Journalism blahs

Good post, Rod. I've just discovered this blog after reading *Cruncy Cons* and I'm much impressed. Everything you say here about journalism and about ECUSA (of which I'm a communicant) applies equally well to the professional racket I'm in: academia, specifically college English. While there is a constant (and mostly welcome) mindfulness on the part of my colleagues of the need for diversity, both in our student body and in our curriculum, the terms of that diversity are limited to race and gender. They do not apply in any way to social class, religious beliefs, or political ideals. My university is in a largely "red" state, but it occurs to few on the faculty that trying to be mindful of the "red" part of our enrollment base should be an aspect of diversity, since being mindful of diversity of that particular sort would mean welcoming students who are less socially privileged, more religious, and more conservative than many on the faculty are comfortable with. Finally, again as with journalism and the ECUSA, this resistance to diversity in the English departement is taking place at a time when enrollment in the major is steeply in decline. Right now, my faculty is concerned because, for the first time in years, enrollment in our major has fallen behind enrollment in the history major, the next most popular humanities major at my university. I wonder why.....>

Rod what you're seeing in your world I'm seeing everywhere.

I like to think of it as mixing paint. If you walk into the paint department and attempt to put every color into a can that has once caught your fancy, guess what?

You get brown.

Yup, when you go for it all in one package you end up with crap.

It doesn't matter if it's an automobile or it's a house or philosophy or a religion or a newspaper, shooting for the average gives you well, average.

Average sucks.

Unless of course you're a conservative money manager.>

Susan S.:Since most newsrooms look like you (white, male) I understand why you don't see it as a concern. The reality is that women and minorities are underrpresented in large, daily newsrooms.
I worked as a reporter and editor in the late 80s and early 90s at two publications--one a slick monthly magazine and one a small local weekly newspaper. It wasn't white men who were over-represented, it was white women. The publishers of both were men, but almost all the editorial people were women, from writers to editors to proofreaders to production to sales. The photographers were men (white and hispanic) and a few of the sales people were men. But again, women were the over-represented group. It was quite dull.>

"The idea that no matter how hard I worked to write well, I couldn't overcome this bias against me because of the color of my skin and my gender was debilitating. You hear stories like this a lot in this business. It was wrong to do it to women and minorities back in the day, and it's wrong to do it to anybody now. And morality aside it makes for a duller newspaper."

So what do you want. Do you want diversity hiring for Christians or conservatives, or don't you?

You've trotted out the traditional affirmative action trope, yet you were hired out of an affirmative action need on the editorial page. There were probably liberals who would have loved that job, but were passed over because they had a conservative quota to fill.

And what do you tell your friend Terry Mattingly and the folks over at GetReligion, who are constantly harping about more intellectual diversity. How do you achieve it without viewing it as part of "diversity" hiring? The dilemma for conservatives is that they've spent so long criticizing diversity and affirmative action, they are now left without solutions when they make their own complaints about lack of diversity.

Suddenly, minority journalism programs like the one run by Mattingly look really attractive, even though they are not dramatically different from the minority journalism programs of the 1980s and 1990s that were derided by conservative circles in the media.>

The idea that no matter how hard I worked to write well, I couldn't overcome this bias against me because of the color of my skin and my gender was debilitating.

Of course you recognize that people like me ran into this at every door, back in the day when I was a girl lawyer. Not the color of my skin, but you needed to be right on both counts to get an interview even.

It's just as wrong to do it to you as it was to do it to me, and I recognize that, but the angels of my worse nature have a little ugly joy to hear a white male, for a change, see just a piece of what it was like.

So now that we've all had our revenge-fest, I'd like to see the entire concept thrown out the window, and if the news room (hospital, law firm, whatever) ended up all white males or all black females or whatever, because those were the most talented people, then that's how it should be.>

Susan S., you didn't answer my question: Do you work in a newsroom? Have you ever worked in a newsroom? If so, when was the last time? Because the predominantly white male newsroom that you posit doesn't look like any newsroom I've ever worked in.

I recognized in my update to my post that it sounds like I'm advocating both for and against ideological diversity in hiring, and I tried to explain the complicated point. Susan S., you don't know why I was hired. My conservative views never came up in my interview; as far as I can tell regarding those hired on the DMN editorial board after I came over, their ideological viewpoint was not at all a factor. That said, it makes perfect sense for an editorial/op-ed page to factor in ideological diversity. I am the editor of the Sunday commentary section here, and I keep scrupulous track of how many liberals, conservatives and non-ideological columns I publish, because it's important to be balanced in terms of the ideas we're offering readers.

