell, 84, whose voice has been synonymous with the Detroit Tigers for more than four decades, will leave the booth after this season. “I love my job. I love baseball. I enjoy being with the players,” he said at a news conference in late February. “It really has come time for me to say one more year and then retirement.” In January, the Tigers announced that Harwell would be back this season to call games for his 42nd year with the Tigers and his 55th year in the majors. Harwell began his career in 1940 as a sports commentator for Atlanta’s WSB radio. He got his first major league play-by-play job with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948 and then went on to broadcast New York Giants and Baltimore Orioles games before coming to Detroit in 1960. Besides telling stories about baseball legends from Ty Cobb to Mark McGwire, Harwell is known for describing the action on the field with accuracy and flair, according to The Associated Press.
Late-night talk show host David Letterman said he would remain at CBS, after being courted by ABC this spring. The critically acclaimed “Nightline” is in the same time period and could have been canceled or moved if Letterman had jumped to ABC. Soon after the announcement, ABC said that “Nightline” would remain – for the time being – in its current slot, according to The Associated Press. “Nightline” anchor Ted Koppel issued a pointed statement in which he and his producers chided Disney, saying that “intentionally or not, collateral damage has been done” to ABC News and that it would be unreasonable to expect the show’s staff to continue “in a climate of ongoing uncertainty,” The New York Times reported. In mid-March, Disney Chairman Michael D. Eisner, in France for the opening of a Walt Disney theme park, called Koppel to discuss his future at ABC News. Eisner spoke to Koppel, but executives said the newsman did not hear the words he wanted to hear – unequivocal and long-term support for his late-night program, according to The Times. Letterman said he hopes to finish his career at CBS but did not plan to stop taking potshots at his network bosses. CNN reported that Letterman complimented ABC on the network’s discussions with him. “They were gracious, they were generous, they were very, very patient,” he said. “My personal hope is that it [the time slot] will continue to be occupied by Ted Koppel and ‘Nightline’ for as long as that guy wants to have that job, because that’s just the way it ought to be.”
John Madden is joining “Monday Night Football” on ABC, replacing comedian Dennis Miller after his two-year stint. Madden agreed to a four-year deal with ABC and will team with veteran play-by-play announcer Al Michaels, ABC announced in February. Madden, 65, had one year remaining on his contract with Fox Sports, but that network agreed to free him from that deal after the sides could not agree on an extension, ABC Sports president Howard Katz said.
After nine years as Washington bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, Alan Murray, 47, is moving into television. Murray has accepted a position at CNBC, which offered him a bureau chief title, a chance to provide regular Beltway updates and a stint as a prime-time co-host. The move comes as CNBC, whose ratings soared during the bull market of the late 1990s, is struggling to recover from a slump in the wake of Sept. 11, The Washington Post reported. Murray, an 18-year veteran of the Journal, will maintain his connection by writing a weekly column for the politics page. Murray, who has a master’s degree from the London School of Economics, has been a frequent guest on CNBC, which has an alliance with the Journal. He has been a longtime regular on PBS’s “Washington Week in Review” and would be the first CNBC bureau chief to double as an on-air personality.
The Louis Rukeyser era at Maryland Public Television is coming to a bitter end after 32 years, as the pioneering financial journalist is being forced out of the anchor’s chair of the program that bears his name. Starting in the fall, MPT’s signature program, “Wall Street Week With Louis Rukeyser,” will have a new format, a new name and two new anchors – Fortune magazine editorial director Geoffrey Colvin, 48, and an as yet unnamed female co-anchor, The Baltimore Sun reported. Fortune will co-produce the show. The arrangement is intended to prop up what public television executives describe as an aging asset. Rukeyser, 69, termed the new show without him “somebody’s idea of a bad April Fools’ joke.” When MPT President and CEO Robert J. Shuman surprised Rukeyser with the news in March and offered him a diminished role as a senior commentator, Rukeyser said, “I decided I didn’t want to have anything further to do with them.” Rukeyser had been expected to finish out the current season, but after he used his March 22 show to discuss a contract dispute and promote his new program, MPT pulled him off the air immediately, saying he had “violated the journalistic standards of the show,” The New York Times reported. During the spring, the producers of Wall Street Week had to scramble to pull together a cast in a hurry. They faced numerous challenges, including the fact that at least 22 analysts and money managers who made regular appearances on the show banded together to show their support for Rukeyser by deciding not to fill in.
Michael Parks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent and former Los Angeles Times editor, has been named director of the School of Journalism at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication, Dean Geoffrey Cowan announced in March. Parks succeeds Loren Ghiglione, who left USC Annenberg last year to become dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Parks had been serving as interim director of the journalism school since Fall 2001.
