Coming soon,The Ralph Wiley Rule for sports journalism hiring?

That's true of any young journalist when you are comparing him or her to someone with 25 years experience. Choosing someone because he or she has a lot a potential is smart hiring. Choosing someone based on skin color is not.

 

She was (assume still is) in the planning meeting every day she works. I agree that is a big impact. After discussing local stories and page placement we always told her to choose the best of the rest (state, region, national, international) to fill the rest of the news hole. She had a lot of responsibility.

 

What Songbird was saying is that by introducing talented minorities into the field early, by giving them those entry-level positions, you are allowing them to begin careers in which they may end up in position to have a greater impact five, 10 or 20 years down the road.

It's easy to discuss how few minority managers there are, but that discussion must start with how few minority entry-level employees there are.

 

Like I said before, it was the best of both worlds. Potential and black skin won the day, and was going to win the day. My newsroom needed a more equal representation of skin colors (there wasn't a gender issue) and I was going to make sure that representation became a reality.

Was I going to hire a black kid with bad clips and really not that much potential? No way in hell. Journalism talent trumps everything. But if I had a choice between white and black talent, at that point in Trentonian time, I was taking black talent till things evened up somewhat. That might bother some, but it doesn't bother me.

What I heard for 4 years from our black columnist is that the Trentonian newsroom was woefully staffed when it came to black people. He and I butted heads over many things, but on that issue we agreed. I had the power to make change, and I did.

 

Do these online check boxes only address race? That's just one component of diversity.

Advertising positions where they're sure to be seen by a class of non-white skinned people is a huge Pandora's box to me. Yes, there are outlets where the audience/membership is restricted and you know your ad will be seen by candidates of a minority race, but if you target one minority, aren't you discriminating if you do not also run the same ad on the job boards of every other minority as well?

 

Easy.

If I were a minority, I would find a way to sprinkle it into the cover letter. Any advantage to get the interview.

 

And why do the online check boxes specifically ask if I'm Hispanic?

 

The idea that we're debating this in an industry that might very well not exist in five years is funny. I really thought most newspaper executives had given up caring about such things.

I tend to disagree with "diversity" initiatives because they are so clumsy in creating winners and losers. In many cases (college admissions comes to mind), Asians are HUGE losers. They are the Jews of our time, facing quotas so a school can avoid becoming "too Asian."

Hispanics are often huge winners. Why a recent immigrant from Mexico is given preference over, say, recent immigrant from Pakistan is something I have never had adequately explained to me. And the hilarious thing is that anyone with a Latin-sounding last name is free to claim "Hispanic" heritage and all the benefits therein. My good friend's grandfather was from Spain and blessed her with a fantastic last name. Diversity City! Newspaper editors don't give a shit. They can get to check the right box and pass it on their boss and get a year-end bonus for meeting their "goals."

It's a fantastic scam. And if you're on the winning side of it, wouldn't you defend it with all your might, too?

 

I know a guy, whose name is quite familiar on this board, who used to send out cover letters that included a line saying, "I am a minority."

 

When I was an ME at a 5-day daily (8,000) about 20 years ago, we had a 6-person newsroom staff (all white).

Over my 30-month tenure there I had to fill three vacancies, and I made a somewhat concerted effort to diversify the staff. Our readership area was approximately 25-30% non-white and I thought it would be good if we had at least some representation. (It was not uncommon for us to get fiery complaints about stories with the punch line, "what do you expect from a lily white paper?" I wanted to defuse that weapon.)

Each time I got a shitload of resumes and a handful of (what I suspected) were minority applicants. I narrowed it down to the 'finalists,' but in almost every case, if they were even remotely qualified and competent, they had way better options than our one-horse paper.

Most of them had internship offers which would have paid them WAY more than what we were offering. I couldn't seriously recommend to them it would be a great idea for their career to spend a year working in Podunkville 60 hours a week for 60% of what they could make in an internship in The Big City.

One came down and we had lunch and laughed about it. I said, "the job's yours if you want it," but he kinda chuckled and said, "what would you do?"

I said, "Uhmmm, well, I gotta plead the fifth. It's my job to tell you to take it, but we gotta be serious here."

So he took another job (actually a full-time gig for 50% more than we offered). I ended up hiring about the sixth person I called.


Bottom line: Shit wages in the industry guarantee good candidates, regardless of race, will go elsewhere.

 

I keep thinking about Richard E. Lapchick's suggestion and I can't help but feeling that there are many who would find a way around it the way the NFL has seemingly done the Rooney Rule.

 

Screw the quota nonsense. Hire the best person you can within your budget. Pretty sound rule for ANY business.