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

i can't speak for anyone else, but i agree that it's a problem, i tend to fully disagree, however, on your suggested ways to fix it. big difference there pe.

 

yup, a ton of white guys out there are idiots, and there are (percentage wise) just as many idiots who are minorities or female. they don't deserve jobs any more than the white guy. once again, that's why the best hire for the job works every time.

 

Now more than ever? Grow up.

 

Bomber,
Can you read? Did you even see, let alone grasp, any of the unbelievably grotesque numbers as far as percentages of white men currently in the industry, and in sports editor and columnist positions?

You're the one who needs to grow up.

 

I look at it this way. I was one of two minority's on staff at my college newspaper. There was one other guy who wrote stories for me, but he also interned at the local major metro daily and wasn't a full-timer on my staff.
He now works for ESPN, simply put, because he was damn good. I have my own modest-sized shop and have noticed that the same number of minorities I worked with in college is around the average I deal with today.
The point? You can't make minority hires if there aren't any out there. You can't promote diversity when you just don't have enough candidates to make it work.

 

We have a lot of interns come through, and I try to give the females and minorities a leg up when I can.

I took our female intern to lunch a couple of weeks ago. She told me baseball is her best sport. I wasn't "quizzing" her by any means, but I happended to bring up Bob Gibson in conversation because of a comment he'd made about the steroid scandal. She didn't know who he was. Fine. A week later, one of our male interns was logging a baseball game, writing down 6-3, F8, etc. She asked him what the numbers meant.

Unfortunately, this is rather common for the young women I see. At that point, I'm usually pleasant but no longer looking to give a leg up, because I only want to help the ones who are qualified.

I have bent over backwards to help a few young men who are minorities-- I even shot a tape and arranged for studio time for one of them-- and I'm proud to say he's working as a sports anchor/reporter in a small market, and I believe the other is on his way.

I guess my point is, if we all tried to help ONE QUALIFIED minority or female candidate per year, imagine how we'd improve the applicant pool. But I think the thing you have to be careful of is not to invest in just anybody. The last thing you want to do is put a lot of energy into an unqualified person.

I'm going off on a bit of a tangent here..... but no woman ever helped me along the way. Not one. For whatever reason-- cattiness? pre-judgement? fear? I really wish more established women would fight those feelings and give other young women a lift.

----------------

Sorry for the tangents, but now that I've told you how unqualified our female intern pool tends to be, I've got to tell this story.

A few years ago, at a different place, my (black) male producer and I were asked by a white male intern, a self-professed sports-nut, if the home team was winning, did they play the bottom on the 9th? My producer shot me a look, then turned to the guy with a straight face and said, "Yes they do, for statistical purposes." ;D

 

Just a random observation here, but isn't funny how everyone is up in arms over a handful of white males allegedly being discriminated against when minorities have been blatantly discriminated against for decades while their complaints fell on deaf ears? Come on people, we're talking about 12 percent of our industry being minority. That's minuscule. I'm a black reporter covering the top sports beat at my paper, and I'm not one of those people saying you should just slot jobs for minorities willy nilly. I think I got where I am because I have busted my ass for the past 10 years. If I couldn't hack it, I would humiliated on a daily basis. But seriously, the white men making this argument here need to realize that the numbers just aren't on your side.

That's all I'm saying.

The above bolded portion might be the most productive comment I've read on this thread to nowhere. If we could have a productive conversation about this and stop having everyone retreat into their trenches, maybe something good could come of this. I thought journalists were open-minded and supported the sharing of ideas. Now I'm not so sure. We really should be embarrassed.

 

Sports editors out there raise your hands if you're getting flooded with applications from minorities and females when you have openings.


Bottom line: This industry is 90 white males not because we refuse to hire minorities and women - there just isn't this huge pool of qualified minority applicants.


One of our design interns - female - just told me that she's got a job in St. Louis designing sports. Straight out of college. I'd describe her work here as pedestrian. You can't tell me there's not a more qualified designer who has cut their teeth at a mid-sized paper.

 

Can YOU read, jerkoff? I'm not commenting on the report. I'm commenting on Lugnuts' hyperbole or naivete -- I'm not sure which. We're supposed to be wordsmiths. We should be expected to think before using them.

Now more than ever?

So you want to tell me it's easier for a white male to get a job in this business today than it was in 1920? Or 1930? Or 1960? Or 1980? Please.

 

Going out on a limb, which will likely snap at any moment and dump me onto the ground.

What is the percentage of minorities in all newspaper departments? I'm guessing it's pretty low for everybody, not just sports. Maybe that's because a lot of minorities who busted their ass to get through college don't have the luxury of spending a few years making 20k while working 60 hr/week in Shitkicker, Miss., or Dead Cactus, N.M. Maybe they had to earn real money in the summers, instead of living in a cardboard box so they could afford that big metro internship.

 

I just wanted to chime in and applaud Luggie's points on this topic.

And I had an interesting situation during a job hunt last year: they wanted a female candidate to balance out an all-male staff. I had the qualifications and experience, but the boss chose the buxom collegiate cheerleader with zero experience. I got the impression that if they had to hire a woman, they were going to make the best of it.