WASHINGTON -- A nearly quarter-century effort to make newsrooms reflect America's racially diverse population has failed to narrow the gap between minorities in journalism and in society at large, a study has found.
The Freedom Forum said nearly half of the journalists hired by daily newspapers will have to be minorities over the next 25 years if the industry is to achieve a goal of racial and ethnic parity with the general population in that time.U.S. dailies are employing more than triple the minorities they did in 1978, when the American Society of Newspaper Editors made a commitment to strive for a better racial balance in the industry.
But because America's minority population has grown so much since then, the disparity remains about the same.
Minorities make up about 12 percent of newsrooms but over 28 percent of the population -- a disparity that has remained unchanged from the mid-1970s, when they filled 4 percent of the news staffs of papers and made up 19 percent of the population.
"What is clear from this analysis is that the existing pipeline that contributes new journalists of color to the newspaper industry is too small," said Charles L. Overby, chairman and CEO of the Freedom Forum, a foundation devoted to free-press issues.
The study, released in conjunction with the annual conference of the newspaper editors' association, found that minority journalists were leaving their newspaper jobs at almost the same rate they were being hired over the last five years.
"Retention is a major problem undercutting recruiting and hiring programs," it says.
Releasing its findings, ASNE reported Tuesday that progress in minority employment was slightly greater than usual last year but still glacial.
Minority journalists made up 11.85 percent of the newsroom employees of daily papers, up by one-third of 1 percentage point in a year. The percentage of black journalists registered a rare, if barely measurable, dip.
"It is devastating news to have any decrease," said Will Sutton, president of the National Association of Black Journalists and a deputy managing editor of The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C.
Blacks filled 5.3 percent of newsroom positions in the latest tabulation.
"We have made some more progress, but there are miles to go," said N. Christian Anderson III, ASNE president and publisher of The Orange County Register in California.
A $5 million plan financed by the industry and foundations, including the Freedom Forum, was to be announced later in the week to spur newsroom diversity.
ASNE, surveying over 950 dailies, reported that 37.12 percent of newsroom employees are women, up incrementally from a year earlier.
Despite the disparities, the division of newsroom responsibilities among races and between the sexes is similar.
Among women, 22 percent are supervisors, 21 percent are copy editors, 49 percent are reporters and 8 percent are photographers.
Among minorities, 19 percent are supervisors, 17 percent are copy editors, 50 percent are reporters and 14 percent are photographers.
Among non-Hispanic whites, 25 percent are supervisors, 19 percent are copy editors, 45 percent are reporters and 11 percent are photographers.
The Freedom Forum analysis indicated that, if not for the difficulty keeping minority journalists once they are hired, their proportion in the nation's newsrooms would be a few percentage points higher.
Surveys by the group last summer indicated that reasons for the retention problem are complex.
On one hand, minority journalists were much more likely than whites to say they might leave the newspaper business, and three-quarters agreed that they sometimes feel they have to work harder than whites to get ahead.
On the other hand, most reported good relationships with supervisors, assessed their prospects for advancement as excellent or good, and said they would still choose journalism if they had it to do over.