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April 20, 2004
Contacts:
Ernest R. Sotomayor, President, UNITY Board of Directors
Long Island Editor, Newsday.com
631-843-3664
Anna M. Lopez, Executive Director, UNITY
(703) 854-3585
Joint statement by UNITY, AAJA, NABJ, NAHJ and NAJA
on the annual
American Society of Newspaper Editors Newsroom Census
The annual census of daily newspapers released
today by the American Society of Newspaper Editors again demonstrated
a continued
pattern of minimal progress in diversifying the news media workforce,
and the nation’s biggest coalition of minority journalists
challenges the industry — especially in this election year — to
develop even more innovative and accelerated measures to address
the disparity.
In the past year, UNITY and its alliance
associations have dramatically stepped up their efforts
to accelerate diversity, developing a five-year strategic
plan that is designed complement the work of the alliance
associations, with a strong focus on greater advocacy
for more hiring, better retention efforts and more complete,
representative and honest journalism. The efforts have included turning association
members for revenue, by raising almost $250,000 in the
past year from personal donations to support the work
of the associations. The strongest effort this year will be “UNITY
2004: A Powerful Alliance, A Force for Change” convention
in August, in Washington, D.C. With planned attendance
of 7,000, the conference —UNITY’s third in
a decade — is expected to be the biggest journalism
convention ever held in the nation, drawing journalists
from throughout the United States and several continents. As part of UNITY 2004, the alliance is
conducting a comprehensive census of the Washington press
corps, to determine the diversity level of the workforce
covering the nation’s government. Early results
show very few people of color accredited by many of the
agencies, including the White House, and a near-total
absence in the bureaus of some major news organizations.
The results will be unveiled at UNITY’s conference. To fight workplace discrimination, UNITY
is making preparations to begin a series of equal employment
opportunity workshops nationwide to inform members how
to document discrimination, prepare cases for litigation,
and collect data on companies that are exhibiting patterns
of illegal activity. UNITY is developing new alliances with
other organizations and institutions, such as with the
United Nations, to make reporting abroad by journalists
of color more accessible and to prepare more alliance
members to serve on foreign reporting staffs. To boost diversity, UNITY’s
alliance has begun a number of major new initiatives.
Here is
a summary: AAJA launched a drive for $2-million endowment
drive that is to culminate in 2006 —AAJA's 25th
anniversary — while attaining record membership
of 1,999 members in 2003 — a 20 percent increase
from 2002. AAJA this month also unveiled its five-year
strategic plan that focuses on strengthening relationships
with the media industry and the Asian American community
as well as financial stability for the organization.
AAJA also has commissioned the Medill School of Journalism
at Northwestern University to conduct an independent
study of Asian Americans in management positions throughout
the news media industry. The results of the study will
be unveiled at the UNITY convention. NABJ began building a database of black
journalists, so it can be provided to the industry as
a recruitment tool to managers who complain they cannot
find qualified black journalists. Additionally it is
revamping the NABJ Media Institute, by creating new training
programs for membership. It also added more than 600
new members since last summer, many of them students,
pushing the association’s total membership to 3,648.
NABJ also launched new efforts to encourage strong journalism
at colleges with high black student enrollment a way
to bring more blacks into the business. NAHJ launched its Parity Project programs
in seven markets to greatly accelerate the numbers of
Hispanic journalists in communities with large Hispanic
populations. Hispanic representation in the program's
first two sites increased by 11 percent at the Rocky
Mountain News and 17 percent at the Ventura County Star
in Southern California. NAHJ is nearing agreement to
add newspapers to the program. NAHJ also developed and
released a Spanish-language stylebook, Manual De Estilo,
in March with more than 400 advance orders. Also, NAHJ
launched a study of Spanish-language media in the United
States to study employment trends, conditions, problems
and search for solutions on how to improve coverage in
that segment of the news media industry. Results are
also to be unveiled at UNITY.
