Columnist opening in Orlando

No, you are equating having a different viewpoint with good writing. I hope you don't think papers should strictly settle on those terms. You don't really think at the end of the day, people want to see good writing, as they want to eat a good meal, drink a good beer, drive in a reliable car....?

 

Tell me the definition of good writing.

 

To paraphrase Potter Stewart, I can't precisely define it, but I know it when I see it. Plenty of white folks can see it in Toni Morrison or James Baldwin. Plenty of black folks can see it in Tom Wolfe or Gay Talese. There is objectively good writing, and knowing that when you see it, not knowing the gender or race or religion or whatever when you see it, is more important at the end of the day.

 

If there were objectively good writing, then it would seem that all the professional writers here would be able to come to an agreement on T.J. Simers, Jason Whitlock, Rick Reilly, Steve Rushin and Bill Simmons. And yet they don't. I don't mean to oversimplify it, but I guess I am. What is good to me might not be good to you. I've read so-called classics that I didn't enjoy and read what could not be classified as high literature that kept me riveted. If everyone enjoyed the "best" kind of writing, then I would go along with your proposal on how to run things. It simply isn't the case, therefore if I were running a newspaper or similar entity, I would try to appeal to diverse viewpoints in order to reach as many people as possible.

 

In other words, not by how they write, but who they are. Pretty sad policy for a word business to not have the actual words count.

 

If by other words you mean other words that I neither wrote nor implied, then OK. I don't see where you are getting that a different viewpoint is automatically inferior writing.

 

It isn't intrinsically so, and a different viewpoint is a darn good tiebreaker on a close call. But that different viewpoint has to have some chops, it isn't intrinsically better than other options.

 

Oh...ranting I will go... (Just read my post and figured I should start with a warning. I'm on a ranting run lately)

I personally like the Arsenio Hall reference. Then again, I can never get past how for one of his final shows, he gave an hour to a bigot. That would be Louis Farrakhan. I remember trying to watch, because previously I had only heard snippets and read pieces of what Farrakhan had to say.

Somewhere in his attempts to place a very large portion of the blame for slavery in the United States on Jewish people, I just couldn't stomach it any more, so I changed the channel. It just wasn't worth the aggravation any more. One of my favorite moments in television came the next night when John Voigt called Arsenio out about it and reminded him that many Jewish people marched with Martin Luther King and supported the civil rights movement.

But I digress. Bomani, you say you aren't, but you sure do seem to be trying to paint critics of Jamele Hill as racists.

Are there people who don't like her because she's black? I'm sure there are. Are there people on this board who see every woman in the business as a diversity hire? Unfortunately, yes, there are.

But I think a lot of it came from the incident with the blog. I've always prided myself on my professionalism and to this day I am deeply embarrassed about the one thing I wrote that I now find particularly unprofessional, though I was just a kid writing for my college newspaper at the time.

When I see others not only doing something unprofessional, but seeming to benefit from it, that bothers me and I think it bothers others as well. I'm not saying Jamele Hill deserves all this bullshit. She doesn't. I hope she doesn't read this board because some of what is said about her is truly unfair.

But to say she only draws negative comments because she is a black woman is every bit as unfair to the people expressing those opinions. There is also a large contingent on this board that is far too ready to pull racism and sexism into the discussion any time something negative is said about diversity hires or a particular minority or woman draws criticism.

 

Bomani, your post was whack because Arsenio once had Louis Farrakhan as a guest for the whole hour.

So which is it? You say outright that you think some people on this very board don't like her because she is black and she is a woman. But for Bomani to imply the same thing is somehow wrong? He didn't say "only."

 

Who does the hiring now for Page 2 anyway?

 

I think I'll post. I was hesitant because this post will piss off most people, including people I agree with most of the time, but what the hell. Why not?

1) This agenda-driven stuff only serves to illustrate how unprofessional and out of touch too many people in the journalism world are. It's frustrating enough when alleged professionals are too ignorant/immature/dense to keep their personal bullshit out of the coverage, but it's even worse when it's used to justify hiring. Read into that what you will.

2) The person mentioned in this thread used to write columns for another newspaper that I used to read. Those columns were flat-out terrible. Had I the time or the inclination, I'd find them, post them and ridicule them.

3) I don't see where the Orlando Sentinel is that fabulous of a newspaper. I think too many people believe that because it looks good and puts emphasis on looking good, then it must be good.

4) The idea that people being hired/promoted/elected simply on personality/charm/magnetism justifies doing that across the board is simply asinine. There are a lot of major problems in this nation and its workplaces (not just newspapers) right now, and they won't be solved by Joe Jackass chatting at the watercooler. People can blather all they want about skills being too hard to measure, etc. There's a word for those people: Gutless. It's a chickenshit way to do things.

The organization I'm participating in a project with right now has very tangible and strict standards. Failure to adhere to them leads to penalties -- no questions asked. Is this a good way to run things? Maybe not, but it eliminates a ton of the subjective bullshit that pervades too many places right now.

In short, most of us are born with brains, spines and guts. They're there for a reason.

 

The people who hire knew about it.