Why Not Me?
Affirmative action — the great tie-breaker: Marty Gitlin is not alone [“White Man’s Burden,” September 3]. I’ve work for the City of Akron for 20-plus years, 18 of those in the same department without promotion. I have five years of college, and have spent another three years training for certain aspects of my job. When I inquire about a promotion, I’m informed that my job has nowhere to promote to — although blacks and women have been promoted from the same job.
I have had black men and women enter my department within the last 8 to 10 years and get promoted to upper levels. None has any experience or schooling to justify these actions. I believe that affirmative action should be used as a tie-breaker, not a means to fill positions with persons that have no education or experience to manage such areas.
Name withheld upon request
Akron
A word from the plaintiff: I want to thank Scene for the article that Pete Kotz wrote about me and my lawsuit against The Plain Dealer. I thought it was well written and quite fair. I was particularly glad you did not characterize me as a redneck or racist, because those are the last things I am, and people needed to understand that.
I do, however, have a couple disagreements. The News-Herald is far from a small daily. It has a circulation of 50,000 and is, as far as I know, the largest suburban daily in Ohio.
Also, during my time in the business, I found it to be untrue that the best writers from smaller dailies find their way to larger metro papers. I know many who have been stuck at smaller dailies for the very reasons I’m fighting for.
Lastly, it is not at all “hard not to win awards.” The vast majority of sportswriters on small or midsize dailies win few or no awards at all. Winning more than 40, as I have done, is very rare. And I have also won several awards in head-to-head competition against The PD. A feature I wrote last year was voted among the best four features in Ohio. That competition included all papers and all writers, not just sportswriters. Mine was the only sports feature included.
Those, however, are small issues in what was a fine column. I have gotten so much reaction from it.
Marty Gitlin
Copley
A question of slave labor: Thanks so much for “White Man’s Burden.” As a female reporter of color, I believe the backlash against newsroom affirmative-action strategies has less to do with a resistance to diversity and much more to do with slave wages. Reporters become willing to use any reason at hand — especially race — to stab each other in the back over $40,000 and a downtown slot at a midsized daily.
Willoughby Mariano
Reporter, Orlando Sentinel
Or he could just suck: Regarding “White Man’s Burden,” there are two things I’d like to point out: Gitlin states that he’s applied for four or five openings and was never hired, despite the fact that — to use his own words — “dammit, I’m good enough to be at The Plain Dealer.” That may be true, but undoubtedly there are countless other writers — black and white — who are “good enough,” apply for jobs there, and never get them. The other point is that he might not be as good as he thinks.
I understand why white males feel like an endangered species, particularly in sports journalism. They’re not used to seeing people of color and women among their ranks. Before you know it, people of color and women will account for, what, 10-15 percent of all sportswriters? What’s the world coming to? But it’s hard to prove you were passed over based on race. That’s nothing new . . . except to a certain segment which is just now finding out.
Deron Snyder
Sports Columnist, The News-Press
Fort Myers, Florida
Fudge Anyone?
“Phony projections” might be a bit harsh: “Billions for a Blackout” [August 27] by Tom Francis was very comprehensive and really gets to the underlying problems with utility oversight in Ohio.
Citizen Power is convinced that problems like the blackout will be exacerbated as a result of deregulation, and we are doing all that we can to expose the failure of state regulators to protect consumers. Your exposé was a tremendous contribution toward that endeavor.
I would like to correct one apparent misstatement. I was quoted as saying that FirstEnergy submitted “‘phony projections’ of increased demand to state regulators.” While the growth in demand projections FirstEnergy submitted were drastically inflated, I cannot claim that the company intentionally submitted projections it knew to be false.
David Hughes
Executive Director, Citizen Power
Madison
Conservative Bashing
What to do in a restroom confrontation: As always, your pieces get my attention. “Hot Lesbian Action” [First Punch, September 10] was one of your best to date. While I appreciate your advising readers to flee if they’re ever alone in a men’s room with Glenn Beck or Billy Cunningham, perhaps another tactic might be even more provocative. Maybe “Here it is; you know you want it” might yield the homophobes’ real issues.
Jack Power
Cleveland
This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2003.
Letter to all the small markets teams in Major League Baseball and a few others.
I was a part of a conversation awhile ago, not long ago with a boy about 8 years old and his father in his 50’s that live in a small town outside Kansas City Mo. and I had to write it down and send it to you all.
Boy Pa, can I ask you a question.
Pa sure son shoot.
Boy Will we ever get to the World Series again.
Pa Well that is a tough question, I wish I had an easy answer for you.
Boy But dad you used to tell me about the good old days with George Brett and Dan Quisinberry and that we used to be in the playoffs all the time and we had a great team, why don’t we have a good team anymore.
Pa Well now that is a very BIG question.
Boy Aren’t the people running the team as smart as the ones that ran the team in the good old days ?
Pa O.k here goes, the system of baseball has changed, and players can come and go for bigger contracts than they could before and so for some teams they can afford to buy better players.
Boy You mean like the Yankees and the team with the red socks.
Pa Yes, they have more money to spend and so they buy the players paying more money than other teams like ours can afford.
Boy But that is not fair if they have more money, it’s just not fair.
