diversity?!?

The bright side -- lots of cake.

 

I have to say, this is probably the best thread I have read on this board on the subject of diversity in the newsroom. Definitely the most civil. Nicely done, all the way around.

DanOregon's summation in particular was very well done.

The problem is not the lack of opportunities for employment for diversity candidates. One problem is the lack of opportunity at higher levels. The larger issue is the lack of strong candidates.

I've been seeing this since my college days, when my paper was practically begging minorities on campus to join the staff. Other than the Black Action Society offering to cover its own meetings for us, and trying to lock out any reporter already on staff, it went nowhere.

I have heard far too many editors bemoaning the lack of diversity in the pool of candidates when they advertise an opening. What is the answer? Really, how do we go about getting talented young people interested.

Because the alternative is more diversity hires that put people in positions they are not ready for or lack the ability to handle. And that is unfair to them and the well-qualified non-minorities who applied and were shot down.

 

The key words there, Out, are TALENTED YOUNG PEOPLE. Not talented black people or talented brown people or talented purple polkadotted people.

Talented people. Period.

Unfortunately, the journalism business resembles a toilet, i.e. the shit rises to the top. The inherent piss-poor management that occupies the upper echelons of most papers wants "diversity," but instead of hiring the most qualified person regardless of skin color or ethnic background, they take the path of least resistance and head down the quota path.

It's horrific, reactive management, the kind of management that runs your company into the ground. Not that this is the root cause of journalism's ills; those were artfully and accurately chronicled by Joe and Fish earlier in this thread.

But the poor management that takes such a tact can't help. It's a symptom of a larger problem.

Ergo, you get Out's "alternative," which is SOP at most, if not all, papers of consequence, examples of which could fill a good-sized book.

And as Joe W. astutely put it earlier in this thread, the next manager who gives up his position for "someone of color" will be the first.

 

I woke up one morning after an intimate night with John Daniels seeing "purple polkadotted people." I digress, though.

 

You can thank the board's Board of Incendieries for that, as they steered clear of this thread, en masse.

 

The demographics of the circulation area might be majority-white, but I'd wager money that that's because the circulation areas have been neatly drawn to incorporate majority-white sections of town/county. And if you've ever read a book called "Confederacy of Silence," set in Greenwood, Miss., you'll know where I get that idea from. Oddly, that paper had a black reporter on staff in 1989, though that didn't stop the steady diet of complaints about "running too many photos of n------."

Someone mentioned why being a minority had anything to do with not wanting to work in journalism. We're not the only industry facing pressure to diversify. If you're a young black man or woman with a college degree, you're in pretty high demand throughout the business world. Of course, we're not societally allowed to say that that's because a significant portion of the young black population doesn't pursue college degrees, so we're sort of cut off at the knees.

And yes, I know a significant portion of the white population doesn't either, but again, there are a lot more whites than blacks.

There's a lot of societal elements to it. So many of the places on that list are places that minorities go to college specifically to escape. They see a lot of people who didn't, and they don't want to be like that. Why would they ever go back? And as a rule, urban areas tend to have higher concentrations of minorities, so they naturally are drawn to those.

It reminds me of the University of Georgia's continuing, and largely unsuccessful, efforts to diversify its student body. No one was ever willing to talk about the fact that (a) Georgia's in the middle of nowhere, effectively and (b) an hour and a half down the road are four black colleges, including probably the top black male college in the country, not to mention Georgia State, which has the highest minority population of any non-historically black college in the country.

Of course, these ARE just excuses...not solutions. If I knew the solutions, I'd be making a lot more money than I am now.

 

One thing I forgot (sorry...):

Someone said that Paris Hilton news is what people DO want. The link is in my work e-mail, where I won't be for two days, but our ME sent us a piece that basically says that what people demand hasn't really changed since the mid-80s, and celebrity gossip remains near the bottom of the list, demanded by less than 20 percent of the readership. Just because it's on CNN doesn't mean that's what people want to see.

 

I would bet a bundle that what people say they want to read vs. what people actually read is quite different.

 

Would that be JACK Daniels, Fish?

Perhaps things were a bit more intimate than you're letting on.

 

Scent of a Woman, 1992:

Frank Slade: I want it wall to wall with John Daniels.
Charlie Simms: Don't you mean Jack Daniels?
Frank Slade: He may be Jack to you son, but when you've known him as long as I have... that's a joke.