The American Society of Newspaper Editors has issued a report that involved creating a web page for each of the 1,413 daily papers in the U.S. that compares the racial diversity of its news staff and the community it serves. The Knight Foundation has produced a detailed industry-flagellating (and occasionally congratulating) summary of the report here.
[Addendum: Actually, clicking on the first URL above takes you to the second URL. Thus I can’t tell if the first link, provided by the Knight Foundation, is screwy or if the Knight Foundation has in fact published the entire report at the second URL.]
Among the findings:
- “only 13 percent of newspapers responding to the survey have reached ASNE’s goal of parity between newsroom and community non-white percentages”;
- 374 newspapers have all-white staffs
- “Some newspaper companies are doing much better than others at hiring and retaining minority employees” [This one was a shocker, wasn’t it?]
The states are listed down the left margin of the Knight summary. Clicking on a state brings up a listing of each paper. Clicking on a paper, such as the San Francisco Chronicle here, brings up that paper’s web page with its very own “Newsroom Diversity Index.” An “NDI” of 100 means the minority percentage of the editorial staff equals the minority percentage in the community the paper serves, or more precisely:
The Newsroom Diversity Index is the newsroom non-white staff percentage divided by the circulation area’s non-white population percentage.
At the San Francisco Chronicle, for example, the “non-white” % of the newsroom staff is 14.5 (shockingly down from 16.1 last year!); the non-white % of the circulation area is 46.8 (up from 46.2 last year); giving the liberal paper an embarrassing NDI of only 31.
But there’s something important missing here (other than good sense): Who are these “non-whites”? Might they not be all Asians? Can’t tell from this report. Does ASNE really believe that blacks and Hispanics are fairly represented by Asians? Can blacks represent Hispanics, and vice versa? And what about Native Americans? Don’t they count? In short, there seems to be an offensive assumption here that all “non-whites” are fungible. But if that is the case, I wonder why those Hispanic organizations (discussed here) who are complaining about Hispanics being “underrepresented” in the federal workforce aren’t happily satisfied by the fact that blacks, who after all are their fellow “non-whites,” are overrepresented.
A well-informed reader who is in a good position to evaluate these findings but who, for understandable reasons, wishes to remain anonymous sent the following astute comments:
Apart from the inherent unfairness of proportional representation, what makes this so particularly foolish is that nearly all journalists are expected to have a college degree, and in fact the proportion of minority journalists nationally is within one point of the proportion of minority graduates. How do they expect to achieve two or three times that?
The seemingly large number of newspapers with no minorities on staff is the result of how small they are — less than 10,000 circulation on average, which usually means no more than two or three editorial employees. Those little papers pay next to nothing, and usually hire people in their first jobs, so any competent minority applicant will have much better options.
I’m beginning to think that it’s a good thing there is no requirement for the editorial management of newspapers to reflect the intelligence of the communities they serve. If there were, intelligence in many editorial offices, and certainly in the ASNE, would be woefully underrepresented.
Do you know who funded this report, or how much it cost?
And why is ‘whites’ adequate to represent italians, germans, irish, etc. I want a separate category for those of us from Lichtenstein!
I’m worried about calculating the NDI correctly if an editor has a Hispanic mother and a White father. Or if a reporter is a Racially Pure Black, but is suspected of Thinking White.
Ow, my head hurts.
Hey John:
I had a long e-mail debate with Bill Dedman, the author of the ASNE report, a couple of years ago. Here’s the link:
http://mediaminded.blogspot.com/2002_05_01_mediaminded_archive.html#85087059
Responding to John’s posting:
The major flaw in that argument is that this isn’t about proportional representation at all. (It’s not a Legislature.) It’s about having people who will know what’s going on in the newsroom.
The minor flaw is that you don’t need a college degree to be a journalist. I’m proof of that.
As for the size of the paper, your correspondent ignores the fact that hundreds of small papers DO employ minorities. So the size of the paper can’t be the explanation for those that do not employ minorities. (Also, not all of them are small.) The excuse given by your correspondent is one that is disproved just by scanning the list of smaller papers that have representative staffs. There are newspaper companies that hire minorities at smaller papers, and others who do not. Size matters, but isn’t dispositive. There’s a discussion of this in our report, which apparently your correspondent didn’t read…
Responding to John’s posting:
The major flaw in that argument is that this isn’t about proportional representation at all. (It’s not a Legislature.) It’s about having people who will know what’s going on in the community.
