Change takes more than apologies

SAN DIEGO — Apologies are worthless. They might make us feel better, but they can’t make change.

Real change requires more than mea culpas. It takes action, which isn’t easy. Action often ruffles feathers, upends the status quo, and shakes up power structures.

It might even threaten livelihoods. Change can make people feel unsure of where they stand in the new order. It can make them feel put off, or displaced. At times, they’ll push back

— in ways that are subtle, or not-so-subtle.

When facing unfairness or injustice, those who want to shake things up often lose sight of an important fact: There are likely people within the organization who are comfortable with how things are. Lower-level managers will subvert reform efforts, if they feel threatened.

That’s true in politics, business, academia and just about any other field you can think of.

And it’s true in journalism, a profession that has of late let the anti-Trump biases of many of its practitioners pull it off course. My trade is now overloaded with agenda-driven crusaders who wear their leftward politics on their sleeve, think all their opinions are worth sharing, and can’t wait to climb into the arena so they can change the world.

The irony is that the folks who run these media outfits would be better off staying closer to home and focusing on changing their own tiny corner of the globe.

Consider the bizarre social experiment taking place at the largest, and arguably most important, newspaper in California — The Los Angeles Times.

The newspaper’s editorial board recently issued an apology for a long and sordid history in which it “displayed at best a blind spot, at worst an outright hostility, for the city’s nonwhite population, one both rooted and reflected in a shortage of Indigenous, Black, Latino, Asian and other people of color in its newsroom.”

The timing is no accident. As the editorial made clear, the gesture was “prompted by a pandemic, an economic crisis and a national debate over policing — all of which have spotlighted racial disparities in the United States.” Given the nation’s “long-delayed reckoning with systemic racism,” the editorial declared: “We would be remiss, in the autumn of 2020, a season of grief and introspection, if we did not take part in that self-examination.”

Oh dear. No good will come from this. Wait and see.

I know this newspaper well. I started my own journalism career as a freelance opinion writer at the Los Angeles Times more than 30 years ago. Over the last three decades, Los Angeles has become increasingly Latino; the city is now about 50% Latino.

Sadly, despite its liberal bent and a professed appreciation for the value of diversity, the city’s primary newspaper has not kept up with that demographic growth.

These days, the battle over inclusion has shifted from hiring to retention, promotions and equal pay.

The Times is in the process of settling a proposed class-action lawsuit by six African American, Latino and female journalists at the paper. The plaintiffs contend that underrepresentation of people of color at the newspaper is tied to a long-standing practice of paying women and people of color less than white men earn for the same jobs.

Today, there are Latino editors, reporters, even a Latino columnist and editorial writer at the newspaper. Good stories are written about the city’s Latino residents.

Of course, this was also true in the late 1990s, when I began what would turn out to be a 15-year stretch of contributing to the newspaper’s Sunday “Opinion” section.

However, all these years later, you still don’t find Latinos in the top ranks of those who run the newspaper. According to a recent study, only about 11% of managers and 13% of reporters are Latino. This is in 2020, folks.

The demographic disparity was not lost on Esmeralda Bermudez, an outspoken reporter for The Los Angeles Times who hails from El Salvador.

After the Times’ apology, Bermudez tweeted a photo of the newspaper’s leadership ranks and wrote: “Make no mistake. The @latimes has a long way to go to correct the ugliness of the past. Today, our masthead — the 14 leaders who make every major decision about our newsroom and coverage — does not include a single Latino. This is in L.A., where half the community is Latino.”

Good for her. It never hurts to remind institutions that like to think of themselves as progressive that they haven’t progressed nearly as far as they believe.

Dear Editor: Now that we’ve had the apology for past mistakes, when can we expect an apology for current ones?