NAACP President Blasts Papers On Minority Hiring

By: Joe Strupp Updated at 11:40 a.m. EST, Oct. 24

Kweisi Mfume, president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), accused newspapers of not doing enough to recruit and retain minorities and urged editors meeting here this week to "support opportunity" for minority journalists.

Mfume, a former Baltimore-area congressman, made his remarks during the annual Associated Press Managing Editors conference. He also urged editors not to think of the NAACP only for stories related to so-called "black issues."

"Often times, the NAACP is relegated to the civil rights reporter and coverage is generated by what happens in the black community," Mfume told a crowd of about 300 editors on Wednesday afternoon. "We are larger than that. We deal with issues such as national security, health care, education, and others."

But Mfume's main focus was on the lack of diversity in newspapers. Citing statistics from the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Mfume pointed out that minorities make up only 12% of newsroom employees. Using his hometown as an example, Mfume said that although 30% of the Baltimore area is comprised of African Americans, just 14% of The Sun's newsroom staff is black.

Data recently reported by The Boston Globe, he said, showed that only nine of the top 100 dailies have minority representation equal to their circulation area's population, while half of all newspapers had no black reporters, editors, or photographers.

(To see the Globe study, click here.)

"It is clearly up to leaders such as yourselves to make a difference," Mfume told the crowd. "Some have grown tired of trying and some have grown tired of caring."

Claiming he is not advocating quotas, Mfume said editors should realize the need to have minorities in order to provide a more diverse news report. "A diverse news staff has a better chance of producing balanced editorials and stories," he reasoned. "Diversity speaks to credibility."

Editors in the audience had mixed reactions to Mfume's comments. "You can't argue with [Mfume's] numbers," said David Bailey, managing editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock.

Others said that editors shouldn't take all of the blame for the dearth of minority candidates. "We do our best to reach out," said Carl Redman, managing editor of The Advocate in Baton Rouge, La. "But it is difficult when you are a local newspaper competing against much bigger newspapers. I don't think minority hiring is strictly a newspaper issue."