…….we can all move on. Good to see that Blacks can still organize when they make it a priority.

———————————–

The MSM consensus is that it was female and/or people of color corporate insiders who ulitmately pushed TPTB to push Imus out the door, not protests by Al Sharpton and others. If so, I heartily congratulate the corporate insiders.

I’ve been hard on NABJ for not calling for an advertising boycott. But, credit must be given: NABJ led the way in calling for his ouster.

In fact, Newsweek, in a press release announcing its Imus cover package, gave NABJ mucho activist cred:

Young black journalists were among the first to demand that Imus be ousted. Thursday evening, one day after Imus’s comments, Jemele Hill, an ESPN reporter, posted the Media Matters link on the National Association of Black Journalists’ e-mail list. Greg Lee, a Boston Globe reporter, spotted it right away. “I couldn’t believe Imus would pick on people he had no right to pick on,” he tells Newsweek. Lee forwarded the story to other online forums. In a matter of hours, black journalists in newsrooms across the country were clicking on it, and getting angry. The next day, the NABJ demanded an apology from Imus, then called for him to be fired.

Newsweek reports that after the networks suspended Imus, inside NBC, rank and file employees and reporters were growing impatient with what they considered foot-dragging. NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker heard from a subordinate about the growing uproar in NBC News, especially among black journalists, and knew immediately it was “obviously a huge problem and completely unacceptable,” according to two people familiar with his thinking who did not want to be named discussing their boss.

But the higher-ups still didn’t understand just how big a problem they had, until complaints started rolling in from employees all over the company, USA Network and Telemundo, the film group in Hollywood, and NBC-owned-and-operated local stations around the country.

NBC News president Steve Capus called for an extraordinary meeting of African-American employees on Tuesday, April 10. According to people who attended the meeting, but didn’t want to be named discussing internal matters, weatherman Al Roker told Capus, “That could have been my daughter Imus was joking about.” Others piled on. “I’m telling you, Capus got lobbied hard, really hard, and he really took it to heart,” says an NBC News senior producer. “We went out and created diversity in our newsrooms and we empowered employees to say what they think. And they’re telling us. It’s good for us and it’s good for the country.”

In my view, NABJ took a weak stance, since it had no teeth behind it, but it was leading.

Anyway, not too much sour grapes. If the advertising exodus coupled with the employee revolt is how this job got done, then so be it.

(On Sunday’s [April 15th] “Reliable Sources” special on the I-Mess, Ana Marie Cox goes into the Quip Hall of Fame: “It’s wasn’t Al Sharpton that got Imus fired, but Al Roker.”)

I’m just sad, because I believe we could easily get rid of all of the people who attack us daily if we weren’t always worried about playing someone’s else game. But I’m a freelancer, so I get to say that.  🙂