NYT reporter says she would boycott Masters until women allowed at Augusta

Might be interesting to argue this as a workplace equity issue for women journalists, rather than as some political or cultural generality.

 

How is it a workplace equity issue? As long as she is given the same access and work space as the men (which it seems like the Masters has done with the exception of the one security guard last year), Augusta's membership policies shouldn't impend on her ability to do her job. It's not like the other male reporters are all members.

Augusta is a bunch of sexist, idiot old men and their membership policies are abhorrent. They should be called on the carpet repeatedly for being jerks, but this is not a workplace equity issue.

 

I knew Karen a little bit back in her pre-NYT days... I like her and respect her a lot...

But I completely agree that 99.999 percent of the time, WE ARE NOT THE STORY. In that .001 percent of times that we may become part of the story, it should be through nothing that we did intentionally.

 

Although I agree that Karen's remarks were pretty dumb (we don't get to pick and choose our assignments on that basis), why is AP getting in the middle of this? Isn't it something between a writer and his/her editor?

 

Waaaaaaa... I don't care who Augusta National allows to join and who they choose to deny. They're a private club. They can do whatever the hell they want.

If she gets equal access as any other reporter covering the Masters, that's all that needs to be done. She should be banished to covering prep swimming, with some prep soccer as an occasional respite. Jeez.

 

The fact that Boom hasn't sniffed out this thread yet is a bigger surprise than Charl Schwarzel.

 

I'm surprised by this reaction. Karen didn't ask to be the story. She was approached and answered a question. Should she have said "no comment," a response we often criticize when it comes from our interview subjects?
I'm surprised, too, by the editor's response. It's your reporter. Have her back. How about "I don't like the way she answered the question but one thing we always have admired about Karen is her passion."

 

Paola, you're a columnist. You're encouraged to have opinions. Karen Crouse is a reporter at the newspaper with probably the strictest ethics code in the country for reporters. Furthermore, she took a shot at her editor by saying she didn't want to cover the event but her boss made her go.

I'll forgive you this one time. ;D

 

LOL. Karen would probably love the prep swimming assignments, that being her background as an athlete. To use a cultural analogy completely fitting for Augusta National, it would be the briar patch. Bonus points if you know where that term's from.

Really, the problem isn't that she has an opinion but that she stated it for public consumption. One of us could have said the very same thing on this message board under a psuedonym and it wouldn't be a big deal. I am admittedly biased because I worked with KC years back, and she's one of my all-time faves. This week is probably not one for her scrapbook, and maybe a little flak is warranted, but she'll move on and eventually so will everyone else. I don't necessarily believe that having a strong opinion makes one incapable of objective work. I didn't recuse myself from editing this story last night. I mean, I really like Karen, but not more than I like doing my job. So there were no alterations by me to the AP item we ran and I did mention to my boss why running it made me sad, but run it we did.

 

Versatile is right. Karen overstepped. If you're a reporter, you do your assignment. Don't publicly upbraid your superiors.