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

Changing Newsrooms

Of the respondents, more than 70 said they are interested in changing newsroom practices or structures. Their plans included conducting community tours, having more discussions about diversity, conducting surveys, creating reader panels, establishing mentorship programs.

Six months: We want to make sure that we are not neglecting any part of our community. 18 months: Hopefully by this point we don't even have to think about it -- it should be standard practice.
-- Mark Dickerson, assistant managing editor, (Sioux Falls, S.D.) Argus Leader

1. Update our diversity source book. On our city desk computer file, we have a list of diversity sources. Our newsroom diversity coordinator will update this list daily with new sources we find each day. 2. We've started a newsroom-wide bulletin board for our staff members to discuss our diversity strategies. It's a way of sharing ideas and critiques. Ultimately, it should keep us completely aware all the time.
-- Rich Jackson, assistant managing editor, Wausau (Wis.) Daily Herald

Creating a Latino affairs beat; creating a religion beat.
-- Eloise DeHaan, special projects editor, The (Allentown, Pa.) Morning Call

We discussed talking to the Nez Perce Tribe about trying to place a tribal member as a student intern in the newsroom.
-- Jeanne M. DePaul, feature sections editor, Lewiston (Idaho) Morning Tribune

Conduct at least two more audits this year and develop methods for reporting, discussing and using the results of those audits to improve accuracy.
-- Joe Happ, assistant to editor and publisher, The (Riverside, Calif.) Press-Enterprise

Members of the (diversity) committee have decided to go on tour, visiting a variety of groups in town to talk about our coverage of their community.
-- Diane Barney, managing editor, The (Vacaville, Calif.) Reporter

Our reporter software package includes a shared source database. Used with vigor, it is an opportunity for each reporter to have a source list of thousands that is continually refreshed, at their fingertips.
-- Bruce Gaultney, executive editor, Ocala (Fla.) Star-Banner

We're going to revisit the subject of racial and ethnic identifiers in stories. In our in-house survey and in our three 'Time-Out' meetings, many employees questioned the accuracy of these labels. We've decided to write a news story on the subject and to invite readers to send their comments on the subject via mail, e-mail, phone and fax. We're also going to find a group of employees who go out into the community and conduct mini-forums on the subject. Then we'll decide whether to change our stylebook. Our second commitment is to review a long list of ides for improving neighborhoods coverage on the south side.
-- Bobbie Jo Buehl, managing editor, The (Tuscon) Arizona Daily Star

Within six months, we should complete a survey of staffers of Spanish-language skills and determine what supplemental education is needed. Also in that time frame, we will establish a database of Hispanic sources available on the newsroom intranet. To help identify key sources, a group of newsroom journalists is mapping the Phoenix Hispanic community.
-- Mark Coast, journalism initiative editor, The (Phoenix) Arizona Republic

Our opinion page editor, who is charged with marking up the newspapers for all to learn from, says he's willing to include marks that are aimed at pointing out weaknesses in diversity. We hope to do more advance work instead of routine meeting coverage to eliminate the need to have the 40-something male government official mug shot with every growth story we do. And the county is growing, so we do a lot of those kinds of stories.
-- Rebecca Collier, managing editor, The (Fishers, Ind.) Daily Ledger

More community interaction through reader panels and focus group; continued use of a Credibility Survey sent to news sources.
-- Bill Church, managing editor, (Richmond, Ind.) Palladium-Item

We began individual reporter focus groups last year and will seek to make them more diverse. In many other ways, the programs we have in place are already working and we need to continue to support them. We are a community with a 9.2 percent minority population, but our news staff is 24 percent minority (7 of 29) and our management team is 27.2 percent (3 of 11).
-- Dennis M. Lyons, executive editor, The (Lansdale, Pa.) Reporter

Better coverage of neighborhoods, because much of our news coverage is city hall/government based.
-- Debi Licklider, new initiatives editor, The Philadelphia Daily News

