Yamiche Alcindor, the White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour, will take over as moderator for PBS’ current affairs show Washington Week, a position once held by the late, great journalist Gwen Ifill, who for a time was Alcindor’s mentor.
Alcindor, 34, will helm her first show this Friday, succeeding Robert Costa, who took over in 2017 and left the show earlier this year.
Regarding her new position, the New York Times quotes Alcindor as saying, “I know how much ‘Washington Week’ meant to Gwen, and how much she put her stamp on the legacy of the show. I also feel this incredible responsibility to think deeply about taking this on and making it a show that people want to watch, that people will feel is living up to its great legacy.”
Alcindor will continue to cover the Biden administration for NewsHour, as well as remaining a contributor to NBC News and MSNBC.
According to Variety.com, a collaboration between Lionsgate Television, The New York Times, and Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films will create a docuseries for streaming platform Hulu based on The 1619 Project from New York Times Magazine’s and Nikole Hannah-Jones‘ journalistic examination of slavery and racism in the U.S. from 1619 to current times.
Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winner Shoshana Guy will serve as showrunner and executive producer. Kathleen Lingo, editorial director for film and TV at The New York Times, will also executive produce along with Caitlin Roper, The Times’ executive producer for scripted film and TV.
Academy Award-winning director Roger Ross Williams will produce and oversee the series with producing partner and co-executive producer Geoff Martz and also direct the first episode.
The series falls under a distribution agreement between Lionsgate and Disney General Entertainment Content’s BIPOC Creator Initiative led by Tara Duncan.
The 1619 Project connected the centrality of slavery in U.S. history with an account of the racism that endures in so many aspects of American life today. It was launched in August 2019 on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the English colonies that would become the United States. It examines the legacy of slavery in America and how it shaped nearly all aspects of society, from music and law to education and the arts, and including the principles of our democracy itself.
“The 1619 Project is an essential reframing of American history,” Williams said. “Our most cherished ideals and achievements cannot be understood without acknowledging both systemic racism and the contributions of Black Americans. And this isn’t just about the past—Black people are still fighting against both the legacy of this racism and its current incarnation. I am thrilled and grateful for the opportunity to work with The New York Times, Lionsgate Television, Harpo Films and Hulu to translate the incredibly important The 1619 Project into a documentary series.”
Gwen Ifill (photo via Getty Images) via jbhe.com Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, announced that it will rename its College of Media, Arts and Humanities after Gwen Ifill, the noted journalist and Simmons College alumna who died in 2016.
Ifill was born in Jamaica, New York, the daughter of immigrants from the Caribbean. She earned a bachelor’s degree in communications at Simmons College and worked as a reporter for the Boston Herald-American, the Baltimore Evening Sun, the Washington Postand the New York Times.
Her first job in television was for NBC News. She then joined the Public Broadcasting System in 1999 and served as co-anchor of NewsHour and moderator of Washington Week. Ifill moderated two vice presidential debates and a primary contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Ifill was the author of The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama (Doubleday, 2009).
In announcing the honor, Simmons College President Helen Drinan stated, “For over 100 years, our mission at Simmons has been to prepare our students to lead meaningful lives and build successful careers. Gwen’s example stands tall in that mission. The kind of unimpeded curiosity Gwen brought to her work, coupled with her warmth, integrity and commitment to truth-telling, is something all of our students aspire to – no matter what field of study they pursue. We are extraordinarily proud of her and so pleased to formalize her legacy at Simmons this way.” Source: https://www.jbhe.com/2017/11/simmons-college-in-boston-names-a-college-in-honor-of-journalist-and-alumna-gwen-ifill/
In an unusually public flare-up, one of MSNBC’s television personalities clashed with the network on Friday in a dispute about airtime and editorial freedom and said she was refusing to host the show that bears her name this weekend.
The host, Melissa Harris-Perry, wrote in an email to co-workers this week that her show had effectively been taken away from her and that she felt “worthless” in the eyes of NBC News executives, who are restructuring MSNBC.
“Here is the reality: Our show was taken — without comment or discussion or notice — in the midst of an election season,” she wrote in the email, which became public on Friday. “After four years of building an audience, developing a brand and developing trust with our viewers, we were effectively and utterly silenced.”
In a phone interview, Ms. Harris-Perry confirmed she would not appear on the show this weekend. She said she had received no word about whether her show, which runs from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays and Sundays, had been canceled, but said she was frustrated that her time slot had faced pre-emptions for coverage of the presidential election. She said she had not appeared on the network at all “for weeks” and that she was mostly sidelined during recent election coverage in South Carolina and New Hampshire. (She was asked to return this weekend.)
In her email, Ms. Harris-Perry wrote that she was not sure if the NBC News chairman, Andrew Lack, or Phil Griffin, the MSNBC president, were involved in the way her show was handled recently, but she directed blame toward both.
“I will not be used as a tool for their purposes,” she wrote. “I am not a token, mammy or little brown bobble head. I am not owned by Lack, Griffin or MSNBC. I love our show. I want it back.”
CNN recently named Geraldine Moriba the Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion. In her new role, Moriba will offer strategic guidance on issues of diversity to the CNN Management team and chair the network’s diversity council. Of her new position, CNN President Jeff Zucker said: “Geraldine is the ideal candidate to take on this very important role within the organization at a critical time for us,” said Zucker. “I had the pleasure of working with her prior to my time at CNN, and always found her to have a terrific sensibility and understanding of some of the complex issues we face when it comes to diversity and inclusion. As we look to reimagine what CNN will be in the years to come, this role on my team will be invaluable in shaping the kind of organization we want and need to have.” Moriba, an award-winning producer who led CNN’s “In America” documentary team, is passionate about diverse content making it on air: “Some of the smartest journalists in the business work at CNN and I know that the prevailing sentiment in our newsrooms is that it is crucial for our content and workforce to reflect the audience we serve,” she said. “These are goals accomplished by working as a team. This isn’t only about pursuing a noble purpose, it’s about continuing to share news from across our increasingly diverse and interconnected world, in even more effective ways.” Moriba’s experience includes 16 years at NBC News and a number of prestigious awards including Emmy Awards, an Alfred I. DuPont Award and two Peabody Awards. article via clutchmagonline.com
President Barack Obama speaks to supporters at the Stroh Center on September 26, 2012 in Bowling Green, Ohio. Six days before early voting starts in Ohio, the President discussed what he says is a real and achievable plan to restore middle-class economic security by paying down the debt in a balanced way. (Photo by J.D. Pooley/Getty Images)
President Obama has a strong lead over Mitt Romney in New Hampshire and narrow advantages in Nevada and North Carolina, according to a new series of NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist College polls, putting him ahead in virtually every swing state with fewer than 40 days before the election.
The president leads 51 to 44 among likely voters in New Hampshire, a state he won in 2008 but one Romney advisers view as winnable for their candidate. Obama has a 49 to 47 advantage in Nevada and a 48 to 46 lead in North Carolina, both well within the margin of error of the surveys. (Go to NBC’s First Read for even more details on the polls.)
