The Spike Lee School of Sportswriting?

I understand your feeling that way, although I contend it's a bit different when gender is involved. But I wouldn't contend women are unfit to cover sports because they never played, any more than I'd contend blacks are unfit to cover fields that have scant minority representation.

I just don't see anything wrong with folks wanting to expose similar folks to unusual fields "for their kind." So if women journos want to show girls the joys and opportunties in journalism, great. Same for hispanics, asians, jews, etc.

How would sports journalism be different? The same way business journalism, political journalism, entertainment journalism, etc. would be different.

There'd be a wider perspective in coverage.

 

I think sportswriting and moviemaking are extremely worthwhile pursuits. We can't all save lives or find cures.

And some folks with enough smarts for those jobs want no parts of grad/med/law school. So they try to find happiness in life in a lower tax bracket.

 

I agree. So now we don't want a black middle class? I'm white and consider myself smart enough to go through law school or medical school if that's what I had chosen to do. But I wanted to do this. Maybe many black youths would feel the same way if the door were opened to them.

 

If I was a young black man, I'd be in that program yesterday.

 

Great idea, Nice move on Lee's part. With the money he has maybe he could buy a paper or two where job cuts took place and put people back to work.

 

great gesture. i just hope scoop jackson and dj stewie are held up at that school as examples of what not to do as a sports journalist.

 

He put his money down and he means it. Good stuff.

 

Lee's quotes suggest black journalists need to be deployed to predominantly black sports like the NFL and NBA, as if those beats are being handed out like fruit cups after a baseball game.

I think the school is a great idea, but an initiative like this only works if you're serious about true integration of black journalists. In other words, black prep writers. Black agate clerks. Black D-3 beat writers. If this pilot program is about creating minority superstars to populate the top 10% of the journalism food chain, it may give us a few more names to toss around this board, but it will not fundamentally change much in the system.

 

This is a great idea, much better than throwing out retarded analogies that it's impossible for blacks to enter the profession.

It's absolutely possible. All you need is motivation and a little education. Spike gets it.

 

Percentage of races which read newspapers.

 

And exactly where, pray tell, does Mr. Lee expect all these new sports journalism school graduates to get jobs? In case he hasn't noticed, the future of sports writing is bleak.

 

Reading Spike's comments, I get the impression he thinks only black writers can write about black athletes. That's a bunch of crap. His motivation for creating more black sportswriters is flawed from the outset.
Second, sportswriting is not exactly a growth industry. There are few sportswriters in the world and it's not like newspapers are clamoring for an influx of untested, unproven writers.
I think Spike Lee could use his influence and money in a more productive way. Creating more black sportswriters is not going make a better environment for the black professional sports culture. But it's his money and he can do what he wants with it.