Diversity takes another hit in journalism

Last hired, first fired usually only happens at union shops. Everywhere else, it seems to be based on higher salaries and beats they feel they can do without.

 

You've touched on a point here that has always bothered me, that being all white guys are alike. We talk about diversity in terms of coming at stories from differing perspectives, but there is no acknowledgement that a white man raised on a farm in Nebraska has a different perspective than a Jewish guy from Brooklyn or the son of Detroit auto worker or a Southern California surfer dude or a Texas rancher or a Baptist from Alabama.

As I stated awhile back on another thread, we don't all look alike and we weren't all sent to the same private school to learn how to think like a white male.

 

LOL. Then :'(

 

That's a good point.

 

After going through everything on this thread, I'll keep it short.

The fact times are really bad should not be used as an excuse by any newspaper to jettison the goal of having a diverse newsroom.

The argument concerning the diversity of the readership vs. that of the staff makes sense on its face. But even if your readership is 100 percent white, having people who can properly relate to and explain the issues of everybody living within your readership area -- people who get the paper or don't -- remains important.

But the first point is my most important: Newspaper management and managers can't say: "Shit, things are bad right now; diversity is the least of our worries, so let's forget the whole thing."

Sorry, Mizzou: It shouldn't work that way.

 

This makes sense.

 

At my paper 30 percent of the staff was diverse. Thirty-percent of the cuts were minorities.

 

It's narrow-minded to say that smaller issues can't be looked at in the context of bigger issues. Yes, the business model is bad, but that's no reason to ignore diversity, or mileage rates, or bloggers' press box access, or any number of challenges.

 

I'm agnostic on affirmative action in general. I don't think most people in for open heart surgery go in thinking "hope they have a diverse staff that looks like our community." Newsrooms are an example of where a more diverse staff produces a better product. Diverse police departments I'd assume are better too. In another time, I think diversity was a concern, but this isn't just a bad cycle, more like journalistic Armageddon.

 

My biggest gripe with diversity hiring as a driving force is that the people doing it often are hypocrites. That is, they want diversity to begin right where their own asses end. Every job opening at their level and below, that's a candidate for diversity. But the promotion they themselves covet, and up the ladder where they want to go (used to anyway, when this business had a future), they get just as hacked off when criteria other than "merit" are used as the rank-and-filers get when their opportunities are lessened by imposed agendas.

Show me the newspaper EEs, MEs and SEs who applaud diversity when the jobs they had their eyes on go to folks who are, well, more diverse than them. If it's such an almighty important value, then maybe the current bosses should flip their keys to such candidates, get out of the way and practice what they pat themselves on the backs over.

 

Maybe a better title would have been: "Journalists take another hit in journalism."

Among the journalists losing their jobs are African-Americans, Caucasians, Hispanics, Asians ...

 

A-fucking-men