Keeping Our Word, Part One: Blacks in Nation’s Newsrooms Still Scarce
Date: Sunday, July 31, 2005
By: Michael H. Cottman
More than 3,000 black journalists will convene in Atlanta this week at a time when more black senior editors are emerging in America’s newsrooms, but media analysts maintain that newspapers across the country are still overwhelmingly white.
Last week, the journalism industry witnessed history when the Los Angeles Times announced that its managing editor, Dean Baquet, would become executive vice president and editor, effective August 15. The move makes Baquet one of 16 black top editors out of approximately 1,500 daily newspapers in the United States.
While many black journalists celebrated Baquet’s promotion, others said the overall status of blacks in the media was troubling.
According to a report by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the number of full-time journalists working on daily newspapers in 2005 has declined by more than 2,200, and the percentage of journalists of color increased only less than half a percentage point to 13.42%, or 700 journalists – and 34 were black.
"It’s just stunning that with all the progress and good intentions, the net result has been an increase of just 34 black journalists," Bryan Monroe, vice president/print of the National Association of Black Journalists, told BlackAmericaWeb.com last week.
Monroe, a vice president for Knight-Ridder Inc., will join black journalists from across the country who will gather in Atlanta Wednesday for the annual NABJ conference, a five-day summit of workshops, networking and job-hunting.
For years, black journalists have insisted that, even after securing jobs at top newspapers, white editors often pass them over for top beats such as the White House and other prestigious national assignments. The Washington Post, for example, has one black journalist covering the White House while most U.S. newspapers and television networks have none.
The problem, many black journalists say, is advancing and receiving promotions at newspapers once they get hired.
"We’ve moved in," Monroe said, "but we haven’t moved up."
Yanick Rice Lamb, a former editor at BET Weekend magazine and The New York Times (Lamb is also an occasional contributor to BlackAmericaWeb.com.), said hiring black journalists and promoting them to positions of authority, is not rocket science.
"I think people make ‘diversity’ harder than it needs to be. Just do it," Rice Lamb, a journalism professor at Howard University, told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "There have been so many revolutionary changes in the industry that it's hard to believe that it takes so long to achieve parity."
Although 2005 marked the fourth straight year in which the percentage of racial and ethnic minority members in daily newsrooms increased, the almost insignificant progress reveals that the industry remains far from ASNE's goal of matching the percentage of minorities in the newsroom with the percentage in the general population by 2025. Today, minorities make up 31.7% of the U.S. population.
"We have tweaked and analyzed data for years, but the message has always been the same: Too little reward for too much aggravation," Jackie Jones, a longtime member of NABJ and journalism professor at Penn State University, told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
"Black journalists with 20, 30 years or more experience realize they've probably gone as far as they're going to go in the industry," she said. "It's time to try something else. So, as black journalists are added to the profession, nearly as many are leaving."
Jones added there is also fierce competition for few top-level jobs.
"We all can't be the editor," Jones said. "We all can't be White House correspondents, but we can all be treated with respect, coached and groomed and considered equally capable to our non-black colleagues."
Rice Lamb added that black journalists must also insist on covering issues that impact the lives of black people in the U.S. and overseas.
"The challenges that black journalists face in the future include increasing our presence in all areas of the media -- especially in decision-making roles and as owners," she told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
"We must also continue to push for fair and balanced coverage of people of color," she said. "Progress has been inconsistent and appears to be at a virtual standstill when it comes to coverage of other parts of the diaspora. Coverage in places like Haiti or in countries throughout Africa remain crisis-oriented."
Richard Prince, a seasoned journalist who writes a media diversity column, "Journal-isms," for the Maynard Institute, said black journalists "have come a long way in the news business," but acknowledged that "many of us are misdirected."
"Many of us don't know what the ‘black’ in ‘black journalist’ is supposed to be about or -- worse -- don't care," Prince told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "Some of us think we got in these positions all through our own effort, and don't think much about relating to the community, young black journalists or even to fellow black journalists. Many have fallen victim to careerism."
Still, Prince said, black journalists are "greatly under-represented" in the nation’s newsrooms.
"African-American film critics or editorial cartoonists hardly exist in daily newspapers, for example," Prince said. "You don't see us much on the business pages."
"We're not doing the investigations," Prince said. "You do see us offering commentary more and more, and many of us seem to be rising to the mid-level ranks. But others are dropping out, chasing the dream of doing their own thing on blogs or websites that don't have much by way of resources -- but they offer the chance to exercise creativity."
This week in Atlanta, as black journalists gather for their annual convention, they will also discuss another journalism first: Next month, The New York Times Company will distribute a weekly newspaper to serve the black community in Gainesville, Florida -- the first time a major news organization has published a newspaper that specifically targets black readers.
The Times-owned newspaper will be called the Gainesville Guardian, and, according to Prince, the black press has reacted with hostility toward the idea.
"The New York Times Co. has seen the potentially bad public relations and has insisted it is not planning a black newspaper, but a community paper targeting an area where many blacks live, but also people of other races," Prince said. "Still, the black woman who is running the project, Charlotte Roy, calls it a black paper, only she is not competing with the black paper that says it already serves the area, the Gainesville Sun."
“If the Gainesville project is successful, I see no reason why the New York Times Co. would not seek to duplicate it elsewhere," Prince said. "Meanwhile, the black press isn't standing still. An alliance of black publishers has hired a New York investment-banking firm to raise $15 million to start a new black newspaper targeting 18- to 29-year olds that would appear first in Chicago, then spread to other cities."
"Bottom line," Prince added. "Rumors of the death of newspapers, particularly among African Americans, appear to be highly exaggerated."
Jones said newspapers are now desperate to increase readership and are looking for innovative ways to attract readers, black and white.
"Newspapers are losing circulation,n and they are looking for ways to tap into niche markets: young adults, Blacks, Latinos, etc.," Jones told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "A big paper like The Times isn't going to radically overhaul the main paper because it's designed for general circulation. However, if it can find a way into certain markets and nab advertisers who want those audiences, it will do it."
Rice Lamb said it remains to be seen whether The New York Times’ efforts would cripple the black press. She said similar concerns were raised several years ago when The New York Daily News and Black Entertainment Television formed a partnership to create the now-defunct BET Weekend, a lifestyle, arts and entertainment magazine that was distributed in both daily newspapers and black-owned weeklies.
"If media companies work harder to balance out their coverage and our representation in their newsrooms in terms of recruitment, retention and advancement to top levels, then their increasing efforts to offer niche publications and programming won't be a problem," she said. "There needs to be consistency across the board."
She said Howard University is working diligently to prepare black students for the real world of journalism. Howard is also the first HBCU to publish a daily newspaper -- one of the country's few black dailies ever.
Meanwhile, several high-ranking black editors have expressed concern that fewer black journalists are rising to the top of America’s mainstream newspapers.
"The trend among black journalists is increasingly worrisome, as the numbers have grown only marginally," Milton Coleman, deputy managing editor for The Washington Post and chairman of ASNE’s Diversity Committee, told Editor and Publisher. "The trend is disturbing. We need to figure out what's going wrong and address it immediately."
Monroe, the vice president for Knight Ridder, Inc., said many deserving black reporters have not usually received the "plum assignments" such as columnists, editorial writers and national correspondents.
"People who have been in the business for a while are finding they are hitting walls when it comes to advancement," Monroe told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "We want the same access to promotional opportunities. Too often editors go with people they feel comfortable with, and those people are not always our folks."
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Tuesday, August 2nd 2005 at 10:47PM
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