Author: Loren Ghiglione
Published: August 04, 1998
Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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Diversity

ASNE’s statement is a great first step in improving newsrooms beyond 2000; board should look toward the future with more energy and leadership

Headlines that shout ASNE is "abandoning" or "retreating" from its 20-year-old diversity goal disappoint me.

ASNE has no power to order newsroom diversity roughly equivalent to U.S. diversity. But the existence of ASNE’s Year 2000 Goal, however impractical, however utopian, has served as a valuable moral beacon. It also has helped achieve diversity.

I applaud President Seaton’s initiative in encouraging an industry-wide discussion on updating the Year 2000 Goal.

Is it right to continue counting and categorizing people of color? Since the rate of increase in newsroom diversity has failed in recent years to keep pace with the rate of increase in U.S. diversity, is it cynically stupid to keep pursuing racial and ethnic parity by a certain date? Is a numerical goal that seems unrealistic to many more harmful than helpful?

The United States and its newspapers cannot, in the name of reality, practicality or color blindedness, turn their backs on ideals that help define this nation: justice, equal opportunity, tolerance, inclusiveness and community. That is why I admire much in the board’s reworded "Statement on newsroom diversity," which reasserts ASNE’s commitment to racial and ethnic parity.

But the board needs to support the statement it will formally adopt in October with greater energy, more programs, increased coordination and stronger leadership:

• We should clearly tie newspapers’ diversity effort to their news and business missions. Newspapers need to achieve coverage that accurately and fairly portrays all segments of their communities. In an era of stagnant circulation, newspapers need to increase their readership among Hispanics, Asians and other fast-growing segments of the U.S. population.
• ASNE should at least double its full-time diversity staff, now one person, and use that staff as efficiently as possible. Some work now required of the diversity director — running job fairs, conducting the annual employment survey — could be delegated to academics or others outside ASNE. Gannett, Knight Ridder and other media firms could be asked to loan executives to mount a special Year 2000 diversity campaign. Increased coordination with the minority journalists organizations also could increase the effectiveness of the ASNE diversity staff.
• The chair of the Diversity Committee should be selected for two years, not one, to permit enough time to initiate significant programs. The current ASNE president — and the three to follow — should decide together on new programs that will move the industry toward its goal of inclusiveness and then pursue those programs with the intensity ASNE is devoting to credibility. After all, inclusiveness and credibility are inextricably linked.
• ASNE should not retreat on job fairs (now 8-10 a year, 16 at one point), middle-school, high-school and college programs, internships and other mechanisms for increasing entry into newsrooms. One study suggests that an internship has become almost a requirement for a college graduate to be hired as a beginning reporter: 85 percent of new hires have had a newsroom internship. But the number and percentage of students of color obtaining internships have declined significantly the last two years.
• We should make retention a top priority. An Associated Press Managing Editors study reported that "nearly half of African Americans expect either to work for a medium other than newspapers or to leave the media field altogether within the next five years." ASNE members, can, for example, personally commit to management training for journalists of color. ASNE members are themselves managers, in a position to be, formally or informally, effective mentors.
• ASNE should build on a promising pilot project, "Newspaper Links ’96," to expand the diversity initiatives at smaller papers. Many are among the 42 percent of dailies without any journalists of color. A changing pattern of ownership — groups operating more regional clusters of small and large papers — makes such an initiative timely.
• In a world where whites are a minority and "minorities" are a majority, ASNE should encourage U.S. newspapers to think about inclusiveness as a global issue. I write from South Africa, where formerly all-white newspapers are seeking a transformation of their newsroom culture. U.S. newspaper people need not only diversity workshops but also everyday opportunities to work together, across fault lines of ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, to achieve company goals and to build personal trust and understanding. Perhaps examples from newspapers abroad can help U.S.  newspapers work across fault lines. Perhaps ASNE can redesign its workshops and conventions to partner with journalists of color here and abroad.