When it comes to hiring for the non-opinion pages, I think that the background, ideological and otherwise, of an applicant can reasonably be factored into a hiring decision. If I needed to hire reporters who were capable of covering the fast-growing Hispanic community in my city, I would naturally favor reporters who could speak Spanish and who were familiar with issues important to Latinos. That would naturally bias me toward hiring Latinos. That's understandable. What you don't see, though, is any interest in newsrooms in hiring people who have special insight into, say, the Evangelical community, or conservatives, even though that would arguably broaden our understanding of the communities we cover. What you end up with is a newsroom that is widely diverse in terms of gender and ethnicity, but filled with middle-class people who are more or less socially liberal and unreligious (check out the studies; I'm not making this up), which is not where the country is.

For me, it's far more important to hire people who are aggressive, fair-minded reporters who can write well, no matter what their race, color, religion or politics. While we in the journalism biz are so busy playing at social engineering, our pages are getting blander and blander and safer and safer.>

The metro paper I read is the LA Times, which is obviously going through hard times, but I must say, I think they've hired a good number of talented, hard-working, and not boring women and non-white reporters and writers (such as J.A. Adande, Hector Tobar, and Meghan Daum). So I remain unconvinced that the "dullness" that Rod correctly identifies as a central problem in American newspapers is caused by hiring diversity. (And in a city like L.A., to have an all-white male staff would be a special kind of blindness akin to having an all white male police force.)

But with that said, I have to agree that the NY Times is making a mistake if they don't add a bright, creative, surprising voice to their op-ed mix...and not a liberal.

Which is not to say that the Times op-eds are as boring as Rod claims. Friedman, for example, is not a liberal but a moderate who was much admired in the Bush White House until they completely screwed up in Iraq and he had the nerve to say so. I don't particularly like him, but he knows how to turn a phrase memorably. And Kristof has consistently put himself on the front line of issues in a way that few other columnists have dared: What's boring about going to Cambodia to highlight child prostitution, and buying the freedom of a young girl?

Still, the Times needs to include someone in its roster around whom conservatives (not necessarily Bushites) could rally, precisely because it is on its way to becoming a national paper, if it's not already. I'm thinking...Rod!>

Y'all are very kind to think I'm Times material, but it's just not true. I do agree, Susan, that it's rare to find anything on the Times' editorial and op-ed pages that surprises. David Brooks is the exception that proves the rule. I turn to his column before anything else in the paper on the days he writes, because he has a way of finding connections and crunching data that reach interesting and unconventional conclusions.

Kristof is a brave and intrepid reporter, but how many times can you write, "Life is wretched in the Third World"? That sounds harsh, and I apologize for that, but I guess I have to admit I used to consider him a must-read, but now I think, "Here we go, another tale of woe from the Third World." I mean, I know what he's going to say. His column is Worthy, but almost never surprising.

I scan Krugman and Herbert, because every now and then they'll really score, but mostly I could write their columns on my own. (Actually, you could too: after my DMN colleague Nancy Kruh wrote about the awful rut Herbert was stuck in, cranking out the same damn column over and over, someone invented an Automatic Bob Herbert Column Generator).

Dowd is all style, no substance (and it's an irritating style), and Friedman seems to be dashing off his glib, thin columns from airport layovers between jetting off to office parks in Asia. (I'm a David Ignatius fan myself).>

Susan S., what your newsroom colleagues perceived and what actually happened are two different things. I'm not "pretending." If I had been hired as a conservative, that would have been fine with me, as the editorial board had no social conservatives on it when I arrived (and this, in a very socially conservative part of the country). You are claiming, based on secondhand testimony from people who don't know me and weren't privy to the process, that I was hired because I am a conservative, and even though I tell you that my conservative convictions weren't part of the interview process, you say that that proves nothing? I can't win.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. If I'd have been hired because the ed board needed a social conservative, that would have made sense. So maybe we're in agreement.

