Every journalist of color … ““The press has too long basked in a white world, looking out of it, if at all, with white men’s eyes and a white perspective. That is no longer good enough.” You don’t get another 52 years. Time’s up on hiring and promoting and giving us voice. We can’t stand it anymore. I’m optimistic that the public will agree.”
An Op-Ed piece by Cuban-American reporter Soledad O’Brien for The New York Times.
Every journalist of color has a story.
My first job as an on-air reporter was at KRON in San Francisco from 1993 to 1996. I saw my new colleagues having a lively conversation and wanted to jump in. I discovered that they were talking about the “affirmative-action hire,” who turned out to be me. That’s how they saw me — it didn’t matter that I’d been a researcher and producer at NBC News or that I had gone to Harvard.
At that same job, the managers half-joked that they had taken their lives into their own hands when their morning commute was rerouted through Oakland. I was the bureau chief for the East Bay, which includes Oakland, and they would be signing off on my reports hours later.
So, as other journalists of color in these…
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