Nisa Islam Muhammad, Final Call
- The fight to increase diversity in newsrooms received a stunning blow April 16 when the American Society of News Editors annual newsroom census revealed U.S. newsrooms became less diverse in 2008 from the year before.
The percentage of Black, Asian, Hispanic and Native American journalists in the nation’s newsrooms dropped from 13.5 percent in 2007 to 13.4 percent in 2008. The percentage of these same journalists in supervisory positions also declined, from 11.4 percent in 2007 to 11.2 percent in 2008 despite efforts to influence their retention rates in newsroom management.
“Industry layoffs affect people of color disproportionately and destroy the gains we have made during past years,” said Rafael Olmeda, president of UNITY president, an alliance of four national associations representing more than 10,000 journalists of color. “The small two-percentage point increase in online journalists of color is the one encouraging point in the results.”
“It is disheartening that the vision articulated by ASNE is still such a distant goal after years of benchmarks, committees and commitments,” Mr. Olmeda said.“We are not a luxury.Part of the reason the industry is suffering is because it has not grown the audiences to support it.”
