Emily Bell Upset That Vice, Quartz, Vox And Buzzfeed Are As Misogynistic As The Guardian
THE GUARDIAN’S Emily Bell on Comment is Free on the lack of diversity in journalists hired for new startups:
“It is not just the four new (and still exciting) breakout projects of the year: Vice, Quartz, Buzzfeed, Politico… – these, too, are led by white men, and filled with more of them. It is as if Arianna Huffington never happened. Or as if diversity of leadership and ownership did not really matter, as long as the data-driven, responsively designed new news becomes a radical and successful enough departure from the drab anecdote laden guff put out by those other men.”
Let’s see some numbers:
Buzzfeed: 26 “on the team”, 6 are women.
Vice: 4 leaders; no women
Quartz: 34 on the team; 12 on the team
Politico: 3 executives; one woman
Bell was once editor-in-chief of Guardian Unlimited.
She is a white woman.
She sits on the board of the Scotts Trust, owner of the Guardian Media Group. Want to see what they look like?
The picture above shows 4 out of 12 on the Scott Trust board are women. That’s “just over 30%”.
Bell says Ezra Klein, founder of Vox, is one “marquee journalist” letting minorities down:
“I was about to feel outside the club,” Klein opinies in a new video on his site, of opening up a complex newspaper story back in the day, confused and uninformed. “This is a real problem. And it’s not a problem we could solve in print.” Says the man who, at last rough count and including his fourlatestadditions, had hired 10 men for regular bylined work to three women – plus himself.
“Clubhouse chemistry is important,” Silver said when he talked to Time.com last week about his own rigorous hires, which he posts gleefully on his dummy site. Last count: six women on the 19-person editorial staff. By the sophisticated math of this pundit – and Silver hates pundits – that is just underover 30%. Minorities – as, after all, women are a majority – are even more poorly served, at FiveThirtyEight and elsewhere…
Bell moves on.
…it is curious that the whiff of testosterone hanging round the whiteboard has not been sufficiently challenged.
No, indeed, it hasn’t…
Posted: 17th, March 2014 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
