By STEVE EDER, ERIC MORATH, and JEREMY W. STEELE
The woman who claimed to be an associate editor of Time magazine looking to put MSU marketing junior Amondo Redmond on the cover is not employed by the publication, a spokeswoman for Time said.
The State News erroneously reported Wednesday that Redmond would appear on the cover as the “College Student of the Year” in July. The story was retracted in Thursday’s edition.
“This is absolutely false, we are not naming a student of the year and I don’t know where this information came from,” said Debra Richman, deputy director of public relations for Time.
State News Editor in Chief Mary Sell said the mistake was due to a lack of fact-checking at the newspaper. A woman who identified herself as Mimi James, an associate editor with Time, told The State News during a phone interview that Redmond had been selected for the cover.
No one verified that James worked at Time, said Sell, a criminal justice and journalism senior.
“Obviously, this was a mistake on our part for not verifying sources,” she said. “That’s part of the reason for the retraction, and we take full responsibility for that.
“However, in trying to correct our mistake, there are a lot of holes and things that don’t make sense in Amondo Redmond’s résumé.”
Some accolades, including internships with the Detroit Pistons, New York Knicks and VH1, were confirmed to be accurate.
Redmond also has been student chairman for the Martin Luther King Jr. All-University Celebration Committee, a member of Summer University Program Excellence Required - SUPER - for incoming college students with disadvantaged backgrounds and founder of the Flint Violence Prevention Coalition.
Several other items could not be confirmed by press time.
But several other items previously reported by The State News were found to contain inconsistencies:
Redmond, who was given the All-University Excellence in Diversity award for emerging progress Thursday, declined to comment Thursday about the Time magazine cover or other inconsistencies.
He also declined to provide The State News with a letter received from Time about the award or the telephone number for James, who he said contacted him about it.
“There was no application process, someone contacted me at work - some lady named Mimi James,” he told The State News on Wednesday before requesting a reporter’s tape recorder be turned off.
“I wasn’t aware of anything, there was no application. I was interning in New York, and someone called me there. I was traveling a lot so I didn’t get a chance to really return the phone call, until she called me and said I won the award.”
A search by The State News discovered a woman named Mimi James working for VH1, the company Redmond recently completed a 10-week internship at in New York.
James, who serves as vice president of talent and development for VH1 in California, did not know of Redmond or the Time magazine cover, said Sarah Wallace, James’ assistant.
“She has no idea what this is about,” Wallace said. “She didn’t make any calls.”
Redmond’s mother, Geraldine Redmond, said Wednesday night the award from Time is the only one she knows of that she hasn’t received any information about.
“A lot of the time they call and send a press release or something, but I haven’t gotten anything,” she said. “I just hope nobody’s playing a joke on him. This would really hurt him.”
Dorothy Harper Jones, consultant to the provost on diversity issues and a friend and mentor of Redmond, said she assumed the Time magazine honor was true because Redmond told her about it in the presence of his mother.
“I have respect for his integrity and what he has done to gain recognition,” Harper Jones said. “I’ll go with that until I have something else that will give me another view of things.
“But that is where I’m at right now.”
Harper Jones, who said Redmond calls her his “second mother,” praised him for his work with MSU and his hometown, near Flint.
“He has accomplished a lot, and he will accomplish a lot more - that is my word - he will do it with integrity,” she said.
Redmond said Wednesday he remained hopeful he would be on Time’s cover.
But Redmond shouldn’t get his hopes too high, said Bill McWhirter, an editor and resident in the School of Journalism and a correspondent for Time for 35 years. He said the magazine wouldn’t recognize one student for such an honor.
“We would not have given a reverential view of only one student across the country as the student of the year on his own,” he said. “Frankly, there’s not a cover story on the average 21-year-old - or any 21-year-old. You really have to live for quite a long time to be a cover story.
“That doesn’t happen to most people in their 20s, unless they’re named Tiger Woods.”
Stephen Lacy, director of the School of Journalism, said story tips like the one about the Time magazine cover are troublesome - but common - to media.
“This is not unusual to find at newspapers,” he said. “There are people who call up and claim things. Most journalists have run into it. The initial reaction to any story that sounds almost too good to be true, is to be skeptical and assume it isn’t true.”
Lacy said the mistake is unfortunate for the newspaper, but could serve to teach a lesson to its staff.
“If we didn’t make mistakes, we wouldn’t learn anything,” he said. “Now those at The State News will learn from this, and call with questions.”
Sell said that’s what she and the newspaper staff intend to do. And she said the effort to correct this mistake should not be seen as an attack on Redmond.
“I would love to see an MSU student on the cover of Time magazine,” she said. “The kid, as far as we know, is a good student and has done positive things. We are not trying to break him down, this is not personal.
“We got our information wrong, and now we are trying to fix it.”
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