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how's that illegal quota race-based hiring going, JR?

Doesn't bother me. But then, I'm a white guy.

Doesn't bother any of the three white guys who sit in my cubicle quad either, though. Or the two white guys on the other side of us. Or the three white guys and one white woman in front of them. Or any of my editors, all of whom are white.

This is the most ethnically diverse newsroom I've ever worked in (and the others were all in the North) and there are still barely enough ethnic "minority" reporters or editors of any type here to field a single "Survivor" team. Or to act as a decent number of pall bearers after I die of boredom with people getting up at arms (or just snide and snarky) about a newspaper having the radical idea that the coverage and the paper are better when the staff's not made up entirely white guys. The entire industry would be better off, it seems to me.

If you're incensed that there
s "illegal" hiring practice going on, get off your keyboard and sue someone over it. If you're angry about the idea I have a hard time understanding why. There's not a single person of color in the newsroom with me as I look around right now and I've got to tell you -- I can't see how the change would be anything but good.

sure.

there's no doubt that diversity helps.

but, I'm referring to a post long ago from JR about how every third or second or whatever hire(can't remember the number) MUST be a minority.

JR assures us it's not illegal. jerry bledsoe says it is. all things being equal, I believe jerry beldsoe.

the problem happens when quotas are set up and bad hires are made to fill numbers... and very qualified non-minorities are overlooked and skipped over...

that's it.

you're certainly right -- but there are ways to go about it and the quota system is NOT the way...

You'd better go back and read what I wrote, jim. Feel free to believe Jerry, but he and you are wrong in your interpretation of what I wrote, what we do and what the law says.

I don't see why the issue begins and ends with who's lying - Robinson or Bledsoe. We don't have to take either of their words on legal matters. As much as I hate to say it, that's a job for lawyers.

In the he said/he said situation you describe ("JR assures us it's not illegal. jerry bledsoe says it is. all things being equal, I believe jerry beldsoe.") all things are certainly not equal. The News & Record is owned by a corporation that, in my experience as an employee, is cautious and not terribly keen on being sued. It employs lawyers who have looked at this. This is the information upon which JR is basing his assertion that the N&R's hiring practices are not illegal. I don't know who Jerry Bledsoe is consulting on this, but the company's lawyers didn't all get their degrees out of Cracker Jack boxes. It seems they would have objected if it were actually illegal. But even if they're all in on the conspiracy one would think the whole thing could be settled with a lawsuit.

The company's hiring practices don't bother. As a straight, white man, I seem to have done fine despite them.

Which gets to the heart of the matter - you seem to think qualified candidates are probably being shut out for racial/ethnic reasons because of quotas that are inherently unfair. What is that assumption based on? I'm a white guy. I didn't go to UNC. I didn't work for the Daily Tarheel. The N&R is the largest paper I interned for before becoming a pro. I still got hired. So did all of the white guys in my quad before me. We could all have been So did Chris Coletta, a white guy about my age who was hired at one of our community papers last year. So did Gerald Witt, a white reporter in our Rockingham bureau. So did Sonja Elmquist, a young white reporter who was hired before me. In the entire time I've worked for the News & Record as either an intern or a staffer there has been exactly one newsroom hire of anyone who wasn't white -- and that person, Morgan Josey, is so terrifyingly qualified and capable that when she'd been here a few days I felt she'd been here years longer than me. I don't have any idea about Jonelle's ethnicity. I haven't yet met her. but I have no fear that she's fiercely qualified.

Anyone who would think for a moment that Lanita Withers, Tina Firesheets or Nancy McLaughlin have their jobs because of their race rather than their staggering skill and exhausting work ethic needs to have their heads examined. I would be sick with dread going head-to-head with any of them for any job anywhere, and it would have absolutely nothing to do with my race or sex.

Taking a simple glance around the newsroom (or down a staff list) at our youngest and newest reporters tells against the idea that qualified white candidates are being turned away. There are plenty of us. Don't worry yourself on our behalf.

If you agree that diversity is good and you think we should have a number of different types of reporters I wonder what's wrong with saying to ourselves "All right - let's make it our goal to hire more minority reporters."

I suspect it's the word "quota." I don't think anyone here actually uses the word. It's the term, the idea. "Every third reporter" as you say. But is that really, when you get down to it, any more offensive than just saying you're committed to hiring more minority reporters? It's just more specific, isn't it? It just asks that you back up what you're saying in a way that is quantifiable rather than transient. Either the idea is offensive or it's not. The way it's carried out is just a detail. Qualified white reporters are obviously still being hired.

I can respect (though I can't understand or agree with it in this particular instance) the opinion that all hiring should be completely ethnic, gender and religion blind. But to agree that diversity is needed and then be angry about it being carried out in a way that gets more diversity on the staff and demonstrably does not lock out qualified white or male candidates is just baffling to me.

