How important is racial parity between newsrooms and the communities they cover?

Posted by Dana Goldstein on May 24, 2004 at 6:06 PM

From Richard Prince's Journal-ism's at the Poynter Institute: The Knight Foundation has surveyed 1,413 U.S. newspapers to find out which are least representative - racially - of the communities they serve. The results show that only 13% of the newspapers surveyed have reached parity between the racial makeup of their staff and the racial makeup of their readership. And 374 papers, mostly small-circulation, reported no African American, Hispanic, Asian or Native American staff members at all. As the Knight Foundation reports, one of the 374 is "The Independent in Gallup, N.M., where the circulation area is 93% non-white."

Of course, it seems impossible to achieve complete racial parity at a time when a disproportionate number of people entering the profession continue to be white. Maybe that's why New York Times spokeswoman Catherine J. Mathis told Journal-isms, "In its staffing and in its coverage, the magazine's style pages, like the magazine itself, [are and strive] to be representative. But actual staffing is only at the beginning." This shifts the focus from staffing issues to the challenge of creating racially representative content.

The reason race and arts coverage at The Times has come to the fore is because of the departure of Elvis Mitchell, who Richard Prince calls "the nation's most visible African American film reviewer." Mitchell quit his job after his formerly equal colleague A.O. Scott was promoted chief film ciritc. Shortly thereafter, culture news editor Steven Erlanger was transferred to the Jerusalem bureau and replaced by Jonathan Landman, Prince reports, "the one-time metro editor in the Jayson Blair saga, the one who said, 'We have to stop Jayson from writing for The New York Times. Right now.'"

Source: Richard Prince's Journal-ism's at the Poynter Institute

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