Opinion: All-white Men of the Year class sparks dialogue

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2023 Men of the Year

Editor’s note: Below you’ll read an email conversation between Bob Nelson, of St. Louis, and Springfield Business Journal Executive Editor Christine Temple. The conversation is printed with permission from Nelson and is shared with the intention of fostering dialogue and spurring ideas around SBJ’s award processes. You can send feedback, for publication or not, to ctemple@sbj.net.

To the leadership Team of Springfield Business Journal,

I was shocked, saddened and disturbed to see all 20 of the Springfield Business Journal 2023 Men of the Year award winners are Caucasian. How can SBJ hold themselves as a reputable news outlet in the Springfield community when it doesn’t provide some type of judging criteria to include those from communities of color in the area? While SBJ leads with “an independent panel of judges has chosen,” can this seriously be acceptable to the journalism standards of SBJ in not finding those underrepresented within the community and helping bring them to light as well? Even with the limitations of candidate pool, there are a number of local community groups that are diligently working to help break the stigma that is southwest Missouri through efforts of growing leaders who are actively involved in the community and are excelling in their own industries.

As a native St. Louisan, I moved to Springfield to attend Missouri State University. After graduating and starting my career there, the primary reason I had to leave Springfield was because of the lack of diversity, representation and acceptance. Seeing this year’s award winners is a slap in the face to mine and others’ efforts in the area to break this systemic culture. I’ve poured countless hours over the last eight years serving on the Missouri State Alumni Board and Council as a volunteer, where (diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility) is at the forefront of our strategy. Every action we take as an alumni association considers both current and prospective students, along with those tens of thousands who live across the world.

Seeing 20 white area men this year celebrated as the top in professional, philanthropic and civic contributions is disheartening. Perhaps the candidate pool wasn’t diverse enough. Work with those in the community to diversify it.

If we are to break the stigma of Springfield and surrounding areas as a place that is not welcoming of all, doesn’t embrace diverse perspectives and walks of life, we and you must do better. SBJ should strongly consider how it can help the solution and not flame the fire of complacency when it comes to strengthening the community’s tolerance and normalization of seeing 20 exclusively white men collaged on its pages as its premier leaders for the year. This unfortunately isn’t the first time this has occurred at SBJ, but please do something to help make it the last. Springfield leaders were pleading for solutions in how to lessen brain drain and diversify its makeup when I lived there from 2000-2011. This is a perfect small example of why I left and so many others will continue to.

You must do better in 2023. I hope SBJ will consider new measures to ensure they’ve both diversified the candidate pool and developed a strategy to ensure the selection of recipients can never again be so homogenized.

Respectfully,
Bob Nelson, St. Louis

Bob, 

Thank you for your thoughtful email regarding this year’s SBJ Men of the Year honorees.

You are right that there is no racial or ethnic diversity when looking at this year’s Men of the Year class, although I don’t know the honoree’s backgrounds and we don’t ask. While each of these men are deserving of the honor, I agree that the class would have been richer if there was parity in representation. There is diversity in this class in other measures and we know that through their stories. There are different socioeconomic backgrounds and levels of education, representation from the LGBTQ+ community, and various industries and ages represented. 

SBJ is committed to covering the whole of the business community. We know that although our community is primarily white, we absolutely have diversity in our businesses. We aim to tell those stories and highlight those expert voices through our mission of providing B2B news in the Springfield area.

In 2020, SBJ adjusted our award processes based on feedback from community members with the goal to be more inclusive. The concern you shared about a lack of diversity in award honorees was the same concern then. Before 2020, we chose judges exclusively from past SBJ award honorees. That inadvertently created a bubble around our awards. We also heard feedback that while our awards may be open to everyone, maybe everyone didn’t feel welcome to participate or know how they work. Since then, we have made every effort to bring diversity in age, gender, race/ethnicity, position and industry to the judging panels of each award event because we know the value in having different perspectives pick the class of honorees. We also allow people to volunteer to judge. In addition to opening nominations to the community, we also internally nominate diverse candidates that perhaps are not subscribers to SBJ/wouldn’t know about the awards or are not part of larger organizations that prioritize nominating their employees for awards. 

In 2020, we also engaged DEI officers, the local NAACP, the Multicultural Business Association (then Minorities in Business), minority- and women-owned business owners and leaders, as well as members of the nonprofit community for feedback developing that strategy.

Since then, we have seen an increase in racial and ethnic diversity in our awards, although not in this year’s Men of the Year class as you point out. We have also seen other measures of diversity increase.

I am proud that our awards have become more representative.

SBJ has not considered having, for instance, awards reserved for individuals based on race or ethnicity. The feedback we heard in 2020 from
our community group was that people should not be singled out or relegated to a particular award or event. They shared a desire to be represented in our awards and within the pages of SBJ based on the merit of professional and civic achievements.

Your email has provided a few ideas. One is that we should create a landing page on our website outlining the awards and judging process for transparency.

I also think it’s time to bring the 2020 group that evaluated our awards process back together and ask them to evaluate our processes once again. We know that this must be a continual conversation and we must be open to scrutiny of our processes.

Thank you for caring about these awards and our community and providing your insight.

 —Christine Temple
Executive Editor, Springfield Business Journal
 

Thanks for the quick response, Christine, and for your commitment to continue to work toward refining your selection criteria. For the record, the list of honorees seem very deserving and I’m sure the judges had many applications that took thought and consideration to subjectively score. 

I’m glad that you have engaged some of the community groups in town in the past and will do so again. One immediate idea that comes to mind is how Missouri State University words its selection criteria for scholarships, when an endowed scholarship creator has a desire to ensure that a recipient has demonstrated interest and commitment to promoting an educational environment that is diverse and inclusive of individuals irrespective of their background, and further to those who contribute to a diverse educational environment. Perhaps there’s something there in that thought that to be a true best of the best in professional, philanthropic and/or civic contributions, it comes with a scoring requirement that lives in this space. I’ve seen community groups (of all kinds) have success in at least being a part of the nominating committee, so you can ensure that at least the opportunity was given to identify individuals who maybe don’t have the visibility of the general population.

Thank you again for the opportunity to share my sentiment to a larger readership and your humbleness in wanting to do better as a publication. I hope both of our efforts will result in making the Springfield community a better place for all.

Sincerely, Bob Nelson