We believe that content analysis will be a powerful engine for change. We've asked each AME, based on the findings of their analysis, to provide a plan for change. The process also keeps the issue in the minds of the whole newsroom and at the top of our agenda. We hope to step up our coverage of the Hispanic and Asian-American communities and of immigration issues.
-- Charlotte Hall, managing editor, (Long Island, N.Y.) Newsday

Among the staff suggestions that I'd like to pursue: developing a mentoring program that matches recruits with established veterans; developing a recruiting source guide that includes a good mix of traditional J-school powerhouses and lesser knowns such as Howard University and Wayne State; involving the diversity committee heavily during recruiting visits; and establishing a developmental program for aspiring minority journalists in the community. Through these efforts, our goal is to increase our minority workforce in the newsroom from 14 percent to 17 percent (the level of our minority readership) in the next six months.
-- Stan Wischnowski, acting managing editor, (Rochester, N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle

We've realized that we attack many issues in "big"projects -- i.e. a two-page spread about minority hiring practices at the county sheriff's department, an eight-page section about how poverty affects our community's children, a package of stories about segregation in municipal housing. What we fail to do is follow up on the "big"stories with daily stories that answer some of the questions raised in the bigger pieces. Solution-oriented reporting and trying to answer the question 'Why?' after big issues are brought to light could be a valuable service to our readers.
-- Deanna Bottar, deputy metro editor, (Utica, N.Y.) Observer-Dispatch

One of the more interesting things that came out of our whole newspaper audit was the fact that we heavily depend on experts from Harvard University as sources for certain kinds of stories. We have several topnotch schools in the Boston metro area that can be called on as well. Photographers, designers, editors and reporters need to think more about their sources and images and where they come from. That is the concept we want to push over the short-and long-term.
-- Daisey Harris, assistant to the editor, The Boston Globe

By creating a new beat of community affairs, The Herald has made a conscious effort to make our coverage a more accurate portrayal of the community. This reporter will write about diversity as a phenomenon as well as focus on issues of interest to such groups as blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans.
-- Terry Plumb, editor, The (Rock Hill, S.C.) Herald

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

More diverse hiring and realigning beats to more accurately reflect the community.
-- Carolina Garcia, managing editor, San Antonio (Texas) Express-News

OTHER PLEDGES

Continue efforts to get more Hispanic journalists on staff.

More women photographed and quoted, especially on the front sections.

Launch a quarterly workshop - either to discuss issues such as standards or style, or to bring in people from the community to talk about their experiences with the media.

Do quarterly content audits.

Hold more community meetings.

Add diversity as a performance factor in evaluations.

Devote more time to reporting the impact of news.

Be more aggressive about including minority sources in stories that are not about diversity issues. Better minority staff recruitment.

Set up more language translation services for reporters to use.

Promote more minorities to management.

I want more people reading the paper, period. We're going to do that with better journalism. Nothing fancy or new-wave about that. We've got to know the community and cover what people care about. That covers everybody.
-- Charles Broadwell, editor, Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer-Times

Each department head is talking to staff to come up with specific objectives to diversify coverage. We plan to do another, deeper audit to measure our progress next year.
-- David Yarnold, executive editor, San Jose Mercury News

We hope to have a series of continuing dialogues about diversity. For instance, we are planning two sessions around gay and lesbian issues and religion. Since the National Time-Out programs, we have discussed setting up more extensive translator services for the newsroom. We are compiling a list of story ideas from the Diversity Week programs and will be assigning them.
-- Sherrie Marshall and Kent Gardner, news content editor and administration editor, (Minneapolis) Star Tribune

Expanding source lists and mapping them to see what areas are missed.
-- Rebecca Allen, team leader, The Orange County (Calif.) Register

Perhaps the most important idea to come out of the Time-Out is to create a building-wide panel to provide feedback on the degree to which we reflect the community. The Star-Gazette is one of the most diverse employers in the region. We're also working with the marketing department to put updated demographic data, including income data, in the hands of news staffers.
-- Mark Baldwin, managing editor, (Elmira N.Y.) Star-Gazette