At this Unity convention of about 5,600 journalists, there is more talk about saving the industry rather than saving diversity. But the digital age only exacerbates the problem of diversity.
Simply put, the digital divide is real when it comes to jobs in media. And the publisher of the New York Times confirmed what should be obvious from looking at staff lists.
Asians get more than their share of the new growth jobs, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the New York Times told a room of several hundred journalists attending the convention this week in Chicago.
“The people we’ve looked at and the people weve hired just at the New York Times… is more heavily weighted Asian than any other minority group,” Sulzberger clarified afterward. He said he knows the TImes numbers, and surmises the industry trend from talking to other newspaper officials.
While black, Latino and Native Americans were logically concerned about how to raise their digital representation, I was concerned about not hurting the numbers of qualified Asians who apply for and want those digital jobs.
I asked Sulzberger how he can avoid what’s happening with Asians in other areas, like being over-represented in higher education and the resulting backlash against Asian American applicants.
Not that I’m against affirmative action, of course.
But I’m thinking about all you Asian American geeks who might get passed over by an affirmative action hire.
“I can’t speak to that,” Sulzberger said. “All I can tell you is that from the New York Times perspective, we will hire the people we need to get the job done and we are going to choose based on skills and ability.”
I didn’t want to get into whether that would be enough to raise the numbers from the under-represented minority groups. But at least he’s on record that he’s not going to reverse the Asian trend, that is if the Asians continue to prove themselves based on ability.
I mean how can you have too many Asians in one place? Unless we choose to ghettoize ourselves.
Before going to another questioner, Sulzberger went ethnic on me.
“If we had this conversation 40 years ago, we’d be having it about Jews.”
Actually, Sulzberger hinted at something I’ve been saying for nearly 15 years: In many ways, Asian Americans are the new Jews.
The difference? We generally don’t have the same skin color of the people who were here before us.
How long will it be before we turn white?