In more than two years as public editor at The Times, I’ve encountered very few subjects that have aroused as much passion and reaction as an Arts & Leisure article about the TV producer Shonda Rhimes and the stereotype of the “Angry Black Woman” the story leaned on. I wrote about it on Monday, and quickly hundreds of readers responded in deeply felt comments; my email has been overflowing with more commentary; and many people I know, inside and outside The Times, have been eager to talk about it. And other writers (Emily Nussbaum at The New Yorker, Linda Holmes at NPR, and many others) have taken it up.
The article and its aftermath tapped into something important – actually, many things: racial issues, mainstream media coverage of race and people of color, diversity on The Times’s staff, the role of strong editing, how people encounter stories in the digital age, and much more.
I talked late Monday with Dean Baquet, the executive editor, to get his view. His opinion is of particular interest because he made history a few months ago when he became the first black editor to lead The Times; he replaced the paper’s first female executive editor, Jill Abramson.
Mr. Baquet told me that he sees a problem with diversity in some areas of the newsroom, including among the 20 cultural critics, where there are only two persons of color — the chief book critic, Michiko Kakutani, and a TV critic, Mike Hale — and no black critics.
“I would criticize us for that,” Mr. Baquet said. “I would love to diversify that area,” as well as others. He noted that The Times has had black critics in the past, specifically mentioning Margo Jefferson, but now, he said, “it’s an issue and we need to work on it.”
He said that in an era when, for economic reasons, The Times is trying to reduce rather than increase staff (it’s common knowledge that newsroom buyouts are expected soon), diversity efforts become more difficult.
“It’s a lot harder to work on it” under those circumstances, he said. “But I’m not going to use that as an excuse. I have an obligation to diversify the staff and I will figure out a way.”
Meanwhile, the union that represents many Times journalists, the Newspaper Guild, is conducting a top-to-bottom survey of newsroom diversity. Those numbers will be revealing. And separately, Times management includes a senior editor whose duties include diversity and training efforts.
Still, Mr. Baquet is the only person of color on the news-side masthead, which includes the highest ranking editors. Ms. Abramson was successful in making the masthead equally male and female, and once told me she wanted to focus more intently on racial diversity. (With the newly reconfigured masthead announced by Mr. Baquet on Wednesday, women remain well represented.)
The Times, of course, can’t just graft on some diversity (just add a few black people and stir, as one commenter mockingly put it) and then call it a day; change has to be deeper, broader and more integral than that. Numbers do not automatically translate to a more balanced perspective. Editors and reporters must be willing to have frank conversations, to grapple with unexamined prejudices and to engage with sensitive subjects head-on.
On the specifics, Mr. Baquet said he fully understood that many readers were deeply upset about the article on Ms. Rhimes. He said that its author, Alessandra Stanley, “was trying to make a profound point” about breaking down stereotypes of black women, but “clearly, it wasn’t read that way.” He declined to comment on whether the article was insensitive or offer any other praise or criticism.
Mr. Baquet suggested that readers take a broad view of The Times, pointing to other articles in the same day’s newspaper (last Sunday’s) that had a racial component, theme or prominent voice – including Charles Blow’s essay on the Sunday Review cover, a front-page article on an historic black film, and a review on the cover of the Book Review. “I would ask people to please consider the whole,” he said.
That’s unlikely to satisfy those justifiably offended by the TV article. The culture editor, Danielle Mattoon, said Monday that she “deeply regretted” that the piece was offensive to so many and said that she and other editors needed to be, and would be, more sensitive in the future.
The role of editors is crucial here. Editors constantly save writers from mistakes or misjudgments. Writers can’t always take the long view or judge adequately whether their tone or rhetorical devices are working as they think they are. I can’t count the number of times an editor has done me that great service.
But several things have to happen for that to work effectively. Editors have to be able to recognize pitfalls – and a more diverse staff of editors throughout The Times could certainly help with that. (Among the more than 15 culture editors, for example, just a few are nonwhite.) And they have to be empowered to do so.
Are critics – some of whom are big-name stars – subject to rigorous and questioning editing, or is there a hands-off approach? That’s a subject that The Times ought to be dealing with forthrightly. No one wants to make stories bland, to take away their style or the writer’s voice and views. No one wants editing for political correctness. And that is not what I’m talking about here. Among other things, this is about being sensitive to points of view and frames of reference other than one’s own.
What’s more, in an era in which readers come to stories on social media or through recommendations from people they know, each story has to stand on its own; it’s disaggregated – it stands or falls alone, not as part of the whole. And it may come with the lens of opinion already in place. For example, Donnette Dunbar, one of the upset readers who wrote to me, told me a link was emailed from a young woman in her office who was appalled by what she had read. (A new Media Insight Project study on the news consumption of Americans of color is germane here.)
This is far from the first time racial and other stereotypes have cropped up at The Times. I’ve written about it before, and am very likely to do so again. In the meantime, I’ll turn to readers for some comment worth considering.
Fredericka Meek, whose email to me (in which she described herself as a female actor of color) offered a lengthy, thoughtful and detailed deconstruction of the piece, said elements of the piece “hurt my heart.” She said she understood that the attempt was to praise but that to “box the beautifully complex, multidimensional characters that Ms. Rhimes creates into that shameful archetype is simply bad journalism.” Her reaction, I think, does a great deal to explain why people found the piece so offensive.
And Julie Sobowale, a lawyer and journalist in Halifax, Nova Scotia summed up the feelings of many: “Maybe this is unfair, but I expect the Times to be better because I believe the Times is one of the best news organizations in the world. How many people of color work for the Times? How many are editors and are in managerial positions? What diversity initiatives exist at the Times? These questions to me are the most important. I truly hope this situation brings in substantive changes to The Times.”
There’s an opportunity for meaningful change here. This contentious chapter may not seem like a welcome gift to anyone involved. But if The Times takes it seriously – looking hard at its diversity and its editing practices — it can be exactly that.