Take a look at the following newspapers online: Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, The Washington Post and the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

Compare the results from the American Society of Newspaper Editors 2001 newspaper employment census to the 2002.

Find book reviews on William McGowan's Coloring the News.

Find out more about benefits for newsroom employees that belong to the Milwaukee Newspaper Guild.

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Diversifying newsrooms: It's important to journalists

Accuracy is one of the most important goals for most journalists. Part of being accurate means that the newspaper should be a reflection of the society it serves. Women and those of color have been trying to help newsrooms reflect society a little better.

Maria Douglas Reeve is a weekend news editor at the Pioneer Press of St. Paul, Minn.  She recognizes a need to get more minorities in the newsroom, but feels like the attempts of newspapers to make these hiring decisions has gone down in the past five to seven years.  Reeve is a black newsroom employee.

The 16 non-white respondents of a survey taken by the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire's senior print journalism seminar shared Reeve’s feelings about newsroom diversity.  Of those, 18 percent say diversity is “somewhat less” of an influence now than when they started their jobs, and 8 percent say it is “much less.”  Their white co-workers responded differently.  Of them, 7 percent say diversity is “somewhat less” and 0.4 percent say it was “much less.”

The rate at which newsroom diversity has gone up is too slow, said Milton Coleman, deputy managing editor of the Washington Post, recently during a visit to UW-Eau Claire.  He cited a 2001 survey taken by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.  According to the survey, although overall newsroom employment went up by 154 people, but the total number of minorities decreased by 102 people.  Asian American, African American, Hispanic and Native American newsroom presence each declined slightly.

The goal of newspapers to have reporters that are representative of the American population has not been met. Blacks make up 5 percent of newsrooms in the United States, according to the 2002 ASNE survey.

These conclusions may have been discouraging to journalists of color. 

At one time there was a good effort made by newspapers to hire minorities, Reeve said.  “When the times were rolling there was more of a selective attitude,” she said about newspapers.  Papers were able to hire more people and the opportunity to hire minorities was better.

But there’s still more to the story.  “There’s this sort of complacency toward it now,” Reeve said.  Although reporters and editors probably do still have an interest in diversifying the news staff, the efforts they have been making have slipped in the past five to seven years, she said. 

The Pioneer Press does try to make a point of hiring minorities.  The paper hires several interns each summer.  This summer, five interns are minorities and two or three aren’t, Reeve said.  The newspaper hires interns with the hopes that some will prove themselves well enough to become staff members when a vacancy opens in the newsroom.

Reeve has seen that minority reporters can sometimes add to the quality of news content.  After 9-11, many perspectives became important and interesting to many.  Newspapers needed to help feed the interest.  A Muslim female reporter at the Pioneer Press had the idea to go out and talk with other Muslims to find out how their lives had been affected by 9-11.  “Would we have had that?" Reeve said.  "Did I think of that?  No.” 

Although there are cases when different viewpoints are valuable, as in the story done by the Muslim reporter, most people are just trying to do their jobs, the editor that has spent 10 years at the Pioneer Press said.  Reporters often don’t give their origin much thought during the daily reporting grind, Reeve said.  “You don’t wake up and think ‘I’m African American everyday.”  In special cases, minorities can help come up with original story ideas that someone else may not have thought about.

Coleman says the benefits of hiring minorities outweigh the negatives of it.  At times, minority reporters can cause a stir in the diverse community they belong to, as Coleman did in 1984.

Coleman, a Milwaukee native, said one of the reasons he got into journalism was to better represent black communities.  But what got him into journalism has also gotten him into some trouble.

In 1984, he published remarks Rev. Jesse Jackson made about “Hymietown.”  The remarks were offensive specifically to a New York Jewish community, but others as well, and essentially destroyed Jackson’s campaign to be president. 

Many journalists would say that Coleman was only doing his job.  But because he is black, many members of the community were irate over his decision to run the remarks that were key to ending Jackson’s campaign.  They thought he was trying to repress their community.  His life was threatened.

This incident did not change Coleman’s beliefs that minority journalists can make newspapers stronger.

 The news media are “disliked, hated in many areas of color,” he said.  One way for newspapers to help remedy this problem is to make a point of hiring minority journalists over white journalists with similar experience.  Coleman said. The Post is trying to reach out to the Hispanic community by paying for reporters to take crash courses to learn Spanish.

