Minorities in the Newsroom: Pressure and Stigma (Part II)

By: Randy Dotinga Karla Shores didn't exactly breeze into a job as a reporter at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. She interned at three newspapers during college and worked her way up from South Bend to Grand Rapids to Fort Lauderdale. But Shores is black, and her pride is tempered by the suspicion that some colleagues may wonder if she deserves her position.

"When you start thinking about how they are perceiving you, it becomes really convoluted," Shores said. "It's a tangle of emotions you deal with every day."

Some minority journalists feel stigmatized on the job. Others resent becoming the token "go-to" person for any story that involves their ethnic group. For a variety of reasons, a high degree of pressure is a daily fact of life for minorities in American newsrooms, which aren't exactly low-stress environments in the first place.

In many cases, the pressure reveals itself as a burning desire to prove oneself to doubters, to go the extra mile. "If you don't, it's very easy to perceive that someone thinks you're just there because you're brown or yellow or whatever color you are that they aren't," Shores said.

Josh Freedom DuLac, a pop culture writer at The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee, remembers feeling pressure when he interned at the newspaper several years ago. DuLac, who is half Chinese, joined the Bee through a diversity internship program.

"I felt I would get sideways glances every now and then, and I don't think I was necessarily paranoid," he recalled. "Nobody said anything like, 'You're just here because you're a person of color.' But I sometimes felt that there was that feeling. I felt like I had to not just do well, but do great to prove that I belonged."

The issue of paranoia is a common theme among minority journalists. They wonder if they're over-sensitive, imagining slights that aren't there.

Consider journalist Margarita Bauza, who interned at a Michigan newspaper while working her way toward a master's degree. She was put to work writing briefs. When she protested and successfully handled better assignments, her editor was shocked and said, "Wow, you really can write."

Bauza was left to try to figure out exactly what he meant. "I started becoming suspicious about why people made these sorts of comments," said Bauza, who now works as an education reporter at The Detroit News. She still wonders sometimes if editors have lower expectations for her. "I feel that a certain amount, and it really burns my toast," she said.

Some comments from white journalists aren't difficult to interpret. Jokes can be among the most offensive. Laura Castaneda, a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California, still recoils at the flippant remarks she'd hear during her career as a newspaper reporter. "Every time I got an internship or job or promotion, someone would inevitably say they needed to fill their 'female Latina quota,'" she said. "They'd say it jokingly, but it was still fairly infuriating."

Minority journalists also find themselves raising their hackles when editors automatically assume they're the best reporters to tackle stories that deal with ethnic issues. They aren't alone, of course. Plenty of journalists -- from gays to Jews to evangelical Christians -- also serve as de facto representatives of their groups in newsrooms.

For blacks, being singled out is the same old drill, said Jon Fortt, a technology reporter at the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News. "It's one of those things that growing up from elementary school prepares you for," he said. "If you're the only black kid in the honors class when someone starts talking about slavery, you become exhibit A."

Fortt said editors have sometimes asked him to write stories he didn't feel comfortable doing. He has often refused. "Once other people start to define your value and your minority status for you, how that will be used in your career, it's almost universally a bad thing," he said. "You feel like you're used as some sort of token or tool."

Like other journalists, Fortt has worked through the pressures of being a minority in a newsroom by finding pride in his work. "If you're a journalist, you're black, you've got talent, and you make it to certain levels, you're an anomaly. It says something about your unique experience and drive, perhaps your ability to adapt to different situations."

At some level, many young minority journalists know that they belong in their jobs, said Shore, the Sun-Sentinel reporter. "If you get inside their heads, most will say, 'I worked hard for this. I deserve this.'"

The hard part is to not just say it, but believe it too.