Last Updated: June 29, 1999
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Reflecting
the community
While San Francisco presents editors with a model of
ethnic diversity, they find accomplishing the same feat in newsrooms a
formidible task; discussing it is easier
Sifting through notes from the annual meeting of America’s editors,
a voice came back to haunt me. I first heard the voice several years ago
at The Poynter Institute. Attempting to explain my good intentions to friends
whom I disappoint. The voice reminded me: “If you are going to talk the
talk, you have to walk the walk.”
I probably don’t have the quote right, but it makes sense for me.
My assignment was to explore the ideas and realities reflected in ASNE’s
annual meeting. Specifically, I was told to “have a little fun with
it.”
But the notes and mental snapshots I brought home were confusing. Too
many mixed signals, too much disparity between good intentions and good
results.
Instead, this report ends up being about how our newspaper industry
and the editors who help run it, don’t walk as well as they talk.
I heard the voice again in San Francisco.
***
Look at the place we gathered.
Outside, in the sunlit and surreal world of San Francisco’s streets,
were people of all ages and from every continent. Whether the city is a
melting pot or a salad bowl or some of both is up for discussion.
You could walk a few blocks and wander among food stalls and shops where
Chinese was more common than English, discover enough French cuisine to
make the most ardent Francophile happy, drink Irish coffee with your ham-and-eggs
near the cable car stop, hear the sound of the blues drifting out of bars
in mid-afternoon, eat Hungarian dishes near the square, relish great fresh
Italian seafood restaurants on the docks, enjoy street dancers and Peruvian
flute players, or nibble chunks of crabmeat in paper cups along the waterfront.
The weather was spectacular, the setting wonderful.
Life is good
Inside, in the artificially illuminated but real world of America’s
editors’ annual meeting, you could see and hear mostly older white males
in expensive suits buying $20 breakfasts, enjoying or complaining about
the faded glory of the Fairmont Hotel, eating variations on chicken a la
rubber, sitting in cramped rows hearing earnest discussions of the future
of newspapers while air conditioners struggled and Los Angeles Times Publisher
Mark Willes ($2.9 million per year, plus options) characterized himself
as oppressed.
Life is a challenge.
If you searched for demographic reflections of America at the editors’
gathering, the best place to look was at staff of the convention newspaper
— bright, young and diverse — or the board of directors — getting younger,
probably brighter, and certainly more diverse than ever before.
At the hotel meeting room used by the staff of The ASNE Reporter, the
young reporters, photographers and editors reflected the face of America
in the coming millennium. The mostly-smiling and earnest young faces came
from all over the place, and clearly are heading somewhere important.
The news from and about the interns was good. The journalism job market
is currently strong, internships are available once again (thanks to a
strong economy), they got to see the president of the United States in
person, and they feel — partly because of the ASNE experience — they
will have opportunities to make a difference for newspapers in the years
ahead.
And the editors handed them business cards. At the job fair following
the convention, these students and scores of others with equally
diverse backgrounds mobbed the recruiters’ tables for interviews.
That adds up to a message of promise, and high expectations.
Other messages were not so clear, and some of the snapshots and notes
from the annual gathering of editors were conflicting.
Harold “Bud” Hodgkinson provided editors with sometimes startling demographics
to reflect the changing nation. He drew on years of research and expertise
to paint a picture of the future which argued for the melting pot our parents
taught us about. “We are preoccupied with physical differences,” he observed
as he described the mind-boggling categories of the coming census. Who
are we? Who do we claim to be? Consider that 43 million folks moved last
year. Consider the poor children of America. Consider bi-, quad-, and octa-racial
families, blends of cultures and climates and continents.
Actor/activist Edward James Olmos delivered his passionate vision of
a salad bowl America on center stage with the fire of an evangelist. “We
don’t know about each other,” Olmos told editors, who nodded in agreement
from plush seats. Olmos aimed his positive zeal and acting skills straight
at targeted editors, his message ladled out with doses of street reality,
trying to make us “aware of the new world being created.”
All the meeting rooms at the Fairmont seemed filled with ideas, concern,
passion and zeal. And then we grabbed a bus to cocktails at the museum,
or a cab for dinner with friends on the Embacadero.
Reality continued to intrude.
More than one editor noticed that President Clinton made a diversity
speech. He reminded editors that the “the oldest demons of society — hatred
of the other — folks who are not like us” still haunt the globe.
He pledged to work to meet the “challenges of history and diversity.”
And more than one editor noted that political promise has not yet been
fulfilled.
