Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)
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Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)
#2I'd be curious how they define race. Do they have a rule book with color pigment density, size of external attributes and maybe even a grading scale of good to bad "diversity factor"?
I find it more disturbing they consider diversity on a pseudo scientific race definition than the supposed lack of diversity. What if in those they call white, many are women, many are young or old, fulltime or partime, idealists or pragmatists, some kind of attributes that could actually matter for writing ? I d be more worried if all journalists are students of the same school of thought than if they were all blue-skinned.
And I say that myself as a minority where I am (happen to be white-skinned western europe pigment variant, italian hair-colored, northern continental medium sized, but live and work in China...) where Im still probably graded as part of a non diverse "race" in my company's corporate diversity index :D
And when the government in China asked me my "self reported racial origin" last census, I said "Other: Normandy", not sure what exactly they want to mean by "westerner" as opposed to "vietnamese" in the multiple choice combo box...
Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)
#3Isn't it a luxury to be able to put down money for a journalism degree tuition in the US? I think this may already be explained quite well for the US higher education system, how do these ratios compare to journalism degrees'?
Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)
#4"Anti" racists are professional victims. Don't engage with them. They will always find a way to twist a disagreement going against their favor into an oppression narrative.
Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)
#5Somewhat related tweet thread from today: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1461633512344326146?s=21
Don’t talk to journalists (at least if you work in tech, but probably outside of it) - they’re not your friends and your incentives are not aligned with theirs (and they’re not looking to tell the objective truth).
You’re better off writing your own articles about what you’re doing. They historically owned distribution, but they don’t anymore. We don’t need them.
If you do want to interview, find a smart individual. Like Zuckerberg’s recent interview with Ben Thompson of Stratechery. The difference in quality between someone like Byrne Hobart, Ben Thompson, Sam Harris, or Scott Alexander compared to someone at the NYT is night and day.
Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)
#6Does “white” include “Jewish”? :’)
Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)
#7Currently, the USA population is 60.4% white [1].
So, whites are under-represented in big tech (50.1% white according to this post) while over-represented significantly in tech journalism (80% white). That's difficult to understand: why is there such a bias in favour of white people in tech jornalism, but not in tech in general??
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/united-states-po...
Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)
#8The only tech writing worth reading is technical.
Everything else is traditional gossip based hype generation. Not a shock it’s a bunch of white people hyping America's financial economic hustle.
Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)
#9Focusing on such statistics usually encourages equality of outcome as opposed to equality of opportunity.
A far more helpful metric would probably be to know how many people want to be in tech (or tech journalism in this case) but can’t, along with the various factors that are preventing them from getting into their desired profession.
If you do then break down the numbers by ethnicity, gender, etc., you may be able to tease out a correlation that may hint at institutional bias, but there’s still no way to prove causation with just that data.
You would at least be clearer on the what the obstacles are that’re faced by people, perhaps marginalized people, that put them at a disadvantage when it comes to trying to get into those fields. Then you can proactively and practically start to do something about those specific obstacles.
Re: Tech journalism is less diverse than tech (2020)
#10Compared to programming and tech, success in a lot of fields in the humanities, including journalism is far more connected to who you know, what family you were born into, what college you went to, and your overall personal network. In such an environment, it is unsurprising that there is a severe lack of diversity.
I have never received a satisfactory answer for why a lot of people from these fields are all about "Everyone should learn to code" initiatives, but not, say "Everyone should learn to be a citizen journalist", or "Everyone should learn to be a copy editor". Indeed, in many aspects, the latter would seem to share many aspects with learning to code (attention to detail, focus on syntax, etc.), and be more accessible.
My conclusion is that there is no desire to increase participation in or accessibility to the field of journalism, because of a rejection of the Jevons paradox. And consequently, the shrinking field seems to rely heavily on credentialism and connections to choose who becomes a journalist.