Freedom Forum

Publishing tycoon Allen Neuharth's $700 million ''Freedom Forum,'' the foundation that proclaims its mission is to defend the First Amendment, has been getting some sharp stings from the free press it's pledged to protect.A spate of critical articles surfaced almost as soon as the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported in late March that the New York state attorney general was looking into allegedly ''excessive and imprudent'' Freedom Forum spending.And the details were, in fact, rather compelling.

In Maryland Pet care available to workers, others in terrorist disaster The Maryland Agriculture Department said pet owners who have been cut off from their animals because of terrorist attacks in New York and at the Pentagon can take advantage of a state-operated emergency shelter program. The department said emergency workers and others unable to get home can make arrangements for shelter for stranded pets by calling county emergency centers or the Maryland Emergency Management Agency agriculture desk at 410-517-3658.

OAKLAND, Calif. -- The ailing Oakland Tribune was saved from extinction less than an hour before sunrise yesterday, when the non-profit Freedom Forum came to the rescue with a pledge to pump at least $5 million into the debt-ridden newspaper.Employees who just one day earlier had brought in cardboard boxes, expecting to pack up their belongings when the paper folded, were jubilant. They hugged each other, cried, toasted their good fortune with mineral water and danced in the newsroom after publisher Robert C. Maynard announced that "the Oakland Tribune is here to stay."

Sun staff writer Jim Haner has been named the winner of the Excellence in Urban Journalism Award, given by the Enterprise Foundation and the Freedom Forum, for his 1999 series on an East Baltimore neighborhood known as "Zombieland." The honor, awarded yesterday at the Enterprise Foundation's annual convention in Atlanta, was for an investigation into how drug dealers and other criminals threaten urban renewal efforts by buying up slum rental houses. Haner's stories also focused attention on the continuing epidemic of lead paint poisoning, from which some 1,200 children suffer every year in Baltimore's inner-city neighborhoods.

In Maryland Pet care available to workers, others in terrorist disaster The Maryland Agriculture Department said pet owners who have been cut off from their animals because of terrorist attacks in New York and at the Pentagon can take advantage of a state-operated emergency shelter program. The department said emergency workers and others unable to get home can make arrangements for shelter for stranded pets by calling county emergency centers or the Maryland Emergency Management Agency agriculture desk at 410-517-3658.

WETA, a major producer of public television programs, will be going into the cable television business this spring with a new channel devoted to public affairs.The Washington home of such shows as "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" announced yesterday that it is teaming with Gannett's Freedom Forum to create the Forum Network, a 24-hour regional channel featuring news and public affairs programs.The pairing of a public television station with a private foundation to create a cable channel is unprecedented but indicative of the new kinds of arrangements being made by PBS operations these days.

Sun staff writer Jim Haner has been named the winner of the Excellence in Urban Journalism Award, given by the Enterprise Foundation and the Freedom Forum, for his 1999 series on an East Baltimore neighborhood known as "Zombieland." The honor, awarded yesterday at the Enterprise Foundation's annual convention in Atlanta, was for an investigation into how drug dealers and other criminals threaten urban renewal efforts by buying up slum rental houses. Haner's stories also focused attention on the continuing epidemic of lead paint poisoning, from which some 1,200 children suffer every year in Baltimore's inner-city neighborhoods.

Cocoa Beach, Florida. -- My fervent hope during half a year of painful scandal has been that the day would soon come when I could say to all Americans, ''The leadership problem is solved. The time has come when you can, you must, again give money and other support to the NAACP.''I could not say that as long as I knew, and was writing, that your and my dollars would likely vanish in a sieve of corruption and waste and sexual-harassment settlements. Now the hallelujah day has come when I and a chorus of my friends can sing, with dollar signs as notes, ''Honest days are here again!

Retired Vice Adm. William P. Lawrence of Annapolis has been appointed a visiting professional scholar from September to May 1995 at the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.He and Frank Aukofer, a veteran military writer for the Milwaukee Journal, will research and write a report on the relationship between the military and the news media.The Freedom Forum is a nonpartisan, international organization dedicated to free press and free speech.Admiral Lawrence was a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War from 1967 to 1973 and superintendent of the Naval Academy from 1978 to 1981.

