The Top Habits of Highly Diverse Newsrooms (Part I)

By: Randy Dotinga Next month, newspapers will get their annual dose of bad news from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Unless there's some sort of miracle, ASNE will report once again that hundreds of newsrooms are less ethnically diverse than North Dakota.

Last year, 530 newspapers reported that they didn't have a single minority newsroom employee. And these weren't just tiny papers in the boonies. Eleven on that list had circulations of 40,000 or more.

Many newspapers "say they can't find qualified people, so they don't look," said Reginald Stuart, corporate recruiter for Knight Ridder, based in San Jose, Calif. "Papers give up too easily. If they gave up on news stories as much as they give up on recruiting, there wouldn't be much in their papers to read."

But there will be some good news amid the bad. The ASNE report will include examples of staffs that actually reflect the communities they serve or, in some cases, are even more diverse.

How do they do it? Here are some tips from the experts:

1. Start early

Editors who consider the Newspapers in Education program to be the height of campus outreach shouldn't be surprised if local minority journalists don't come calling when they grow up. "Most of the newspapers that are successful at this invest their time and effort by starting to recruit reporters in high school," said Joseph M. Selden, assistant dean of multicultural affairs for the college of communications at Penn State University. "They follow them through college."

When was the last time someone from your newsroom dropped by a middle school to talk about journalism and your newspaper? How many local high school journalism teachers do you know by name? If these questions stump you, it may be time to reach out.

Don't forget to approach local colleges and universities too. Editors may be surprised to find that even the most prestigious journalism departments are happy to work with smaller papers.

Consider the success of internship programs sponsored by Penn State, which sends students to regional newsrooms and publishes a resume book for newspapers looking to hire minorities for internships and jobs. The school's partnership with the Centre City Times of State College, Pa., helped that newspaper reach a minority newsroom employment rate of 11.8% in 2001, making it one of the six most diverse newsrooms in the entire state.

When looking for partnerships, editors shouldn't forget that plenty of good journalists don't have journalism degrees. Liberal arts colleges deserve attention even if they don't offer journalism programs, Selden said. "History majors, for example, can be excellent reporters," he said. "They just need some exposure like a tour of the paper or a chance to meet prestigious journalists."

2. Meet and greet

Black, Latino, Asian, and American Indian journalists each have national associations, and all hold annual conventions with job fairs. If your budget prevents your newspaper from sending a recruiter to an event across the country, check out the regional minority job fairs closer to home.

"Most of the hiring editors are still white and we don't necessarily run in the same circles," said Julio Moran, executive director of the California Chicano News Media Association, an advocacy group for Hispanic journalists. "Job fairs are an opportunity to meet people and start developing relationships."

When you go to a job fair, keep your expectations in check. Many of those who attend may still be in college, and there may be few experienced journalists present.

Some newspapers will offer one- or two-year internships to these job candidates, but be aware that some minority applicants may be skeptical of the offers. "They're a safe way for newspapers to test people of color to see if they fit into their corporate culture," Moran said. "They're a way for newspapers to hire someone, bring them on board, without making a full commitment."

3. Keep in touch

Newspapers that want to be diverse need to look far ahead, said Patricia Walker, editor of the Bucks County Courier Times in Levittown, Pa. Over the past five years, she has used long-term connections to help turn her newsroom into one of the most diverse in the country, with minorities in more than one in every five newsroom jobs. "It can take several years before the right match opens for this newsroom and that person," she said.

Walker spends much of her time grooming students for summer and two-year internships that can lead to permanent jobs. "You have to be aggressively going after people by maintaining contact and following their path," she said. "E-mail is a wonderful tool to stay in touch with students at universities. I use that often -- 'Where are you? What are you doing? How's your semester going?' -- just to express an interest."

Walker said minority students are often surprised that she follows up on their lives. Too often, editors don't make any sort of effort to keep in touch after shaking a hand at a job fair, said Stuart, the Knight Ridder recruiter. "A lot of times we get people all excited about coming to work for us, then we drop the ball. We don't call people back, we don't send them little notes, we don't send them copies of the newspaper. There's a lot of little things we don't do that people would look at as a signal that we're interested in hiring them."