Author Topic: Hell, I'll bet this guy has gotta be black.... (Read 3694 times)

Batz · « **Reply #105 on:** May 12, 2003, 11:18:15 PM »

he wasnt a "golden boy", he wasnt even high yellow . He was known to turn in poor work but was advanced anyway and he wasnt advanced along the normal lines either. There were numerous red flags that in all reality its pretty hard to believe that senior management didnt know about.

The facts are he was advanced to broaden "diversity" at the NYT National News Desk. Whether you wanna call that AA or not is up to you. But his color had more to do with it then his work. Early on folks were aware of the problems with his work. Thats documented.

GRUNHERZ · « **Reply #106 on:** May 12, 2003, 11:39:48 PM »

MiniD I do know what newsapers do when there are factual errors in their articles - they print corrections and your examplary employee had tons of them for his articles - apparently some 1/2 of his articles needed corrections to be published - those are serious errrors people knew about. So in 1/2 of his articles in a given period of time he made serious errorors and lies, errors that people knew about. His direct supervisors wrote things about his perfomance like this (paraphrasing) "we have to stop jayson from writing for the times right now." Yet he got promoted and promoted and promoted as senior executives touted him as a model of their diversity program.

What you are propsing in his defense is that its standard NYT procedure to deisregad errors and lies as long as the articles draw readers. You broughtv that in to this discussion not me, and now that I called you on the absurdity of that argument you are trying to distance yourself from the matter. Go ahead everyone can read that in your posts.

Mini D · « **Reply #107 on:** May 13, 2003, 12:09:54 AM »

His stories were on the front page batz and grun. Call them what you want, they were on the front page. That does not happen because someone is black. Its that simple. How many of the NYT's writers do you think had front page articles last year? Or the year before?

Don't tell me he wasn't turning in good articles. Oh yeah... but they had errors. Errors are bad... they are the end all be all of quality workmanship... but not wording.

You guys are focussing so hard on the negative, you're failing to take in much of what was around it. You're focussing so much on "reports of his errors" that your failing to see what was printed and where it was displayed. What newspapers do internal via promotions is one thing, what they print is entirely different. Surely you guys must see this distinction... you can't be that blind.

Then again.. I guess you can.

Not much point in going on here guys... the same thing is just being said over and over again.

Continue your self reassuring bigotry without me. I'm done with you guys. Keep at it long enough and you might even convince yourselves that you were right and you are just concerned about the welfare of everyone.

Good luck to you... let me know if you ever decide to run for office.

MiniD

GRUNHERZ · « **Reply #108 on:** May 13, 2003, 12:56:01 AM »

Its funny how you are trying to diminish the impact of his poor performance and open lying over and over again. And then he gets promoted again and again even with his direct superiours saying things like that he must be stopped right now.

Whats your take on that MiniD his direct superiors though he should have been stopped from writing for the times right now! How does that reflect with your idea that somehow he was a star reporter and had good performance? And yes If you ask ill give you a link to a direct quote saying just taht - so go ahead and feel free to answer the question...

Batz · « **Reply #109 on:** May 13, 2003, 02:34:35 AM »

His stories were front page because of subject matter not because of his writing style. Look at the stories he covered. Even if he turned in a badly written article on the Washington sniper I doudt it would have been buried in the back some where.

Do you think a story on Jessica Lynch would not appeared on the front page? Even if the writing was poor on its first draft it would have been sent to be edited.

Pick a story of his that made front page that wasnt there do to subject matter.

The folks who looked at his work new it was poor. Even so he was still promoted.

Newspaper reporters are a dime a dozen.

Leslie · « **Reply #110 on:** May 13, 2003, 07:02:12 AM »

I don't care much for journalists anyhow. The profession has gotten a sleazy rep over the years, at least as regarded by non-journalists.

The rules of engagement have changed...and pretty much anything goes, unfortunately.

I believe Grun's ire is directed at journalists, and especially yankee liberal ones, with no discrimination of race, color, creed, religion, or national origin.

As far as whether someone is racist or not, it depends on how they treat people. Look at Archie Bunker. Was he a racist? I think not. Though he did stereotype, which is a normal thing and everyone does it.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about that. Carry on.

Les

gofaster · « **Reply #111 on:** May 13, 2003, 08:57:18 AM »

What countries do white guys come from?

Is Italy one of them?

What about France? Spain?

What about "black Irish"?

German Jews? I always wondered if Jews qualified as being white people, because it seemed at some point most of Europe and the Middle East hated the Jews for one reason or another, so they would therefore qualify a persecuted minority, right?

Are Polish people white? I used to hear a lot of Polish jokes. Were the joke-tellers racist? Poles certainly seemed persecuted.

midnight Target · « **Reply #112 on:** May 13, 2003, 09:21:23 AM »

This guy did a story on a family anxiously waiting for word on their son in Iraq (a Marine). He described the look on the mother's face as the news came on the TV. He descried the blue and white flowers in the garden. It was a beautiful piece of writing by all accounts. The mother even wrote a letter to the editor of the Times praising the reporters work.

But he never went to their house. The descriptions were from wired pictures. The problem wasn't the quality of his writing, it was the accuracy of his sources. He was a good enough writer to fool the management for a long time.

The NYT should be commended for actively blowing the whistle on themselves.

GRUNHERZ · « **Reply #113 on:** May 13, 2003, 11:58:21 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by midnight Target

The NYT should be commended for actively blowing the whistle on themselves.

But they really didnt MT - not until it went outside the NYT. People at the NYT knew he was outright lying for years and they knew he was unproffesional and a poor journalist. They only called him on it once an outside newspaper writer from New Mexico noticed he had lifted parts of her report.

And thats another one of things that made wonder if there was internal pressure from executives to keep this guy on the paper. He may have been a good creative writer but his collegues and direct supervisors knew he was a poor journalist and wanted him stopped from writing at the paper. Yet he got promoted and promoted while high executives lauded his acivements as testament of sucess of their diversity outreach program. Now all of that has been established as fact, either admit directly by the NYT in their 10 page apology article and the rest discoverec by other newssources - the only thing thats left to debete is if you belive this positive diversity PR spin that jayson's "sucess" added for the paper created a conflict of interst for the NYT executives whose main job is to promote and sell the company. Basically if you belive there has been a failiure in this case of the NYT AA outreach efforts.

JBA · « **Reply #114 on:** May 13, 2003, 12:00:15 PM »

Affirmative action at work.

Makofan · « **Reply #115 on:** May 14, 2003, 09:03:06 AM »

We don't seem to have this color issue up in Canada (there aren't many black people to begin with). Instead we have cultural issues (English/French) to display our prejudice

So from a disinterested viewpoint it looks like you can have three stances on the racial subject.

1) Race is the deciding factor. This is obviously racist. Examples can be "No blacks allowed in our club" or "I'm not having a black man managing our team".

2) Race is part of the deciding factor. This is also obviously racist. An example could be "All candidates being equal, I will hire the white guy" (like professional football) or "All candidates being equal, I will promote the black person" (like affirmative action)

3) Race has nothing to do with the decision. This is obiously non-racist. An example could be hiring the person you think would do the best job (Detroit Lions and Notre Dame perhaps as examples)

It seems strange to me that proponents of stance #3 are deemed racist, while proponents of stand #2 are deemed non-racist