Minority sports reporters

Perhaps, but is perspective more important than the gathering and reporting of the news? Sorry, but no, it isn't.

As I keep saying on these threads.... if it's close, I understand hiring the minority candidate every time. And if we're only talking sports jobs, that includes women because there are so few in sports journalism.

But if the white male is clearly the best person for the job and doesn't get it, if the qualifications aren't close, that's when I disagree with the choices being made.

And to Grizz and anybody else insisting the best person always gets the job and if they can't cut it they are gone, I wish that fantasyland you are living in would become reality.

I understand his point, saying the underqualified person won't last in the job. But it's hard to just get rid of people. And what if they are just struggling by doing a mediocre job? Sometimes it is a matter of degree. Candidate A will do a great job. Candidate B will do a mediocre job and maybe in 5 or 10 years they will be as good as Candiadate A, but they are younger or add to our diversity.

This just doesn't work in absolutes.

 

Sigh. I really do want to let this die, but that might be the single most ridiculous argument in this discussion. Jerry Porter replaced Tim Brown because football is a demanding physical activity and the body eventually wears out. A receiver at 45 can no longer do what one can do at 25. Are we saying the same is true of reporters? That a reporter at 45 can't do what a 25-year old can? What part of your brain is worn out at 45? I'd say I'm a far better reporter now than I was in my 20s because I know what the hell I'm doing. The sports analogy is a bad one because it's a physical activity while sports reporting is not.

As for your second point, again, I said there are exceptions. But that's what they are ... exceptions. The straight-out-of-college people who flourish on major beats are not common. And as for ``experience is worthless if the other person is flat-out better,'' in most instances, experience is how one gets flat-out better.

And yeah, you can put a rookie in the lineup right away, but most of the time, he'll struggle until he figures out what's going on. And many of them never do. A few are great right away, but they are few.

 

Yes, Heinekin Man and Ace, there are diverse candidates who can offer unique perspective.
But in lots of instances these candidates are hired, then can't hack it in the day-to-day grind and they wind up being loathed by the copy deskers and the eds.
Those folks, and several I've seen don't even want to do any work, are way harder to get rid of than the underachieving white male.
So, as I said, they wind up being basterdized by the other staffers.
And they lend a negative light on the prospect of "diversity hires"
This is why I am so opposed to equal opportunity and quotas.
But, to answer you all's proposition, the non-white candidate can often offer unique perspective.
And so could a lot of bush-beating, motivated white staffers I've worked with.
There's lots of writers at small to mid-market papers who love football, basketball and basketball if you poll them - but have developed award-winning copy on the off-beat sports.

 

Great, I wake up and see yet a whole bunch of new arguments for why the white male is soooooooo superior. The generalizations here are grosser than in the Duke lacrosse thread: The white male reporter with experience is a stud who can handle anything great. The minority was hired because she was a minority woman -- and no other reason.

That's baloney. The level of talent and competence in the minority journalist pool is very high. Just from reading this thead, it sounds like people are saying that most white male reporter automatically could do better than most minority reporter hired.

 

Maybe some of those stories do exist already. But what chickwriter is saying isn't necessarily wrong. If the community is diverse, what's wrong with reaching out into that community and showing its diversity on the pages of our papers?
Gannett might have a staff to ethnicity stories but not all small papers have those kinds of resources. And with all the other responsibilities reporters have, it can be tough to focus on features and the like.

 

So bad hires are all minorities? :

Hey, some of the least talented, most loathsome people I ever worked with were white males. And I'm not prejudiced. Some of my best friends are white.

 

That seems to be the hunch with some people around here. Pisses me off.

I'm drawing two conclusions:
1. Some people here really are that bigoted.
2. Some people here aren't as good as they say they are and feel threatened a better minority candidate is pushing them out.

 

Did I say "bad hires are all minorities"?
No, I didn't!
Read the post and quit reading other stuff into it!
I hate quotas.
I hate quotas.
I hate quotas.
That's what I said.
Quit feeling so damn insecure and realize that there are a lot more whites in this country than blacks and other ethnic groups.
Nothing racial about it. It's just a fact. So lots more sportswriters or newswriters will be white than non-white.
Since the demographic is so unbalanced, do I think we should have allow more non-whites into the game to sort of "balance things"?
No, I don't.

 

Same goes for you, PE Teacher.

 

So why do you assume that "diverse" candidates are unqualified in lots of instances.

That has not been my experience.

 

The "once-hired, tough to fire" concern is legitimate.

An editor looks like a child-molester in some quarters if certain minority hires don't work out.

That ain't right.

 

What I should say, to clarify that specific portion my point, is that a person who is "diverse" is a lot tougher to be called in to the big editor's office and given his or her walking papers.
That's been my experience.
It's not that X number of minority hires have turned out to be bad eggs.
I do not want to imply that. I've worked with plenty of pathetic, lazy, unimaginative white writers.
It seems to me that the white ones are lot's more easy to be told "You're fired"
Diversity folks seem to have more of a coalition working for them in those instances.
And that's simply my "Take" on it.
Life as I know it.