 The Trentonian, Trenton, N.J.
Percentage Increase in Minority Staffing Best Overall Achievement Also winner 25,001 to 50,000 Circulation [Chart]
Matt DeRienzo
Interim Editor
The Trentonian, Trenton, N.J.
 Please describe your approach to increasing diversity in your newsroom. We simply can’t be successful in our market — the majority of the population in the core of our coverage area is a minority population — if we do not have a diverse newsroom. We seek out staff members who will be able to understand and connect with the communities we serve.
What is the toughest obstacle to success and how have you worked to overcome it? Recruitment and retention. Fewer young people seem to be choosing newspaper journalism as a career. And we have been a victim of the success of some of our strongest minority staffers. Some are quickly scooped up by larger papers. For example, one reporter started his career with The Trentonian as a reporter in 2005 and within a year had been hired by the Times-Picayune in New Orleans and won a share of its Pulitzer for coverage of Hurricane Katrina. But that’s a good story for us to tell. We are using the career success of some of the staffers we’ve lost to bigger papers as a recruiting tool. We can be a great launching pad.
In recruiting, we set no artificial obstacles to being considered for a job. Some of the best journalists in the country did not get a college degree in journalism, and some did not get a college degree at all. We also feel that a key to a newspaper’s ability to recruit and retain a diverse staff is to give even entry-level staffers the chance to help shape the direction and tone of our news coverage.
What are the benefits/paybacks of greater diversity? It makes our paper better every single day. We operate in a highly-competitive, two-newspaper town, and having a diverse newsroom helps make us “the people’s paper.” We have better and more diverse sources. We have a wider viewpoint. We have better insight into the news. And a diverse newsroom gives us credibility with our readers — not because of the gender, accent or color of a staffer’s skin, but because of each person’s knowledge, understanding and connection to the community.
How does greater diversity in your newsroom affect content? We hear about things and get news stories that would never materialize for us otherwise. Carlos Avila, editor of The Trentonian’s Spanish-language weekly, is interacting constantly with our daily staff on news tips and insight into the Latino community. And the diversity of our staff has cultivated a trust with our readers and the community that leads to more news tips. The newspaper, remarkably, is the second phone call many community members make after dialing 911. They trust our staff to keep the police force honest and get the truth into print.
Diversity also shapes content in giving us perspective on how the news is played and perceived.
Please cite one example of a story that was impacted by diversity in your newsroom. Crime coverage at The Trentonian has taken on a greater depth since the newsroom leadership has worked to focus reporters on peeling back the layers of why a crime occurs or a person chooses a criminal life. For example, reporter Victoria St. Martin profiled a woman who remains haunted by her gang life, even as she tried to distance herself from that life. The reporter showed the grief the woman had for her baby’s father, who was gunned down before her, and the trauma she experienced after being shot at six times while driving down a street. The profile did more than showcase a gang member; it also provided a human face to a growing American trend. The story would not have been possible without the reporter’s ability to gain access to and trust of these sources. But also key to this kind of coverage is having diversity in newsroom management. It took the guidance and mentorship of Night City Editor Andria Carter to shape the idea for this story and see it through.
What advice do you have to editors seeking to improve diversity in their newsrooms? Embrace real diversity – not diversity for the sake of appearances or political correctness. That means welcoming and being shaped by opinions that are different than your own and possibly a view of the news that is different than your own. Set out with the idea that improving diversity in your newsroom is going to fundamentally change your newspaper.
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