By Brigitte L. Nacos
When William Saffire retired as New York Times columnist
some time ago, I wondered whether a woman would succeed him since the paper had
only one female columnist, Maureen Dowd. When this did not happen, I actually
complained to Gail Collins, the editorial page editor of the Times. In today’s Washington
Post, the papers ombudsperson Deborrah Howell, writes, “The Post needs more
opinion writers and columnists who are of the female persuasion or are
minorities. Overwhelmingly, Post columnists are white guys. Some are among the
paper's best columnists, but more diversity would make The Post a richer paper.
Numerical equality is not what readers look for, but women and minorities want
to see themselves well represented in the news and opinion pages of The Post.
This is a remarkably diverse region, and that should be better reflected in
columnist jobs.” How could anyone take issue with the point that diversity
among columnists (just like in news rooms) is desirable—not for the sake of
women and minorities, as Ms. Howell seems to indicate, but for the sake of everyone.
Judging from some of the comments in response to the article,
there are still those who believe that only white males have the brains to be columnists
of leading newspapers, that hiring more women and minorities would mean the
adoption of a quota system, and that men earn more because they work more
hours. Here are excerpts from a few of the comments in reaction to the call for
diversity:
*
Somehow or another, I
had the opinion that being a columnist was a matter of having a good mind, an
inquisitive point of view, a sense of fairness and the ability to write. Now I
find Deborah Howells sense of political correctness in the mix. By her
standards, no color or sex will be unmixed, until the Post columnists are a
uniform, dull gray.
*
Are these broad and
patronizing assertions based on actual feedback to the Ombudsman, or simply the
liberal pipe dreams of a PC maven? The Post is diverse enough, thank you very
much see, e.g., yet another series last month on Being a Black Man, I choose what I
read based not on the color of the columnists’ skin or sex - but on the content
of the column. Ignoring diversity of ideas to obsess over diversity of skin
color and sex is itself racist and sexist.
*
White guys may be
over-represented, but Jews only make up two percent of the US population
and they are way overrepresented in even the names Howell mentions, much less
the bylines one sees in the Post. How can such a small ethnic minority even
begin to understand what the other 98 percent think? Why should they not be
limited to two percent of writers? Ill now mention that my wife is Jewish and I
raised my kid Jewish my above rant is to point out where the door opened by
Howell leads. I truly believe leftism begets fascism. Also, if you run the
numbers of actual hours worked, men do not earn more than women and in the
Internet age there is no excuse not to know that.
*
Why not simply continue to concentrate on
quality journalism however it may be found, rather than some insipid desire to
make the newsroom look more like the region. There are a lot of really poorly
educated people with terrible writing skills in the region. Should they be
represented on the staff?
*
Yes, we want quality columnists and quality journalists and
quality editors—but it is utter nonsense to make believe that the male dominance among columnists and in newsrooms persists
because there are no, or not enough qualified women and minority members around for these
positions. And, no, there ought not to be a quota system; to make efforts to achieve greater diversity, whether in news organizations or elsewhere, does not and should not mean the establishment of quotas.
Comments