Don’t pay attention to Alito, pay attention to this
Yesterday I had a sad, broken-spirited a day trying to figure out how the United States could keep the judicial confirmation process from being a charade in which the nominee has to pander to both sides shamelessly before embarking upon a lifetime of impartial rulings. Finally, I realized that the confirmation process actually works fine; it eliminates the rabid and the obviously unqualified, and beyond that is only as good as the President who generates the nominees. Since I already know what I think about the President, I was then free to consider other matters.
Released from the shackles of relevant news, I turned to Gawker. Usually about as politically engaging as a trip to the Dairy Queen, today’s edition actually touched on an issue of some importance: minorities in journalism. Jesse and Jessica Gawker wanted to comment on an Observer story revealing that the New York print media staffs are overwhelmingly white. However, as is their wont when serious matters are up for debate, they punted:
Confronted with such an important topic — race, America’s original sin — and with such a lengthy look at it — 2,500 words — we knew this was an article we must address […] we also knew that we’re not at all the right people to address it.
So they handed the post off to “Special Correspondent for Brown-People Issues” The Assimilated Negro. This particular punt makes some sense. White bloggers don’t like to talk about race, and for good reason — they don’t know enough about it, and they’re afraid they’ll get it wrong. Both of these statements apply to me too. But I don’t think TAN quite finished the job, so here goes.
Journalism is incestuous. It’s true in SF, and I’m sure it’s true in NYC as well. Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, most of the magazines the Observer article calls out, are run by like-minded groups of people talking to other people like them. It wouldn’t be too hard for a magazine to break that incest link if it wanted to; it could start by advertising with services geared to minority jobseekers (yes, they exist). It could recruit at historically black colleges or other primarily minority institutions. It could post its job ads in national interest or minority-niche publications to increase the exposure of its positions.
It’s possible that VF and TNY have never thought of any of this. It’s also possible that they have sort of thought about it and then decided not to do anything. If this is true, then I’d say we’re all being cheated out of the opportunity to hear from and write for people who are of a different race than us. I think this not only bodes ill for the general health of American society, but also keeps dialogue about race in its current twisted and stunted state.
What do you, the viewers at home, think?
January 12th, 2006 at 2:48 pm | Promoted
Broadsheet linked to a Feminists Are Narcissists article (having difficulty linking), which sparked an interesting conversation between my office mate and myself. While the article is about feminism, it brought to light the question of what to do about underrepresented peoples.
My two suggestions were:
1. Continually broadcast the message that anybody is welcome in any field - a positive spin on anti-discrimination.
2. Provide support for underrepresented people such that when they face difficulties and discrimination, they have the tools necessary to overcome challenges and succed.
I think that VF and TNY could do a better job and through hiring and publishing more works by minorities. They could do this by collaborating with and throwing their support behind organizations that promote minorities in journalism. That would meet criteria 1 and 2.