Minority sports reporters

Tommy,

I'm just saying that a company should routinely at least look beyond the pile of candidates for the best possible hire -- whether that is a minority or not.

wow ace, i agreed with you.

 

May be true, but you might be surprised at the number of youngish white males without degrees who apply (sometimes successfully) for writing or editing jobs at large papers.
i've never had that discussion ace, so i can't give an opinion one way or the other. what i can say is the last three places i've worked, every full-time staff member had a degree except for one guy, who still needed to take a class (math i think) to be degreed.

can say if i were in the practice of hiring non-degreed folks i wouldn't care what sex they were or the color of their skin, though. again, i only want the least amount of headaches from staff as possible. if that means an entire staff of females, blacks or whatever, so be it.

 

uhh, hey chick, should should taco bell start selling lasagna, linguine, manicotti and spaghetti? what you are getting at is asinine.

it's written that way because a mass majority of the people who subscribe are just what you described. not everything wrong in the world of newspapers can be blamed on editors.

 

Mr. Petty, that's was just flat out ignorant.The reason why a lot of minorities don't subscribe to the papers is because they don't see any reason to. Many minority people have told me that. When I ask how come they don't subscribe, they'll say you guys never write about anything from this black community or that Indian community. An editor from a sister paper of a paper I interned at last year told me about how they made an effort to reach out to their circulation area's Phillipino community, which was about 10 percent of an approximately 110,000 population area. Since they made that effort about five years ago, and since then, the circulation has jumped about 10 percent. Coincidence?

 

I was always under the impression that the newspaper was written to communicate to, at best, a fourth-grade reading level.

 

ignorant? jesus, grow the hell up pe. tell me small subsections who subscribe to newspapers don't have special sections or regular features aimed at increasing their market share run daily and you'd be a damned liar. there are more promotions aimed at expanding minority demographics than not at every major paper in this country.

but, if you want to say a majority of the paper is targeted at whitey with kids? hell yes, that's, who for the most part, buys the paper.

hey marketing major, you attempt to please the majority of your customers because that's how you stay in business ... it's called common sense. what are you, ingnorant?

 

We've veered far off topic, which is fortunate in that it lets drop in another tidbit.

I spent my first 32 years in rural Illinois, and I couldn't count the number of times that papers from out of the area latched onto national stories that took place in my hometown and spun the community as the Midwestern equivalent of Mayberry. I recently read a Bill Bryson book in which he characterized Carbondale, Ill. as a one-horse town with no nightlife. Apparently, he wrote this after driving down one main road. He then wrote how he preferred college towns. Of course, Carbondale has a bustling nightlife because it is, after all, a college town.

Given such poor characterizations, I can see any hiring decision that broadens the knowledge base of the staff would be a benefit. Now, does this mean that hiring a minority over another candidate could mean that you've missed out on the better reporter? Certainly. But there is something to balance that. The problem for many is that we're talking about intangibles that can't be easily plucked out and examined.

 

The best person gets hired. And if they suck, he/she gets replaced.
If you think an SE is going to keep some hack on staff just because they're a minority, you're loco. Are there minorities who get moved up too soon? Hell yeah. But if they don't cut it, they're replaced, and the same can be said of a white reporter who can't handle it.
The best person gets hired and does well, or they get replaced.

 

No. It's a lie...very unlikely the paper's circ has jumped 10 percent in the last five years. (And it's Filipino, by the way).

CW1975,

A discussion like this has its place until you start suggesting black people are so selfish as to need stories about them and reporters who look like them before local and national events matter to them. If you sincerely believe black America needs a quid pro quo society...keep on waiting. The nation will roll on with or without the participation of black America, and suggesting we need to ask ourselves "what would the black person think" gives a sector of population an alienation complex it already has...and doesn't deserve.

 

I'm not suggesting we have all-black news. I'm just talking about a simple matter of inclusiveness. And I don't mean with just blacks, either. Women. Asians. Hispanics.

I'll give you a perfect example. A few years ago I read a story about how African Americans drowned disproportionately compared to other groups. Why? Because with the number of public pools and swimming programs cut in the inner cities, a huge percentage of black people weren't learning how to swim. That, to me, is an example of a diverse story, one that black people and others will read. I can't remember which paper I saw it in, but that's a story that could be done in any major city.

Unfortunately, those stories don't appear in newspapers all that often -- just simple lifestyle stories about minorities. Contrary to what the newspaper would have average readers believe, minorities don't spend their time just commiting crimes or picketing when an affirmative action bill comes up. I'd like to see newspaper do simple things like ... when do a story on kids leaving for college, include blacks, latinos, etc., in the copy and in the photos. I'm not saying it doesn't happen at all, just not enough.

Newspapers must learn to broaden their coverage of minorities beyond just political bills. But that will only happen when there are more reporters and editors at the newspaper that reflect a diverse demographic.

 

Sorry, I don't buy that. I can tell you that I'm far more motivated to do a good job now, at my advanced age, than I was when I was young and thought I knew everything. There are a lot of people who have been in the business 15 or 20 years who are pros, who want to do the job and know what it takes to get it done. I can tell you -- yes, from experience -- that it's a whole lot easier to do a good job covering a coach search when you've done it before. Experience is a huge plus in this business, though most decision-makers in this business don't seem to realize that anymore -- and it is not mutually exclusive from ``hunger'' or motivation. As an SE, I'd feel a whole lot more comfortable with a 20-year veteran who has been around the block a time or three covering a big-league beat than a kid right out of college with potential (which any coach will tell you is Latin for ``ain't done it yet''). Again, not that there aren't exceptions, but in general, yes, I am convinced experience is way undervalued in this business.

 

The experience card will certainly trump almost everything. But when it comes to either a coaching-search story or going to the hospital to be with a child or spouse, which would you choose?