Would you post a link for your Knight study figures? I'd like to see them. I've never seen a figure about the ethnic minority representation in our newsroom, but I don't think you are correct at all about our readership (I have seen those figures, at least on internal studies). Anyway, your first complaint was that "women and minorities" were underrepresented in a newsroom, which is what I was reacting to; you've dropped the women complaint, I guess. Personally, it doesn't matter to me what the percentages of men, women, minorities, etc., are in this or any newsroom, as long as we're covering the news in a lively, aggressive, fair and comprehensive fashion.>

As for minorities and women, I noted the average of 37 percent of newsrooms nationwide. Unless there is something extraordinary about your number of women (which is unlikely given your low numbers of minorities overall), it's fair to say women and minorities are underrepresented, which means white men are overrepresented.>

I always hear this talk about racial and sexual diversity in the newsroom. What are you doing to promote ideological diversity.>

More weird voice out of Victor. Interesting.>

Y'all are very kind to think I'm Times material, but it's just not true. I do agree, Susan, that it's rare to find anything on the Times' editorial and op-ed pages that surprises

I donno, Rod. I don't agree with you all the time(!!), but you're a good writer, provocative and original, and you seem to be able to sustain those most ephemeral of qualities. You engage the religious and spiritual dimensions of people's lives in a way that no one on that particular board comes close to. And you're interesting, whereas most folks on that board are, like, boring. (Loved the part about the automatic column-writer! YES!)

Right now, the NYT is limited mostly by its own vision (or, lack thereof), which vision sees the land beyond the Hudson pretty much as Terra Incognita, like the famous magazine cover.

So, what is it? Is this a national newspaper, or is it just all about the street map of lower Manhattan? Time to make some decisions.

A personally religious, politically conservative, scary-smart columnist from Texas (Texas!! Yes, Virginia, there is a Texas!!) might not be the worst idea in the world for something that aspires to be national.>

Though some of us have long found ourselves sharing the allergy of Albert Jay Nock toward the habit of reading newspapers - especially those football-field hectares of earnestly-rewritten press releases from the Defense and State Departments and White House quaintly labeled "news", which crumble to yellow and stain the fingers black within seconds of being "read all over" by the sorts of Very Important Persons who require them on the taxpayers' "dime" - we make an exception in sampling from the lists generated by The New York Times of the 25 most-emailed articles from the
last 24 hours - last 7 days - and last 30 days: for it is through such a timeshaving division of labor that those very few anthology-worthy diamonds amid the dust likeliest to enhance our lives for months and years after will deliver themselves, shorn of the drudgery of turning page after page, world without end, whether in newsprint fact or in digital metaphor - with such separated cream, even then, demanding judicious straining further through the colander of one's browser.

A happy-accident case-in-point came from the very top of the most-emailed lists as of last Wednesday, 8 November, - one which may turn out to earn a slot on the All-Time Top-10 files of even the most cynically demanding of Times readers: Mark Bittman, "The Minimalist" kitchen hand at the paper, offers a how-to on a revolutionary snap method for home breadmaking (including recipe)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/08mini.html

a local baker invited him by email to learn in person:

"I m not counting sliced bread as a positive step, but Jim Lahey s method may be the greatest thing since...the results are indeed fantastic...The loaf is incredible, a fine-bakery quality, European-style boule that is produced more easily than by any other technique I ve used, and will blow your mind...The baking itself is virtually foolproof...you will be rewarded with the best no-work bread you have ever made."

Those with a heavy 6-8 quart covered pot - cast iron, Pyrex, enamel or ceramic - are cleared for revelatory takeoff in the home bakery. A friend with long experience camping with Boy Scouts swears by cast-iron Dutch ovens, which filtered searches at Froogle, Yahoo! Shopping, eBay and Amazon.com return from about $15 and up. Further research, however, including a first-hand consensus derived from the comments of inveterate users, persuades me that those willing to pay a bit more for stout yeoman and heirloom quality are best advised to pass Go in bearing straight for the Lodge brand of Dutch oven, Breakfastware of Champions.

Those with an interest in extending Mr. Bittman's expertise in the kitchen across the great encyclopedic menu of life, mark well his 1998 masterwork How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food.>

"It was wrong to do it to women and minorities back in the day"

Back in 'the day'??? When was that anyway? Oh wait, I remember. It was October. (And again in November too in America.)

"and it's wrong to do it to anybody now"

'Ceptin' of course to the homos, eh Rod? That's perfectly okay I guess.>