Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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Short takes
This is an excerpt from a speech Gregory Favre gave during the Newspaper
Association of America convention held in Dallas in April.
We should make diversity a company-wide policy at every newspaper, infuse
it into our values just as we infuse our journalistic standards into these
values.
We should conduct regular content reviews, constantly asking ourselves
if we are being inclusive, if all voices are given an opportunity to be
heard, if others unlike us are reading about themselves or seeing themselves
in our news and advertising columns, if we are eliminating the stereotyping
that sadly still appears in too many newspapers.
We should identify and nurture minority candidates, reaching as far
down as our elementary grades to encourage young people to join our craft
and help them with scholarships and internships.
We should make sure that journalism schools are part of the solution,
because 87 percent of all entry-level jobs are filled by journalism graduates.
There are some encouraging signs in this arena. At least 35 percent of
summer interns last year were people of color. And more than 22 percent
of the journalism undergraduate students were African Americans, Latinos,
Asian Americans or Native Americans.
We must create a welcoming environment at our newspapers, create mentoring
programs internally and externally, partner with other organizations in
our communities to make the transition easier for those who join us, provide
training for everyone in our buildings so that they can relate in some
way to the multicultural, multiethnic, multiracial society of today. We
must work harder on retention and promotion of minorities, shattering those
glass ceilings that most of us in this room have never had to deal with
and, therefore, don’t know how it feels to not be given a chance because
of race or gender.
We must direct our energies toward achieving these goals rather than
expending our energies trying to affix blame. There is enough blame for
all of us to share.
And, finally, we must make sure that people do not have to forget who
they are in order to become what they want to be.
Favre, a past president of ASNE, is executive editor of The Sacramento
(Calif.) Bee. In July, he becomes full-time vice president/news of The
McClatchy Co.
