New Leader of AP Sports Editors Seeks Candidates

So if I am reading this correctly, if a sports department have no people of color... they have an opening and they want to make a diverse hire ... they are discriminating against white males?
Ok if you take that a courtroom, I would think a judge would say the hiring patterns don't bare out in this charge of discrimination.

 

Fran

I can easily counter that argument by saying how do we know the currently employed staff were not the best qualified candidates for the jobs they got too.

What is subjective is who is the best qualified candidate. What is not subjective is the hiring patterns of these newsrooms. You can pull the numbers through the EEOC if we wanted to.

I love how people on this board always tries to find excuses around this subject when you have objective information of companies historic hiring practices.

I would rather I see people say this industry has done a piss poor job with diversity (whether you believe it or not) but today's environment its much harder to attempt to achieve those goals.

If someone want to file a class action complaint to the EEOC about hiring patters in America's sports departments, I am sure the plaintiff would have a good chance to win the case based on objective data.

 

what exactly is our goal when we say "we want to increase diversity on our staff"? is it to have a staff that, when broken down by race/age/gender/etc., reflects the same percentages of each that we find in society? i think not. i think the goal is much more realistic than that -- the goal is to make getting a job fair for everyone, no matter race/age/gender/etc.

when a boss says to the hiring folks "go increase diversity," the boss seems to almost always be suggesting "go hire anybody but a white man." that idea works exactly opposite of the goal i previously stated -- make getting a job fair for everyone.

so, is the hiring process at your paper fair for everyone? if not, how do you know? even if your staff is 90 percent white men, that doesn't necessarily mean the person who hired them was biased. it could mean that, but it's not a certainty. did minorities/other genders have a fair chance in each hiring process? if not, how do you fix it to make sure they have a fair chance in the future? you don't fix it by setting out with a plan that is unfair to any one group. doing so over and over will lead to a problem with that group -- in this case, it's the majority group.

i think everyone now understands the need for diversity, so, while the numbers remain ugly, they're numbers, they might not reflect the reality, which COULD be that hiring practices ARE FAIR for everyone. i'm much more interested in the fairness question than the numbers. if fairness is a problem, it's a problem in a dwindling number of places, and we should figure out where that is happening and fix that problem.

i hate the numbers, hate what they suggest about us. i want to change them badly, but not if it means treating a group unfairly. fairness trumps all.

 

Burgers, I applaud that you acknowledge a change needs to be made.

So I will take this across all industries and this nation's history.. So fairness should start today, July 5, 2011. This would erase all of the previous years of unfair treatment of minorities in every industry. Fairness only comes into play now that white men are targeted as not getting a fair shot today. Just think about that for a minute.

If you don't think that a staff is 90 percent white male don't necessarily means they are not biased, then I need to take that new math. You take those figures to the EEOC and they will laugh at you. That is totally utopian to believe that. Oh the word would be "preferred" than biased.

We need to find real answers. Today, our newsrooms and a lot of industries does not reflect the diverse communities we serve.

 

We sure aren't talking much about this part of his comments:

"It is not only the right thing to do, it’s the vital thing to do. It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s the urgent thing to do. It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s key to our survival. . . ."

Do you think it's key to our survival? The more I think about it, the more I agree.

 

If there's an opening, and there are ten candidates, and one's a minority, and he (or she) is the best qualifed, he sure as hell should get the job.

What if the minority is the second-best candidate? Or the third-best, based on cold evaluation? Who should get the job?
Where should the lines be drawn?

 

Something's broken.

 

Again this is a subjective call. You need to make the best decision for the paper and your readership. If getting a diverse voice who has good clips and brings a different type of voice would serve your readers (the people who buy your publication) well.

Again, hiring is so subjective.

The problem quite simply this industry has is that it has dug such a big hole for not hiring diverse talent, that some of these same managers are put in your scenario of having 10 applications and the one minority gets hired because of the hiring patterns they had before. Have you ever considered that?

 

I think this stuff about "the best candidate" is a bunch of crock. Interview 10 white male candidates and it's only a 50-50 chance that the person hired really was the best candidate. That's just because the entire process is so subjective.

As hiring managers, we really cannot say, with certainty, who was the best candidate. We can talk about which candidate impressed us the most, and did the best job in the interviews, but that doesn't mean he was the best man (or woman) for the job. Candidate No. 2 might have simply interviewed poorly.

At the end of the day, people hire who they want to hire.

 

How many minutes did you say you've been in the business?

 

15,678,000. You can do the math from there.

 

Hire whomever you consider to be the best qualified candidate. Yes, I realize that is a subjective judgment.

I've seen minority candidates hired and then marginalized..... "he/she's only here because he/she's a black/woman". I've also been told I was the most qualified candidate for a job, but a hireup demanded they hire a minority (in that case, female). Did not sit well.