 Tulare Advance-Register and Times-Delta
PERCENTAGE OF MINORITIES ON STAFF: 25,001 to 50,000 CIRCULATION [Chart]
Linda Green
Executive Editor
Tulare Advance-Register and Times-Delta, Visalia, Calif.
 Please describe your approach to increasing diversity in your newsroom. Our goal is to hire good people who can do good work for us or who can learn to do good work for us. Because we hire a lot of people who are in their first journalism job, we look for people who have an attitude of wanting to learn and being open to trying approaches and techniques that might be new to them. A really good place to find such people is through internships and offering freelance opportunities.
We work closely with one of the instructors at our nearest university, Fresno State University, and provide freelance opportunities to students. That has allowed us to identify students we might like to hire, or that we can recommend for a Chips Quinn internship through the Freedom Forum, which we also participate in. We hired our Chips intern from last summer for a full-time job.
We also seek freelancers in the community. Knowing a freelancer’s work led us to hire a woman who had business experience but no daily journalism experience. She became a reporter and is now an editor on our local desk. We hired another freelancer as a temporary photographer when we had an unexpected opening. Both are talented journalists and minorities.
Internally, we identify people who have shown they want to take on more responsibility. We help them get ready for it. When there’s an opening, they can move up. That has allowed us to promote several editors who are minorities — although in a few cases, it took some time to convince them they really were capable of the new position. It is very satisfying to see people succeed, grow in their career and move up within the newsroom.
What is the toughest obstacle to success and how have you worked to overcome it? We are a small newspaper. It is hard enough to find good people, but to be able to train them and keep them for very long is difficult. Larger papers head-hunt us. To offset that, we have tried to give people opportunities to advance internally, to try other jobs through job swaps and to provide them good guidance. One drawing card that we’ve had is the benefit of some very good experienced editors (especially our Senior Editor/Local Desk Jim Houck) who are willing to help newcomers develop.
What are the benefits/paybacks of greater diversity? We often get insights into stories that might otherwise be missed. Some examples: One of our Chips interns did a wonderful package on how people pass along what’s important in their culture. We also hope that people of different racial and ethnic groups in the community can feel more confident in reaching out to us if they see someone like them in the newsroom.
It also makes newsroom potlucks much more interesting.
Please cite one example of a story that was impacted by diversity in your newsroom. A story by one of our Chips Quinn interns is a good example. The intern is of Chinese descent, and while here for the summer, he made contact with other Chinese-Americans in town. As a result, he wrote a two-part series on how the older people work to preserve their culture and teach younger generations. It was an interesting story on a lot of levels. It gave a voice to an older group of people we cannot always easily reach. It delved into details that might not have occurred to someone outside the culture. And because the reporter was young and many of his sources were old, it also showed how intergenerational tensions can be affected by cultural expectations on the part of the older people and a younger generation’s desire to assimilate.
What advice do you have for editors seeking to improve diversity in their newsrooms?
1. Be sure the entire newsroom understands why diversity is important.
2. Hire editors who are committed to diversity and to working with journalists of all experience levels.
3. Take a chance on an “alternative hire” — maybe someone who did not go through journalism school or someone who wants to change careers but has shown commitment to that change by taking steps to get where he or she wants to be, whether that is freelancing or going back to school for basic journalism classes.
4. Work with journalism instructors to identify people you might want to hire. When you have an opening, use it as a chance to give someone an unplanned internship.
5. If necessary, start with high-school students. Set up internship programs for them that are coupled with learning about journalism.
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