Too Many Jews Whites at the Times
You can’t say there are too few of a group without also implying there are too many of another. Additionally, there has consistently been a fear at the NY Times of the perception that it is a Jewish newspaper, which has affected its reporting. There has been such a fear since these former Yekkes took over the newspaper in 1896.Â
But it is an awkward position to advocate openly, particularly for a New York based newspaper.
Unless you intentionally confuse Jew with white. That makes it a whole lot easier to sell. Internally, and externally.
Media Mob Reports,
After a 10-month study, the New York Times Diversity Council issued its confidential internal report yesterday. The 39-page document, made available to staffers, describes The Times as “a newspaper at risk” on diversity matters and says the paper is “losing ground in comparison to business that are among the leaders in diversity.”
The council, a 23-member group including newsroom and business employees, was founded in 2004, in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal. The “Jayson Blair debacle continues to haunt the Times and continues to affect diversity efforts, according to dozens of interviews with employees,” its report declares.
The report says that no evidence connects Blair’s transgressions to the diversity efforts then in place at The Times, but that the perception of such a link still lingers: “[in] the minds of many, however, Mr. Blair remains an example of newspaper diversity run amok.”
“Many in the newsroom said they believed the Blair case had a lasting, deleterious effect on the way minority reporters and editors were viewed, both inside and outside the newsroom,” the report says…According to the report, the Times newsroom is currently 82.5 percent white, slightly less than the industry average of 86.5 percent. Only 14 percent of newsroom managers are minorities, the council found, and there are currently no minorities on the newspaper masthead and only one nonwhite on the company’s executive committee…”[W]omen and minorities remain underrepresented at the Times and minorities are seriously underrepresented in its managerial ranks,” the report says…The council defined diversity in terms of employees’ race, gender and sexual orientation. Religious and political differences were not accounted for.
Also in today’s NY Times, 25 years after the Times dismissed and derided accusations of the Soviet Union’s order to kill Pope John Paul II, it reported that the Italian parliamentary commission has concluded that the Soviet role was “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
No mention in the Times of the Grey Lady’s previous denial of the Soviet role was mentioned.Â
Tying the two parts of the post together, maybe the diversity the Times needs is political diversity, and they should hire some conservatives.
You say they’ve “confused Jew with white” — but have they?
Some Jews are whiter than others.
They already have 4 conservatives on their op/ed page. Freidman was prowar. Brooks was prowar. Kristoff is prowar. John Teirney is prowar. I don’t think conservatives are underrepresented in the punditocracy.
Are there any ‘religious’ Jews at the Times? Are there any pro-Jewish Jews at the Times?
Somone help me out… I just read that it was Tehran, not the Soviets… anybody have more info?
yes there are jews at the times. there are even Jewish jews at the times. It doesn’t hurt to spell Tom Friedman’s name correctly, and frankly, the times IS almost like a Jewish paper for the neighborhood of Manhattan and covers lots of Jewish news. You just don’t like its politics. But other than that, it’s a damned fine paper. there’s a hell of a lot more to life than an op ed page, where people preach to the choir. No one really cares.
Really. Because the damage is coming from left wing blogs like mediachannel.org and irandokht and stuff them comes googling up at them.
the old gray lady is old and gray, despite the 4-color pages. But the book reviews and arts sections, the real estate sections, the business pages…there’s nothing like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
This post is disturbing to me, because it quotes an article that says 82.5 percent of the NYT newsroom staff are white. Even if they were all Jewish, even though there is underlying anti-Semitism in the response to that figure, can’t we also step back from the defensive position and recognize that this is a picture of white privilege? Are 82.5% of NYC residents white, or Jewish? I think it’s totally appropriate for diversity committees to sound a loud warning about the shamefully low 14% minority leadership with only 1 executive level position filled by minorities — and it looks like that’s even including women in the minority category, who are actually 51% of the general population! Let’s be critical of anti-Semitism, but not be distracted from acknowledging other oppressions when they so clearly exist!
“But other than that, it’s a damned fine paper. there’s a hell of a lot more to life than an op ed page, where people preach to the choir”
I don’t agree. The front-section current affairs/ politics/ International/ National news section is loaded with opinion, and I don’t mean only the articles labelled “news analysis”. There’s no attempt at balance (remember that these are “news” stories, not editorials) within articles, and the decisions on what to cover are slanted as well. People have been complaining about the book reviews for years. Read the reviews in, say, the New Republic or the London Times Literary Supplement, and then compare them to the shallow Times coverage. Unfortunately, the baby was thrown out long ago.