THE LA TIMES HAS HIRED 28 SUMMER INTERNS — ONLY ONE IS A WHITE MALE

Cultural progress looks like blatant discrimination when a prominent U.S. media company, with a chance to identify and develop young journalism talent, all but rejects a large and proven demographic

     I once dreamed of working at the Los Angeles Times. Instead, my journey zigged through Detroit, Cincinnati, Denver and Chicago, which sounds like a relief pitcher’s tour of bad baseball places and, in the end, became a slapstick safari of failing newspapers. At least there were times I thought the LA fantasy could happen, contrary to these days, when my chances as a college-age white male would be about three percent.

     This is based on a demographic breakdown of the Times’ 2023 summer intern hires. Twenty-eight have been named so far, and I’m happy for all in an industry that needs substantial doses of joy and hope. But I’m also wondering, after reading the bios and studying a photo montage, why only one is a white male.

     One of twenty-eight.

     It means the Times is batting just .035 in one category of vacation-season diversity. It suggests that a traditional .200 demarcation boundary — known in baseball circles as the Mendoza Line for weak-hitting, 1970s-era infielder Mario Mendoza — will have to be lowered and renamed the Owen Tucker-Smith Line. Best of career luck to Owen, the lone white male in the rented newsroom space by the LAX flight runways, who will have to proceed in a climate that certainly represents cultural progress but also has plunged into blatant discrimination.

     Before I am massacred as a white supremacist and Trump-lover — I identify as a centrist — let me first say I’m a champion of diversity. I was the one who cringed on days when our TV producers, who filled out the lineup for ESPN’s “Around The Horn” debate show, would invite three other white males to join me and a white male host. I’m the one who never looks at color or gender when it comes to meritocracy, such as when I often describe the Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins as the best sportswriter going, and when I’ve praised Jerry Brewer from her staff and said Michael Wilbon deserves a multimedia career achievement award. Male or female? White or Black? I don’t care. Write me a great sports column, as Bill Plaschke does at the Times, Nancy Armour does at USA Today and Marcus Thompson II does at the Athletic. I’ll also speak up when someone isn’t worthy of the column gig, such as Laurence Holmes, a Chicago cheerleader and media social climber.

     But those who make intern decisions — woke-minded editors, as directed by woke-minded publishers — only are contributing to the marginalization of white males. Welcome to the new minority. I understand why we’ve arrived at this juncture, thanks to a horrid history of bigotry and hatred, but the numerous white males who unsuccessfully applied for Times internships had nothing to do with that history and shouldn’t be summarily rejected for it. If someone on high can say without crossed fingers that 27 intern hires are better young journalists than every other white male in the selection process, so be it.

     I doubt it. My ideal in life — everyone is born equally, everyone is treated equally — has been thrown ass-backwards. When I say white sports sinners such as Brett Favre and Pete Rose aren’t American heroes, people generally agree. When I say Black figures such as the late Jim Brown and Brittney Griner are not American heroes — the former for his seven violence-related arrests, the latter for recklessly packing cannabis oil cartridges that led to her Russian detainment — people generally do not agree. When I say ESPN should focus on sports and not slide into politics, people generally agree. When I said Jemele Hill and Michael Smith shouldn’t have used “SportsCenter” anchor positions to advance activist views, I was excoriated.

     For centuries in this country, white men were entitled when they shouldn’t have been. Now, white men are canceled when they shouldn’t be — come on, college applicants? — even as they continue to comprise around 30 percent of the U.S. population. I first realized the discrepancy at ESPN, where I spent eight years elevating the ratings of “Around The Horn” to levels near one million viewers daily. In 2010, before I knew if I’d even need a lawyer in a legal matter, the network permanently removed me from the program. I prevailed in a critical civil proceeding before my record was wiped clean — in a case entirely about money, an outcome never published by the Times after its reporter stopped covering the locally based story. Eventually, I met with John Skipper, then the ESPN president, over dinner in Malibu. I’ll never forget something he said that night, this in the same period when he protected a Black journalist named Howard Bryant and continued to employ him for years after alarming criminal charges against him in Massachusetts.

     “Jay,” Skipper said, “we needed diversity on the show.”

     I related this story in a Wednesday email to Kevin Merida, executive editor of the Times and once a high-ranking Skipper appointee at ESPN. In fact, he was one of Bryant’s bosses. Merida, an African American, has done a commendable job at a West Coast giant that is trying to transform digitally after near-death experiences in the late 2010s. I expressed that I’m a subscriber and an avid reader of his digital sports section. I don’t know Merida and have nothing against him. I doubt he was heavily involved in the process of hiring interns, with the announcement coming from Angel Jennings, an assistant managing editor for culture and talent, and Joseph Serna, a deputy editor for culture and talent.

     But I had to ask him anyway. Why the .035 batting average?

     “Diversity and inclusion are certainly important to our industry, and we need more of it in sports departments everywhere,” Merida wrote. “That said, I have always been on the lookout for — and an advocate for — supremely talented journalists, period. Every demographic. There’s always a place in our business for game-changing talent.”

     I assume his heart is in the right place. He’s trying to keep an influential, once-proud media company alive and, to do so, he might hire anyone short of a Manson disciple. But a sweeping agenda was laid down years ago in Big Media — white males are phased out when do-able, everyone else is in. This is, in part, a cause-and-effect consequence of the Harvey Weinstein Plague, fallout from a Hollywood creep who belongs in prison until he dies. His crimes have been used to tilt the cultural wars against white males in media, even those who’ve led clean lives or had mere scrapes with the law and/or the #MeToo movement. As a fiercely independent sports columnist who willingly takes on powerful people, I once told a friend, “It’s a good thing I live a clean life, or they’ll bury me.” That’s what happened in 2010, never mind that the first 50 years of my life were clean and my life has been clean since.

     A healthy aspect of this sociological sea change: I have a better understanding of discrimination and its torment. I’ve lived it. I’ve seen it impact the lives of media colleagues. But as I wrote to Merida, “When I see where this is going, politically and culturally, I’m not sure I’d advise any young person to pursue a journalism career.” How can I in good faith encourage a white-male aspirant when he has only a three-percent chance, demographically, to land an internship at the LA Times?

     I could tell more stories of unfair treatment as a white-male professional in the 21st century. When a crackpot baseball manager referred to me as a “f—ing fag,” I was told to deal with it. When a sleazy website told repeated lies about me and pushed me to consider legal action, I was told to deal with it. When an editor-in-chief forearm-shivered me into a wall, I was told to deal with it. When a colleague badgered me with a press-box “Cancer” barb while a family member was ill, I was told to deal with it. And yet, when I simply said Colin Kaepernick should find a larger platform than a football sideline to protest racial inequality and police brutality, I was called a racist. Never mind that I think LeBron James doesn’t get enough praise for his social conscience, for avoiding scandals and any sort of trouble for two decades. Doesn’t matter. I’m on the wrong side of the politics now.

     When you’re a white male, you’re routinely canceled in 2023.

     Even when you’re 20 years old and maybe capable of winning a Pulitzer Prize someday at the Los Angeles Times. We’ll never know if that’s possible.

###

     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.