Joe... perhaps things have changed radically at the N&R since I knew some folks there back in the day (early 90s)...

but, even then, without the quota and just a stated "we need more diversity" I knew PERSONALLY of two reporters at the N&R who were passed over for jobs to only have those jobs be filled by minorities who quite quickly washed out of the N&R (one was outright fired for complete incompetence and the other was drummed out and essentially sent packing -- she was perhaps the laziest reporter I ever knew in my entire life)

each of the white reporters who were passed over were eventually hired by the N&R (despite the fact they were just as qualfied or more so as the minorities when they were under consideration originally) and went on to do very well -- shining at the N&R and both moving on the much, MUCH larger publications

so, when I know how this worked without quotas, I shudder when I hear quotas...

but, maybe things have changed... maybe...

and, yes, the WAY this is accomplished can be destested even though the idea of hiring more minorities is thought to be -- on the whole -- good.

setting up a system where hires MUST be a certain color depending on what hire it falls (the third vacacy or whatever) just pushes managers who are already VERY overworked every day to make very decisions.... there will be times where it will be very easy to hire the less competent minority to appease the quota and the executive editor breathing down your neck.. I KNOW how it works...

there are also those wonderful hires known in the industry as "projects" (and, yes, this exists on the down low)... how interesting that no white people are ever hired as "projects"...

So you're basing this on something that you assert, anonymously, that occurred 15 years ago. An assertion, presumably, based on hearsay from the aggrieved parties? As I said the last time you stated this as fact, I was involved in hiring back then and recall nothing close to what you're describing.

We have good people here. We hire good people. When things don't work out -- and that happens -- we let them go or they leave on their own. Please don't generalize about how you think things work in our office.

Can't speak to how things may have worked 15 years ago. I was still watching "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" then. I'm also not involved in hiring. You could very well be right.

But I have been through the hiring process that's now in place - and from internship to part-time position to full time position my being a straight, white guy doesn't seem to have been a concern. As I look around the newsroom each day I wonder how it could be much of a concern at all, as there seem to be so many of us.

I guess this is where I always get tripped up in the "affirmative action screws white males out of jobs" argument. I'm a white male - Italian and Irish. I'm heterosexual. I'm from an average lower middle class American family. Anything at all remarkable about me is in what I do rather than what I was when I was born. I should, according to the argument I so often hear advanced, be the guy least likely to get a break at schools, scholarships, jobs, advancement, etc.

But I got into all but one of the colleges to which I applied (a small, private college in Boston I probably couldn't have afforded anyway). I've gotten every scholarship and internship for which I've ever applied. In the one instance in which I've ever been turned down for a job I was, I think, the least experienced and qualified applicant. I now work in a newsroom that is (as in every other newsroom in which I've ever worked) heavily dominated by white folks. My entire life and all of my experience tells against (at least to me) the idea that white men are getting the short end of the stick in America. Or, if we are, I keep lucking out.

Maybe it's best to keep my head down and my mouth shut, silently praying for the streak to keep on going...

Yes, JR, I am asserting that it happened because it did.

And, I know this closer than hearsay. I know it based on much, much more than that. Total 100 percent facts -- even first hand stories from the hiring and firing editors (who no longer work form the N&R). It's TRUE. And, I am certainly doing this through a cloaked identity because most -- if not everything -- I've ever said on your blogs would get me fired.

Newspaper journalism is a business in which journalists love to turn on each other and run them out of the business -- if they don't "go along to get along." It is VICIOUS. Just look every week on Romanesko and you'll see the latest cast-off get raked through the muck. It's not enough that journalists get fired, but four columns, six blog posts and several stories are always written about every departure -- and it's grueling.

For all of the "we love to challenge assumptions" that journalists spout, they really don't. It's a lie. The things I say must be said through a pseudonym or that would be the END of me. The END. I would bet that there's already been an attempt to find out who I am just to get rid of me.

I've known people personally within the N&R who espoused a conservative view and they've been laughed out of their job -- essentially been shown the door. (And that view was no more overtly displayed than any liberal view at the N&R.)

That person, from the mid-90s, was given little choice but to leave and is now in the PR world. And, again, I know this based MUCH more than hearsay. (The now-departed editor of the person told me first hand that the political leanings of the reporter were a large factor in the her being politley told to leave... She was laughed at at every turn by a group of reporters and editors. It made her a joke so that she was ineffective.)

So, don't try to tell me that "all views are welcome" and "we're a melting pot of ideas." Because you're not.

And, I'm sure that things have improved -- now that firm numbers are attached to minority hiring because it couldn't have stayed the same or gotten worse. Right? Things must have improved because you say they have. Right?

I'll bite, Jim: Even if what you're saying is 100 percent true (and though I'm happy to give our readers the benefit of the doubt, we'll never know for sure if you can't name names, though I fully understand why you can't), you're citing incidents from 10-15 years ago. My experience here, on the other hand, has been utterly unlike the newsroom experience you're describing. Politics rarely, if ever, comes up for discussion, and when it does, people tend to keep their views to themselves. I am quite confident that this is not an atmosphere in which someone would be fired for holding certain political beliefs.

Now, someone could well be fired if they couldn't keep those beliefs out of their stories. And I don't mean in an "all-reporters-are-biased" kind of way; I mean in a systematic and reckless way that showed a callous and/or purposeful disregard for fairness. Maybe that's what happened.

Or maybe some disgruntled folks who were fired for other reasons convinced themselves it was because of their political beliefs. Psychologists call that "self-serving bias," and it's a well-documented phenomenon.

Or maybe you're right and people were fired for their political beliefs. But I'm being honest when I say that nearly every reporter I've ever come across would consider that absurd and an affront to their professional standards -- including reporters here. So you can believe that the N&R is some cesspool removed from the standards of the reporting world, or you can believe the more obvious explanations.

People are more than happy to believe the former because the media make an easy target. Fine.

But Occam's Razor gives us the latter.