American Society of Newspaper Editors, March 28, 2007
By Tiffany Hsu

The percentage of minority staffing in daily newsrooms fell slightly last year for only the second time since ASNE began tracking minority employment in its annual Newsroom Census, according to editors briefed about the report that is to be released Tuesday.

"The pressure on the industry is too great," said ASNE President David A. Zeeck, executive editor of The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash.

"When jobs went unfilled in years past, people would hire diverse staff at a greater rate to fill a diversity hole," Zeeck said. "Papers are not really hiring, so when people leave, the percentages go down."

The 2007 census is expected to show that the percentage of minority journalists slipped 0.25 percentage point over the past year, Zeeck said.

The first drop in minority employment in the survey's 29-year history was by 0.21 percentage point in 2001. Since then, diversity ratios had been rising minimally, with a 0.45-point increase cited in last year's report.

In that report, minorities constituted 13.87 percent of America's newsrooms while the nation's minority population is nearly 33 percent.

Briefed on the report's findings Monday, ASNE board members said they were not surprised. Several noted that editors have been dealing with difficult economic conditions that have hit the news industry hard.

Board member Mike Jacobs, editor and publisher of the Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald, said he was disappointed.

Board member Janet Weaver, executive editor of The Tampa Tribune, in whose circulation area a plunging housing market has wreaked havoc on hiring, said some newspapers are struggling to stay afloat, let alone increase diversity.

"It's a hard year to stay steady, much less make progress," she said.

Zeeck said maintaining diversity in a shifting job market has been a challenge.

"Diverse staffers have greater opportunities in a place like this, so some leave papers for better jobs," he said. "But in some shops, it's last in, first out, so the people hired most recently will be let out soonest."

The diversity report is expected to include good news.

Minority employment in online news departments is at 16 percent, higher than overall minority employment in print newsrooms. This is the first year for which data on employees in online departments were collected.

"The number is pretty impressive," said ASNE board member Stanley R. Tiner, executive editor of The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss. "Some thought that maybe it wouldn't be that way. It's higher than the numbers in the rest of the industry."

The online percentage was a pleasant surprise for a sector that many people expected would show more discouraging results, Weaver said.

"We felt like online would've been lower, much more white and male," Weaver said. "We thought it would be a deeper problem area."

Still, the downward trend in minority hiring continues to trouble leaders of minority journalist organizations, who said in a news release before Monday's board meeting that they were expecting dismal results.

"Common sense dictates that unless there has been a seismic change in the last year of which we were somehow unaware, newspaper newsrooms will have reached barely 43 percent parity with the nation's Asian American, black, Hispanic and Native American population," Karen Lincoln Michel, president of UNITY, an association of minority journalist organizations, said in a statement.

Michel, a Native American, said UNITY is available to help news administrations reach parity by ASNE's stated goal of 2025. ASNE's initial goal of 1978 was advanced to 2000 and then by a quarter-century.

"We were anticipating that the numbers were again not going to be good," Michel said after hearing the expected findings. "We recognize that these are changing times and difficult times for the news industry. However, newspapers need to step up their efforts to hire more minorities now, especially in this climate."

Zeeck said pinpointing the cause for this year's decline is difficult.

"Nobody really knows why this happened," he said. "It's frustrating to be working on this thing for 29 years and have a falling year. It's frustrating to not be at the goal."

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