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NATIONAL
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Myth of Newspaper Diversity Shattered
by Makebra M. Anderson
NNPA National Correspondent
WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Despite all of the professed interest in diversifying newsrooms, almost three-fourths of American newspapers employer fewer people of color than they did in earlier years, according to a new study.
An analysis done by Bill Dedman and Stephen Doig for the Knight Foundation, a Florida-based organization affiliated with a major newspaper chain, concludes: “Among the 200 largest newspapers, 73 percent employ fewer non-Whites, as a share of the newsroom jobs, than they did in some earlier year from 1990 to 2004. Only 27 percent of these large dailies were at their peak as 2005 began.”
The Baltimore Sun is a case in point.
“In the Sun’s newsroom, meanwhile, employment of journalists of color peaked back in 1991 at 19.6 percent of the supervising editors, reporters, copy editors and photographers,” the report states. “That fell to 14.2 percent the next year, struggled back up to 18.0 by 1996 and has drifted lower, setting this year at 15.9 percent of the staff.”
Other top papers that are below their peak include: The San Francisco Chronicle (peaked in 1998), Newark Star-Ledger (1998), New York Daily News (1995) Cleveland Plain Dealer (1995), USA Today (1994), the Wall Street Journal (2000), the Washington Post (2004) the New York Times (2003) and the Los Angeles Times ( 2000).
Herbert Lowe, president of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), says the problem extends beyond declining numbers.
“I think the greater issue is when we get folks into newsrooms, what more can be done to keep them there,” he says. “We have only 34 more Black journalists working in mainstream newsrooms than 2000 or 2001. We know that there are people getting hired everyday, so if the numbers are so low, that means that people are leaving.”
Lowe works as a courts reporter for Newsday, which had its most diverse staff in 2002. He notes that African-Americans leave the industry at a higher rate than White journalists.
“I think it has much to do with the lack of advancement or lack of opportunity for advancement,” he explains. “Our members have consistently said they want a chance to be involved with big stories whether it’s across the city, across the state, across the country or the world.”
Philip Dixon, former managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and now chair of the Journalism Department at Howard University, left journalism after working for top papers such as the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer, is not surprised that the industry is having a hard time retaining quality reporters of color.
“It’s not surprising because I’ve been seeing people leave the business for a long time. I left the business. I think part of it is that it’s hard and it takes so much of your life – I left because it wasn’t fun anymore,” Dixon says. “You retain people by being straight with them and by having transparency in your system. No, every game is not fair, but you can tell everyone safely how the game is played – that if you want to be a foreign correspondent, you need to do these things. Not all newsrooms do a good of telling people how to get what they want.”
The Knight study also pierced the myth that large newspapers are making major improvement while small-circulation dailies have less impressive records.
Dori Maynard, president and CEO of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, a group that helps news media reflect America’s diversity in staffing, content and business operations, is surprised that most of the small and mid-sized papers are the ones doing the most to diversity their staff.
“I thought that was really interesting because for a long time in the industry there has been this feeling that people of color won’t go to small markets. It turns out, there is something you can do because people are getting people of color to go to small and mid-sized markets, which give you the foundation to work in the bigger papers,” Maynard says. “This is a great sign for the industry. People should look to their colleagues, figure out what they’re doing right and do the same thing. This is not the intractable problem that people make it out to be.”
Only 18 percent of all newspapers currently employ their highest number of journalists of color. Among them: the Chicago Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Arizona Republic, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Detroit Free Press, the Oregonian, the St. Petersburg Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Sharon Rosenhause, diversity chair for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the group that publishes an annual employment census of newspapers, says that some papers are working diligently to diversify their staffs.
“A number of newsrooms around the country, my own included, continue to increase their numbers,” she says. “In almost four years, we have just about doubled the numbers in our newsroom – we’re almost at 30 percent now. The problem for some newspapers is that the communities are changing so quickly, we can hardly keep up with the pace,”
However, many papers appear to be making no effort to make their newsrooms mirror the communities they cover.
“The number of newspapers reporting an all-white newsroom declined a bit. There were 346 newspapers this year, 374 last year,” the report found. “Although many of these all-white newspapers are small, they have a combined weekday circulation of 3,337,478 – about the total of USA Today and the New York Times combined.”
Rosenhause, who works for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, says. “I think it’s possible to not have the most diverse staff and still be very sensitive in how you cover diversity and diverse communities. It’s just easier if the people on your staff speak the languages and have those cultural connections.”
Dixon of Howard University agrees.
“I think in many places it’s not a glass ceiling, it’s a stone ceiling. It’s a concrete ceiling,” he explains. “On other occasions, I’m not sure how much of it is the ceiling and how much of it is the person. When you start competing for the top jobs in journalism, it’s really fierce competition and you have to really want it and you have to do the things it takes to get it. You have to give up pieces of your life. You don’t have to give up your dignity, but you have to say I’m in this game and I’m playing to win.”
In order to advance, Dixon says, African-Americans can’t rest on their laurels.
”I found as a manager that too often Blacks, Latinos and Asians thought they did their work and did it very well the right thing would happen to them,” Dixon states. “That’s not always the case because how would people know what the right thing is for you if you don’t tell them? I can count on one hand the number of times that people of color have come at me and confronted me, saying give me a raise, give me a better assignment. White folks do it all the time. Managers are not going to go out their way and tell people to come ask for a raise.”
Maynard says it’s no secret what African-American journalists want.
“People want to be listened to, they want to be challenged and they want to see room for advancement,” she states. “Without that room for advancement, why would you stay in a career that you view as a dead end?”
For Rosenhause, diversity is not simply about numbers.
“A good newspaper should want its pages to look like its community. People should be able to pick up the paper, see themselves in stories, and hear their voices in stories. If you are writing a story about investing and you only write about White middle-class people that are investing and your community is broader and deeper than that, you’ve failed,” she said. “This is real practical. It’s not about being politically correct. The more diverse your community is it seems to me that practically you want your newsroom to be diverse.”
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