Pa Well, it may not seem fair but it is called the fair market system and it is a true open market with the competitors being able to outbid each other to make a better team to beat the other teams…their competition.
Boy So they spend more money to beat the other teams because…
Pa Well it is the American way, find a way to beat your competition to get ahead and win.
Boy So to beat the other teams they buy the best players and make it impossible for the other teams to buy better players.
Pa Yeah thats about it.
Boy So all the teams in the league are against each other and they do whatever they can to make the team better but only a few can afford the best players.
Pa You got it son.
Boy Why would the other teams put up with this, I do not understand, it’s like it is fixed, everyone knows the team with the best players win. When I am captain of my team and I pick players I always try to get the best ones first and the other captain does the same thing, but if the other captain said I could only pick from a certain group of players and he could pick whoever he wanted…well I would not even play, what would be the point ?
Pa You are right, you are making this into a very simple problem but there is lots of money involved here not just a back yard baseball game with the neighborhood kids.
Boy Well I can only look at it from the way I see it Pa and thats how it looks to me.
Pa I left out a lot, like advertising dollars and luxury boxes and…hey, I am a simple man it is all beyond me too.
Boy Pa, if we had a farm and it was the biggest and best farm in all the state, and we had the best food and milk and stuff and eveyone wanted to buy from us and no one else because our food and everything else we had was better. So this happened and because it happened all the other farms went out of business becasue they could not sell enough to make enough money to stay in business.
Pa O.K. I don’t know where you are going but go ahead.
Boy We knocked out all the other farms and built an even bigger farm and made all kinds of money because there were no other farms for anyone to go to right ?
Pa O.K
Boy Well that would be good for us, we knocked out all the other farms and we would make all the money no matter how we did our work now because there would be no where else to go. Would that be fair, I mean to the other farms.
Pa Well they should have did a better job to keep up, then they would not have had to go out of business.
Boy But that would be good for us the big farm yes, we knock out the other farms and make all the money and we have a big big huge money making farm yes.
Pa Yes, that would be good for us then, what is your point here.
Boy I am getting to it Pa. The Yankees and the teams with the red socks have more money than the other teams and so they can go out and buy the best players because they know the smaller teams can’t afford them right ?
Pa Yes, but I still don’t..
Boy I would like to know why the other big teams have more money than our team does.
Pa That is the biggest reason that this is a big big question son, they have a bigger market and more people with more money with which to work with, they have many many more ways of being able to make more money than we do out here in Kansas City. We don’t have that much big business or the people to spend money on the team as those other teams do.
Boy So out here in Kansas City I will never be able to see a World Serise with the Royals.
Pa That’s not true, we could get lucky with some of our young talent one year coming together and then…
Boy And then the big teams see they are good players and they pay them more money and talk them away from us.
Pa I……..I can’t say no to that I am afraid.
Boy That was not my question anyway, I wanted to know how and why the big teams got more money than our team.
Pa I told you they have….
Boy No no no….How do they make money, they make money from their team playing other teams yes.
Pa Yes
Boy I mean, they need teams to come in for their team to play so that they have someone to beat yes.
Pa O.K yes again.
Boy If all the teams that they play, KNOW that the system is unfair and they have a way to make more money that the smaller teams can make, why do they keep coming and playing the unfair teams.
Pa I don’t see…
Boy Pa, in a fair market system if you beat your competition, you make all the money, if in baseball the BIG teams knock out the small teams and they can’t make enough money to stay in business because no one is coming to see their team get beat out year after year, well then, the BIG teams would have no one to play and they would go out of business.
Pa I can’t think of anything to say.
Boy If the small teams were smart they would know that the reason the big teams make money is because of the little teams that come in to play their team, they need the competition to stay in business.
Pa So.
Boy So, if the BIG teams won’t play fair and redo the way they do things so everyone has a fair chance, then the little teams should start their own league that is fair, where someone from Kansas City or Pittsburg or where ever has a chance every year to win the championship. That’s what you always tell me about football right, they have something that gives all the teams the same chance, that’s why everyone likes to watch so much. Every year it seams different teams are in the playoffs, not just the bigger teams. Why can’t that work in baseball pa, I mean they all make money because there are other teams to play. Why can’t there be a fair system in baseball if they are making money off of each other like football.
Pa I have no answer for you son, but I think you should talk to the owners of the small maket teams because I am not sure they realize the power that they do have. If they did, why would they put up with this system that is in place.
I wanted an answer to this question, which is why I am sending this to all of you. The Big Market teams have the ability to make money money because of more people, more busineses and tv contracts, but the only reason they have the ability to make all this money is because there are other teams to play out there and teams that don’t seem to care that they don’t get a share of all the money they are helping the bigger market teams make. Lets see how much money they would make if their fans got to watch a the Yankees play the Red Sox every day, o.k throw in a few games with the Dodges and Mets maybe. But I don’t think so as these other teams would want to go on making money and they would join all the other teams in the FAIR league. The All Amercian Baseball League maybe ? A fair market system exsists between open competition, Major League Baseball is ONE business with many branches, it needs all the branches to succeed to remain viable. A kid out in midwest farm somewhere deserves the same opportunity to have a championship ball team as a kid in a big city someplace.
Brian D. Zelinski
4663 N 27th St.
Butler, Wi 53007
262-373-1154