Media's diversity losses

MINORITY journalists are leaving American newsrooms at disturbingly high rates. The temptation to blame media's declining diversity on our industry's economic woes should be resisted in favor of immediate steps toward solutions.

The American Society of News Editors has conducted the annual census since 1978 as a way of monitoring diversity efforts. Gains in the efforts to diversify news staffs and content are being lost.

Newspapers shed nearly 6,000 newsroom jobs last year, reducing the number of working journalists by 11.3 percent. The loss pushed our industry back to early 1980s employment levels.

A casualty of these losses were gains the industry had made in hiring minority journalists. Employment levels for writers and editors of color are back to where they were a decade ago.

The ranks of black and Asian journalists suffered the highest declines.

The number of black journalists, who make up 5.17 percent of newsroom employees, fell by 13.5 percent, and the number of Asian Americans, who comprise 3.1 percent of newsrooms, fell by 13.3 percent.

Hispanic journalists, 4.4 percent of newsrooms, fell by 11 percent. Latinos are the fastest-growing population in America, yet their presence in newsrooms is declining. That's a problem worthy of attention.

Exacerbating the problem is the growing number of newspapers without any minority staffers at all. These papers tend to be smaller operations, but they should not be excluded from journalism's obligation to reflect the communities we cover.

There is some good news. Native American journalists, who comprise a fraction of the industry, saw their ranks rise from 0.6 percent to 3.17 percent. A slight uptick in diversity of online news staff offered another positive note.

Diversity is critical to the success of the news industry. We cannot produce a strong product without it. Newsrooms that reflect the growing diversity of America help ensure fairness and excellence in media coverage. A loss of diversity equals a loss of substance and that's a place none of us want to go.