Diversity matters and it’s worth it

By Margaret Sullivan

Does newsroom diversity really matter? Is it worth the effort, the setbacks, the hassles? Come on, is a room full only of white men really such a bad thing, after all?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

I’ve spent a year working to make The Buffalo News staff more diverse after being named editor last September. We’ve made some good progress — I inherited a newsroom with a seven percent minority staff, and have brought it to 10 percent. I’ve hired 12 reporters and editors in the past year — six have been minority. And I’ve learned a few things along the way. I don’t claim to be the journalism world’s biggest expert on the subject, but I’d like to share some observations.

1. Yes, it really matters. Not for the sake of appearances, but for the sake of what we all care most about: Getting good stories into the paper. If you were visiting this newsroom, you could ask Susan Schulman. She’s the head of our largest suburban bureau, who recently got an up-close look at the role of diversity in stories. One of Schulman’s reporters, Diedre Williams — my first minority hire — wrote a powerful profile of a 5-year-old Sierra Leone orphan who’d been adopted by a local family. The depth and detail of the story was a direct result of Diedre’s extraordinary access to the family. And that, in turn, was helped tremendously by Diedre’s being African-American. She truly cared about the subject.

“Sure, someone else could have certainly written the story, but not with such dedication and passion,” Schulman told me afterwards. The story — displayed as a front-page centerpiece — got tremendous response among readers. In fact, we’re now thinking of sending Diedre to an orphanage in Sierra Leone from which other children who’ve survived the atrocities of that country will come to homes in the United States. We’ve seen that kind of thing happen time and time again — whether it’s an illustrator whose drawings naturally include people of color or a writer whose native Chinese language comes in handy when reporting local reaction to the China trade bill.

And it matters in a broader way, too. To serve our readers best and connect with them best, we have to reflect who they are. There’s no way around it.

2. It’s not as hard to achieve as we let ourselves think. The main thing, it seems to me, is to get serious about it. Once you start communicating that resolve to staff — no diversity, no hire — it’s amazing what happens: Good minority job applicants start magically appearing.

In our case, we’d seen the resume of one Asian-American reporter a few times, but hadn’t acted on it. It got lost amid the scores of others in a pile on some editor’s desk. But, amazingly, once diversity got onto everybody’s “must do” list, it surfaced. She came for an interview, everyone loved her, and she was hired. It turns out that she’s one of the most energetic and productive new talents this newsroom has seen in years.

3. You might have to bend some rules. At this paper, we rarely hire reporters with fewer than three years experience on a good-sized daily. As a Top 50 paper, we have that luxury. In the past year, I’ve broken that rule a few times.

I have yet to regret it. In every case, the staffers hired were talented and promising journalists with a great deal to offer. If they came from smaller papers with fewer years experience, so be it. At smaller papers than this one, it may mean finding people without j-school or even without newspaper experience. If the talent, work ethic and desire is there, the rest ought to be negotiable.

4. Ask for help. This paper had often sent one of our top editors to a Long Island minority job fair, and very seldom had any results. This past year, we had no job openings and very nearly decided to pass up the job fair altogether. But, because we’d decided to get serious about diversity, we took a different kind of shot at it. Instead of sending, say, a managing editor, we decided instead to send a reporter and an editorial writer — both of whom are black. They were pleased to be asked, happy to help and enthusiastic about the people they’d met. Soon after they came back, a reporter’s job did open up and we ended up hiring one of the prospects they’d found.

5. Tokenism doesn’t work. For more years than I care to remember, I was the only woman at the daily Page One meeting. I didn’t enjoy the feeling. I felt isolated and strangely on display. Sometimes I was asked for “the woman’s point of view” on a story and I found myself resentful. I tended to reply like this: I can give you ONE woman’s point of view, maybe, but not THE woman’s point of view.

Do you think I was a big advocate for stories about breast cancer or reproductive rights or equal pay? Not as often as I would have liked. In order to do that, you need more than a token person – you need a critical mass of people.

I’m convinced that at a table of 15 men, the lone woman, in effect, becomes another man. I’m sure there’s a complex psychological reason for this. Or maybe it’s just peer pressure. And certainly it’s as true for race as it is for gender.

Of course, you have to start somewhere. If that means having one person of color at a table of Page One decision-makers, or one woman on a sports staff, rather than none, that’s progress. But please — only temporarily. It really does matter.

Sullivan is the editor of The Buffalo News.