The minor flaw is that you don’t need a college degree to be a journalist. I’m proof of that.
As for the size of the paper, your correspondent ignores the fact that hundreds of small papers DO employ minorities. So the size of the paper can’t be the explanation for those that do not employ minorities. (Also, not all of them are small.) The excuse given by your correspondent is one that is disproved just by scanning the list of smaller papers that have representative staffs. There are newspaper companies that hire minorities at smaller papers, and others who do not. Size matters, but isn’t dispositive. There’s a discussion of this in our report, which apparently your correspondent didn’t read…
Bill: As I noted in the e-mail I sent you, congratulations on making it in journalism without the benefit of a college degree. You’re exactly the second person I’ve met in 15 years in the business who has accomplished that feat, and I’ve worked at papers both large and small. (The other non-college person is 50 and still covering American Legion baseball at a small daily.)
Please address this from John’s correspondent:
“…the proportion of minority journalists nationally is within one point of the proportion of minority graduates. How do they expect to achieve two or three times that?”
I think that’s the crux of this so-called problem of a lack of minority journalists, and it’s something I pointed out the other year when we had our e-mail exchanges: for whatever reason, minorities don’t seem to want to major in journalism.
“The major flaw in that argument is that this isn’t about proportional representation at all. (It’s not a Legislature.) It’s about having people who will know what’s going on in the community.”
But it seems the entire study is based on “proportional representation.” In fact, the premise of the whole study seems to be that proportional representation is the ONLY way newspapers can accurately represent what’s going on in the community.
About the pipeline issue. You’re raising the pipeline issue — the myth that there just aren’t enough (educated) minority journalists to fill these jobs.
That’s been well dismissed by the research of Lee Becker at Georgia.
See a summary at
http://www.timporter.com/firstdraft/archives/000298.html
Bill
From Becker’s report:
“Based on the projections of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the nation
First, these comments have been uniformly thoughtful, and I appreciate them. I especially appreciate Bill Dedman, the author of the report I criticize, taking the time to comment, and being so civil about it. We’re also lucky to have Media_Minder’s thoughtful (and from my point of view, persuasive) observations. As some of you will recall, MM had a fine blog himself on these subjects until he gave it up in favor of having a life.
As for the substance, let me refer back to Bill Dedman’s first comment here. He says in his first paragraph that the “major flaw in [my] argument is that this isn’t about proportional representation at all.” But then in the third paragraph he praises “smaller papers that have representative staffs.” Perhaps he can understand why some of us thought the report endorsed, well, representative staffs, a conclusion that was aided by the report’s own criticizing papers for not reaching “ASNE’s goal of parity between newsroom and community non-white percentages.” To most of us, this sounds pretty much like proportional representation.
I will leave it to the professionals Bill D and MM to hash out the fine points of the relationship between the number of available minority journalists and the number of newsroom hires, but I can tell you that as a lay reader the report doesn’t say anything if it is not a criticism of newsrooms for not having something closer to proportional representation of minorities than they do. But if that is to be the standard, wouldn’t all groups have a claim to it as well — born again Christians, wiccans, Muslims, poor Catholics, … maybe even Republicans?
My last posting on this topic, I promise:
You say, “that doesn’t scream discrimination on a massive scale…”
Who said that it did? You’re tilting at windmills. I don’t know anyone who has suggested that newspapers are discriminating in their hiring. You’re the one who keeps bringing that up!
What has been said is that they’re shooting themselves in the foot by not hiring people of all kinds (all races, yes, and all political points of view, too).
Most of your commentary is on the question of whether or not parity with the community is a good thing. That’s not up to me. But ASNE has set that goal for its member newspapers/editors across the nation. What we’re reporting is hwhich of those editors are actually meeting that goal, and which ones aren’t.
Bill: It may be true that YOU don’t think that there is discrimination going on, and your report doesn’t say that DIRECTLY, but it sure does hint at it, and I don’t think I’m the only one who might read it that way.
But what really worries me is that this report hands the Eugene Kanes, Bill Herberts, Courtland Milloys and other racial polemicists of American journalism a nice stick with which to beat up their white colleagues. Also, it will almost certainly lead to more (in my opinion, unnecessary) mau-mauing for diversity programs from the NABJ. But hey, that’s what they do.
My point is: I don’t think these findings show a troubling situation. I’m fairly certain that journalism would measure quite favorably to most other industries in terms of minority employment.
And with that, I’m done.