Do You Want To Be Like Jason?

When all else fails, the grammar police flash their badges and derail threads.

Either way, we need to see a repatriation of blacks into the field of journalism. There was once over 1000 black newspapers in this country prior to 1965, and the promise of intergration in the mainstream print and broadcast media has fallen short.

Rather than asking certain people to open up the door, we seriously need to reconstruct our own homes.

 

Glad to see we're back on topic and discussing the merits of each and every argument instead of the quality of the typing.

 

And that post did neither.

 

The problem with black newspapers primarily comes down to advertising dollars. I know a couple of journalists currently working for respectable black newpapers and magazines that have trouble securing enough advertising revenue to stay afloat. One of them, spurned by a diamond company, was given the rationale that black women don't buy diamonds.

But you're 100% right, there's a huge opportunity there. Nothing surprises me about BET.

 

Jemele I agree that programs to help out needy families and first-generation college students are important. Again, I contend that restricting the availability to black students is a double standard. Where's the uproar about the lack of hispanic journalists? Or Asian?

And I have to disagree with you on being Irish around the KKK.

Maybe you should check this book out:
http://www.toddtuckerbooks.com/html/notre_dame_vs__the_klan.html

Seriously, not just black people have had it bad in this country. I don't know, maybe that's the major sticking point here.

 

Why do you continue to dress up these scholarships up as restrictions? Are they elbowing some impoverished white male away from getting an education? Is there some black separatist movement I'm unaware of borne out of this that will exclude Hispanics and others you're suddenly "concerned" about?

 

Personally I think it's your insistence that blacks and other minorities can't have it as bad as you do, that somehow any assistance given to a woman or a racial minority hurts you.

Look around your newsroom, esp. the sports department, and tell me what you see. I'm willing to bet that most everybody looks the same. White males have an inherent leg up because they're the norm, because they've populated newsrooms for centuries, because they are the power brokers in this industry.

 

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Chick, Chee,

All I'm saying is that I think it's wrong to make any kind of decision based on a person's skin color.

Stop trying to put words in my mouth or recraft what I said, both of you.

Chick, when I look around my office I see my publisher and editor who are women. I see the city editor who is a woman. I see the news editor who is a woman. I see the assistant news editor who is a woman. I see the 80-percent female copy desk. I see our head of online and marketing is a woman. I see our head of advertising is a woman.

On my sports desk the SE is white, in his 30s. The college beat guy is Chinese (second generation). Our part-time sports copy editor (we share him with the main desk) is from Denmark. Then there's me, white male. Our female intern and the male intern we're about to fire because he sucks.

 

Plus Chick, I've got to say I was a little disappointed in that last post. In the short few months I've posted and lurked here I always thought you had something pretty levelheaded to say. That felt like a cheap shot.

I'm willing to let it slide because you don't really know me. Just don't pigeon hole me, think about what I have to say. Let it sink in a little before you fire back. S'all I ask.

 

I'm not putting words in your mouth. You make passing references saying "where's the white boy scholarship?" as if white males are somehow being excluded in the industry. If so, where?


What is it about some of you guys who blanket individual success stories as the standard rather than the anamolies they truly are when viewing the aggregate sum of who is who in the industry?

 

Yep. And yours was even more insightful

OK. My two cents. Like most of you, I was baffled as to why the AP put this out over the wire. Whether or not it was budgeted as a sidebar to the Spike Lee piece, some editor clearly should have taken a closer look at it and either held it, or asked for a serious rewrite. The problems within the text are too many to mention.

I'm going to stay away from the whole entitlement debate and comparison between upbringings for different races, but I do have a problem with the notion promoted in the column concerning the ability to relate better to athletes because of the color of your skin or your athletic background or your gender.

At the Poynter sports summit last month I brought this up. More reporters could do a better job understanding and relating to the African-American community, or the Hispanic, Asian, Arabic and Jewish communities, if they were simply willing to go into these communities more and open their eyes and ears. We as sports reporters do this a little more often by design when we cover games in some of these out-of-the-way towns and then go back for practices and other interviews, at least those of us who prefer to set aside the phone for the face-to-face interviews.

I've been in this business 13 years, but even in my first year I remember how it irked me to hear of a specific writer being told to cover all of the games in a certain part of town because he'd fit in better or be more comfortable around the team. I always looked at it as an opportunity to prove that line of thinking to be asinine, so I'd intentionally choose that game. And I found that if I treated the players and coaches no different than I would the high-priced private school on the other side of town, spoke to them like people and was honest and sincere, there was no issue.

Learning how to be a good reporter, a good observer and a good writer should have nothing to do with your skin color or your last name. And like someone said earlier on this thread, the best learning environment is at the smaller papers where you have to go out there and get your feet wet in order to survive.

Sorry friend of a friend if that just happened to be relevant.