Published Wednesday, April 4, 2001
Industry sees rise and fall of minority numbers
BY JASON BEGAY AND SHANNON COMES AT NIGHT
ASNE Reporter
Newsrooms across the country saw a decline in minority journalists last year – a trend the industry’s top leaders find alarming.
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Current ASNE membership is about 900. Minority members number 49 or 5.76 percent. Current ASNE Board has 20 members. Eight or 40 percent are minority.
The number of newspapers with no minorities increased, halting a steady decline. Last year, 368 papers responded that they had no minorities, or 39 percent. This year: 422 newspapers were reported to have no minorities, or 44 percent.
Nineteen percent of all minority journalists were supervisors. About the same percentages as last year.
Where do minorities work? Nearly two-thirds of all minority journalists work at newspapers with circulations exceeding 100,000
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According to the annual ASNE Newsroom Employment Survey, the total number of minority journalists fell from 6,665 in 2000 to 6,563 in 2001. Compared with the increase in minority population seen in the 2000 U.S. Census, the number “is unacceptable,” said ASNE President Richard A. Oppel.
“The latest census shows that the nation is becoming increasingly diverse at a faster rate than our newsrooms,” Mr. Oppel said during a news conference addressing the survey results. “We need to find a way to close that gap.”
Considering that the number of people of color hired last year was the largest in the past 10 years, the problem, Mr. Oppel said, is in keeping the minority journalists currently in the profession.
According to the survey, 698 minority journalists left the industry in 2000 while nearly 600 were hired into their first full-time newsroom job.
“We need to step up our retainment efforts,” said Charlotte Hall, vice president and managing editor of Newsday in Melville, N.Y. “That’s not to say that we should stop recruitment.”
The report, released Tuesday, is the result of a nationwide survey of daily newspapers, said Bobbi Bowman, director of diversity for ASNE.
Of the 1,446 newspapers contacted, 950 responded. Tribal newspapers aren’t included because the survey covers “daily newspapers of general interest to the public,” Ms. Bowman said.
Last year’s decrease in the minority population in newsrooms is the first in the 23-year history of the ASNE survey.
According to the report, the percentage had been on a small but steady increase since 1978, the first year of the report.
While editors have theories to explain the downturn, a definitive reason remained a mystery.
Most of the decline came from smaller newspapers. The percentage of newspapers with circulations higher than 50,000 that employ minority journalists has remained constant since 1978. Those same newspapers actually saw small percentage increases in minority journalists last year. Papers under 5,000 also saw small increases in minorities last year.
However, newspapers with circulations of 50,000 or less lost minority employees. The percentage of smaller newspapers employing minority journalists also declined.
This trend could be due to a number of things, Mr. Oppel said. Perhaps, he said, more minority reporters are moving to the larger publications.
“If this is so, then the question is ‘why aren’t we able to replace them?’ ” said Ms. Hall, the outgoing chairwoman of ASNE’s Diversity Committee. “Bigger papers want minority reporters. It’s harder to retain people when you have bigger papers calling.”
Sheila Rule, The New York Times’ senior manager of reporter recruitment, agreed, “We do actively recruit students of color.”
For the first 17 years of the paper’s internship program, recruitment was aimed exclusively on minority students, Ms. Rule said.
Although the program is now open to all students, minority recruitment “remains a very important part of our effort to create as diverse a staff as possible.”
The summer 2001 crop of interns supports that claim. Of the 11 students, six are people of color, Ms. Rule said.
The percentage of minorities at small newspapers is a complicated issue, Ms. Hall said.
“It’s easy to beat up on small papers. They want to diversify their newsrooms,” she said. However, these newspapers in small communities are working out of a limited recruitment pool.
Some small newspapers, however, find themselves in the opposite situation.
The Anadarko (Okla.) Daily News is listed in the report as having a minority staff of 80 percent. About 65 percent of the city’s population is Native American, said Carla McBride, the newspaper’s administrator. The Daily News, which has a circulation of 5,000, employs an overall staff of 19.
Mr. Oppel described the newspaper industry as going through profound structural change, and this year it is hindered by a stumbling economy. Use of online news and information is rapidly increasing, and the Internet may siphon away a portion of print revenue.
“Newsroom diversity – that rich blend of backgrounds and cultural perspectives – brings energy and authenticity to journalism in the service of readers,” he said. “But the commitment to diversity must be borne across the breadth of our industry, not by ASNE alone.”
“Our industry has entered a stall in its once proud record of bringing diversity to our newsrooms. We are good at recruiting minorities … ASNE was successful last year in building a pipeline into the profession for people of color … but we are not nearly as good at keeping minorities in our newsrooms,” Mr. Oppel said.
As the outgoing ASNE president, Mr. Oppel said if he were to be president again he wouldn’t do anything differently.
“ASNE can’t enforce any laws or regulations,” he said. “This is not a case of ASNE success or failure.”
Mr. Oppel said that for some time, ASNE has known retention was an issue, but it had to deal with pipeline issues first.
“Keep the faith,” Mr. Oppel said to ASNE. “Never give up. We will make progress. This is a setback, but we have 23 years of achievement, and we are central to the vision of a newsroom workforce that reflects the population of the nation.”
