Farewell to Asian Pop
Ouch.
Long time friend of the blog, Jeff Yang, has just lost his far reaching and influential column, Asian Pop. He writes in today’s farewell post:
So this is it, I guess: The final installment of “Asian Pop.” After nearly eight years beneath the masthead, the Gatekeepers have decided that “the economics of our business have changed in a way that doesn’t support online-only columns.” (And maybe not offline ones either: These are parlous times for the news biz.) [...]
As you might guess from its title, Asian Pop began with a focus on Asian media and entertainment, treating “Asianness” as something alien to the American experience, and “pop” as a reflection of passing fancies and ephemeral trends.
Over time, however, with the encouragement of three successive terrific editors, the column moved beyond those original boundaries, transforming Asianness from a spectacle into a perspective, and making “pop” shorthand not for popular but for populi.
Last week, I accompanied Doris Truong to drop Jeff off at the airport, one his way to a retreat to go walk up a mountain and think about things. Knowing Jeff, he will come back bursting with excitement and ready to embark on a bunch of new projects. But this decision by the powers that be to kill his column (and all other online-only long form columns) is heralding more bad business to come. I’ve been engaged in journalism work for the last two years, ever since Poynter made the decision to make me a Sense Making Fellow. In many ways, I’ve had a front seat to watching the freefall of legacy media. Diversity was one of the first values on the chopping block as expendable.
As the American Society of Newspaper Editors reported earlier this year:
[W]hile the study showed a slight increase in newsroom employees overall (from 41,500 in 2009 to 41,600 in 2010), the number of employees of color was actually down half-a-percent, making 2010 the third consecutive year that the percentage of minority journalists declined, explained MediaBistro. The total number of journalists of color declined from 5,500 in 2009 to 5,300 in 2010.
“At a time when the U.S. Census shows that minorities are 36 percent of the U.S. population, newsrooms are going in the opposite direction. This is an accuracy and credibility issue for our newsrooms,” said Milton Coleman, ASNE president, in a statement.
What’s more, 441 newspapers that were part of the ASNE survey reported no full-time minorities whatsoever — a number that has been increasing since 2006.
Broadcast isn’t much better:
Out of 815 executive producers, assignment managers, managing editors, assistant news directors, news directors and general managers at the ABC, CBS, Cox, FOX, Gannett, Hearst Argyle, Media General, Meredith, NBC and Tribune stations 713 (87.9%) are White, 64 (7.8%) are African American, 24 (3%) are Hispanic/Latino, 13 (1.6%) are Asian and only 1 is Native American. The management teams at 82 of the stations are all White.
“It is disheartening in 2010 that four of the media companies in the report have no African American news directors and so many of the companies have no black news director in some of the most diverse cities in America,” said NABJ President Kathy Y. Times. “It’s time for African American viewers to reconsider their support of media companies that do not appreciate or make diversity a priority.”
NABJ first began conducting its annual census as a way of encouraging broadcasters to commit to hiring more people of color for editorial positions. Still, the association believes true progress cannot be made unless the companies fully commit to developing talent who can then be promoted from within.
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