The Ringer has 19 people writing about the NBA

What stories do you think are missed by the current staff but would be written African Americans?

And really? For every player who said to a reporter. Did you play the game? The answer now is, yeah, I guess you’re right. I don’t know what it’s like to be a player so I can’t write about it.
If you don’t have to be 6 year NBA veteran to write a game piece or a column why do you need to be black to write about he NBA?

 

I strongly doubt the NYT, Politico and Post are negatively judging minority political beat writer candidates by the color of their skin. Hardly that. I'm guessing all of them would like to bolster their racial diversity in that regard.

 

Sounds like judging by the color of the skin to me....

 

Exactly. If you're a shit reporter, you won't get hired. Regardless of skin tone.

They are, according to several people I know in those newsrooms.

 

Did you sniff glue before writing that non-sequitur?

 

Politics being national, and those sites being national sites, I think it makes considerable sense to have a broad spectrum of experiences on the beat writing team.

One of the truths about journalism - well, two - is, first, a lot of folks who are lower on the socioeconomic scale don't get into it, especially on the coasts, because the pay isn't great but the cost of living is high, and young journalists, working the hours they do, generally need parents or other sources of wealth to float them along as they work their way up in the field. Second, it's very much a who-you-know kind of business, which means, often, news organizations have a lot of hive-minding going on. Similar circles of friends, similar circles of experiences, and so on. You don't get jobs because you're good so much as, you're good and someone knows you.

Journalism is, let's face it, more or less for the elite - you could be Tom Wolfe and I'm not sure you could work at any of those places without a college degree that most agree is often tangential to being good at the work - and, since certain groups of people are disproportionately underrepresented in that elite, it makes sense to recruit for it.

 

I don't see why it's a bad thing to want people from a broader range of backgrounds and perspectives writing on a topic.

 

This is very true about journalism. We’re a rich kid’s calling.

However, the people I’ve worked with who had a father who “worked with his hands” typically fought much harder for good stories than the children of the affluent. They also moved up faster because that was their only path to a decent salary and didn’t have parents supporting them.

 

It's not bad at all in a "in a perfect world . . . " sort of way.

The rub comes if/when you begin to compromise in other areas to achieve this objective.

 

I’ve seen many kinds from different backgrounds.

But I don’t think there’s much question that journalism has long done a poor job of recruiting people from blue collar backgrounds.

 

I think that's a stereotype that isn't accurate. I'm sure there are plenty of great reporters from low-income backgrounds, and plenty from middle-class and upper-income backgrounds. I've seen many examples of all of the above.

 

Oh, I think it used to be more true than it is now. And I think 15 years from now it’ll be more true.

But we’re in a pocket right now where a lot of millennial journalists living on the coasts - making junk money - are partially surviving on mom and dad’s financial help, or family money from years back.

And our definition of rich can be tricky too. Rich is not the 1%. Upper middle class is rich when compared to the food debit card folks in America.