Note well. This report is from the Cleveland Scene
The Plain Dealer is under fire from black journalists after adding another white guy to its roster of sports columnists, a team that now has the diversity and sex appeal of a Golden Girls shower scene.
In a letter last week, Roxanne Jones, an ESPN VP. and member of the National Association of Black Journalists, criticized the hiring of former Akron Beacon Journal columnist Terry Pluto. He is white, male, and the love child of a Whose Line Is It Anyway? skit gone bad.
In her letter, Jones criticized the PD's poor minority hiring record, which includes the time editors got drunk and approved Bud Shaw's Sunday Spin column. The paper should have at least interviewed some black candidates for the job, she wrote.
Editor Susan Goldberg, formerly of the more diverse San Jose Mercury News, admits her paper is whiter than a Shelley Long movie marathon. "I came from a much more diverse newsroom," she tells Punch. "Just visually, it stood out to me." Only 14 percent of the editorial staff are minorities, she says, not including editorial writer Kevin O'Brien, who comes from Planet What the F%&# Is He Talking About?
But hiring Pluto, the best-known sports columnist in Northeast Ohio, was a no-brainer. Goldberg didn't need the charade of interviewing others. While the paper plans to cast a wider net for other jobs, "This is an exception . . He's a major player here."
The paper's mistake will not be Pluto's race, Punch predicts, but his religion. The born-again columnist once penned a piece confessing his porn addiction. Despite this serious miscalculation -- That's way too much information, Terry! -- the PD has also agreed to let Pluto pen a regular religion column.
Published: August 29, 2007
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7 comments:
Listen, Terry Pluto is a very nice guy. He's a prolific writer. But, my gosh, he is one of the most overrated columnists in North America. Volume does not quality make.
Bravo Guiseppe... Pluto taking his unctuous, self-absorbed ramblings northward gives the rest of the ABJ sports department some much needed fresh air and room to breathe.
Terry's hands must be raw from the constant hand-wringing and god knows what else.
Ooh, a Terry Pluto masturbation joke!! That's almost as pathetic as the Cleveland Scene. "First Punch" should be retitled "Low Blow" because that is all that worthless (literally, folks) rag goes for in its articles.
I will say, though, it's also pathetic how non-existent Pluto's public exit from the paper was. The reader's deserved much more than just a standard column Tuesday.
I assume the paper's management asked Terry not to write a farewell column. That's the least he could do for an organization that let him do anything he wanted, wherever and whenever he wanted. I'll not lose much sleep over missing out on his formulaic commentaries.
Scribbles in my notebook Anon...
When you announce you're leaving to take a similar position with your #1 local competitor, most companies ask you to leave immediately.
That the ABJ let him leave quietly without fanfare was more than he should have expected.
It's not like the PD picked Terry up on waivers or was traded against his will. The decision to leave was his.
If you think the PD is actually competition to the ABJ, and vice versa, you're mistaken. Seriously, how many people in the Beacon's main readership even want to read the Beacon, let alone the stuffy PD?
And everyone knows what Terry meant to the Beacon and that means you should also know he deserved a nice public farewell.
I'm sorry, but the Beacon "owed" Pluto nothing. The paper allowed him to spend as much time as he wished writing books...and then essentially marketed the books for him. Be interesting to see how his co-workers in Cleveland feel about his outside writing (is that what it is...or just stringing together extended quotes from interviews conducted during his day job?); the PD frowns on moonlighting, but I'm sure Terry wouldn't have moved unless they waived this rule for him.
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