A brief article in the business section of today's New York Times discusses racial diversity in the newspaper industry. The Times passes along without even raising an eyebrow the following: "Gilbert Bailon, the executive editor of The Dallas Morning News, said that increasing diversity would be difficult in a slowing economy. 'Fewer jobs are open,' he said. 'Papers are scaling back. The highly competitive people will be hired. But the numbers -- increasing them is going to be hard.'"
Talk about your soft bigotry of low expectations. The suggestion seems to be that minority hires are some sort of drag on a newspaper's performance, a luxury that can only be afforded in flush times. The truth is that in a slowing economy lots of newspapers offer their highly paid senior employees buyout packages and wind up replacing them with cheaper new hires. That actually might increase racial diversity. And if racial diversity is as important to economic competitiveness as its advocates claim it is, tough economic times might be exactly the moment to place a greater emphasis on minority hiring.
The other phenomenon that goes unremarked upon by the Times is that the newspapers use the economy as an excuse for their lack of racial diversity no matter what state the economy is in. In fact, the Times article paraphrases one expert as saying that "during the go-go days of the dot-com boom, 'people who didn't feel appreciated in the newsroom or invested in the newsroom took advantage of other opportunities.'"
So, in a bad economy, newspapers have few minorities because "fewer jobs are open." In a good economy, newspapers have few minorities because the minorities left and "took advantage of other opportunities." It's enough to make one suspect that the economy isn't the real explanation for what is going on here.
Smartertimes.com shares the skepticism expressed in Jason Riley's article in the April issue of Commentary with respect to the notion that race is, as Riley puts it "a stand-in for an individual's experiences, ideas and outlook." This is the idea that undergirds much of the obsession with racial statistics in occupations like journalism. Still, it is an idea that suffuses the Times' approach to the topic. So it's funny to see the New York Times let the newspaper industry get away with the sort of excuses that, if offered up by, say, the New York City Police Department, would be -- are! -- the topic of a front-page special report in the Times.
Wrong Reason: A dispatch from Jordan in today's Times reports that "Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab countries with diplomatic ties with Israel, although neither has an ambassador there at the moment because of heavy opposition in their own countries to any such links." Not true. Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia all have diplomatic ties with Israel at varying levels. And the description of the cause of the lack of ambassadors from Egypt and Jordan is laughably charitable to the Egyptians and Jordanians. Since when did the governments of these countries become so deferential to public opinion?
Can't Spell: A dispatch in today's New York Times from London about the Iraqi opposition refers to an opposition leader as "Ahmed Chalaby." In fact he spells his name in English as Ahmad Chalabi.