“There are a million stories out there that we may never know if we don’t speak Spanish,” Coleman said of why The Washington Post chose to reach out to the large, growing community of Latino workers.

For example, Coleman recalls a crime had been committed at a D.C.-area local restaurant.  As usual, a reporter went to the restaurant it occurred in to get some comments and a better idea of what happened.  When she got there, she realized that she simply could not write a good story.  It wasn’t because the story was particularly unusual, but because the owners of the restaurant were Spanish-speaking people.  The reporter was not.  She was unable to understand, much less get any comments in English.

Being Hispanic or even being able to speak Spanish is an asset for any Washington Post reporter.  The growing population of Latino seasonal workers in the Washington area has caused a demand for news in Spanish.  The workers won’t take the time to pick up the paper if there is nothing in it that will pertain to their lives, Coleman said.  If the Post wants to maintain or improve its large circulation, it must reach out to members of society other than middle- and upper class audience it typically caters to.

“The main things readers are looking for is something that is relevant to their lives,” Coleman said.

Lucy Her is a reporter at the Star Tribune who thinks more newsroom diversity is a must. (Submitted Photo)

Star Tribune reporter Lucy Her would agree to that statement. When she was attending Fresno State College in California, she realized that her Hmong friends didn't pay much attention to current events or the news. This was troubling to the young student so she decided to help bring her friends up to date. She did so much as devote her career to doing this.

Now a metro reporter at the Minneapolis newspaper, Her feels a sense of accomplishment in the work she has done so far.  "I get e-mails from Hmong people all over the United States," she said.

They have read her articles in the Star Tribune or on startribune.com and are often excited to see someone from their community successful in the mainstream media, she said. 

As a child, Her learned to speak and write in Hmong. She soon found out that words in the English and Hmong languages are used in completely different ways. Learning to write well in English has been a struggle for Her. But it has also added to her determination to become a better writer and journalist.

Her says she has had a lot of support from her editors in her experiences at newspapers in Ohio, Kansas City and Minneapolis.

Her is one of just a handful of Hmong journalists working at a mainstream newspaper she knows about in the United States. She would like to see those numbers go up.

Numbers from a survey done by the ASNE are a disappointment to some Asian journalists.

Asian Americans made up only 2.3 percent of newsroom employees in 2001.

The need for reporting on Hmong issues is great in cities that have a large Hmong community, said Joe Bee, director of Hmong Mutual Assistance in Eau Claire.

When the mainstream media began to produce stories about Hmong and their culture, more Americans began to accept the community of people transplanted from Laos.

"The media were really helping us a lot," Bee said. "I think that is part of what helps us survive here in Eau Claire."

Coloring the Newsroom

Author William McGowan questions the media for being overly sensitive in reporting about minority communities in his 2001 book,  “Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism.”

He says that newsrooms shouldn’t be so hasty to make such serious efforts to please minority communities.  His claim is that too many newsrooms are being too sensitive to minorities and women.  Instead of doing the job of a journalist, they have succumbed to social pressures to be politically correct -- which often boils down to not offending women and minorities.  Just because certain articles may offend a minority group or a women’s group, doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be reported, McGowan wrote.

The former writer for The Washington Post, The New York Times and Newsweek is fast to dish out some criticism of each of those publications, which are considered by many, the pinnacle of American journalism. 

Although McGowan gives credit to Milton Coleman for his “courage” to make the decision to run the “Hymietown” comments, he criticizes Coleman’s news judgment when it came to covering former Washington Mayor Marion Barry.

“At one point, Coleman was spiking stories so routinely that the Metro staff he supervised rose up in revolt, leading to a highly charged confrontation in the newsroom, but very little toughening of the coverage itself.  As a result, the public was left in the dark about the city’s increasingly dysfunctional schools, police force, public housing, and child welfare services, to name but a few of the city services and agencies that declined on Barry’s watch,” McGowan wrote.  He argues that The Post was not nearly as aggressive as it should have been when it came to questioning Barry about his drug and alcohol habits as well as the policies he made as mayor.

