Remarks by UNITY President Ernest R. Sotomayor, March 19, 2004, at a dinner hosted by the Gannett Co.'s vice president and general counsel, Thomas L. Chapple:

To UNITY Board of Directors, Executive Board members of,
alliance associations and Gannett executives

On behalf of the board of directors of UNITY, and of the boards of the Asian American Journalists Association, the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Native American Journalists Association, please accept our thanks for hosting our gatherings this week, and for the reception and dinner tonight.

There are few news media companies that, over the years, have consistently shown the level of support that Gannett has, and it has made a difference in the newsroom, and in coverage.

And if anything demonstrates the critical need for news media companies to move faster in making their newsrooms more racially and ethnically diverse, then it’s the very story on the front page of USA Today, just yesterday, that reiterated how, by 2050, more than half of the people in this nation will be people of color. What will they call us then: "majorities?" Today, we make up a third of the U.S. population, and yet we hold little more than a 12 percent of the professional newspaper jobs. And the higher the ranks you look in newspapers, the lower the percentage.

And when it comes to broadcasting, we believe we're in dire straits: for the last two years our representation in local radio and TV broadcasting has dropped. Given hiring in the past year, we are fearful that the next RTNDA survey this summer will show a drop for a third straight year.

We look around, and it's nearly impossible to find male Asians who are anchors. We have entire national television networks that haven't a single Native American in any professional journalism role. It took 150 years for The New York Times to put an African American in its masthead, and we wonder how long it will take before the second person of color gets there; and we have some of the nation's biggest newspapers where sports departments are devoid of a single Spanish-speaking writer, even when more than a quarter of the players in baseball are Latinos and many of them speak little or no English.

All of that is why we are here this weekend, and why this coalition will again convene this August, right in Gannett's backyard, side yard and front yard, the biggest journalism convention ever. And, we're very glad that you are playing a role in this event.

At our core, what our organizations and our more than 7,000 journalists of color seek is nothing less than fair, accurate, honest journalism. We should be long past the excuses such as "we can't find them" or "we can't keep them."  Well, we're here and have long been, and we're here to stay.

Thank you.