Categories: OLD Media Moves

Holding tech news accountable for not covering diversity

Sherrell Dorsey, the founder of The Plug Daily, writes about the lack of coverage in tech news about minority innovators.

Dorsey writes, “Within the context of an industry that has grossly underrepresented and underfunded both aspects of innovators ascribed identities like mine in this country, I am attempting to develop and adapt language that accurately conveys the work of people of color within the technology and adjacent industries.

“As a journalist, a future graduate student, and an entrepreneur, I bare witness to the myriad ways in which we’ve neglected to develop a diligent and rigorous approach to how we report and correlate startups and people of color in innovation.

“Our stories have been deduced to patronizing show-pieces; fluffy ‘diversity’ features in place of investigative journalism.These practices, conducted at even the most well-respected news outlets, pose a threat to the tech community at large.

“In lieu of bringing attention to the work, dumbed-down storylines placate the people behind companies building technologies and brands with tremendous sacrifice and very little recognition.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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