NAJA has worked to get more Native
Americans started in journalism with a wide-ranging
tour of visits to sites in the Midwest to recruiting
for journalism training projects, including student
projects at NAJA’s annual convention. The trip
included stops at nine different reservations and seven
urban Native American communities. And, in a move critical
to supporting efforts for press freedoms on Indian
reservations, the National Congress of American Indians
last November passed a resolution supporting a free
and independent press in Indian Country. |
The 2004 survey, unveiled at ASNE’s annual
convention in Washington, D.C., showed that in America’s
1,417 daily newspapers, people of color make up 12.94 percent
of the professional
news staffs — half a percentage point more than a year
earlier. (View ASNE report.) Of great concern remains
low representation in the supervisor ranks, and a drop of 1 percent
in that category for blacks. The representation among supervisors
went up by 1 percentage point among Asians, Hispanics and Native
Americans. (Today, one third of the nation’s population is made up
of people of color, demonstrating the wide disparity between
staffing in newsrooms, despite ASNE’s stated goal of having
the industry reach parity with the population by the year 2025.) “While we welcome even a slight increase in representation
by people of color in newsrooms at a time that overall employment
fell in the industry, the progress remains too slow in the face
of much greater diversity in our population,”
said Ernest
R. Sotomayor, president of UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc.,
a coalition that represents more than 7,000 people
from the four major associations of journalist of color. “We have advocated
for strong measures, declared this a crisis in past years; we’ve
stated that diversifying the newsroom leadership is an obligation
of this industry, but we see this year’s survey as yet
more evidence that efforts simply aren’t enough.” The survey comes in yet another election
year where even the top leadership of ASNE’s Diversity
Committee conceded that there is an almost total absence of
people of color covering
the presidential election. “If newspapers and others in the media want to ensure
that Americans get a full, accurate portrayal of what the electorate
wants from the presidential campaign, and that their viewpoints
are represented in this year’s coverage, then the UNITY
alliance believes more people of color must be added to the staffs
covering the elections. That is a broad, meaningful step that
can and should happen immediately,” said Sotomayor, Long
Island editor for Newsday.com in New York. UNITY and its alliance partners have become even more proactive
in advocating, developing programs, forming alliances and collaborations,
providing models for diversity and conducting research and training
for its members as a way to rectify the problems.
UNITY is a strategic alliance comprised of four national associations:
Asian American Journalists Association, National Association
of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists
and the Native American Journalists Association.
Among highlights of ASNE’s report:
- Overall, while about 500 professional journalists
left the business, there was a net increase of 161 journalists
of color.
Of the total 54,718 workforce, 6,855 were journalists of
color.
- Representation increased among all four
groups, especially among Native Americans, which added
24 journalists to the industry.
Nonetheless, Native Americans represent less than one
percent of newspapers’ workforces. Among the supervisory
ranks, Native Americans continued to have almost no representation.
“ It was “encouraging
to see that newspapers added two dozen Native Americans last
year, an eight percent increase," said
Matt Kelley, the board secretary of UNITY and a member of
the Native American Journalists Association. "Still, we
remain the most under-represented group in American journalism.
Having
so few of us in the newspaper business — including
none in the Washington press corps — is unconscionable." Kelley
is a reporter with The Associated Press in Washington.
- The
number of Latino journalists working at U.S. dailies increased
by only 46, climbing from 2,212
in 2002 to 2,258 in 2003 — an
increase from 4.04 percent to 4.16 percent. The survey figures,
however, include journalists at two newly launched Spanish-language
dailies, Belo’s Al Dia in Dallas and Knight-Ridder’s
Diario La Estrella in Fort Worth, so the actual number
of net new jobs for Latinos in English-language papers
appears
to
be much smaller. ASNE officials today could not say how
many such
reporters were counted in the survey.
“We are dismayed and perplexed by the continued lack of
significant progress in the overall hiring of Latinos last year,” said
NAHJ President Juan Gonzalez. “Given all the attention
newspaper chains are devoting to new publications geared to the
Latino community, we expected a big increase in the numbers of
Latinos now more than ever. What happened?” Gonzalez
is a columnist with the New York Daily News.
- Among supervisory ranks, the number of
blacks in management dropped by 1 percentage point — with
five fewer supervisors than a year earlier. Representation
among Asian Americans, Hispanics
and Native Americans rose by only 1 percentage point.
“NABJ is alarmed that fewer black journalists are working
as supervisors in America’s daily newspapers and call on
top editors to take advantage of NABJ’s growing census
of members ready for key decision-making positions,” said
NABJ president Herbert Lowe, a staff writer with Newsday in New
York City. “It’s pitiful that we continue to measure
progress — or actually the lack of progress — in
terms of plus .04 percent or .09 percent a year, when what we
really need to see are spikes of 3 percent or 4 percent. The
industry says all the right things, but every year we find that
we’re no better off than the year before. This is far
too important for baby steps.”
- Mae Cheng, AAJA’s president, said, "We are heartened
that Asian Americans continue to play a part in today's newsrooms,
but we need to put more emphasis on making sure that Asian Americans
also have a role in making important daily newsroom decisions
ranging from the types of stories that get into newspapers to
who gets hired at these papers.” Cheng is an assistant
city editor at Newsday in New York City.
# # #
About UNITY: Journalists of Color
UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc. is a strategic alliance advocating news coverage about people of color, and aggressively challenging its organizations at all levels to reflect the nation’s diversity. UNITY, representing more than 10,000 journalists of color, is comprised of four national associations: Asian American Journalists Association, National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and the Native American Journalists Association.
In addition to planning the largest regular gathering of journalists in the nation, UNITY develops programs and institutional relationships that promote its mission. For more information on UNITY, visit www.unityjournalists.org, email info@unityjournalists.org or call (703) 854-3585.
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