The Society of Professional Journalists has begun to compile a "Rainbow Rolodex" for editors and reporters to enrich news coverage by including voices of underrepresented communities.
"This is going to be the real world phone book of expert sources," said Sally Lehrman, national diversity chair for the Society of Professional Journalists.
"If you are writing a story by covering just one segment of society, you're not going to get it accurately. We could increase credibility and accuracy of our reporting by broadening the perspectives."
The "Rainbow Rolodex" is a sourcebook of experts who are people of color, gays and lesbians, women, people with disabilities and those with links to the poor and the disfranchised. Candidates for the sourcebook are recommended by reporters around the country. Entries include names, titles, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of experts, and are organized by region and topic area such as religion, legal affairs and urban planning. Both bound and online versions of the publication will be ready for distribution by the Unity Convention in Seattle in July.
The effort of diversifying contacts and resources has been a challenge for newsrooms of any size and location. Some newspapers such as The Kansas City Star and The Greenville (S.C.) News have created local versions of the Rainbow Rolodex.
The Kansas City Star has developed "Diverse," a 250-inch list of contacts to expand the coverage of the paper to which every newsroom staff has an access.
"When we start an initiative like this, we don't know what effect we are having," said Lewis Diuguid, associate editor/columnist and co-chair of The Star Company's Diversity Initiative.
But nine months after the paper had started the campaign, he knew that the paper had been doing the right thing. One morning at the breakfast table, his daughter pointed at a centerpiece picture of several girls in The Star's feature section. One of the girls happened to be an African American.
"She said, 'She looks like me,' " said Diuguid." Until that time, we were invisible."
Wanda Lloyd, incoming chair of the ASNE Diversity Committee and managing editor/features, administration and planning at The Greenville News calls it "mainstreaming," an effort to positively include people of color to stories that are not necessarily about the ethnic minorities. The paper has a "Diversity List" that is updated daily in its computer system.
"It's not about quoting the right percentage of different ethnic or any minority groups in our community," said Lloyd.
Editors say the challenge of making the best use of a list is to keep it updated. Many said they could do a better job to make sure that reporters are using it.
And it's not just newspapers that are trying to diversify their reporters' address card files.
Lisa Skriloff, who worked for The New York Times as a marketing director for 10 years, published the "Source Book of Multicultural Experts," an 80-page book of 200 associations and agencies divided by categories such as women in business and different ethnicity. The second edition of the book, which will be available free at Unity, will have two new categories: "Gay and Lesbians," and "Ethnic Media."
