The group proposed strategies for enhancing diversity in six areas: marketing; training for newsroom recruiters and editors; recruiting strategies; pre-college recruitment; partnering opportunities; and the editorial case for diversity. The group also offered recommendations on ASNE’s regional minority job fair program, now in its 12^th year.

The main themes from the meeting:

• Develop a broad-based marketing plan to attract young minority people (high school and college) to newspaper journalism careers.
• Aggressively recruit non-journalism majors in junior colleges and four-year colleges and universities. Encourage undergraduates in business, social sciences, history, English, art design, pre-law, pre-med., and liberal arts to consider journalism careers.
• Develop CD-ROM, videos and handbooks to help train and educate editors and recruiters on "best practices", content audits and recruitment strategies.
• Use ASNE’s in-house publications and Website to more aggressively disseminate information on innovations in high school/newspaper partnerships, content audits, readership and minority communities, and diversity-related issues.
• Increase the number of ASNE regional minority job fairs held annually, and explore more sponsorships of job fairs by universities and other professional journalism associations.

Marketing

• Conduct national advertising campaign aimed at attracting young people (college, high school and potential career changers) to newspaper journalism careers. Create a national house ad that can be used by ASNE members in their newspapers. Develop a two-minute public service announcement (PSA) for radio.
• Produce a three-to-five-minute video on journalism careers that would show diversity among journalists, size of newspapers and career options. Talk about the future of journalism and changes in technology (digital cameras, online newspapers, and pagination).
• Develop a handbook showing newspapers how to work with local high schools to develop workshops, partnerships, internships, etc. Write a curriculum for summer high school journalism workshops in partnership with Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, which already has a guide.
• Promote role models for young people interested in journalism careers. Create excitement around journalism prizewinners - ASNE writing award winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, etc. Ask winners to talk to high school journalism classes and college journalism programs.
• Create a newspaper character that young people can identify with to use in advertising campaign to reach high school and middle school students.
• Use newspapers as a teaching tool in schools. Promote as a supplement for government and civics classes. Newsroom should become more involved with Newspaper in Education (NIE) coordinator at newspaper.
• Sponsor contests to generate interest in specific journalism careers. For example, win free tickets to a movie or sporting event for the best feature article or sports story submitted by a local student.
• Use the newspaper’s opinion section to highlight an "issue of the day" to get young voices into the paper. High school or college journalism students could be asked to submit op-ed pieces.

• Create a module for newsroom training that would discuss why diversity is important for newspapers.
• Develop a guide or video to train newsroom recruiters how to recruit diverse people into newspapers. The guide could include successful interview strategies and eliminating cultural stereotyping, i.e., Tom Kochman’s seminar on cultural differences.
• Showcase successful models of recruitment and hiring, for example, new hire orientation or buddy system.
• Train editors and mid-level editors on diversity using video described above and "Color of Fear" video.

• Set aside funds to give entry-level staffers for assistance in paying school loans and household start-up costs in exchange for promise to stay for a certain length of time.
• Make diversity recruitment, hiring and retention part of the standard performance evaluation of all key managers, with no tie to bonuses.
• Offer retention bonuses to keep talented people, borrowing a page from high-tech firms’ employment practices manuals.

• Publicize more what newspapers are doing to help high school journalism through The American Editor and on the Internet.
• Help local high schools publish newspapers, for example, ASNE’s current Student Press Partners program. Create a guidebook on how to set up such programs.
• Develop national scholarships for minority youth that have declared print journalism as their major in college.
• Create a "junior Olympic" competition in journalism to identify students interested in journalism careers. Develop the program in partnership with local universities.
• Participate in career fair days at high school. Connect with high school guidance counselors.

• Revamp the program that paired a larger newspaper with a small newspaper in the hiring and tracking of minority journalists. Program could be revamped with focus on newspaper groups that own several small dailies. Examine partnerships with journalism schools.
• Work more closely with existing programs to identify talented applicants, such as Maynard’s copyediting program and Wayne State’s program for minority journalists.
• Develop partnerships with journalism programs at historically black colleges through speakers’ bureaus, assistance to campus newspapers.

• ASNE should lead the effort to demonstrate how a diverse staff leads to diverse content and more diverse readers:
• Include surveys on minority communities and minority readers in future readership studies. Readership studies should be longitudinal and examine penetration in minority communities.
• Update the newspaper content audit handbook, "Covering Our Community." Provide case analysis of how content has made a difference in readership and circulation. Stephen Lacy, Michigan State University, has conducted new research on newspaper content audits.

Make diversity of hiring an ASNE convention theme.
• Make diversity a theme for an issue of The American Editor and The Editor’s Exchange
• Provide diversity forums for top editors, perhaps at state press associations.

• Increase the number from eight annually to 10 or 12 per year.
• Partner with more universities, i.e., University of Missouri-Columbia, University of Nevada-Reno, University of Kansas, University of North Carolina, University of Texas-El Paso.
• Use other conventions to co-sponsor job fairs, for example, SND, AASFE, and National Conference of Editorial Writers.
• Add short course component to some of the job fairs.
• Track internship and hiring patterns by sending surveys to recruiters and job applicants at least six months after each job fair.
• Increase the number of young, experienced journalists (one to five years) who attend job fairs.
• Conduct more "hands-on" workshops on resume writing and interviewing skills.
• Mandate that recruiters stay for the entire job fair.
• Revive distribution list of minority graduates from historically black colleges and colleges with large minority enrollments. Use the Internet to publish the list for editors and recruiters.