Taylor Miller Thomas
May 1, 2013
9:36 am
News organizations are approaching diversity from many angles — from increasing diversity in coverage and sourcing to reaching out to new audiences on new platforms.
Three efforts in particular have focused on partnerships and grants to achieve these ends. Digital … Read more
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Mallary Jean Tenore
Apr. 30, 2013
8:55 am
100 Percent Men | The Atlantic Wire
The new “100 Percent Men” Tumblr highlights “corners of the world where women have yet to tread" and aims to "shine a light" on the issue. New Republic reporter Lydia DePillis created the Tumblr earlier this month to show the gender disparity among higher-ups at news organizations, political groups, tech companies and more.
“[I] just wanted a place to collect the 100% men instances I'd noticed in a central place, and Tumblr’s generally acknowledged as the best platform to do that,” she told Poynter.
Many of the posts include photos that show how male (and white) the executives of some companies are. Other posts highlight media-related “Boys Clubs”:
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Roy Peter Clark
Apr. 22, 2013
4:35 pm
I once heard Ben Bradlee describe former Gannett CEO Al Neuharth as a “mountebank.” I rushed to the dictionary: “a person who sells quack medicines from a platform; a boastful unscrupulous pretender.”
How’s that for an epitaph: “Al Neuharth: Snake … Read more
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Roy Peter Clark
Apr. 18, 2013
4:00 pm
My colleague Al Tompkins reminds journalists to remember the case of Richard Jewell as they cover the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings. Jewell was the security guard wrongly accused of the bombing at the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta.… Read more
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Andrew Beaujon
Apr. 12, 2013
3:52 pm
The Week
Matt K. Lewis
says newspapers need to hire more Christians: "Media outlets who want to understand America should at least have a few journalists hanging around who share -- or at least, aren't hostile to -- the Christian faith."
But Lewis doesn't quantify his claim that Christians are unwelcome in newsrooms: He cites a
New York Times obituary of McCandlish Phillips -- an evangelical who said there were no fellow-travelers when he started at the paper in 1952 and who was leading prayer meetings there before he left in 1973 -- and says that if more journalists were Christians, there'd be more coverage of Kermit Gosnell's trial.
Lewis didn't reply to a query about whether he had any data about Christians in newsrooms. Another problem: As happens way too often in media criticism, he lets the Times and The Washington Post
stand in for all of newspapering.
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Nicholas Diakopoulos
Apr. 12, 2013
9:45 am
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Mallary Jean Tenore
Apr. 11, 2013
12:31 pm
Pamela Paul says one of her goals as
the incoming editor of The New York Times' Book Review is to make the section "unpredictable."
Some contend the Book Review has been too predictable, at least in terms of who's featured in its pages. Authors Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner
have argued for years that the section features far more male authors than female authors, and figures
from VIDA and
The Rumpus back up this claim.
When asked about VIDA's annual count of female authors, Paul said via email:
"Representing a diversity of authors and books is extremely important at the Book Review, and it will continue to be. And by diversity, I mean variety in every way: a diversity of author backgrounds and ideologies and arguments, a diversity of genre, a diversity of subject matter. While the VIDA numbers were indeed dismal overall, I was pleased to see that the Book Review has had a far better record than many other publications."
She didn't elaborate on how she would help diversify the section.
It's hard to compare the Times to other publications in the VIDA count because it reviews more books than many of those other publications. It's obvious, though, that there's a lot of room for improvement.
The latest VIDA count shows The New York Times Book Review featured more than twice as many male authors as female authors -- 488 to 237.
Here is my edited email exchange with Paul, who is serving as the features editor and children's book editor at the Times until she assumes her new role in May.
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Eric Deggans
Apr. 4, 2013
7:06 am
It may have been the the oddest 90 minutes of my media-watching life courtesy of Twitter, where hot-button issues such as race, prejudice and media can quickly turn toxic in 140-character bursts.
The first real sign of trouble came on Tuesday evening from Tim Graham, an official at the conservative watchdog group Media Research Center and Newsbusters.org. Though we don’t agree on much politically, he is one of the few conservatives willing to have regular conversations with me about media, so I was a little surprised to see this note from him on news that former Democratic political operative Karen Finney would host a weekend show for MSNBC.:
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Mallary Jean Tenore
Mar. 28, 2013
3:10 pm
Columbia Journalism Review | TVNewser | Media Matters
MSNBC’s Christopher Hayes acknowledges that the lack of diversity in the media is a problem. Instead of just talking about it, though, he’s doing something about it.
His weekend morning show "Up with Chris Hayes" has been praised in recent weeks for being “a beacon of diversity.” Hayes,
who is about to move into prime-time, tells Columbia Journalism Review's Ann Friedman that he and the show's producers rely on quotas and spend a lot of time discussing the diversity of the show’s guests.
"We just would look at the board and say, ‘We already have too many white men. We can’t have more.’ Really, that was it ... Always, constantly just counting," Hayes tells Friedman.
He has tried to look at diversity from a racial and gender standpoint. "Out of four panelists on every show, he and his booking producers ensured that at least two were women," Friedman writes.
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Andrew Beaujon
Mar. 28, 2013
8:53 am
Time
Time magazine's new covers
address the same-sex marriage debate that dominated this week's news. Russell Hart and Eric LaBonté, who have been engaged since 2010, kiss on one cover; Sarah Kate and Kristen Ellis-Henderson, who have been married since 2011, kiss on another.
"We had a long debate in our offices about this week’s cover images of two same-sex couples," Time Managing Editor Rick Stengel writes in an editor's note. "Some thought they were sensationalist and too in-your-face. Others felt the images were beautiful and symbolized the love that is at the heart of the idea of marriage. I agree with the latter, and I hope you do too."
Photographer Peter Hapak shot more couples, and the magazine has a
slideshow from his shoots. The last time the magazine featured split cover images
was in November 2012; it had two covers on the election and one cover on Hurricane Sandy, which ran in the Northeast.
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