irmed on Thursday. Fulwood told Journal-isms (a blog by Richard Prince on the Maynard Institute for Journalsim Educatrion) he thought the move "mean-spirited."Clifton said Fulwood's Thursday column, on embattled radio host Don Imus, was Fulwood's last, and that he was being reassigned to the arts and features staff to do general assignment stories on the pop culture beat.
Plain Dealer veteran Richard Peery, who took a buyout last fall after more than 30 years at the paper, told Journal-isms on Thursday that "the concern" was that Fulwood would be replaced by editorial writer Phillip Morris, whom Peery called "one of those . . . black writers who reinforces white supremacy rather than challenges it, and he does it constantly. I've told him that to his face," he said. Morris did not respond to a request for comment.
The Plain Dealer announced later in the day that Morris, who has served on the Plain Dealer's editorial board for the past 16 years, would succeed Fulwood and that his first column would appear April 24.
"'Phillip's once weekly op-ed column has been one of the paper's strongest, and the Metro column will allow him to do more of what he does best — get out into the community and offer intelligent perspective on it,' Clifton told the newsroom in an e-mail," the Plain Dealer story said.
Clifton told Journal-isms he expected that Morris' column would go "deeper into the community. Sam's column was occasionally that way, but it was more his personal reflections, which is perfectly fine, and frankly, I wanted something different."
Fulwood replied that "there's 180 days of my column on the Web site" if anyone wanted to see whether he had been in the community.
Fulwood, 50, came to the Cleveland paper in 2000 after 11 years in the Los Angeles Times' Washington Bureau.
"We're enormously lucky to have him," Clifton told readers on July 25, 2000. "He's an outstanding newspaper man with a passion for the business. Already he's shown concern and interest in Cleveland."
The information above is all from Prince.
See the PD story in Friday's newspaper by Brie Zeltner
And read the original Fullwood column
Fullwood's column was headlined: Imus bosses share the blame. It said, in part:
By estimates reported in The New York Times, Imus' frequently offensive and all-too-often racist comments generate in excess of $20 million in annual revenue for CBS Radio.
Add with what Imus has produced in ad sales for the network's affiliates and MSNBC, the self-proclaimed "shock jock" is a mouthy $50 million moneymaking machine for his bosses.
Fullwood concludes:
No, the truly disgusting part is that institutions allow Imus to do his edgy thing. They are like the silent and never-seen drug lords who make it possible for a street-level bully like Imus to traffic in blatant obscenities.
They do it because it's too profitable for them to turn their backs. So he's allowed repeatedly to insult, defame and humiliate women, Jews, African- Americans, so long as it draws a crowd to hear him.
What's worse, Imus is aided by a bevy of the nation's leading journalists, politicians, writers and entertainers. The guests on his show - former Sen. Bill Bradley, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, NBC News anchor Brian Williams, among others - make up the nation's media and intellectual elite.
By agreeing to sit for a pseudo- interview with this odious 67-year-old hatemonger, his famous and accomplished enablers allow their celebrity to burnish Imus' veneer of respectability. Plus, they provide the laugh track for his racist routines.
Imus rose to fame at Cleveland's old WHK and later honed his act at WWWE and WKNR in the 1990s.
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