|
|
Letter to the industry
December 5 , 2004
UNITY
President's Message
Ernest
Sotomayor |
Diversity, they pledged, was a priority.
It is good for everyone and crucial to the industry’s future. Diversity,
they promised, would become an important part of the corporate
strategy. They held receptions, invited the “minorities” in
town, and toasted our gathering.
Those were the messages that industry executives by the
hundreds from print, television, radio and online conveyed
to us at UNITY 2004.
Four months since we adjourned the
largest convention of journalists ever held, it is difficult
to see just how serious some in the industry are about
making our newsroom look more like our nation’s population.
Here is just a sampling of the developments, and these
are just since summer:
- The Washington Post, the hometown
paper where our convention was held, picked a new managing
editor, and as always, it was not a person of color. But,
Editor Len Downie told unsettled journalists of color afterward,
there is diversity among lower ranking editors. And, he
said, he would ask department heads to begin taking diversity
more into account in hiring. The paper’s overall newsroom diversity is about half
that of the city’s and has had minuscule growth in
the last decade.
- In New York City , the chancellor
of the City University of New York selected Business Week Editor Stephen Sheppard as chairman of a newly created
journalism department in one of the nation’s most diverse cities. Certainly,
while Sheppard is a great catch for the school, numerous
published reports named the finalists, and no person of
color ever surfaced on those rosters. Further, Business
Week has never been noted for its racial/ethnic diversity
on staff, though it’s written plenty about how America
is changing. Note that CUNY is generally aimed at the city’s
urban population and the new program is intended to make
journalism education more accessible to a vastly multicultural
population.
- Jobs are being eliminated by the
hundreds, and people of color stand to be big losers in
the reductions, once again. At the Dallas Morning News,
about one-fourth of the 70 or so people who were eliminated
this fall were people of color. Before the layoffs, only
one fifth of the paper’s
newsroom was made up of people of color – half the
percentage of the city’s population. Tribune Co.,
which owns papers in the most diverse regions of the nation – New
York City , South Florida , Los Angeles , Chicago , and
Baltimore – is cutting 200 jobs; CNNfn has shut down
its operations also.
- A UNITY
census of all national newspaper
bureaus in Washington , D.C. , showed only 10.6 percent
of the reporters and editors are journalists of color.
The chiefs of two bureaus that were shown to have not
a single person of color – The
Dallas Morning News and Copley News Service – are
among those not even acknowledging our queries about
diversity in their bureaus. One of the worst offenders,
Hearst newspapers, had only one person of color among
22 editors and reporters in its D.C. newspaper bureaus – its
one in bureau for the Houston Chronicle.
Last week, the Chronicle named a new
bureau chief, Stephen G. Smith, again bypassing an opportunity
to make its Washington staff more diverse. Smith is not
of color, but half of the population in the Chronicle’s
circulation area, in fact, is. At Newsday, as part of
a downsizing of 50 editorial staff members overall, the
only editor of color in Washington was told that her
bureau job was eliminated and she’s leaving
under a buyout.
- Two of the most prized positions
in all of broadcasting are turning over, and people of
color have once again been left on the sidelines. Tom
Brokaw has signed off after two decades as the face
of NBC’s Nightly News and was
replaced by Brian Williams – another white male
who was groomed for years and
now tells us he doesn’t even think diversity
in journalism is all that important, anyway. Brokaw, on the other hand,
expressed concern that over the years, the networks have
done nothing to break the white male trail into the plum
anchors’ chairs.
Next comes CBS News anchor Dan Rather,
who says he’s
leaving in the spring, and already it’s widely expected
he’ll be replaced by White House Correspondent John
Roberts. Network heads never ever had us in their sights
and one believes, for now, we will not be in years ahead when
Peter Jennings retires at ABC News. But, all of the network
presidents have declared unequivocally to us that diversity
is important to them, and that it’s improving in their
operations.
If that’s true, then they must
not be watching the Sunday morning news roundtable/analysis
programs on every major broadcast network or channel, including
their own. Let us know how many people of color are ever
brought to the table to share their viewpoints and those
of people outside the Beltway.
- CNN last year named its first journalist of color,
Princell Hair, to head its U.S. news operation and last
month, removed him from the position. His replacement is
a noted ex-CBS news exec, but the cable news channel is
again left without a person of color at its helm.
In 1978, the American Society of Newspaper
Editors declared that by 2000 they wanted newsrooms to
match the diversity of the nation's population. Falling
far, far short of that by 1999, ASNE changed its target
date to 2025. At the current rate that representation is
growing, with the downsizing that’s going on, and
renewed efforts by broadcast companies to push ahead on
consolidation and cross TV-newspaper ownership rule changes,
how real is the will to meet that goal?
So in viewing the layoffs, the one place that media companies
don't have a problem in boosting our numbers is when it
comes to job eliminations, where often people of color are
the last ones in and the first to go, or leave because they
see so little chance for advancement in an companies still
widely dominated by whites.
We see the transformation that has occurred in the newspaper
industry where intense pressure to attain high profits for
shareholders increasingly drives decision-making. Investors
seek the highest return for their money, and take their
dollars to the news media companies or to other industries
whose profits satisfy them. Stockholders dump -- or buy
-- shares of steel makers or PC makers or power companies
for the same reason. News executives are steadfast, though,
that cost-cutting through reduction of news pages, crowding
out of more and more programming to cram in more and more
radio commercials, consolidation of newspaper chains and
other belt tightening is not affecting the quality of journalism.
Editors stand before their staffs, outline the goals
of the company and talk about the need to maintain high
journalism standards, but in these discussions how often
is diversity included as one of the foundations of our craft?
Accuracy, strong ethics, fairness and objectivity, the newest
classes of journalism students, are told by their deans,
are the foundations of journalism. How often is diversity
built into the strategic planning process, considered a
core value in college curricula?
In recent years we’ve heard lots about how many
in journalism are afflicted with “diversity fatigue” – tired
of the debate and of the opinion we’ve marked plenty
of progress. Well, the nearly 10,000 members of the UNITY
alliance partners who make up less than a fifth of the workforce
in journalism don’t believe that, and they are fatigued
by the constant fight to be considered for the plum assignments
and the newsroom’s power jobs.
For now, UNITY and its alliance associations will continue
advocating as strongly as we can, developing forums to explore
issues, conducting original research exposing the disparities
in our newsroom hiring and in coverage and educating the
industry on diversity, developing programs ourselves to
teach our own people skills and preparing them for management.
That’s because diversity, like
accuracy, fairness and honesty, is a core value of journalism.
And without it, there is no excellence.
Ernest R. Sotomayor
President, Board of Directors, and chair, Executive Committee
UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc.
| Back to Top
| |
|
