The point I try and make to Democrats and liberals -- who claim to know better about how Hispanics should be treated as human beings -- is the following:
If the people who claim to be tolerant about Hispanics end up ignoring our needs and contribtions such as those who hate us, then there really is no difference between the two sides. In fact, I prefer the haters because they are at least honest in how they feel about people who look like me. I then can deal with them.
So consider this morning's Tennessean and its feature on ordinary people doing extraordinary things in their jobs and lives. Just as with the newspaper's July 4 feature on ordinary patriots, today's Labor Day feature did not have one Hispanic face among the seven people profiled.
How in the world can one separate Hispanics and labor in Middle Tennessee and this nation? Hispanics do the most visible and most arduous work in lawn and garden care and in building large homes and stadia like the place where the Titans play.
Or how can one ignore Hispanics on July 4, considering that 44 human beings of this descent has received the Medal of Honor for service beyond the call of duty to this country?
Yet that is what The Tennessean has done.
LOBBYING NON-LISTENERS
Some very good people have lobbied Tennessean editors to recognize the contributions of Hispanics, citizens and non-citizens. Father Joe Pat Breen, pastor of St. Edward Catholic Church, has expended his valuable time to meet with The Tennessean's city editor and top editor. He has respectfully asked for inclusion of Hispanics, particurly the many heroic people he knows personally.
The Tennessean city editor, touted as a former LA Times staffer, told Breen he knew about the emerging Hispanic community, similiar to the one in Los Angeles 15 years ago. Actually, that kind of comment shows the city editor's ignorance. The Hispanic community in LA has never been emerging. Los Angeles was a Hispanic community, until white folks descended on the area in bigger numbers in the 1800s. Communities only "emerge" when the media establishment finally gets around to recognize them.
Tennessean editor Mark Silverman only directed his newsroom to write about the torture of Nashville mother Juana Villegas(DeLaPaz) and her newborn after Father Breen handed him a copy of original reporting by The New York Times about this human rights atrocity.
Tody's Labor Day package proves that the two editors are not listening. Of course, Tennessean staffers also know of frustration from dealing with these same editors. Many of these staffers have lived here for decades, so they know what is important and who is critical to making our communities better places to live. But their voices are not respected by their newsroom's leadership or the publisher who runs the whole operation.
ELIMINATING ELITISM
Perhaps Hispanics in middle Tennessee should not take the continuing and insulting slight of their positive contributions in The Tennessean personally. Perhaps they should not consider this kind of affront as bigotry, just a bunch of decisionmakers and columnists who do not know all the people of the area they're covering. Many Hispanics do know English. It was my first language in my household.
Yet I've had to go back to school to gain an initial capacity to communicate in Spanish. Each day brings more improvement. Each week brings growing respect for brothers and sisters in middle Tennessee of Hispanic descent. But you must get off your ass and go to them.
The Tennessean news decisionmakers, in my time here since 1996, have seen the newspaper as an institution to be served, not to serve. This kind of elitism is destructive. The only decent top editor of the newspaper in my time here was E.J. Mitchell, who ultimately left after a too-short tenure for New Jersey.
How ironic it is that the media here and across the nation question whether Sen. Barack Obama is suffering from a sense of elitism voters get from him. If the media would only look in the mirror and the product being produced, its members would discover the elitism plank in their own eyes.
CONSTRUCTIVE STEPS
To be constructive in my criticism to improve the newspaper and increase revenues, I'd recommend the following steps to Corporate Gannett overseeing The Tennessean:
* Get rid of Silverman.
* Bring Reno (NV) Publisher Ted Power back to Tennessee. Kick out current publisher Ellen Leifeld and replace her with Power. Then let Power hire a new top editor in his image of reaching out to the community and boosting his employees' morale.
* Get new newsside columnists who will get out of the office and into communities of all ethnicities and races too long ignored. Get a new African-American columnist who is not tied to the current and lackadaisical African-American leadership.
The Tennessean had a brilliant African-American reporter who wanted to join the editorial board and write opinion. He was told by the top editor then that he would first have to work on the copy desk.
What kind of career ladder is that? A stupid one.
So the young man, a graduate of Notre Dame University and son of college professors, left The Tennessean for a much smaller newspaper in Springfield, Mo. Readers lost out here and gained there. The journalist was simply one of at least seven African-American professionals I've known who have left The Tennessean newsroom in my tenure due to the inadequacy of the top newsroom leadership.
I worked with three African-American journalists there to try and get them advanced professionally in the 1100 Broadway newsroom. Two I was trying to make into columnists, not just because of their skills but their race and youth.
We were unsuccessful.
A POVERTY OF EXPERIENCES
Local and national media continue to be prisoners of the poverty of their experiences and the lack of needed diversity in their staffs and decisionmakers. Personnel lack diversity by politics, race, ethnicity and even income. And that shortcoming in diversity shows up in coverage that ultimately is most uninteresting.
Today's Tennessean is just indicative of a continuing decline in the quality of the product. But it is not the fault of overburdened and heroic staff members.
Blame belongs with the top editors and the publisher. And all of us -- not just Hispanics -- are being shortchanged when it comes to information we need to know and staffers desperately want to provde.
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1 comment:
I knew the "brilliant African-American reporter" who left. (Un)fortunately, most of the black talent there have left for much more appreciative pastures. I can remember one defector who was actually told she was marginal upon review yet performed the lion's share of the work of her desk. Some have been in the same job for 10-plus years with no sign of anything to come. Others are ghettoized as urban reporters who supposedly can only understand black music, urban issues and hip hop culture. Puh-leeze. Don't let living in East Nashville, playing a Kanye West CD or liberal labels fool anyone ... I've had some of the most honest conversations with Confederate flag wavers.
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