Genuinely depressing how many of the good and the great of the New York Times' older white male demographic think it's okay for one of them to use slurs, and that someone still allows him to be seen as a good journalist. https://freebeacon.com/issues/inside-the-grey-ladys-meltdown-over-donald-mcneils-resignation/

Sorry to use a Free B*acon story but there is dramatically little reporting on this, which is kind of a big media story.

I've been watching white men in journalism defend Donald McNeil for several days, and I wonder if they realize that their stance of "slurs are okay, once" is deeply offensive to the Black and POC colleagues around them.

As a related matter, perhaps McNeil did more than name-calling to help the pension situation? Because as entertaining as it is, it's not really getting anything done. Giving someone credit for talking a big game is Peak White Boomer.

I love journalism and I have been a journalist, in some capacity, since I was 18 years old, but this is also not brain surgery. People can be trained to be good journalists. We don't need to keep pretending that some older white men are made of magic bc other white men like them.

My personal plea is for the New York Times under Dean Baquet to not be a depressing, disorganized mess hostile to BIPOC and women. He keeps making bad decisions then reversing them then making more bad decisions. How about listening first? So the message is consistent.

Also. The guy is already gone. All this talk isn't going to change the fact that he's fired and he used a slur, and disrespected other cultures. So this Discourse has only one purpose, and that is to intimidate Black colleagues into shutting up and protecting other white men.

Depressing, depressing, depressing state of media. Absolutely bleak.

Here's a good thread on the Donald McNeil situation. It would be really helpful for Baquet to be transparent (for once) about how this decision was made, because everyone in media is looking at it. https://twitter.com/jeligon/status/1358512180359004163

As long as we're here:

1) I hope NYT BIPOC reporters get hazard pay for how often they raise sensitivity/racial justice issues and get called names by their white colleagues for it

2) REALLY hate that Baquet used "intent" bc it reinforces the idea of racism being about intent

I'm sure that somewhere, in some Slack, someone at the NYT is dismissing "the mob" (which are their own colleagues) or saying "these people don't know how the NYT works." How should the NYT work? Surely it should be leading the industry in understanding racial equality?

Here is a great thread on why we should stop judging racial discussion on "intent" alone. https://twitter.com/mariachong/status/1358846935394754561