Newspapers faulted for sports hirings

They recognized a failing profession faster than whitey maybe?

 

I'm not saying its okay for sports departments to discriminate or that diversity is a bad thing, what I am saying is that sports is typically a night gig and once women have families, sports offers a less preferable schedule to other newspaper jobs.

How many people, white, male or other, would put up with the schedule or pay, if they didn't love sports and had other options?

 

why the use of that language?

I think the death of the black newspaper industry in the name of intergration had more to do with it than blaming anyone in particular.

 

I don't mind that the ivory-tower types fill their days gathering marginally useful statistics to publish marginally useless reports, but give me a break with the F and C grades on gender and race diversity.

The country has 12% black population. Given that black individuals as a demographic choose to pursue higher education far less frequently than whites, I'd say 5% black men in the industry isn't too far off target to what would be expected in a color-blind study. This isn't to say that there aren't a number of closet racists in high places, but it isn't the bleak, attention-grabbing sentiment from the article either.

Maybe the study goes into details of what percentage of women aspire to be sports-writers compared with men. And like Armchair said, and what always runs through my mind when i see statistics posted like these: what is an acceptable number?

Barring few exceptions, I believe we've come far enough in this country that if you are talented, work hard, and can do the job, you will rise to the top no matter what you look like. (See Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton) Bullshit "grades" on studies like these only elicit guilt, outrage and, given the leaning of most university-types, tenure.

 

Uh....I think your point about fewer minorities going to college than whites has ALWAYS been the case, YET there were more black sportswriters in the industry 40 years ago than there are now as minorities attending and completing college is at an all time high.

It has little to do with minority recruitment programs since most college educated blacks who are employed did NOT, I'll repeat, did NOT need a recruitment program to gain their employment.

It's obvious that there are other factors which play a bigger role.

 

40 years ago, journalism was far more of a craft than a profession, and writers of both tints had a good shot at getting hired even without a college education.

And I would go back at least a decade farther than you have to trace the free-fall of the black newspaper.

 

The Lapchick Foundation is the sports world's ambulance chasers.

They create controversy with regards to diversity where there is none. They consistently put out these platitudes about "racism" in hiring, but never look at the underlying reasons ... most of which have been covered here.

Could the fact that only 11% of sportswriters are women come down to the fact that not as many women are interested in sports as men (in addition to the nighttime hours of the job). That could also explain why men's participation numbers are higher at the high school level than women's, but the Lapchick Foundation will still run around claiming discrimination.

 

Given the current state of journalism today, I'm gonna say it.

Yo, Lapchick, shut the fuck up.

 

I don't like these studies. I can't remember the last time we had a female applicant, or a minority candidate for that matter.

At the paper I used to work for, we hired a female once. Not because she was female, but because she was the best candidate for the job.

I don't give a flip what gender or color you are. If a white man is more qualified that a Hispanic female, I'm hiring the man, and vice versa.

 

I don't think people should be comfortable seeing those numbers in light of the diverse make of the people many of these writers are covering. 

Criticize the grading system or the talk of discrimination (if there is any) on that report.  But the numbers are what they are, and lets not act like it's something we should be satisfied with. 

 

Fine, I'll do it.

The grading system is crap, and the only discrimination that happens in hiring in sports journalism is the open preferences FOR minorities and females in an effort to get the numbers up.

In years of following sports journalism and being a sports journalist, one thing that's pretty certain is that if a minority or female can string a sentence together, they'll probably be in line for a major metro job.

 

Race will stop being an issue in this country ... once we stop making it an issue.