`Wallace Terry, 65, Who Covered Top News When Few Blacks Did.”
The headline on the June 8 New York Times obituary was about a man I had admired since I was his student at Howard University. Although I hadn’t seen Professor Terry in 18 years – the last time was when he stopped by Trinity College to talk up his bestseller “Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans” – the news of his death was sobering.
As sad as the news was, though, the headline struck me with another sobering fact: It wasn’t that long ago that minority journalists were simply nonexistent in mainstream newsrooms. It wasn’t until the ’60s that black reporters started showing up in any kind of numbers, primarily to furnish the inside story on the exploding civil rights movement.
The 1960s. It doesn’t seem that long ago.
Since 1978, the American Society of Newspaper Editors has been on a mission to increase the number of minorities in newsrooms to match their numbers in the general population by 2025.
In 2002, according to ASNE’s annual Newsroom Employment Census released in April, minority journalists made up 12.5 percent, or 6,900, of the 55,000 reporters and editors working in newsrooms. The percentage of minorities in the U.S. population was 31 percent. ASNE surveyed 935 of 1,435 daily newspapers in the U.S. The data was projected to reflect all dailies.
When ASNE started counting back in ’78, minority journalists numbered 1,700, or 3.9 percent, of 43,000.
The 2002 census also found that the number of newspapers with no minorities dropped by nearly 100 newspapers, from 471 newspapers to 373 newspapers. Asian Americans made the greatest newsroom gains, growing by 152 journalists to 2.6 percent (1,435). African Americans have the largest number among minorities in newsrooms at 5.3 percent (2,919). Hispanics were at 4 percent (2,212). Native Americans number 289, or 0.53 percent.
The percentage of minority journalists working at Connecticut newspapers: Connecticut Post, Bridgeport, 3.3; The Courant, 13.9; the Record-Journal, Meriden, 10.8; The Herald, New Britain, 4.5; New Haven Register, 15.9; The Day, New London, 6.3; Norwich Bulletin, 8.6; Waterbury Republican-American, 4.2. The latest U.S. Census Bureau numbers show Fairfield County’s minority population at 26.9 percent; New Haven County, 25.2 percent; Hartford County, 27 percent; New London County, 15.3 percent.
You can take your pick of the reasons newsrooms say it’s a struggle to reach ASNE’s goals: Hiring freezes and budget constraints won’t allow aggressive recruiting and training. There aren’t enough minorities interested in journalism careers. And my least favorite: “My community isn’t diverse anyway.”
The excuses seem shortsighted considering the minority population in the U.S. is projected to more than double by 2050.
As the challenge of the University of Michigan’s race-based admission policies and the Jayson Blair/New York Times fiasco raise the volume on the affirmative action debate, it’s hard for me to forget the doors that people like Terry had to break through.
According to a biography that can be found on the website of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, Terry was one of the few black students chosen to integrate his predominately white Indianapolis high school, where he went on to become the first black editor at the student newspaper.
He made his first mark on the mainstream media as a student at Brown University by forcing an audience with Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus. Faubus was in Providence to meet with President Eisenhower after defying a federal court order to integrate Little Rock’s Central High School. Terry, in pursuit of this most important story, blew past Faubus’ bodyguards to ask for an interview. The picture of Faubus shaking Terry’s hand made front-page news in 1957. Soon after, he became the first black editor of the Brown Daily Herald.
After Brown, Terry worked for the Washington Post, covered the Vietnam War as the deputy bureau chief in Saigon for Time magazine, gave the brothers who fought in Vietnam an international audience with the book “Bloods,” produced TV programs about the conflict, built a stack of academic credentials and awards, and wrote for USA Today and Parade.
Some opponents of affirmative action argue that the need and time for race-preference programs have passed. I would like to believe that. We’ve come a long way since Little Rock, but we have a long way to go – 1957 still feels like yesterday.
