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Sep
18
When The Plain Dealer‘s editor, Susan Goldberg apologized, right or wrong, for a cartoon by Jeff Darcy that centered on the shotgun death of a 12 year old in Cleveland, one comment she made referenced the lack of diversity in the Plain Dealer’s newsroom. The child was African-American.
This Poynter column expands on that tip of the iceberg realization and discusses at length some possible underlying connections to that lack of diversity.
“Collectively, the people running our journalism and mass-comm programs don’t look much like America, and they don’t even look a lot like their own student bodies, which are now pretty much two-to-one female,” Tom Kunkel, dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, wrote in a report last month. “Like the media industries, we’ve got to work harder and smarter on this problem. That means everything from better mentoring of female and minority faculty to cultivating media interest among students of color when they’re still in our elementary and secondary schools. We simply need more talent in the pipeline.”
Remember the geography lesson where you had to learn the difference between the mouth and the source of a river? In regard to this issue of diversity, both ends need work.
Further legitimization, encouragement and promotion of citizen journalism would be one way for both ends to bulk up.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:12 am September 18th, 2007 in Media
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13 Responses to “Diversity among news disseminators, where art thou?”
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Shalom Jill,
My two-bits?
Darcy was dead on. And Goldberg ought to have defended him and his work like a mama bear.
B’shalom,
Jeff
Yeah, I haven’t made up my mind about that. But I do think that whether she defended the cartoon or not, the issue of diversity in the PD newsroom is a related but separate story and I’m not anyone – protester or other – should be mashing them together. I’ve not followed it closely enough to see what the Black journalists group has said, or the NAACP or other similar groups, or any of the political cartoon folks. Do you know?
who cares? i’m pretty sure that the lack of diversity at the PD isn’t what causes them to kill each other. gimme a break!
I guess you do, since you took the time to not just read but also to leave a comment. Thanks for contributing.
Shalom Jill,
This was a discussion we (my fellow budding Journalists and I) had in school during the early ’80s. Ohio University’s print media Journalism School was mostly white and female.
A significant part of the males in the print media programs (myself excluded) were there because it was one of the few programs at the university that had no math requirement. (That changed in 1985.)
The end result was that you could count the number of non-white males in the program on your hands.
I don’t know about other programs around the country, but I have no reason to expect that there experience was any different.
Now 25 years later if you’re a Journalist of color you’re in high demand which means you’re actively courted by real newspapers. Why would you settle for the Pee Dee, the paper where editors go to retire?
Then there’s the issue of what population ought any news organization represent: its city, its county, its readership?
I’d be willing to make a serious bet that the readership of the Pee Dee is seriously skewed toward the white-male end of the spectrum. If that’s the case, then the staff probably does reflect the readership.
And if a paper does achieve some kind of racial/ethnic/gender diversity, does that mean that white females can’t cover basketball because the players are predominantly black males? Can an Asian male cover Italian fashion?
And if those can, why the feck do we get our shorts in a bunch when a white male cartoonist comments on the absurdity of a black male mayor actually commenting on knowing someone related to the black female child victim of a horrible murder?
B’shalom,
Jeff
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As usual, all good points, Jeff. I don’t know for sure though, in this day, to whom the paper needs to pay allegiance. Len has posited that its the advertisers, not the reading audience. But regardless, to some extent, this really isn’t much different from identity politics’ issues: can a woman represent a woman better than a man? Some people don’t think it matters. I, on the other hand, do.
Shalom Jill,
Identity politics is a black pit because there’s no place to stop.
If I’m a Polynesian gay male sufferer of Bora Bora Fever and a rapid devotee of Yukon curling, where’s my representative?
B’shalom,
Jeff
[...] Diversity among news disseminators, where art thou? 0643 On AG nominee Mukasey being an Orthodox Jew [...]
Jeff – there must be SOMETHING analogous to being a Polynesian gay male sufferer of Bora Bora Fever and a rapid devotee of Yukon curling, don’t you think? There are 535 senators and congressfolks after all.
I understand – but you aren’t answering the question – can men represent women as well as women? And so on?
Shalom Jill,
Yes.
B’shalom,
Jeff
Shalom Jill,
OK, that was the short answer.
Here’s the long answer.
I’m represented in Congress by:
An African American female liberal (Stephanie Tubbs Jones);
An Western European American male centrist (Sherrod Brown) and;
An Eastern European American male conservative (George Voinovich).
None of the above do a good job of representing me as a Jewish American of German-French-Welsh-Italian descent with centrist/progressive political leanings.
I reject the idea that anyone can represent someone by virtue of their genetic heritage.
Is Phyllis Shalafly a good representative for women?
Is Alan Keyes a good representative for African Americans.
Some say yes. Some say no.
The best we can hope for is to discover people; humans, able to put themselves in the shoes of the other and then make wise decisions that benefit the majority while protecting the minority.
I want to know what’s in a politician’s soul, not their chromosomes.
B’shalom,
Jeff
I reject this idea too:
“…that anyone can represent someone by virtue of their genetic heritage.”
What’s relevant is experience. Regardless of the possession of certain traits.
However, it is more likely than not that women will have experienced a choice about pregnancy in a way that men can never experience it. Now, that doesn’t mean – we know – that all women will feel the same about such choices. But we know that no man will ever feel it like women do.
Same for race, religion and other elements that make up who we are.
No – it is not pre-ordained or whatever the right word would be to describe it that simply by virtue of what’s on one’s chromosomes, you can be better represented. All your examples are valid.
But in many of life’s choices, having been there and done that can impact the ability to empathize and be copacetic with people who share that experience.