Journalism startups aren't a revolution if they're filled with all these white men

[Commentary] The Internet has presented journalists with an extraordinary opportunity to remake their own profession. And the rhetoric of the new wave of creativity in journalism is spattered with words that denote transformation.

But the new micro-institutions of journalism already bear the hallmarks of the restrictive heritage they abandoned with such glee. At the risk of being the old bat in the back, allow me to quote Faye Dunaway’s character from Network: “Look, all I’m saying is if you’re going to hustle, at least do it right.”

Of the many others who have eloped from the portals of the industrial presses to big, shiny and new things (as in, not Yahoo or The Information), the sole female top editor or founder is Kara Swisher at Re/code. And she is running that technology site collaboratively with a man, Walt Mossberg. At First Look, behind-the-scenes Laura Poitras is one of two main female names on a virtual masthead that just added John Cook from Gawker (to run Greenwald’s magazine) to join Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone (to lead his own).

It is not just the four new (and still exciting) breakout projects: Vice, Quartz, Buzzfeed, Politico, Grantland -- these, too, are led by white men, and filled with more of them. It is as if Arianna Huffington never happened. Or as if diversity of leadership and ownership did not really matter, as long as the data-driven, responsively designed new news becomes a radical and successful enough departure from the drab anecdote laden guff put out by those other men.

[Bell is director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism.]