Last Updated: December 29, 2000
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Diversity
Six steps to diversify a journalism faculty
By Loren Ghiglione
In July 1999, shortly before Loren Ghiglione became director of the
USC Annenberg’s School of Journalism, the school was threatened with the
loss of accreditation. A major reason cited: absence of faculty diversity.
On a full-time faculty of fourteen there were no people of color, except
for a visiting professor who would decide to return to Northern California.
Eight months later the faculty could boast six excellent new members,
five of them people of color. The American Editor asked Ghiglione to share
some of the strategies that contributed to this transformation. Here are
his tips:
1. Buttonhole bearers of bad news, including faculty candidates of color
who had rejected — or had been rejected by — the school or who had
left the faculty. What improvements in atmosphere and attitude,
policy and practice would they recommend? What salaries and benefits
did the school need to offer to be competitive? Were there changes
in curriculum and programs that would strengthen the school, make it more
attractive and take advantage of its location in multi-ethnic Los Angeles?
2. Counteract the social segregation that exists in journalism education
as well as in journalism. Contact journalists, journalism educators
and USC alums, staff and full- and part-time faculty of color to recommend
possible faculty candidates (Geoffrey Cowan, dean of the Annenberg School,
Murray Fromson, the previous director and Joe Saltzman, the previous
associate director of the School of Journalism had recruited a diverse
part-time journalism faculty). Serve on industry committees (e.g.,
ASNE’s diversity committee) and attend meetings of organizations (Maynard
Institute, NABJ, AAJA, NLGJA, etc.) where inclusiveness is a priority.
Invite journalists and journalism educators of color — even before they
are candidates — to meet the USC journalism faculty and discuss Spanish-language
news broadcasts, journalism education at historically black universities
and other topics about which the faculty may lack expertise.
3. Travel almost anywhere — New York, New Orleans, Atlanta, Memphis
—to interview a strong candidate of color, but remember not to overlook
excellent candidates close to home. Alice Bonner, a former Washington
Post reporter and editor, who had just completed her Ph.D. at the University
of North Carolina, joined the faculty in March.
Another hire, Kenneth Noble, a former New York Times correspondent and
bureau chief, was teaching at nearby California State University at Northridge.
Laura Castaneda, a Temple University faculty member, came from Los Angeles
and is a USC alumnus.
A fourth hire, Serena Cha, an awarding-winning television journalist,
was on campus, directing Annenberg TV News, the 30-minute, student-operated
nightly news broadcast.
4. Make sure the outreach is so effective that the resulting pool of
candidates generates at least one finalist of color, possibly two, for
every opening advertised. Insist that finalists be evaluated by the same
standards—that candidates of color are not eliminated from contention because
the faculty feels less comfortable with them. Difference should not
be made into a disadvantage.
5. Rethink the school’s curriculum and programs with the realities of
the 21st-century world in mind.
For example, Lester Sloan, a former Newsweek photographer, is introducing
“Photographing LA,” a course that will focus on the city’s evolving ethnic
communities; the school obtained a $35,000 grant from the Times Mirror
Foundation to fund Sloan’s video interviews with Gordon Parks and other
photographers, interviews that will provide students with an international
body of mentors.
Also, the school’s faculty has voted to require all graduate students
to work abroad as journalists, preferably in newsworthy locations where
students may learn about The Other as well as themselves. So in May-June,
Noble, a former New York Times correspondent in Africa, will lead a group
of USC graduate students to South Africa where they will intern for the
Cape Times, Bush Radio and other news media.
William Celis, a former reporter for The New York Times and Wall Street
Journal who grew up on the Texas side of the U.S.-Mexico border, will take
students to Mexico to report on significant changes there.
6. Apply the experiences gained in newsroom diversity efforts. I brought
to USC a lesson learned from trying to hire reporters of color for a 6,000-circulation
daily in Southbridge, Mass., a 17,000-person town that one African-American
intern nicknamed Whiteville: Hiring is only the first step in a long
process filled with many minefields. Retaining excellent people
may be even harder than finding and hiring them. Training them for
promotion to management positions is also crucial. We hope faculty
mentors will help our new hires accomplish records of teaching, researching,
writing and serving society that will earn them tenure.
We also hope our new hires will further transform our school and contribute
to the new, multicultural USC, finally putting to rest the out-dated fiction
of it as a waspish University of Spoiled Children.
Ghiglione directs the School of Journalism at the University of Southern
California’s Annenberg School for Communication.
