Diversity takes another hit in journalism

Concern about diversity in journalism right now is like the full-blown cancer patient who's having a few problems with his bum knee.

 

I agree with Buck and Frank.

I oppose quotas and affirmative action. I do not like identity politics. But my paper is 93% white in a town that is 50% white. White males - and I am one of them - are capable of covering non-white people quite well. But there are many stories we miss because we are not privy to the gossip and dinner-table chatter and barbershop conversation of the many non-white communities here. Several of our most memorable and unique recent stories have been those of young minority reporters exposing injustice and telling amazing tales from the communities they know best.

For us, at least, there is at least a rough correlation between how diverse we are and how well we cover our city. It's not an exact correlation, to be sure; if fantastic white reporters do not get jobs because less-good not-white reporters are getting them, we lose. But we also lose if we continue to be so, so ethnically unrepresentative. Which we will, since we're not hiring at all.

All this said, diversity cannot be the number-one concern at a time like this. But it's not a "times are bad, who gives a fuck about this shit," either.

 

Sirv's got it right. Nobody's hiring right now, so diversity can't be the number one concern for the moment. Obviously, that's an important point considering the financial picture. But no matter how good or bad off we are, we HAVE to represent our communities well to cover our communities well. That's not to say good white reporters can't cover nonwhite communities well -- but there is a gap that must be bridged, and that's where having a diverse newsroom can help.

It can't be just for show, and when you throw that community representation out the window in tough times, then it IS just for show. Or at least it's perceived that way. And that gives minorities -- which can make up a majority of many communities -- even less reason to pay attention to us. Then, are we really doing our jobs well? That's where a diverse newsroom can help, because people don't associate the newspaper with being all-white and all-male when there are different perspectives telling their stories.

The whole point is: our job is to cover our communities, and part of having a good pulse on our communities is being a representative part of them. The only way newspapers can survive, if we can ever fix that pesky business model, is by once again becoming indispensable to people's everyday lives. We'll never do that with newsrooms that are 90 percent white and male. (We'll also never do that if we don't pay good reporters -- of all backgrounds -- a living wage, and cause them to want to be a part of the community. But that's another story.)

 

One more point. I think the views of people working for papers in communities with long-established, acculturated minority communities, or overwhelmingly white communities, might be different from those working for papers in communities with large immigrant populations. In a place that's 96% white, I can understand - though I still might not agree with - resentment over racially-influenced hiring in this economic environment. But here's where I'm coming from.

A town that's 50% white; might be 45% in a decade. Lots of long-established minority groups, but, as of the 1980s, many new ones. Today, a host of minority communities are relatively new. They are heavily non-English-speaking, often distrustful of outsiders, and reluctant to open up to white authority figures. For at least the next, I don't know, two decades, we simply cannot penetrate these groups if we do not have staffers who speak their languages and look something like them. Other, longer-established minority groups we can cover adequately as white folks - they speak the language, understand the culture - but we are still far, far less likely to get the good scoops and generate the good enterprise ideas than colleagues who have spent their lives immersed in these groups.

I don't even think this is an ideological matter. In places like the place I live, this is objective fact. As a libertarian-leaning guy who tries to be colorblind, it is occasionally distressing. But it is, simply, true.

 

Perfect.

 

Actually, the whole point is: our job is to make sure people read/buy the paper/Web site and that the audience that does that is attractive to advertisers, who pay the bills.

I'm not disputing the value of having a diverse collection of journalists in a newsroom (although I can cover a murder story without being a murderer). But if the community we're so desperate to represent and cover doesn't buy what we're selling whether we have 6% diversity or 60% diversity in that newsroom, then the goal in and of itself is useless.

I have seen diversity pursued way beyond the demographics of the market in which a paper exists, and I have seen it pursued for its own sake, without regard to whether the resulting coverage will actually sell more ads and papers. We can't bitch-slap publishers for being lousy business people on the one hand, and then demand that they do something for reasons entirely unrelated to business realities on the other.

Just saying, that's where all the big-bucks market research comes in. I mean the real nut-cutting stuff, not the focus-group, "we want more coverage of our high school" blather.

Hire the best, most creative and energized journalists you can find. (Make sure those already clogging the newsroom get their asses energized, too.) Lead them. Then turn them loose on the community and the product.

 

Bravo, sir.

 

What are the diversity numbers of students graduating in 2007, 2008 and 2009 with journalism degrees?

If 25% of college graduates are black and only 7% of new hires are black, then there is a problem.

But if 7% of the graduates are black and 7% of the new hires are black, I really don't think the finger should be pointed at the hiring practices of newspapers.

 

I've read all of the posts. I commend everyone who posted for putting some thought in before they wrote. It's a touchy subject because with papers cutting back, yet trying to remain competitive, the profession appears to be taking a step backwards in an effort to survive. I believe in hiring the best person possible. I also believe in representing every community because newspapers are supposed to do that, inform the community. I don't think there is a winner in this race.

 

If we were trying to have our staffs look like our readers, we'd only employ people over 70.

 

We've been weighed, measured, and found lacking.

 

Besides, diversity was a pile of bullshit anyway. It was based purely on skin color or plumbing. Not diversity of a person's interior... specifically, between the ears.