Largest-ever Gathering of Minority Journalists Attracts Bush, Kerry

By: Mark Fitzgerald President George W. Bush didn't speak at this year's NAACP convention, but he is making time to talk to the record number of minority journalists gathering in Washington this week for the Unity 2004 convention.

Perhaps spurred by the Bush appearance scheduled for Friday morning, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who first said his schedule would not permit an appearance, will be at Unity Thursday morning. Both have agreed not just to speak, but to take questions.

The addition of both presidential candidates to a roster of speakers that already included such high-powered figures as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Time Warner Chairman and CEO Richard D. Parsons speaks to the increasing clout and visibility of this largest-ever meeting of journalists of color.

Unity, first held in Atlanta in 1994, is the joint convention held every five years by the four principal minority journalist groups: the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ), Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA), and the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA). Unity begins Tuesday night with a "town hall" discussion about multiculturalism in entertainment that is open to the public. It formally kicks off Wednesday and runs through Saturday.

By last week, 6,930 delegates had already registered for the meeting, Unity said. Of those, 2,656, or about 40% of the total, are members of Unity's biggest coalition partner, NABJ.

Unity is convening at a time when the numbers of minority journalists in the newsroom have grown very slowly, and even occasionally shrunk slightly, in recent years. According to the census released earlier this year by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the 7,005 journalists of color working at daily newspapers comprised 12.95% of total newsroom employment.

Yet, membership is growing in all the minority journalist associations, most notably at NABJ. Last week, the group, formed by 44 journalists in 1975, announced a record membership of 4,695 -- up 43% in just a year. NABJ President Herbert Lowe, a courts reporter at Newsday (Click for QuikCap) in Melville, N.Y., said "excitement" about the upcoming Unity convention played a role. "But we also believe black journalists are responding to our efforts and priorities -- first and foremost, that NABJ is a year-round organization fighting for them every single day."

Unity President Ernest R. Sotomayer, Long Island editor for Newsday.com, suggested Bush's and Kerry's encounters with Unity journalists will help the nation get "a fuller view" of the candidates' positions on race as well as the media. "People of color have long been, and still are today, vastly underrepresented in the national press corps in Washington and on the campaign trails," Sotomayer said as he announced Kerry had agreed to come to Unity, "so we hope this appearance will provide the opportunity for us to pose the questions that no one is likely to hear before election day."