Since it’s getting increasingly more difficult to tell the difference between news in the New York Times and parodies in The Onion, I thought I would perform a public service by giving you the opportunity to hone your source-spotting skills.

Here’s how a recent article begins about a “curious disparity” that, until now, you probably haven’t worried about very much. Is this an example of what the Times regards as news that’s fit to print, or is it an Onion parody?


Baseball’s Praised Diversity Is Stranded at First Base

About 40 percent of the players in Major League Baseball are black, Hispanic or Asian, and the sport is seen as a leading example of diversity, yet a curious disparity has emerged in a corner of the game.

Among baseball’s 30 teams, only 23 percent of the third-base coaches are members of minorities, compared with 67 percent of its first-base coaches. The disparity has existed for decades but it is now about twice as large as it was in 1990, based on an analysis by….

You guessed The Onion, right? I mean, who else would write in apparent seriousness (as the article in question does a few paragraphs later) that “diversity among the third-base coaching ranks has been in decline for the past five years, from a peak of 12 in 2005 to 7 this season, and the racial disparity between first- and third-base coaches has increased,” an underrepresentation deemed so dire that it was accompanied by a sidebar with a graph showing “A Gap in the Coaching Boxes” of 43 percentage points and noting that “[t]he  disparity between the percentage of minority first-base coaches and minority third-base coaches in Major League Baseball is greater than ever.” (more…)