Former CNN Washington bureau chief Frank Sesno has joined the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., as a professor of public policy and communications. Sesno will teach an undergraduate communications course and a graduate course on public policy. He also will hold a series of forums on journalism and public policy. In addition, he will be the host of regular on-air town meetings on the university’s television network. Sesno left the network in September after 17 years there, citing a shake-up of top management as a reason for his departure, according to The Associated Press.
Edward Wendover, a Michigan editor and adjunct journalism instructor at Michigan State University since 1983, was named general manager at the Columbia Missourian, the student newspaper at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He replaces Patti Hoddinott, who is retiring. Wendover was editor and publisher of Michigan’s Plymouth-Canton Community Crier Inc. from 1974 to 2000. Besides serving as president of the Michigan Press Association, Wendover led the independent nonprofit corporation that publishes the Michigan State University newspaper.
Richard Wilson, a former reporter for The Courier-Journal of Louisville, was named interim director of the University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications. Wilson, 64, will head the journalism school until June 30, 2003. A nationwide search for a permanent director will begin this spring. Wilson retired from The Courier-Journal in 1999 after nearly 32 years as a reporter in Louisville, Frankfort and Lexington, the AP reported.
Andrea Thompson, the actress-turned-anchor, has resigned from CNN’s Headline News less than a year after her controversial hiring. CNN executives say she wasn’t forced out. Thompson announced her decision to network officials in March, they say. It is not yet clear whether she will try to return to acting, stay in the news business or start another career. When she left a seven-figure salary playing Detective Jill Kirkendall on ABC’s “NYPD Blue” to become a general assignment correspondent for KRQE-TV in Albuquerque, N.M., Thompson had no journalism experience. She worked there for a year. CNN executives then saw a tape of her work and hired her to be an anchor as part of a remake at Headline News. Critics slammed CNN for what was seen as an example of trying to Hollywood-ize its on-air look, adding that Thompson had little journalism experience and was a high school dropout, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. CNN anchor Sophia Choi, 34, will be Thompson’s permanent replacement in the network’s 6 to 10 p.m. slot.
Robert Thomson, the Financial Times’ managing editor in the United States, has been named the new editor of London’s Times newspaper, officials announced in late February. Thomson, 40, who was born in Australia, replaced Peter Stothard, who resigned Feb. 21, The Associated Press reported. Stothard, 50, announced he was stepping down after 10 years as the editor of the Times. No reason was given for his departure, but a battle with cancer had forced him to take a temporary leave in March 2000. Thomson, who assumed the new title on March 6, began his career as a journalist in 1979 at the Herald in Melbourne. After a job at the Sydney Morning Herald, he joined Pearson’s Financial Times, working in Beijing and Tokyo before moving to the United States.
DEATHS
Raffaele Ciriello, 42, an Italian free-lance photographer, was killed by Israeli tank fire in the West Bank town of Ramallah March 13, Palestinian hospital officials and witnesses said. Ciriello was on assignment for the Italian daily Corriere della Sera. Ciriello was a veteran free-lance photographer whose work occasionally appeared in The New York Times. Fellow journalist Amedeo Ricucci said he and his colleague were following Palestinian gunmen through the center of Ramallah when the Israeli tank appeared, according to The Associated Press. Ricucci said soldiers on the tank fired a machine gun from about 150 yards without warning, striking Ciriello six times in the stomach and chest. Ricucci and another colleague, both of whom work for Italian television Rai Uno, were not hurt.
Peggy Durdin, a foreign correspondent who made a career of covering Asia when women rarely worked in the region, died Feb. 12 of pneumonia in Encinitas, Calif. She was 92. Durdin began her career in 1938 after marrying New York Times correspondent Tillman Durdin. She covered news in Afghanistan, Burma, Hong Kong, Japan and Laos throughout her four-decade career, The Associated Press reported. Her stories appeared in numerous publications including Life, Look, The Saturday Evening Post, Reader’s Digest and Time magazine, for which she was based in New Delhi. Prior to her journalism career, she worked as head of the English department at American School in Shanghai.
Walter Goodman, 74, a former reporter and critic at The New York Times and the author of a widely read history of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, died March 6 at a hospital in Valhalla, N.Y. Goodman wrote nine books, including several children’s books, as well as articles for a variety of magazines, according to The New York Times. He also served as an editor in various sections of The Times and as an editorial writer at The Times. As television critic, he specialized in news and documentary programs, often using specific events or programs to make broader observations. Goodman also held various writing and editing jobs for magazines, including The New Republic, Redbook and Playboy.
