By TRACIE MORALES and CHARLIE ERICKSEN
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
For the first time in the 29 years that the American Society of Newspaper Editors has been keeping track, the percentage of Hispanic journalists employed in the newsrooms of this country's English-language daily newspapers declined this year.
It wasn't much of a drop, but it was enough to raise this question:
When is ASNE is going to come clean with the Hispanic community _ as well as the black, Asian and American Indian communities _ about its 1,415 member newspapers' commitment to creating newsroom staffs that reflect the country's racial and ethnic composition?
After claiming year after year that such newsroom parity is a high priority for the industry, its record is about as bad as it gets. Persons of color now make up a third of this nation's population, but less than 14 percent of the news staffs on ASNE member publications.
Consider these tidbits:
_ More than a third _ 483 _ of member publications just plain declined this year to participate in ASNE's ethnic/racial survey.
_ Of those who did, 392 reported they had zero reporters, editors, photographers or supervisors of color at all. That number was up from 377 in 2005.
_ Of the speakers, experts and workshop chairpersons selected by ASNE brass to lead its just-concluded annual convention in Washington, nearly 90 percent were white. Every one of the 24 persons featured on March 27, the opening day, was white (and only four of them were women).
ASNE released its 2006 diversity report during the convention. It showed that the white presence in newsrooms of the country's daily papers increased by slightly more than 2,000, from 47,208 to 49,219.
Hispanics nudged up a tenth of that figure, by 200, to 7,800, but slipped from 4.51 percent of newsroom personnel to 4.41 percent. For all journalists of color _ Hispanics, blacks, Asians and American Indians _ the percentage decreased from 13.87 percent to 13.62 percent.
Hispanics alone represent more than 14 percent of the U.S. population.
When, with much fanfare in 1978 ASNE pledged to bring racial and ethnic parity to its members' staffs by the year 2000, the rationale was simple and clear. Doing so would improve the newspapers' ability to cover the nation's increasingly diverse population and, if done right, it would be good for business, too.
At that time, persons of color made up 4 percent of daily newsrooms' personnel and 15 percent of the nation's population.
Twenty years later, in 1998, the gap continued to grow _ 11.5 percent vs. 26 percent. ASNE was failing badly to meet its benchmarks. So it solved its dilemma by moving its goal a quarter-century forward to 2025.
But the gap has expanded. Yet without fail, every new ASNE president claims newsroom parity as one of his or her very top priorities.
Rafael Olmeda, president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, submits the question, "We are asked to adapt to changes in the industry ... Is it too much to ask the industry to adapt to changes in the U.S. population?"
There are a number of ASNE members who still believe in and promote parity as a worthy goal. But in reality, ASNE is basically an old-white-boys club that has no power to make its members do sensible things such as ensuring that news staffs can relate to and communicate effectively with the public they are supposed to cover.
That's why, for example, Hispanics make up just 5.9 percent of the Los Angeles Times newsroom staff while it serves a circulation area that's nearly 40 percent Latino. And the Dallas Morning News, with 21.2 percent of its circulation area Latino, has a staff that's only 6.1 percent Hispanic. Comparable percentages for The Miami Herald are 19.2 and 47.1.
As an institution, the nation's press will not reach racial and ethnic staffing parity in the lifetime of anyone reading this column. ASNE's leaders know that's a fact. They should stop pretending that they care enough to reform their hiring practices and reassess their coverage so their product truly reflects the composition of this changing nation.
(Reporter Tracie Morales covered the ASNE convention for Hispanic Link News Service. Charlie Ericksen is its editor and publisher.)
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