Journalism blahs

So columnist John Tierney is leaving the New York Times op-ed page to write for the Science section. He won't be missed. His column was predictable and mostly ho-hum. But at least as a libertarian, he brought some ideological diversity to the Times' op-ed page. He's going to be replaced by Tom Edsall, who is a smart liberal[UPDATE: I believe I got that Edsall tidbit from The New Republic Online yesterday, which no longer has that claim, if it ever did. Let the record show that I don't know to whom the Tierney slot will go.-- R.]. That leaves David Brooks as the only conservative voice on the page -- versus a gaggle of liberals: Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert, Tom Friedman, Nick Kristof, Paul Krugman, and Edsall. Six to one -- and Brooks, the only original thinker of the bunch, is pretty moderate for a right-winger.

Leaving aside the dullness of most of the Times' columnists, it's amazing that they would opt for such ideological uniformity in a time when they're trying to make themselves a national newspaper. The NYT is actually losing readers in NYC, but picking them up nationwide with its national edition. I subscribe to it at home, and you'd be surprised driving through Dallas early in the morning to see all the blue bags on front lawns. It's in the paper's longtime interest to expand that national edition. But this is a country that's a lot more diverse (and conservative) than Manhattan, obviously, and it is in the financial interest of the NYT Company to serve that diversity on its op-ed pages. The Washington Post's op-ed page is far more diverse -- and far more interesting -- than the Times's. If the WaPo could deliver a newspaper to my front lawn every morning, I'd probably choose to subscribe to it instead of the Times.

It's confounding to watch the newspaper industry from the inside. It has been obvious to me for a long, long time that ours is an industry that talks a good game about the need to serve the readers (read: the customers), but which won't lift a finger to do it if it would require us to grow outside our own comfortable prejudices. Journalism executives agonize over "diversity" hiring, which they take to mean exclusively hiring racial minorities. "Diversity" expanded to include conservatives, and (say) Evangelicals, never occurs to them -- or if it does, it's rejected. Newspapers spend a lot of money sending recruiters to black colleges and minority journalism events, but I'd be shocked if any paper committed a single farthing to visiting journalism programs at religiously affiliated colleges looking for writers with potential.

Don't get me wrong -- it's a very good thing that newsrooms are not monochromatic. I wouldn't consider it a good thing if the newsroom all looked like me. But in my opinion, newsrooms ill-serve their readers when they think they've achieved "diversity" even though there's little or no ideological diversity on its staff.

But I'm conflicted about this. Fact is, it would do no good whatsoever to hire conservative, or Evangelical, journalists because they offer ideological diversity if they are not good at basic reporting and writing -- you know, the art and craft of journalism. But American journalism is also an industry that lives by the dogma that diversity -- read: one's race or gender, provided it is not white or male -- adds to the quality of one's work as a journalist. It would do nobody any good if that racist and paternalistic dogma were expanded to include religious and/or political conservatives; it would simply mean expanding a spoils system that corrupts the nature of the journalism business. I don't care if the courts reporter is black, white, socialist, Whig or whatever; I care that he or she is aggressive and trustworthy, and a good writer. Don't you? But I tell you, the diversity dogma -- in its highly selective form -- is unshakable in American newsrooms. I have no data to prove it one way or another, but I believe the idea that readers care about the race or gender of the writer of a given story, versus the quality of the reporting, writing and analysis, is a liberal shibboleth -- and the kind of thinking that is creating duller newspapers (and more morally self-satisfied journalism executives).

I more or less decided to quit going to journalism classes to talk to students. I don't want to encourage them falsely. I expect to spend my whole career as a journalist, because it's what I love, and it's what I know how to do. But as an avid newspaper reader who sees a lot of newspapers on my travels, it's hard to find much life in American newspapers these days. I recently connected through Cleveland and picked up in the airport my first-ever copy of the Plain Dealer, a newspaper that had a big repuation, at least when I was in journalism school. I was quite literally shocked by how dull the thing was. Completely unremarkable and personality-free. No life in it at all. I thought that if I moved to Cleveland, there's no way I'd subscribe to this newspaper. It was bland and mushy. Mind you, that's one day's newspaper, and maybe the PD was having an off day. But I'd guess not. You read journalism from the past -- H.L. Mencken's, say -- and you lament that a lot of this stuff would never make it into an American newspaper today. Too edgy. Too lively. If Mencken tried to get a job at an American newspaper today, they'd never hire him. Did American newspapers become blander when they got all professionalized? I wonder.

Anyway, I'm rambling, but what I want to say is that I pretty much think the newspaper industry, barring an unexpected burst of creative thinking, is all about managing decline. A lot of that -- maybe most of it -- has to do with technological changes that the entire industry is struggling to adapt to. But we do ourselves no favors on the things we can control -- like the way we approach reporting, writing and analysis. In that, I think we're about like the Episcopal church: losing communicants in part because our bien-pensant dogmas make increasingly little sense to the wider world, yet we stand defiantly and proudly upon them, taking little notice of our customer base and, frankly, boring people silly.

UPDATE:You may be thinking, "So what does he want? He's complaining because the Times is not hiring more conservatives on its op-ed page for the sake of diversity, at the same time he's complaining about newsrooms hiring for diversity? How does that make sense?" Let me try to explain. In the case of the Times op-ed page, the ideological orientation of a columnist directly affects the kind of job he or she does. It would be nonsense to hire a columnist only because or predominantly because that columnist is a conservative. But to fill a job like that, especially on an op-ed page that's almost entirely liberal, it makes sense to seek ideological diversity within an overall search for a smart, lively, inquisitive columnist. In newsrooms though -- that is, not the op-ed page -- hiring for diversity (as defined by this profession, which excludes ideological diversity) is enormously important, far out of balance, at least from what I've seen. In my own case, about a decade ago I applied for a film critic's position at a particular newspaper, was told by the arts editor that he loved my writing, and wanted to hire me. He called back later and sheepishly told me he couldn't bring me in for an interview, because his boss told him they wanted to hire a woman or a minority. It worked out for me in the end -- I ended up with a much better job elsewhere -- but to be told flat-out that the quality of my work didn't matter at all, only the color of my skin and my gender, was infuriating and discouraging. While this was going on, I phoned the arts editor's boss and offered to buy my own plane ticket to come to that city and sit for a job interview; the boss said he would meet me for a cup of coffee if I wanted, but that I shouldn't consider it an interview. The only reason for this was because I am a white male. A few months went by, and the newspaper called me back, said their national search for a woman or minority candidate was over, and they'd like to bring me in for an interview. Happily, I had that very day accepted a job at the New York Post, and could tell them I wasn't interested. But the sting remained. The idea that no matter how hard I worked to write well, I couldn't overcome this bias against me because of the color of my skin and my gender was debilitating. You hear stories like this a lot in this business. It was wrong to do it to women and minorities back in the day, and it's wrong to do it to anybody now. And morality aside it makes for a duller newspaper.