As the nation’s newspaper editors gathered in Los Angeles last week for their annual convention, the Star Tribune was honored with a “Diversity Pacesetter Award.”
It was among the few newspapers meeting the goal of the American Society of Newspaper Editors annual diversity census: that journalists employed at local newspapers should reflect the market’s racial diversity.
In the 13 counties that make up the core of the Minneapolis and St. Paul newspaper market, the minority population is 12 percent. At the Star Tribune, minority journalists comprise just over 12 percent of the journalists — good news that honors efforts by many on the staff to recruit and mentor promising minority journalists.
That encouraging result was in my head on Wednesday when I walked into the afternoon news meeting. Why was it that, of the 20 top editors gathered to decide what was going on the next day’s page one, the only person of color in the room was Duchesne Drew, the assistant managing editor for business? Why was I among only six women present? I decided to look behind the overall numbers and see what the details revealed about the state of diversity at the Star Tribune — something readers often ask about when I speak out in the community.
As welcome as that ASNE honor was, this newsroom still has a lot of work to do before it can claim to be truly diverse, especially at the most powerful levels of decisionmaking. Diversity means far more than just getting a foot in the door — although that’s an essential starting point.
Progress in this newsroom, while very real, is still fragile and the numbers small enough that just a few departures can be a serious setback. In 2004 there were 18 African-American journalists at the Star Tribune; today there are only 13.
The Star Tribune didn’t meet its own diversity goal this year, a standard more demanding than the ASNE goal. The intent, according to Brenda Rotherham, the news training and recruiting manager, is to be better off in terms of diversity each year.
By that measure, the newspaper slipped to 12 percent from 14 to 15 percent in the previous three years. So instead of planning a victory lap, Rotherham remains intensely focused on a many-layered approach to attracting minority journalists that’s fueled some success in recent years.
Rotherham mines the intern program, which last summer included nine people of color among the 11 interns, as she develops diverse hiring pools for full-time jobs. She also relies on partnerships with staffers in minority professional groups to spot and recruit top prospects.
She said two of the newsroom’s most consistent critics and helpful allies in recruiting have been Drew and TV critic Neal Justin. Drew is president of the National Association of Black Journalists’ local chapter. Justin is past president of the local chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association.
When Drew arrived at the Star Tribune 14 years ago “there were more of us (African-Americans). It’s part of why I could see myself, coming out of a more diverse environment in New York, being here,” he said. Now he worries that a critical mass of African-American employees isn’t as visible. “We’ve had black candidates come in and be unnerved by how white the room is,” he said. “It’s too bad. It’s a great place to work.”
Among top managers, Drew noted, he is now the only person of color (an Asian-American woman who headed the features department left to become publisher of another newspaper and the opening has not yet been filled).
Justin and Rotherham said an ongoing problem is that just as minority staffers are poised to get a top reporting job or promotion into management, they get recruited by bigger newspapers eager to improve their own diversity. “We’ve lost talented people just ready to blossom,” Justin said. “If that’s the deal, we should be plucking top journalists from other newspapers too,” Drew said.
Newsroom diversity “makes all the difference in the world,” Rotherham said. “The more diversity you have, the better the story ideas, the more access you have to communities, the more people learn from each other.”
In short, it’s about better journalism for readers in an increasingly diverse market. The proportion of minorities in the 13 counties may be 12 percent, but in the heart of the Twin Cities, in Hennepin and Ramsey counties, it’s nearly double that. In Minneapolis and St. Paul public schools, almost three-quarters of the students are kids of color. Those are the newspaper’s future readers. The newsroom needs to reflect the reality of their lives.
The numbers are a bit more encouraging when it comes to women moving into positions of power in the newsroom. Since 2004, three more women have joined the ranks of supervisors, for a total of 23. With the appointment of Nancy Barnes as the editor and with Susan Albright as the editorial page editor, this is a rare newspaper where both of the top editor spots are held by women.
That’s a fine start at making up for well over a century of both spots being held by men. But if the proportion of women in the newsroom reflected our community, half of the journalists and top editors would be women. Right now, it’s about 30 percent in both categories.
There’s still a ways to go.
