Diversity Diaries: David Hawpe

By David Hawpe
Vice president and editorial director, The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky.

07.11.01

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When I was managing editor of The Courier-Journal, I occasionally would wait until it snowed, then rush into the newsroom and announce, "It's snowing in the South End. Children on sleds will appear."

Now the background is that the three major residential areas of Louisville are the South End (blue-collar folks, where I grew up), East End (middle class to affluent, white collar) and West End (African-American, largely lower income). Naturally, most of our staff lives in the East End, and most of our pictures of kids on sleds were shot in East End parks, which, ironically, are not as hilly and amenable to sledding as the city's biggest park, which is in the South End.

I didn't keep count, but I think the staff got the idea: I wanted blue-collar kids in our snow pictures, too.

In brown-bag sessions with staffers and in meetings with interns, I have asked participants to tell me where we're most likely to take pictures of kids playing in the snow — the East End, the South End or the West End. They usually guess right, that we have lots of photos from the eastern part of the city. And they know that's at least partly because most of us live there, and the East End parks are what we see most often and think about most reflexively.

But then I ask what's the next most likely place for snow pictures — the South End or the West End? Most often they say the South End. But in my experience that hasn't been the case. I think the second most likely object of our snow photography is the West End, because we make a concerted effort to include African-Americans in our coverage and because we have several African-American photographers.

So who gets left out? The South End, where none of us lives and where few of us grew up.

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