New Leader of AP Sports Editors Seeks Candidates

Laughable. Show me the places. There are fewer people of color working in

Happening in a lot of places? Really. I can promise you, there are fewer people of color working in newspaper sports departments than in the last 20 years -- and I have been in this business for more than 30 years.

People of color simply are not being hired at the expense of white men. There are no numbers to support that.

 

i've been doing this for 27 years myself. ... maybe you're right. maybe no companies out there are trying to hire minorities and women. that would explain why the numbers are so bad. that's not the reality i've witnessed, but maybe you're right. the whole idea of companies trying to increase diversity by hiring anybody but a white man, maybe that's my imagination. but if it's NOT my imagination, if companies are trying to hire minorities and women, if that's their mindset from the start of a hiring process and it guides their decisions, then they do so by discriminating against white men.

 

Thanks my friend. You just made things a lot clearer. The problem is, you don't understand what diversity is.

Diversity is everybody and everything. it is the 300-pound white guy who has been out of work for three years and is trying to get back in.

Is is the young African-American male who is 23 and deeply rooted in hip hop.

It is the the Hispanic woman who grew up around sports and dreamed some day of becoming a sports editor.

It is the former black sportswriter who is in his late 50s now and hasn't had a full-time newspaper gig since being downsized five years ago.

It's the 30-something whatever who was paralyzed 10 years ago in a car accident and still wants to be a working journalist.

It's the guy who loves everything Glen Beck says.

It's the other guy who swears by Al Sharpton.

All newsrooms should have a lot of all those kinds of people.

The way you talk diversity is about the black man vs. the white man. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Diversity is about diversity of thought, diversity of color, diversity of sexual orientation, diversity of political opinion -- and a whole lot more.

I too have been the best candidate for jobs and not chosen, yet I don't bitch about it. If you hang around the game long enough if happens. To all of us. Trust me, it's not about black vs. white.

 

i don't think i need any lessons on what diversity is. in this forum, i tried to stand up against what i think is wrong -- the practice of opening up a job search with the idea that, to increase diversity, we won't consider white men. that's discrimination. if you don't consider white men, you're discriminating. that's all i said. also, i said this is going on a lot of places. i've witnessed it, been a part of both sides of it. i KNOW it's going on. sorry i can't convince you of this straightforward and, i believe, simple concept. good night.

 

Sorry but I never suggested that there was open discrimination against white men. My point is actually that there's no open discrimination against anyone, and that no informal survey of a select number of papers that belong to an editors group can expect to prove otherwise simply on its own merit.

 

Let me add this: We hire an intern 3 times a year. Two of the last 12 have been girls, which in some statistic would indicate that we hire 83% men. We're discriminating bastards. Never mind that BOTH times a girl applied for the gig she was hired, a hiring rate of 100%

Not sure if we should be searching out more applicants in the wisdom of these people or what, but we don't have the time or inclination what with 4 furlow weeks a year and a newspaper to put out and all.

 

This is crazy talk. The only diversity that counts at newspapers is the diversity that shows up in a statistical survey. You might be a black Republican who just converted to Judaism, but the only thing that matters when a newspaper conducts its survey is "black." there is no weight given whatsoever to any different life experience that can't fit inside a bubble on a form.

 

For all the statistics thrown around, I'd like to see what percentage of applicants and working sports journalists are women or minorities. If it's 10% and papers are hiring at 10% then there isn't really a problem. If it's 40% and they are hired at 10% then there is one. This particular survey offers incomplete information.

 

This list is entirely unrealistic.

I mean, you have eight people on this list. You can't expect a newsroom to have as many as eight people. It ain't the 90s any more! Gotta do more with less!

 

I'm glad I have this thread to remind me how persecuted I am as a white male. I look forward to part two of the series when we get to talk about how how tough it is to be a Christian.

 

Well I just think the census of sports departments have no merit and that white males don't have or get jobs. But who are getting them then? I want to know.

 

Anyone in charge of hiring who may be favoring a specific demographic group of groups is thus thrusting everyone else into the NOT-favored pool.

There's no denying this. If you don't understand this, you don't understand first-grade math.

And in a shrinking job pool, it's clearly a double-whammy, given the broad state of the business.