For all the oppressed white males out there....

If you are considering it when making your hires, you are basing the hires at least partially on those numbers. And arguments exactly like yours were and still are used as excuses to unfairly exclude women from covering men's sports.

 

I edited your post to make it more clear.

Hope you don't mind.

 

Gotta say, Luggie, he's got you there.

 

Generally, yes, we have a moral obligation to consider the participants in the sports we cover and make sure we have good representation among the people who cover them. What "good representation" is -- that's up for debate. But it's a factor to consider, yes. The same principles apply to minorities and coaching, for example.

What we do not want is this:

A group made up overwhelmingly of white men writing about a group made up overwhelmingly of minority athletes.

It smacks of something really bad.

 

I was trying to avoid posting on this thread again because it just seems to keep going round and round forever, but some of the recent posts are just bugging the shit out of me. Shot, you asked about percentages of the population. White males are roughly 30 percent of the U.S. pop according to the most recent census figures I could find, yet they hold about 85 percent of the jobs in print sports journalism, according to that article. Does that seem out of balance to you? It does to me. I don't know what the numbers are for minorities or women. If you want to make those comparisons perhaps you should look them up yourself instead of putting the question out there and then complaining that no one's answering it.

As for the contention from outofplace and others that white males have all sorts of backgrounds and perspectives, of course that's true. No one is saying differently. The point is that sports departments have a legitimate interest in having as wide an array of backgrounds and perspectives as is reasonably possible, and they can't do that if such an overwhelmingly high percentage of the jobs are held by any one group. I wouldn't want to see 85 percent of the jobs held by black men, Jewish women, 55-year-olds, 25-year-olds, or any other single demographic. As Luggie said, sports departments should be working toward balance. If you think an acceptable balance can be attained by having white men dominate the field to the extent they do now, well, I just think you're wrong, and I think most reasonable people would agree.

Back to Shot. You asked what different stories would be gained by having a more diverse staff, which is an unanswerable question. How can anyone know what stories they're missing? If they did, they wouldn't miss them, would they? The point is that having a diverse staff would have benefits both tangible and intangible. I once worked at a place where we ran a headline that offended some of our black readers, and the sports editor said that if there had been just one black person on the desk that night, the headline probably never would have gotten into the paper. That's one example of how diversity could have been a benefit. But there are other, less measurable ways as well. One of the things we do is document and comment upon racial and gender inequalities in sports. How much credibility would a newspaper or mag have if it didn't practice what it preached? How can a columnist decry the lack of black head coaches in college football if there are no black faces on his own staff?

We can debate the methods used to achieve diversity or how to measure it, but some of what I've read here lately seems suggest that the problem is overblown, or that there really isn't one at all, and I find that disheartening. End of rant.

 

LOL.

You are writing for your readers.

Not the athletes.

 

If all we cared about was exactly what readers wanted-- with no regard for 'the right thing to do'-- newspapers would have porn on the front pages or be something like Fox News Channel.

 

Thanks a lot, Luggie. Your post made me picture Bill O'Reilly naked.

 

Hole:

Question for you.

You have stated there aren't enough qualified minority candidates.

Why do you think that is?

 

And, why is building a staff with ethnicity/gender percentages equal to the players on the court/field 'the right thing to do' ... as opposed to building a staff based on ethnicity/gender percentages of your readership?

Also, I think fewer women are represented looking at things your way instead of mine, for whatever that's worth.

 

It seems as if people want to keep talking about why its the right thing to do to diversify, which makes great sense, but they tend to skirt the issue on making jobs openings available only to one race, or to what extent they are willling to sometimes ignore differences in qualifications and ability in order to fill whatever racial profile they are seeking.

To me, that is the center of the issue.

 

Folks, folks, I NEVER said 'equal to' or 'quota.'  Geez!  I said it's a factor to consider-- among many factors.

Does the NFL want a percentage of coaches 'equal to' the percentage of minority players?  NO.  Is the NFL trying to encourage more diversity in the coaching ranks?  Yes.  Why is the NFL doing that?  Because it's the right thing to do, espcially given the percentage of minorities in the game.

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AGAIN.  I ask anyone here... JME... ANYONE...

If you claim there aren't many qualified minority candidates...

WHY do you think that is?