Lack of Diversity Debated at Townhall
by Michelle K. Massie
Unity 99 Convention Online Staff

According to recently released surveys, more journalists of color are showing up in newspaper bylines and on television newscasts, but their numbers still fall short of industry goals.

A Unity '99 Town Hall meeting held Tuesday night featured a panel of eight media professionals who addressed a crowd of 300 residents, students and professionals about the lack of diversity in newsrooms and how it affects the coverage of non-white communities. 

 "The idea is not to get us jobs, but to affect coverage," said Ellis Cose, contributing editor and columnist for Newsweek. "What we are really talking about is the very values of journalism. Communities of color, communities that are not wealthy, have to be treated the same in coverage as white, upper middle-class people."

The results of two national surveys were released at the town meeting. As of 1998, the minority population in the United States was roughly 26 percent, however the number of minority journalists newsrooms across America was 11.5 percent, according to the study by the American Association of Newspaper Editors/Associated Press Managing Editors.

The ASNE/APME goal is to have 40 percent of minorities in the newsroom by 2025, to mirror the projected number of minorities in the population, said David Yarnold, creator of the National Time-Out Diversity and Accuracy Project. Last year, ASNE extended the goal for newspaper staffs to reflect the racial makeup of the nation from 2000 to 2025.

Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio & Television News Directors Association, also released the results of the 1999 RTNDA survey that showed the numbers of minorities in broadcast newsrooms faired better than that of newspapers.

Minorities comprise 19 percent of television newsrooms and 11 percent in radio.

Yarnold, an APME board member and executive editor and senior vice president of the San Jose Mercury News, presented the results of the Time-Out Project, which surveyed nearly 150 newspapers about their commitments to diversity. The results were mixed.

While many of the newspapers have taken steps to expand coverage of non-white and non-English speaking communities, the few minority reporters who are on newspaper staffs say they feel marginalized in their efforts to cover these communities beyond crime reports.

"Minority reporters are leaving the newsrooms at faster rates than their white counterparts," said Victor Merina, a fellow at the Freedom Forum's Media Studies Center in New York. "More than half of the minorities in the field plan to leave the newsroom within the next five years."

Besides trying to recruit new reporters, newsrooms need to try retaining the minority reporters they already have, he said.

White reporters also have to be sensitized on how to present minority communities in their coverage, said Dolores Sibonga, a former Seattle city councilwoman.