Good, bad and ugly? Three departures offer views of the media business

There were three really interesting pieces I read last week tied to departures in the media biz. They don’t really have anything to do with each other, but together they give three glimpses that serve as a little snapshot of some big issues in media at the moment.

OK, only two of them do. We’ll start with them.

Dave McKinney, a longtime political reporter with the Chicago Sun-Times, resigned last week and explained why in a personal blog post headlined “Why I left.”

The reason is a little complicated, but it has to do with what McKinney writes is his feeling that the Sun-Times “no longer has the backs of reporters like me.” He writes that he was taken off his beat, put on leave and later denied a byline after the campaign of Bruce Rauner, the Republican candidate for Illinois governor, accused McKinney of having a conflict of interest. And then the Sun-Times, which declared in 2012 that it would no longer endorse candidates for elections, endorsed Rauner.

All this after the Sun-Times had called the Rauner accusations an “attack” that bordered on defamation. McKinney asks:

Was all this retaliation for breaking an important news story [in which Rauner looked bad] that had the blessing of the paper’s editor and publisher, the company’s lawyer and our NBC5 partners? …

Readers of the Sun-Times need to be able to trust the paper. They need to know a wall exists between owners and the newsroom to preserve the integrity of what is published. A breach in that wall exists at the Sun-Times.

It’s had a chilling effect in the newsroom. While I don’t speak for my colleagues, I’m aware that many share my concern. I’m convinced this newspaper no longer has the backs of reporters like me.

There has traditionally been a “wall” between a media outlet’s newsroom and business interests, as well as between the newsroom and the owners’ powerful friends and political interests. We’ve heard a lot in the last few years about that first wall becoming more permeable, and about how that can be a good thing, with content creators taking on a more realistic view that what they’re doing is part of a business, and needs to succeed to survive.

It’s the other wall that McKinney is talking about. Is that one becoming softer too? And if so, what will the consequences be?

Another unhappy departure is chronicled by Rebecca Carroll in the New Republic: “I’m a Black Journalist. I’m Quitting Because I’m Tired of Newsroom Racism.”

“It’s a strange and incredibly demoralizing time to be a black person in American media,” Carroll writes, continuing:

The words “racist and “racism” have cynically become clickbait, all while various newsrooms are claiming that they want to hire more writers and reporters and editors of color, but don’t. What it feels like you are hearing is: We’re not really trying to diversify our newsrooms, because we don’t actually have to.

Among the challenges that make racism so difficult to fix, and so odiously constant, is that white people often don’t even recognize when they’re saying or doing something that cuts their black colleagues to the bone. Or worse, they do recognize when they’re being racially insensitive, but then demonstrate some semblance of regret and move on unscathed. If we can’t say anything about this kind of behavior—or don’t—then who will? What’s more, if we do speak up, particularly if we are among the chosen few who are granted a voice in mainstream media, at what cost?

If you don’t think racism is a real issue in media—and if you don’t, chances are you’re white—you should read Carroll’s piece.

On a happier, if wistful note, is news that “iconic” baseball writer John Lowe is retiring from the Detroit Free Press. You may have heard the Fox broadcast crew mention this during Game 2 of the World Series. Here’s Fox’s Jon Paul Morosi and Ken Rosenthal writing about Lowe.

They both mention how much Lowe loved baseball, loved writing about baseball, had a positive outlook, and helped younger writers. That’s a pretty good way to approach the daily grind.