Minority sports reporters

I have a feeling this will start a fire here but I'm mentioning it anyway because it's a serious topic.

Last week, I wrote a feature on a Chinese tennis player. He's a senior now and he's been a stud for a while. I interviewed him regularly during his career, but this was my first story on him. He was always nice and professional, but our black photographer, who met him for the first time, seemed to instantly bond with him. They chatted for a while and then upon departure, had a "see ya later, bro" type of handshake. I just had the regular handshake despite knowing him for several years.

I talked to the photographer about this today and he said the fact they are both minorities absolutely had something to do with the camaraderie, even though they were different minority ethnicities.

Even though I'm white, I'm all for diversity. Look around you. Go to any sports journalists gathering and people are as white as the Miami Heat stands in a playoff game. We're missing the boat here. There are many industries with diversity problems, but ours, especially in sports, may have the biggest problem of all. Somewhere along the line, we dropped the ball when it comes to minority recruitment.

 

Or maybe the kid just liked getting his photo taken.

 

??? ??? Is this post serious or was this just to get a reaction?

 

This is FAR from true.

 

Both. After what I witnessed, I wanted to see what others thought.

 

Uh, no. I disagree. We'll leave it right there.

 

Ding! Ding! .... Is it much better than it used to be and has the diversity pool evolved over time -- yes -- however -- are the majority of sports departments still primarily white men -- yes.

The bigger papers and the larger sports-concentrated organizations (TV stations/PR agencies, etc.) seem to be targeting minorities and appear to be focusing on recruitment of minorities. But, when the scope of the issue changes to a 20K-circ paper just in need of a body to get the high school football section out, if a minority doesn't apply, I don't believe many of those 20K-circ SEs are out "hunting" for the diversity hire.

 

Or maybe the photographer is a better interviewer...

 

sxy - can you please tell me why, when a paper puts an ad in the paper for 'a body to get the high school fb section out' should they go beyond the pile of queries they receive from the ad? should they discriminate against the folks who actually applied for the job(s) by reading the paper? are you saying minorities don't read the paper?

what are you attempting to imply? it's not like people sign queries tommy johnson, a white guy.

 

Thomas,

I think sxy is pretty clearly saying that some companies make a concerted effort to include minorities in the hiring process while others throw up their hands and say that these are the only applicants so we'll have to go with one of these.

Are you saying that job searches should be limited solely to the people who send in their resume in response to an ad? You wouldn't call an editor at another paper, a j-school dean or a promising kid at another paper to try to sweeten the pool?

 

I'm almost embarassed to say this, but we've had several openings lately. We've received a decent pool of candidates, but usually lacking in minorities (race) and women.
I noticed this, but honestly didn't care. We wanted the best person for the job. I think that's the mentality most places.
While hiring a minority was/is important, if the skills aren't there, no effin way. That just means more work for the rest of the staff.