Yet another loss. Read below.
FYI-----This
was sent from AABJ yesterday.
Deidre
Dear Members,
It was been a
year for losses. Earlier this month we lost Ed Bradley. But since then
two notable print journalists have passed away.
Gerald
M. Boyd, the only black journalist to
rise to the highest newsroom ranks at the New York Times, died on
Thanksgiving at his New York home after battling lung cancer, his wife,
journalist Robin D. Stone,
told Journal-isms.
"He was at home
with his family," she said.
Boyd, 56,
stepped down as managing editor on June 5, 2003, with the paper's
executive editor, Howell Raines,
in the wake of the scandal involving Jayson
Blair, the reporter whose extensive
fabrications "laid bare deep discontent within the staff over their
leadership," as the Times reported at the time.
His wife said
Boyd "should be remembered for his contributions to journalism, to the
people who worked in the field, to diversity in journalism and to
humanity."
Journalist-turned-novelist
Bebe Moore Campbell,
who was diagnosed with
a neurological condition earlier this year, died peacefully at home at
12:15 a.m. Pacific time Monday, her publicist, Linda
Wharton Boyd, told Journal-isms. She was 56.
Campbell had
written for the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, Los
Angeles Times, Essence, Ebony and Black Enterprise and had been a
regular commentator for National Public Radio's "Morning Edition." Her
novels include "Brothers and Sisters," "Singing in the Comeback Choir"
and "Your Blues Ain't Like Mine."
"In 'Your Blues
Ain't Like Mine,' her first novel, Campbell's ability to delve into the
minds of multifarious characters and relate their truths was riveting.
She also demonstrated her uncanny adroitness at helping readers sort
through their own heated feelings about race while considering opposing
views. Campbell
so skillfully navigated this same risky ground with her second novel,
'Brothers and Sisters,' that it is now a text for several college
race-relations courses," Patricia Elam
wrote in a 1998 review in the Washington Post.