Someone's Take on diversity in the newsroom...

Knowing that I will be a white male looking for a job soon, I do hope that the field is as level as possible. Right now, I still think the industry has a long way to go, which I'm disappointed with. I want to know I was the very best person for the job I was after, making it that much more rewarding when I get it.

 

Of course it's not good enough. But that's life, too. There are always inherent obstacles to overcome. In this era, in this realm of society, that's one of them. In another time, in another place, the obstacles were different, and for different people.

So it's not good enough? I hear ya.

And then I say: Now find a way to beat it.

 

I feel very comfortable saying that in no sports department I have ever worked in, been in or seen, have I ever felt that white males were somehow getting the short end of the stick. Please tell me in what newspaper's sports department are white males underrepresented. I would be very interested in finding where such a place exists.

 

Shotty, you know I respect you, but what do you think the message has been to women and ethnic minorities until this generation?

I actually agree with Jemele here: the most qualified candidates should get the jobs, but if you're a female/ethnic minority you have to work twice as hard to prove you're qualified, because people assume you're the diversity hire. Things have changed on paper, but attitudes are much slower to shift.

I don't usually resort to this argument, but I daresay a white male cannot truly understand the day-to-day struggles of a female/ethnic minority in this business because they have never gone down that path.

 

Well, white males need not worry about my shop discriminating against them -- we've had a hiring freeze for five years and we did away with the intern program about four years ago and the only personnel decisions my boss has had to make is who among the part-timers to pink slip in order to save money......

That being said, the last three hires we've made have all been white males, which brings me to my next point -- has anyone done a real study about the hiring practices of, say, the top 30 or 40 papers over the past, say eight to ten years?

It is real easy for both sides of this coin to throw out accusations and I see a lot of facts and figures about the total number of people in the business and the number of minorities......

What I'd like to know is, how many total hires in sports (reporters and sports editors) in the top 40 papers -- which I would assume almost all would be considered major or at least very good metro's where all or the majority of the good jobs are -- have there been in the past ten years and out of that total, how many have been women and/or minorities?

I think that would shed a lot of light on this argument/debate. White males always claim all the jobs are going to minorities and women while minorities and women claim they can't get a fair shake.

I'd love to see that set of numbers if anyone has any access to them because until then this is a lot of grandstanding and noise.

 

APSE did a diversity study about a year ago. it's not hard to find online. and it's appalling.

 

Here's a link to the first APSE page regarding that study, an AP story:

http://apse.dallasnews.com/news/2006/062506study.html

A study of 305 newspapers in 2006 revealed that 9 of 10 sports editors were white males. Women and minorities only make up about 12 percent of sports staffs.

This page has links to others regarding this topic.

 

I always find these threads interesting because I learn about staffs of other publications. It really amazes me to discover that women are so scarce in the sports business because I've worked with so many.

Off the top of my head, at my previous three stops the women I have worked with include:

One AME/sports

One sports editor

Two assistant/deputy sports editors

One columnist

14 reporters, including five on high-profile college or pro beats

At least seven copy editors and/or page designers

 

Mr. Man, without outing yourself, how many of those publications have been major metros or mid-majors? How many have been papers of less than 50K? Less than 20K?

Even the study shows that women/ethnic minorities tend to get hired at larger papers as opposed to smaller ones.

 

One major metro, one 50-100K, one right about 50K

 

No, again, those numbers are somewhat irrelevant to the question I asked because so many of the people who make up the staffs of major metros and top 40 papers have been around in their current positions for more than ten years.

I'm asking this -- How many new hires (among reporters) over the past ten years have there been in sports at top 40 newspapers and of that total, how many have been minorities and/or women?

Those numbers would tell a lot more about our industry than the ones in the APSE study because any time a discussion like this comes up the first thing the white males throw out is "you can't get hired if you are a white male because all the jobs go to blacks and women" and the blacks and women throw out "look at the percentages of us in the work force, that's just not the case."

That's why the most relevant data to this discussion would be number of hires in major metros in the last ten (or 15 if you think that is more appropriate) years since diversity hiring became such a hot button topic and how many of them have actually been minorities and women?

I'd be willing to be both sides would be a little surprised by the results as I'm sure the number of white males is still a large portion but the number of blacks and women would be much higher than the APSE numbers -- which again take into account all employees and many of them were hired in a different era or time -- would indicate as well.

 

I'd be curious to know the percentage of j-school students with the intention of working on a sports staff who are women and minorities. Also, it would be interesting to know at any given time the percentage of women and minorities in the pool of applicants/cold submissions for every newspaper sports staff.