By: Dave Astor About 1,500 e-mails flooded into Leonard Pitts Jr.'s inbox since his Monday column about the different ways many media people have reacted to the Jack Kelley and Jayson Blair scandals.
"I get an average of 500 to 800 e-mails a column, so this is higher," Pitts told E&P Wednesday. He said at least 70% of the 1,500 responses were positive, and added that nearly 100 of the e-mails came from journalists. One told Pitts she would be putting his column on her office door.
Pitts, who won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary this month, composed the April 26 column in a tongue-in-cheek yet serious way. He wrote wryly that white journalists who made Blair a symbol of affirmative-action problems are undoubtedly "warming up their laptops even as we speak" to ask some of the following questions relating to Kelley's transgressions: "What does this mean for the future of white journalism? ... Did USA Today advance a moderately capable journalist because he was white? Did some white editor mentor him out of racial solidarity even though Kelley was unqualified? In light of this fiasco, should we re-examine the de facto affirmative action that gives white men preferential treatment in our newsrooms?"
The Miami Herald/Tribune Media Services columnist added: "Certainly, no one had to beg for these questions to be asked a year ago, when Jayson Blair got his sorry backside in hot water. ... When a white person screws up, it ignites a debate on the screw-up. When a black person screws up, it ignites a debate on race."
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