May 1, 2007

Number of Black Reporters at 10-year Low

by Kayce T. Ataiyero

There are fewer black reporters working for daily newspapers now than there were in 1998, according to a recently released newsroom census conducted by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

According to ASNE’s 2007 newsroom employment census, there are 1,598 black reporters working at daily newspapers. This number is down from 1,651 in 1998. The decline is indicative of a broader newsroom trend in which the overall number of minority journalists in newsrooms has decreased.

“The declining numbers represent only a piece of the puzzle. For years, ASNE has tracked diversity numbers in newsrooms and for years those numbers have been horrible,” said Ernie Suggs, vice president for print for The National Association of Black Journalists. “So while the decline from 1998 until 2007 is horrible, the overall problem is widespread.”

Of the 57,000 full-time journalists working at daily newspapers, only 13.62, or 7,800, are minorities. In 2006, minorities were 13.87 percent of the workforce. Those numbers are far short of ASNE’s diversity goals.

In 1978, ASNE set an industry goal of having minorities represent at least 15 percent of the journalists in the nation’s newsrooms by 2000. But by 1999, with that number only having reached 11.5 percent, ASNE pushed the timeline back to 2025. The annual census is ASNE’s way of measuring its goal of having the percentage of minorities working in newsrooms equal that of the minorities in the nation’s population.

But according to its census, ASNE is losing ground with black reporters. In order for newsrooms to live up to the goals set by ASNE, they will have to beef up recruitment and retention efforts, Suggs said.

“The numbers are declining because there are no efforts to find new journalists, who happen to be black. So the pipeline essentially stops,” he said. “Black journalists retire, quit, go into new professions and are never really replaced.”

Suggs cited the recent staff shake-up at The Philadelphia Inquirer as an example of an exodus of black reporters that went unanswered by management.

“That paper got rid of 16 blacks during the latest round of layoffs. Does the Inquirer eventually replace those 16 with blacks?” he asked. “What happened to those 16? Do they find other jobs at papers? Do they go into PR?”

But when it comes to the decline of black reporters, layoffs aren’t the only culprit. Robbie Morganfield, executive director of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute at Vanderbilt University, said anecdotal evidence suggests that black journalists are inclined to leave the profession earlier than others.

Some, Morganfield said, leave because they hit the glass ceiling and outgrow the opportunities that are available to them. Others, he said, leave because they get discouraged in their mission to improve coverage of their communities.

“They got into the profession thinking that they could be agents of change and a frustration sets in when they feel like the kinds of stories they want to tell or the kinds of things they want to do in the newsroom are short-circuited because there is not an openness to the ideas," he said.

Morganfield said he knows a number of people who have left newspapers due to that frustration. The result is a newsroom that is much less reflective of the community. And that hurts the quality of news coverage of blacks.

“Today, the type of coverage we have is determined by the make up of the newsroom. It is unfortunate. It really shouldn’t matter but the reality is that it often does,” he said. “I don’t think newsrooms have evolved to the point where they view the community as a whole. It pains me to say that but I really believe that the less black reporters you have the less thorough, accurate and fair the coverage seems to be.”

Without black reporters in the newsroom, the black community lacks a conduit for its voice, Morganfield said.

“Communities can be completely overlooked if you don’t have that representation. Reporters tend to have their own interests and don’t go outside of that unless assigned and editors might not be inclined,” he said. “I travel across the country and look at newspapers and you can get a sense of who works there by looking at the paper.”