Don King, boxing promoter AND newspaper publisher, is facing a staff insurrection at his paper, The Call & Post, in Cleveland, OH. King has ordered the staff to endorse the re-election of Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell. So what’s the problem? Campbell is white. According to Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist and political reporter Mark Naymik:
[H]is edict hit the staff like a punch to the midsection. The paper has traditionally defended and promoted black politicians, something its mostly black readership has come to expect.
I don’t recall similar stories of staff discontent when
newspapers in the South have endorsed black candidates over white
candidates. Imagine if a political reporter had written with a straight
face that a publisher’s edict to endorse Senate candidate Harvey Gantt over Jesse Helms
in 1990 or 1996 “hit the staff like a punch to the midsection. The
paper has traditionally defended the white power structure, something
its mostly white readership has come to expect.”
