El Paso (Texas) Times

PERCENTAGE OF MINORITIES ON STAFF: 50,001 to 75,000 CIRCULATION  [Chart]

Don Flores
Executive Vice President and Editor
El Paso (Texas) Times
 
Please describe your approach to increasing diversity in your newsroom. I don’t think it’s any different than any other paper. Every time an opening comes up, we make sure we have a diverse pool. We include people of color and women — and then we hire the best. I’ve made a lot of contacts (I’ve been in the business 35 years). Through the accrediting council for journalism schools, I know many of the deans and chairs and professors at journalism programs. If you’re in this business long enough, you end up working for just about everyone. A friend at a major metro might tell you “this person doesn’t have the experience I need, but you may want to take a look at (him or her).” Networking works. What makes us different? We’re committed. If you go through the process without a commitment, you end up years later no more diverse than you were to begin with. I don’t think there’s anything more important in the news and information gathering industry than reflecting the people you serve. You can’t cover your community effectively otherwise.
 
What is the toughest obstacle to success and how have you worked to overcome it? It’s getting support of the mid-level managers who are the people who deal with the staff directly and are doing the primary outreach to get a pool of diverse candidates. It’s important that they realize that if they don’t have a person who can speak English and Spanish, there are going to be parts of our community where a reporter is not going to be able to function as well as he or she should. If the reporter can’t talk to the mother and father of the soldier who was killed in Iraq, there is no way you can capture the drama, feeling and passion.
 
In El Paso, we talk about our efforts every day — twice a day actually — in the morning and afternoon news meetings. Do we have any Hispanics in this story? We want to make sure we tell the stories through the eyes and ears of the people affected by the story. In El Paso, three out of four are going to be Hispanic. We want to make sure we have relevant people talking about what some bill in Austin may mean to this community.
 
What are the benefits/paybacks of greater diversity? We become more relevant to the reader and the viewer, whether it’s our newspaper, online product or anything else we produce. If you look at our products, you see and sense El Paso. Our stories clearly say this is El Paso, it’s a border region, it’s an Hispanic community. We understand the need for bilingual education or health care for the poor. We understand that this is a community focused on immigration and how it relates to business and commerce.
 
How does greater diversity in your newsroom affect content? It just does. We do a lot of market studies so we know what is of high interest in our community. Education and immigration are our franchise topics. When you have people who are undereducated and who have this great need for breaking this cycle, this rut of poverty, it’s something we need to focus on to move the community forward. We understand this because we have staff members who live it — they go home to households of Hispanics throughout this community. When they’re not in the newsroom, they’re living in the community. They understand what the issues have been and what’s topical.
 
It’s not just being brown or black, etc. It’s understanding the culture and getting people to talk to you. If people can warm up to you because they can relate to you, you’re going to get a story that you otherwise might not get.
 
Please cite one example of a story that was impacted by diversity in your newsroom. This summer we had historical flooding. We had staffers from the various communities that were touched, and those staffers could easily identify people who had lost a house or couldn’t go to work because they had to deal with issues. When you have something like that, it’s easy to pose a question of the staff: “Do you know anybody who ….?” It allows us to take a story and make it very local and very personal. We were able to talk to families who had to relocate.
 
This first-hand knowledge also allowed us to overcome the cliché of going to the Red Cross shelter and talking to people there. (Because of our diverse staff,) we knew where the victims were going to end up. In the Hispanic community, you take care of your own – they were not going to end up in shelters, they were going to end up with friends and families. Youwouldn’t know that if you didn’t understand the culture.
 
What advice do you have for editors seeking to improve diversity in their newsrooms? You just have to believe — believe it is possible. I worked in Iowa City, and we were able to make it happen in Iowa. It takes a commitment and belief that it’s the right thing to do. Take a chance (when filling) entry-level position in a small town. If you can find candidates with diversity, convince them that the small town is not the end destination — you know they will move on. Offer to help them move on when they’re ready.
 
If I can keep a person for two or three years and then the person is off and running, that helps me recruit the replacement (because you develop a reputation for training good journalists).
 
If I were at a large paper, I don’t know that I could accept not being at parity. You really have to think about your commitment. Many diverse professionals aspire to reach the Metros and do great work there. Those newspapers should have a huge advantage for finding and keeping talented minorities.

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