Thomas Griffith, 86, a former senior staff editor and writer at Time magazine, died March 16 at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. He died from head injuries from a fall. Griffith joined Time as a writer in 1943 and rose to senior editor, becoming one of the most powerful editors at Time Inc. during his 30-year career there, The New York Times reported. Once called the “house liberal” in an organization known for the conservative politics of its outspoken founder, Henry Luce, Griffith succeeded in winning and maintaining Luce’s respect and friendship through tumultuous interoffice clashes on major news stories of the 1950’s and 60’s, according to The Times. Griffith began his journalism career in 1936 as a police reporter for the Seattle Times, leaving the paper in 1942 to become a Nieman fellow at Harvard University. He also wrote for Fortune and Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post reported.
Thomas Leahy, 64, a former CBS president who helped develop one of the company’s first cable ventures during a 30-year career with the network, died March 8 in a New York hospital. He had cancer, according to The Washington Post. Leahy joined CBS in 1962, becoming vice president for sales for CBS television stations in 1971. He then became general manager of the network’s flagship station, WCBS-TV in New York, in 1973. Leahy was named president of the CBS television stations division in 1977. He rose to president of the CBS Television Network in 1986, where he remained until 1989. He left CBS in 1992.
Eda J. LeShan, 79, an educator, psychologist, family counselor and self-help author, died of kidney failure March 2 at her home in the Bronx, N.Y. She also had been a contributing editor of Parents magazine and a columnist for Newsday. LeShan was the author of two dozen books on children and aging that have been translated into nine languages. Her best-known work may have been “The Conspiracy Against Children,” published by Atheneum in 1967, according to The Washington Post. She also did radio commentary on CBS, had a program on PBS and wrote the play “The Lobster Reef.” LeShan wrote her first book when she was 43, began to appear regularly on a television show when she was 46 and got her own program on educational television when she was 48.
Shelley Mydans, 86, a journalist who spent 21 months in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during World War II, died March 7 at her home in New Rochelle, N.Y. The cause of death was not reported. She and her husband, photographer Carl Mydans, were Life magazine’s first photographer-reporter team to cover the war, The Washington Post reported. They traveled to Europe, China and the Western Pacific and were taken prisoner when Japanese forces arrived in the Philippines. Shelley Mydans was the author of three novels, including “The Open City,” based on the experiences of Americans captured by Japanese during the war. She later was a commentator for a Time Inc. radio news program in New York. She continued to write for Time and Life and reported from Tokyo when her husband served as bureau chief there.
Patrick J. Owens, 72, a columnist, editorial writer and reporter for Newsday during an era in which it came of age as a nationally recognized newspaper, died Feb. 22 in Kalispell, Mont. Owens, “an irascible, eccentric bear of a man who did not suffer fools or editors gladly,” arrived at the newspaper in January 1969 to help breathe fire into its editorial pages, according to Newsday. Owens, who was chief editorial writer, also helped to launch in Newsday a careful but forceful campaign calling on former President Nixon to make good on his promise to end the war. Before coming to Newsday, Owens had worked as a hard-digging reporter and provocative, imaginative editorial writer, Newsday reported. Always drawn to stories of people who are struggling, Owens was intrigued by the battle to get a few black children into a whites-only school in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957. Owens asked for and got a job covering events in Arkansas and the national civil rights movement. After a stroke in November 1986, Owens’ career at Newsday was cut short. He returned to the paper for a brief period and then retired to Kalispell in 1992.
Dave Smith, 64, whose elegant prose helped usher in an era of literary journalism at the Los Angeles Times in the 1960s, died of a heart attack at his home in Tucson, Ariz. His body was found Feb. 20, The Associated Press reported. Smith covered some of California’s most high-profile crime cases for the Times, including the trial of U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin. He was perhaps best known at the paper for pieces such as one on Benny Smith, who killed several women and girls at a Mesa, Ariz., beauty parlor in 1966, according to the AP. Smith was one of several people the Times recruited in those days “because they could write,” said former Editor William F. Thomas. Smith, who grew up in Arizona and worked for the Tucson Daily Star while attending the University of Arizona. He later worked for The Associated Press in Los Angeles and New York before joining the Los Angeles Times in 1968.
Howard K. Smith – one of radio and television’s most outspoken and familiar voices in a long and often contentious career as an anchorman, news analyst and war correspondent – died Feb. 15 at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 87. He died of pneumonia aggravated by congestive heart failure, his son told The Associated Press. Although a courtly Southern gentleman, Smith was tough and insightful, stubborn and opinionated, and frequently clashed with his bosses at CBS and ABC during his four decades in broadcast journalism, The New York Times reported. He came on the scene when radio news was playing a paramount role in bringing World War II home to Americans, and he made the transition to television with passion and authority, according to the AP. Smith played a role in one of television’s defining moments, serving as moderator for the first Presidential debate – between Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy in 1960. Smith also was a member of Edward R. Murrow’s famous wartime team of CBS radio correspondents known as “the Murrow Boys,” a group that also included Eric Sevareid, Charles Collingwood, Richard Hottelet and Larry LeSueur. Their work set the standard for broadcast journalism in their time, The Times said.
