Quote of note:

(There's a postscript to the story, as reader Mosher pointed out: Steven Chu wasn't the first Asian American to direct a U.S. national laboratory, despite statements to the contrary by UC President Robert Dynes. That honor goes to Praveen Chaudhari of the Brookhaven National Lab in Upton, N.Y. He was appointed early last year.)

Why race mattered
- Dick Rogers
Wednesday, July 7, 2004

BY HIS OWN ACCOUNT, Steven Chu was the family's "academic black sheep," an uninspired student in his early school years amid relatives with an array of advanced degrees.

So Chu's academic awakening in geometry, where rote learning took a back seat to logic and ideas, was a turning point.

A parade of achievements followed: a successful educational career, 10 years at Bell Laboratories, 18 years as a professor at Stanford University, the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics and a string of other awards.

Last month, he made news with yet another accomplishment: Chu was selected by the University of California Board of Regents to direct the 4,300- employee Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.

The Chronicle announced Chu's appointment under the headline "First Asian named to run Berkeley lab." The lead paragraph of the story said: "The first Asian American has been named to run a U.S. national laboratory, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the Berkeley hills."

To reader Bob Mosher, it was a "pointless ethnic emphasis" that minimized the man in favor of his race. "I am most pleased that he was selected -- not because he is Asian," Mosher said, "but because he appears to be so well qualified.

"I do not object to race being mentioned," he said. "It is, to some extent, newsworthy. My objection is to it being the headline and the lead of the story."

…The Chronicle left itself open to criticism by making race the most prominent aspect of the story, then immediately dropping it. After the headline and lead sentence, there wasn't another word on the subject. The story failed to provide context, background, comments or quotes. If you didn't already know the racial significance of Chu's selection, you wouldn't by reading the story.

Somewhere along the line -- from reporter to assigning editor to news editor to copy editor -- someone should have asked, "If this is so important, why don't we say more about it?"

The result might not have persuaded reader Mosher, but it would have given depth and value to the story. Readers could have decided for themselves whether the regents' decision was politically motivated, whether it represented the best person for the job or whether there was a whiff of political correctness.

Readers might have learned, for example, that Asian Americans earn more than a quarter of the doctorates in science and technology each year at U.S. universities. Nonetheless, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says, Asian Americans struggle to reach the highest echelons of science, both in the private and public sector.

We also might have learned that there was powerful symbolism in the appointment among those who were deeply angered by the Wen Ho Lee spy case. Lee, a nuclear scientist, was accused of feeding secrets from the Los Alamos National Laboratory to China. The case collapsed and Lee was freed with credit for time served.

Many Asian Americans felt that Lee was the victim of discrimination and stereotyping by the government. The 59-count indictment against Lee prompted L. Ling-chi Wang, professor of Asian American Studies at UC Berkeley, to lead a boycott against UC-run national labs.

But readers learned none of those things. So the paper ended up making much of race without saying much about race.