Jon Stone,65, who help create Big Bird and Cookie Monster as the co-creator and Emmy Award-winning writer, producer and director of "Sesame Street," died Sunday in New York of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.He wrote the pilot script for "Sesame Street" and was the head writer and one of the three original producers of the program, which first aired on PBS on Nov. 10, 1969. He remained the principal director of the children's show until last year.Mr. Stone was also an author of children's books, including "The Monster at the End of This Book," which was published by Little Golden Books in 1971.

In Baltimore City Coppin State College student is selected for journalism award The Freedom Forum has selected Coppin State College student Keith Henry as Chips Quinn Scholar for its fall program for college journalism students of color. Henry, of Baltimore, is an intern at the Oakland Tribune in California, and at the end of his internship he will receive a $1,000 scholarship from the Arlington, Va.-based Freedom Forum. The year-round program to train young journalists of color was begun in 1991 in memory of John C. "Chips" Quinn Jr., who was managing editor of the Poughkeepsie Journal in New York when he died in a car accident at age 34. Fire Department to stage emergency drill today The Baltimore Fire Department will sound emergency sirens in the Wagners Point, Curtis Bay and Brooklyn neighborhoods at 10:30 a.m. today as part of an annual hazardous materials practice drill.

This is an excerpt of remarks by Christiane Amanpour, chief international correspondent for CNN, to the Freedom Forum in New York on April 13. IN MY years of covering Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, the most terrible things were often first reported by journalists from eyewitness accounts. And then they were proven true: the death camps in Bosnia, the mass graves, for instance. Of course, none of the Albanian refugees on Serbian television are portrayed as fleeing the terror campaign; Serb officials insist they are only fleeing NATO bombing.

Bunnie Riedel is hopping mad, and that means bad news for some big names in television journalism.Riedel is the executive director of the Washington-based Alliance for Community Media, a nonprofit organization that represents public, educational and government community-access channels. The alliance has 1,400 individual and group members and represents about 5,000 cable channels nationally.And right now, its leader is locked in battle with Washington's WETA, one of the nation's most powerful public television stations, and the Freedom Forum, an international foundation with an endowment of more than $1 billion and an announced goal of serving the interests of a "free press, free speech and free spirit for all people."

WETA, a major producer of public television programs, will be going into the cable television business this spring with a new channel devoted to public affairs.The Washington home of such shows as "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" announced yesterday that it is teaming with Gannett's Freedom Forum to create the Forum Network, a 24-hour regional channel featuring news and public affairs programs.The pairing of a public television station with a private foundation to create a cable channel is unprecedented but indicative of the new kinds of arrangements being made by PBS operations these days.

ARLINGTON, Va. -- The definition emblazoned by the doorway informs visitors to the Newseum that news is "1. A report of recent events, especially unusual or notable ones."This report concerns such an event: The world's first interactive museum of news and the newest attraction in metropolitan Washington, opened Friday across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial.Vice President Al Gore was on hand for opening day festivities and President Clinton telephoned his good wishes."We are here to celebrate the press," Gore said.

ARLINGTON, Va. -- The definition emblazoned by the doorway informs visitors to the Newseum that news is "1. A report of recent events, especially unusual or notable ones."This report concerns such an event: The world's first interactive museum of news and the newest attraction in metropolitan Washington, opened Friday across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial.Vice President Al Gore was on hand for opening day festivities and President Clinton telephoned his good wishes."We are here to celebrate the press," Gore said.

Bunnie Riedel is hopping mad, and that means bad news for some big names in television journalism.Riedel is the executive director of the Washington-based Alliance for Community Media, a nonprofit organization that represents public, educational and government community-access channels. The alliance has 1,400 individual and group members and represents about 5,000 cable channels nationally.And right now, its leader is locked in battle with Washington's WETA, one of the nation's most powerful public television stations, and the Freedom Forum, an international foundation with an endowment of more than $1 billion and an announced goal of serving the interests of a "free press, free speech and free spirit for all people."

Jon Stone,65, who help create Big Bird and Cookie Monster as the co-creator and Emmy Award-winning writer, producer and director of "Sesame Street," died Sunday in New York of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.He wrote the pilot script for "Sesame Street" and was the head writer and one of the three original producers of the program, which first aired on PBS on Nov. 10, 1969. He remained the principal director of the children's show until last year.Mr. Stone was also an author of children's books, including "The Monster at the End of This Book," which was published by Little Golden Books in 1971.