CONTENTS
Executive Summary
Survey Results
The Premise
Audits
Selecting Sources
Best Practices: Coverage (Ideas at a glance)
Best Practices: Internal
Changing Coverage
Changing Newsrooms
Pursuing Diversity and Accuracy
Voices in the Newsroom
Appendix A: A Letter to Editors
Time-Out 2000
About this report
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Audits
Of the respondents, 60 chose to do audits as part
of the diversity project. Some papers conducted
full audits, using the audit tools provided by the
Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.
Maynard's audit focuses attention on coverage
along five "fault lines" - race, gender,
geography, class and age.
Others chose to focus their audits on certain
areas of their papers: section fronts,
photographs, religion pages. A number of
newspapers reported that they already conduct
regular audits or are working on audits with
journalism institutes or universities. While some
papers found their coverage accurately reflected
their communities along some fault lines, they
fell short elsewhere. An overwhelming majority
reported that they were dissatisfied with the
results, and said they need to work harder to
reach more deeply and broadly into their
communities for sources and story ideas.
(The) audit results sparked a revelation among reporters that the more
they seek out real people affected by the issues raised in traditional
beat reporting, the more reflective of their community their sources
became. Many previously assumed that since Stockton is so diverse, their
story sources naturally reflected the community's diversity without
much effort. The audit proved them wrong. 
-- Jim Gold, executive editor, The (Stockton,
Calif.) Record
It generally found that our photo report reflected the diversity of
our area (actually, we seemed to be doing better than we had suspected).
However, the survey was valuable because it pinpointed a couple of specific
areas -- hiring and promotions column in business and weddings and anniversaries
in features -- where we needed to make more effort to seek and include
photos of minorities.
-- Tom Eblen, managing editor, Lexington (Ky.)
Herald-Leader
While we make an effort to be more inclusive, the sources we quote are
predominantly white and male.
-- Denise Zapata, assistant city editor, The
Bakersfield Californian
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It generally found that our photo report reflected the diversity of
our area (actually, we seemed to be doing better than we had suspected).
However, the survey was valuable because it pinpointed a couple of specific
areas -- hiring and promotions column in business and weddings and anniversaries
in features -- where we needed to make more effort to seek and include
photos of minorities.
-- Tom Eblen, managing editor, Lexington (Ky.)
Herald-Leader
We highlighted the names on section fronts. We found we cover and quote
mostly white men. According to census figures, our community is almost
90 percent white. Diversity issues go way beyond race and gender.
-- Noel Nash, managing editor, (Florence, Ala.)
Times Daily
We need to add new listening posts to our beats, do deeper and wider
reporting, bring community members into the newspaper on a regular basis,
diversify our Rolodexes, conduct additional dialogues in-house.
-- Jessica Tomlinson, community coordinator,
Portland (Maine) Press Herald
While we make an effort to be more inclusive, the sources we quote are
predominantly white and male.
-- Denise Zapata, assistant city editor, The
Bakersfield Californian
Far more photo images of men than women in news; surprisingly more images
of women in sports; as far as minorities, we were fairly close to our
population breakdowns but need to work more on covering our Hispanic
population. Features department was dominated by women, but it was offset
by the news department dominated by men, for an overall balance.
-- Diane Barney, managing editor, The
(Vacaville, Calif.) Reporter
Minorities and women were greatly under-represented in all categories
throughout the newspaper, given the demographics of San Francisco. Minorities
were least represented in the Business and Style sections. The greatest
gap existed between the number of Asian faces and voices in the paper
and the percentage of Asian-Americans in San Francisco.
-- Sharon Rosenhause, managing editor/news, The
San Francisco Examiner
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External, community-conducted audit. And it highlighted the ongoing
disconnect between news content and African-American readers, despite
three years of tremendous diversity efforts.
-- Steven Smith, editor & vice president, The
(Colorado Springs, Colo.) Gazette
We certainly don't choose to be less than accurate. We believe we're
sensitive to the need to portray the community accurately. And one advantage
of being part of Gannett is that our corporate staff expects us to report
on the community in all of its social, cultural and economic diversity.
-- Mark Baldwin, managing editor, (Elmira,
N.Y.) Star-Gazette
We found that our coverage is pretty much as we would have predicted.
It relies heavily on government sources, and does not include enough
minorities. Our black sources tend to be in sports stories. Only 33
percent of our sources are women, while exactly 50 percent of our population
is women and a majority of our readers are women. We quote no Hispanics
and only a couple Asians during the period of the audit.
-- Maria T. Hileman, assistant managing editor,
The (New London, Conn.) Day
Older white males are still the most quoted and most photographed news
sources.
-- Jim Gold, executive editor, The (Stockton,
Calif.) Record
Staff-written stories tended to accurately reflect the diverse elements
of our readership. Wire stories had fewer sources, and it was difficult
to determine whether or not the sources were diverse.
-- Heidi Reuter Lloyd, senior editor, Milwaukee
(Wis.) Journal Sentinel
Showed many more men - particularly white, middle-age men - are getting
quoted on the front and metro pages than women.
-- Laurie Williams, city editor, Tri-City
(Wash.) Herald
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Missed opportunities were costing us the chance to make significant
gains in the diversity of our news coverage. This ranged from a better
variety of sources in news stories to more diversity in standing features
such as business promotions and wedding announcements.
-- Diane Graham, editor/staff development, The
Des Moines (Iowa) Register
Our full-time cops reporter covers the city of Dayton, fairly exclusively.
