Maynard, who has had a strong influence on diversifying
America's newsrooms, is leaving the Bay Area to chair
the Freedom Forum's Media Studies Center in New York
City, effective July 1.
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Maynard, who has had a strong influence on diversifying
America's newsrooms, is leaving the Bay Area to chair
the Freedom Forum's Media Studies Center in New York
City, effective July 1.
"Nancy Maynard is a really skilled and talented woman who has been deeply involved with projects important to the Freedom Forum and the Media Studies Center." said Cheryl Arvidson, the Freedom Forum's media relations director. "We are very fortunate to have her."
The Freedom Forum is a self-funded organization that promotes "Free press. Free speech. Free spirit". It has offices around the country as well as a European and Asian center.
The Media Studies Center is the oldest operating program in the forum. It is considered the nation's top institute for the study of mass communications and communications technology.
"She's incisive, reads everything and can explain things the way no one else can." said Bay Area Black Journalists Association chair, Charles Jackson, who has known the Maynard family for almost 20 years. "With the new media technology we'll need someone to explain the craziness, she's perfect for the job."
The center also studies the effects of mass communications and communications technology on society and offers a better understanding of the media to the public.
"The Media Studies Center has for 10 years been very well-known to build a bridge between the media to the public," Nancy Maynard said at the farewell reception.
Maynard has served the same purpose.
Nineteen years ago, she and her late husband, Robert C. Maynard, quit their respective jobs at the New York Times and Washington Post and moved west to Oakland. In 1983 they purchased the Oakland Tribune, Bob Maynard passed away in 1993, one year after selling the Tribune to the Alameda Newspaper Group. Nancy Maynard continued to work on what she and her husband had set out to do, through Maynard Partners, Inc. and the Robert C. Maynard Institute of Journalism Education in Oakland, established in 1977.
The institute educates professional journalists about adding more diversity when covering the news.
"The Maynard Institute is really the premiere source of minority talent of the newspaper industry," Leroy Aarons, a Maynard Institute board member and former Tribune editor, said. "It set standards that have opened the door to the integration of newsrooms in the country."
Maynard Institute programs include the annual Management Training Center at Northwestern University in Illinois which trains journalists in newspaper management and the Editing Program for Minority Journalists at the University of Arizona which trains minority and non-minority journalists in copy editing.
"The Maynard Institute created a climate for diversity as a positive and necessary force that hasn't been there before," Maynard said.
"The Maynard Institute changed the face of the industry which is now every color," Maynard's daughter, Dori said. "I think the Maynard Institute made it okay to be green as long as it was the best green you could be."
Six years after the establishment of the institute, the Maynards made a symbolic move in the news industry when they became the first African-Americans to own a metropolitan daily paper.
"I don't think the historic aspects were clear," Maynard said when asked about the reason she and her husband decided to buy the Tribune. "It was the idea that you could help the community. No job in the world is better than being a newspaper publisher."
When Maynard began her career she was already making history. In 1966, she became one of the first minority women reporters at the New York Post. Since then she became a reporter and Washington correspondent for the New York Times, executive director and president of the Maynard Institute, reporter and commentator for KTVU Channel 2 in Oakland, senior vice president and co-publisher for the Oakland Tribune, and president of Maynard Partners Inc.; a consulting firm specializing in the economics and future of the news media.
"I think I've tried to be professional and separate my personal accomplishments," Maynard said about up-and-coming journalists using her accomplishments as a guide. "I hope it's important to show that young journalists should be willing to take risks."
Maynard graduated from Long Island University in 1967 and received her postgraduate degree from Stanford Law School in 1987.
"My mother has lived out the words of a trailblazer who came before her," Dori Maynard said, during her speech at the reception, "`Life,'said Helen Keller,`is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.' I think my mother's life has proven to be a daring adventure and then some. And I'm thrilled to see the adventure continue."