Starting ‘A Conversation about Race’
This weekend, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch started a blog called ‘A Conversation about Race.’ I thought it was something we needed to begin and I didn’t want to dilly-dally, with Barack Obama’s inauguration looming.
The idea had been rolling around in my head for a long time. It really gained steam for me after we started story comments and I watched the surprising level of intolerance that was spewed out from time to time. It seemed clear that the discussion about race needed a forum.
I’m pretty pleased with the start to the blog and the quality of the comments we’ve gotten on it so far. Knock on wood, right? We’re only three days into it.
The biggest slip so far is criticism from within my newsroom that we didn’t include enough people of color in the process of planning the blog. The planning process still isn’t done, even as the blog is launched, but I’ll try harder to get more involvement next time. Said one of the newsroom critics:
One of the common frustrations of people of color is that we are often not the ones in control of the dialog and language about ourselves, that it is others that are often setting the agenda.
Still, as I said earlier, we wanted to move fast once the idea took root.
I’d interviewed Dawn Turner Trice, the Chicago Tribune columnist who writes the Exploring Race blog. I gathered a small group in our newsroom to talk about the idea — two black men, two white women and three white men — one of whom is a reporter who covers diversity.
Well before we launched, I also consulted with one of our columnists, Sylvester Brown Jr., a black man, before we moved ahead. Sylvester is also on board as a contributor to the blog.
So, we’re up and running. We’ll see how it goes. And we’ll continue to engage our own newsroom in the discussion — as well as the community.
This is typical of many of the comments on the blog so far: “Praise this noble cause because this is America’s pride, the first amendment applied to speech, press, assembly so we can turn and face this issue RACE. It has been at my root from South St.Louis womb to tomb, but not a ghetto. I look forward to sharing, caring and learning from this, my first blog experience.”
And then, of course, there’s the other sentiment, on the question of whether such a conversation is necessary: “In a word, no. But keep digging, Post-Dispatch. There are still readers and advertisers left to alienate.”
Wish us luck.
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