Dayton is the urban core of our region so most of our published crime
news is from Dayton to the exclusion of crime news in the suburbs ...
The percentage of local stories and briefs that were about minorities
or had minorities quoted in them was less (11%) than the 16 percent
minority population in our circulation area. We must work harder to
include minorities as we focus on more suburban and regional coverage.
Most of the minorities quoted or whose image appeared in the paper were
black. Asian-Americans, American Indians and Asian Indians were virtually
non-existent in that month.
-- Edwina Blackwell Clark, assistant managing
editor/administration, Dayton (Ohio) Daily
News
We tend to gravitate toward the public official types, who are mostly
middle-aged males in higher income brackets. We also tend to do a good
deal of kid stories, which is fine, but through the audit, we noticed
that with one in particular, there was an opportunity to include children
who were not from white, upper-middle-class families, yet those are
the ones we gravitated to in the story we wrote and the pictures we
took.
-- Rebecca Collier, managing editor, The
(Fishers, Ind.) Daily Ledger
We rely too much on official sources. We don't include the poor, people
in their 20s and 30s, and we need more diversity in our neighborhood
category.
-- Eileen Lehnert, managing editor, Jackson
(Mich.) Citizen Patriot
Our small sample showed we reflected the diversity of our readership
in three targeted areas - racial, gender and geographic.
-- Bill Church, managing editor, (Richmond,
Ind.) Palladium-Item
We hope to gain mightily from participating in the University of Missouri-Columbia
Journalism School's Strategic Study on Race and the News. We also hope
to gain instant and long-term feedback from the reader advisory board
we are establishing shortly.
-- Nancy Conner, reader advocate/training
coordinator, St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press
Our internal audits so far show that we do a pretty good job of 'mainstreaming,'
although we often 'miss opportunities' by not including different sources,
choosing different photographs or thinking a little more about the graphics
we use.
-- Bob Ray Sanders, vice president and
associate editor, Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram
We found that most of our fronts and features pages were generally dominated
by photos and stories of life among whites. Actually, the audit also
suggested that our numbers were not completely out of line for a readership
area that is about 20 percent minority. Some sections, especially our
regional sections, did a better job than other sections.
-- Jim Walser, senior editor/staff development,
The Charlotte (N.C. ) Observer
Used whole newspaper image and source audit forms. Middle-class and
rich white men still dominate our pages. The topics were varied, with
crime far less dominant than many readers perceive, and a very high
proportion of our articles/images had an urban, as opposed to suburban
or rural, setting.
-- Louise Seals, managing editor, Richmond
(Va.) Times-Dispatch
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The tendency always is to give the grease to the squeaky wheel, so the
areas of the community that make the most noise, wield the most power,
or have the most money tend to get the most extensive coverage. We are
trying now to seek out the quiet newsmakers, those who work tirelessly
(and quietly) to bring change and programs that are/aren't working.
-- Deanna Bottar, deputy metro editor, (Utica,
N.Y.) Observer-Dispatch
Photos of white males appear much more often than any other group.
-- Otis Sanford, managing editor, The (Memphis,
Tenn.) Commercial Appeal
In terms of sources, we found that we tend to quote more women and minorities
in our economic stories, possibly reflecting the ascension to power
of female chief economists!
-- Andrea Shalal-Esa, diversity coordinator,
Reuters America (offices in Washington, D.C., and
New York)
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Sun Herald
photo
The Rev. Alvin Years leads a
discussion on the results of a content audit and
on race issues and perceptions with the newsroom
staff of The Gazette of Colorado Springs,
Colo.
AUDITING: WHAT WERE YOUR MISGIVINGS?
Editors were concerned that it's
difficult to assess sources' backgrounds simply
from their names. They worried that these studies
were time-consuming and might have limited
validity.
That minorities would be under-counted, since we relied on last names
for ID.
-- Eloise DeHaan, special projects editor, The
(Allentown, Pa.) Morning Call
Timing - two weeks before hotly contested mayoral primary - skewed the
results somewhat - heavy dose of politics.
-- Debi Licklider, new initiatives editor, The
Philadelphia Daily News
It involved roughly half of our reporters and was not broad enough to
include editors, photographers, etc.
-- Bob Woessner, training editor, (Green Bay,
Wis.) Press-Gazette
We only audited two papers -- a Sunday paper and a weekday. It was extremely
difficult to gauge much beyond ethnicity and gender. In future audits
we would like to involve the reporters more by encouraging them to track
things such as age, generation, geography and class.
-- Stan Wischnowski, acting managing editor,
(Rochester, N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle
These are only snapshots of our work.
-- Suki Dardarian, senior editor, The (Tacoma,
Wash.) News Tribune
They said the objective should be met up front in assignment discussions
between reporters and editors. 2) Many felt the fault lines should include
religious differences.
-- Fred Kerr, managing editor/news, Asbury Park
(N.J.) Press
We audited 5 days' worth of papers (zoned editions included) that were
published within one week's time. This audit cannot be presumed to reflect
the newspaper's general performance in this area. Also, the high percentages
of unknowns in several categories casts at least some doubt on the findings.
-- Joe Happ, assistant to editor and publisher,
The (Riverside, Calif.) Press-Enterprise
The audit was extremely time-consuming and there were some questions
about its breadth and depth.
-- Jim Walser, senior editor/staff development,
The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer
Photo by Don Rosenstrauch, Contra
Costa Times
Artist Joni Martin,
left, Managing Editor Saundra Keyes and reporter
Jahna Berry analyze Contra Costa (Calif.) Times
content
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