The new board of directors of ASNE, elected by their peers, became a
positive model for the ASNE goals for inclusion. Look at the board and
you can see a good — not perfect — representation of the people who make
up the readers we claim we want. Approximately one-third are minority.
It is no longer unusual to see women and people of color on the board.
One third of the society’s directors are female, not great, but better
than it used to be. Editors voted for an inclusive leadership, and honored
it.
Of the total ASNE membership, according to the office staff, 5 percent
are members of racial and ethnic minority groups. That’s 45 members
out of a total of 893.
***
The reception for ASNE’s 156 women members was held this year in a room
enlarged to handle the increasing female membership, a marked change from
less than 10 years ago when the session was held in a hotel room. No one
took much notice when another competent woman editor — Diane McFarlin of
the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune — was put on the ladder to be president.
Her competency and hard work earned honors, and no one is surprised. Women,
after all, represent half the population.
The newsroom, however, is far from parity. Women represent 36.9 percent
of all newsroom employees and one-third of all newsroom supervisors, according
to ASNE’s newsroom census, which this year counted women for the first
time. Women who are top newsroom managers — those eligible to belong to
ASNE — represent 17.5 percent of its membership.
***
The ASNE Diversity Committee meeting had a full agenda, a long list
of worthwhile projects, strong leadership from The Greenville (S.C.) News’
Wanda Lloyd and Newsday’s Charlotte Hall, plus a visit from
the supportive incoming president of the society. “This is extremely disappointing
for all of us,” 1999-2000 ASNE President Chris Anderson said of the annual
diversity survey. According to the survey, 11.6 percent of U.S. journalists
are people of color. “This is simply unacceptable. We must step up the
pace,” he said.
Not attending the Diversity Committee meeting were most of the senior
editors at the convention, the people who actually run newsrooms from the
top. The committee has 40 signed-up members. Less than half showed up for
the session. Four people who actually run newsrooms were present. “I had
a conflict,” one told me later. Most attendees were the same folks from
minority organizations and the handful of newspapers who always help ASNE
push for improvement.
***
Among early-morning discussion sessions were two specifically established
to deal with issues of making newspapers more representative of readers:
one on total community coverage, and another on covering gay and lesbian
issues. Attendance wasn’t strong. The session dealing with fault lines
in journalism run by Maynard Institute had the smallest attendance
of all the workshops (although a similar workshop before the convention
filled a room).
The best-attended early morning workshop was the one on land-use planning.
It was standing-room only for about 65 editors. The investigative reporting
session also drew a crowd.
***
The head table at the Clinton luncheon provided a striking visual statement
about a changing editors’ society.
From the left, the former presidents of the society represented the
past, seated by date of service, comfortable among old friends, mostly
male, white-haired and over 60. Several of these men worked hard to make
newsrooms more inclusive, and still do in retirement. Two former presidents
seated near the end of the table joked together that when one more year
passes they may end up off the dais, shoved onto the floor by the
younger editors moving in from the right. They didn’t seem bothered by
the idea. Eleven male editors were seated at the head table.
At the far right end of the table sat Catalina Camia, president of Unity
and of the Asian American Journalists Association, the youngest person
by decades at the table. She invited all editors to come to Seattle to
take part in this year’s Unity ’99 sessions, and look for talent. She was
seated next to Sandra Mims Rowe, among the youngest of the past presidents,
and the only other female at the head table.
***
What once was a proud highlight of the ASNE convention — the annual
announcement of progress made in the effort to achieve parity in America’s
newsroom for racial minorities — was an announcement of no progress. The
kindest summary about the effort was in the convention newspaper. The reporter
wrote: “Progress has been glacial toward increased diversity in the nations
newsrooms, many editors say.”
The annual survey of newsrooms reports that minority employment increased
one-tenth of one percentage point in the past year, a rate that won’t reach
any ASNE goal past or present despite a booming economy for newspapers.
The longer we go, it seems, the behinder we get.
Despite bright young interns and student journalists present in San
Francisco to show us where newspapers’ future really lies, the attention
span of editors appears to be shifting to other priorities.
Toward the end of still another convention session, a soft-spoken Jay
Harris, publisher of the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News, reflected
on progress at U.S. newspapers. He detects “a clear gap between our high
ideals and our daily practice.”
On diversity, the evidence suggests we are still talking about good
intentions and high ideals.
But we are not yet walking the walk.
LaMont, former executive editor of The Modesto (Calif.) Bee, is ombudsman
of The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee.
