By VANNESSA MARAVILLA
The UNITY News

Diversity is not just a feel-good thing – it’s good business, even amid turbulent times.

That is the message UNITY leaders hope to convey to media executives whose companies have gone through rounds of layoffs in recent years, slashing many minority journalists from newsrooms already struggling to represent the communities they cover.

In an attempt to stop the bleeding, AAJA president Jeanne Mariani-Belding called and wrote letters to news corporations including McClatchy Co., MediaNews Group, the Baltimore Sun and the Seattle Times beseeching executives to consider diversity before issuing pink slips. Last week, she dashed off a letter to Chicago Tribune publisher Sam Zell.

“With all these layoffs coming down, doing nothing is not an option,” said Mariani-Belding, editorial and opinions editor of the Honolulu Advertiser. “This is a crisis. Diversity cannot take steps backwards.”

Since union contracts typically mandate that layoffs be determined by seniority, young reporters of color are among the most vulnerable, she said. In her campaign to preserve newsroom diversity, Mariani-Belding said she implores employers to take reporters’ and photographers’ bilingual skills into account.

At the San Jose Mercury News, a MediaNews paper going through many rounds of layoffs in eight years, the number of minority journalists has dropped from about a third of the newsroom in 2000 to just a fifth today, said Joe Rodriguez, a columnist at the publication who conducted the survey.

In 2000, there were 410 minorities in the newsroom – that number has dipped to 155, he said. In addition to layoffs, many minority reporters decided on their own to leave the Mercury News.

The former Knight Ridder paper once known industry-wide for its commitment to diversity still lists as its core mission: “We will reflect the changing demographics of the community in both coverage and hiring, recognizing that diversity is a core component of accuracy.”

But staff members, present and past, question that commitment when jobs simply are not available.

“It doesn’t have the same priority it used to,” said Edwin Garcia, a state house reporter who has worked for the Mercury News for 16 years. “We used to play up our diversity stats a lot, but we don’t do that anymore. It makes us worry about what the future is going to look like.”

David J. Butler, editor of the Mercury News, did not return phone calls.

Nationally, the number of minorities working at newspapers has remained stagnant at about 13 percent since 2004, according to statistics compiled by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Minorities only make up 11.4 percent of managers at daily newspapers, and the rest are white, according to ASNE.

Organizations in the UNITY alliance have revamped training programs and added multimedia training and executive leadership programs to made members more indispensable to their newsrooms.

“We want to position our members not just to survive, but to thrive in this new media landscape,” Mariani-Belding said.

UNITY recently a launched program, Ten by 2010, to bring more minority journalists into the top ranks of newspaper companies. Gannett and the New York Times were the first two companies to join, said UNITY President Karen Lincoln-Michel.

Without diversity, important stories and angles would be missing and key questions would never be asked, said Brad Gorham, associate professor of communications at S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.

“That gets to the heart of why diversity matters,” Gorham said. “Journalism is losing by not having an adequately diversified workforce.”

topic: Industry Issues
tags: budget cuts, diversity, layoffs

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