NABJ AT 50: WHERE DOES IT GO FROM HERE?
By COURTLAND MILLOY
Photo courtesy of NABJ, Jason Miccolo Johnson
Joe Davidson receives the Founders’ Appreciation Award from Sandra Dawson Long Weaver at the 2018 NABJ Convention in Detroit.
By any measure, Sandra Dawson Long Weaver has had a successful career as a newspaper journalist.
Starting in 1974, she became the only Black reporter working dayside at the Wilmington News Journal, Delaware’ s flagship newspaper. But at first, her future didn’ t look so bright. When she asked her editor for a raise, he said she needed more frontpage stories.“ But I’ m not the assignment editor. How to do I get more frontpage stories?” she recalled saying to him.
The answer he gave was not helpful and Weaver walked away with an
12 even more vexing question:“ What do you say to white editors who don’ t understand where you’ re coming from?”
Through her contacts with Black journalists at other newspapers, Weaver learned about a meeting that would be held in Washington, D. C., on December 12, 1975, to discuss creation of an organization that would support Black journalists as they navigated overwhelmingly white newsrooms, and work to“ sensitize media to the institutional racism in its coverage and employment practices,” as the organization’ s constitution would put it.