McGowan also wrote that concern over diversity in newsrooms has hurt the bottom line of some papers.  “The failure of the diversity campaign to deliver on its promise of profitable new minority markets was underscored by the demise of New York Newsday."  The paper made a serious attempt to appeal to more readers and produced some hard-hitting affirmative action stories.  The paper made its staff representative of the population in accordance to minority and gender standards.  Although the paper became popular with liberals, it did not generate profits, and Times Mirror Co. closed it in 1995.   

Women in the Newsroom

Women have also been changing the shape of newsrooms for some time and continue to do so.

Female reporters in Wisconsin and the large daily metros in Minnesota don’t think their influence in the newsroom is increasing as much as men do, according to the UW-Eau Claire senior capstone seminar survey.  But you wouldn’t know it by talking with some female journalists -- young and veteran. 

Amy Mayron, a Pioneer Press reporter said that being a woman in the newsroom has helped her.  It has helped her get quotes and stories.

“I cover a lot of breaking news,” Mayron said from her office in the Minneapolis bureau of the paper.  Often breaking news will be about death, accidents and crime.  Maybe just the comfort of having a soft, feminine voice will get friends and families of the victims to open up. 

The reporter, who is in her fourth year working at the Pioneer Press, spends a fair amount of time at the police department each week.  Mayron thinks the male-dominant police department probably may take more interest in her than male reporters because she is a young woman.  If she talks with them a little here and there, they often give her ideas for stories.

Mayron said the compensation she receives for her work is fair and she feels secure in her job.  She attributes the stability to being part of a union.  The union sets her salary.

According to the class survey, Mayron may be lucky to have good job security.  Of the women who responded, 34 percent said they have "somewhat less" job security than when they started at their jobs.  Another 8 percent say they have “much less.”  Not so for Mayron who thinks her job security is much better than when she began reporting 10 years ago at the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester, N.Y.

As a rookie reporter, Mayron said she was more concerned about proving herself as a journalist than her pay scale and job security.  Although a union member at her first job, Mayron said it simply wasn’t as strong in New York as it is in the Twin Cities.

The capstone survey also showed that female journalists are still making less than men are.  Among women, 54 percent are in the $20,000 to $50,000 pay range.  The lion's share of men (47 percent) are in the $50,000 to $75,000 pay range. 

The capstone survey also showed that women’s paychecks were rising slower than men’s.  Among those who say their pay has risen “much faster than inflation,” 21.1 percent are women and 78.9 percent are men. And among those who say their salary has risen “much slower” than inflation, 54.1 percent are women and 45.9 percent are men.

Larry Sandler, bargaining chair at the Milwaukee Newspaper Guild said a number of factors, including seniority and childbearing, may lead to the differences in pay.  But Sandler said that the union he works for is working to “ensure equal pay for equal work.”   He said, “Our contract forbids discrimination on the basis of race or gender, among other factors, and we monitor salary data to enforce that provision.” 

When Reeve began her career as a journalist, she was shocked to find out that a man with less seniority in the newsroom she worked for was making more money than her.  “I was getting $325 a week.  A new guy was making $10 more.”  When Douglas Reeve confronted her editor, she was told to keep quiet about her findings.  The man is Hispanic and she is black, so she thought that gender played more of a role in the salary discrepancies.  She said she didn’t last long at that newspaper in Florida.

Since Reeve has been at the Pioneer Press, she says her job security and pay is on the up-and-up.  As a union member, she is protected from gender and racial discrimination when it comes to determining salary.

Carol Hunter is one more woman who is secure in her job as executive editor of the Green Bay Press-Gazette.  She says being a woman in the field of journalism has helped and hindered her in some ways.  

The editor, who has been with Gannett for the past 23 years, says that when she was first looking for a job as a journalist, her sex may have helped.  When she started her career, she thinks newspapers were looking for female reporters.  But once she got into a job, she did encounter some minor struggles.  She says her small stature has made others question how assertive she really is.  Because of her short height, Hunter says that she has had to work a little harder to show people that she is a good reporter and editor. 

She hasn’t felt like the pay she receives or her job security has ever been compromised because of her sex.  “This is something that Gannett would look at very closely,” she said.  But she says that many women make decisions that influence their salaries.  A female reporter at the Press-Gazette talked with Hunter within the last week saying that she would have to leave the paper because she was going to stay home to raise her children.