by Julio Morán
Hispanic Link News Service
For the third consecutive year, the number of journalists of color in U.S. newsrooms declined, this time by nearly half a percentage point, to 12.79 percent. While the number of all professional journalists increased by about 100 to 41,600 in 2010, the number of journalists of color dropped by 200 to 5,300. Simple math indicates a net increase of 300 white journalists.
Those numbers are estimates because only about 60 percent of all U.S. print and online newspapers responded to the annual survey by the American Society of News Editors (ASNE). Still, of the newspapers that did, nearly a third, 441, reported they had no journalists of color on their full-time staffs. Meanwhile, the 2010 Census reported that people of color now comprise 35 percent of the population and by 2042 are expected to make up more than half. It estimates that as early as 2020, they will comprise more than half of this country’s children.
In 1978 ASNE set a goal of having journalists of color working for the country’s daily newspapers equal their percentage in the U.S. population by 2000. By 1998, near stagnant at 11.5 percent, it was barely a third of the way there, so it shifted its target date forward a quarter of a century to 2025. The industry has given itself nearly a half-century to reach a movingparity target.
Not even keeping pace with population growth, it is further distancing itself from this growing young population by failing to respond to its interests or needs. The problem is worse in my home state. At 22.3 million, including 14 million Latinos, California has the nation’s largest population of people of color, 60 percent of the state’s 37.2 million residents.
Yet looking at the newsrooms of the state’s largest newspapers, Latinos are nearly invisible, particularly as top editors. At the San Diego Union-Tribune, Orange County Register, Los Angeles Times, San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle and Sacramento Bee, the percentages range from 6.8 (Los Angeles Times) to 14.2 (Orange County Register), according to ASNE. The Chronicle and the Union-Tribune did not participate in the survey, but are believed to fall within that range.
The real dearth is in top editors. Among those newspapers, only one Latino name is listed on the mastheads: John Díaz, editorial page editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. (Although Tom Negrete is managing editor for production at the Sacramento Bee, his name is not on the masthead.) Real diversity has to start at the top. Latinos not only have to be in the decision-making process on stories, but they have to have a say in hiring. The most diverse newsrooms nationally are at newspapers where Latinos and others of color are among the top editors. California has one of the few Latinos as a top editor at a mid-size or larger newspaper.
Carolina García became editor of the Daily News of Los Angeles in 2008 after five years as editor of the Monterey County Herald. Her editorial page editor, Mariel Garza, is Latina. It is human nature to hire people with whom you feelcomfortable. The problem is that while most people of color seem to be comfortable with white people, not a lot of white people feel comfortable enough with us to hire us for important jobs.
This must change. The Latino population is projected to surge from 50 million today to nearly 140 million by 2050. Its share of the nation’s population is projected to double, from 16 percent to about 32 percent. That means nearly one of every three U.S. residents will be Latino. The Latino population increased by 15.2 million, or 43 percent, between 2000 and 2010, accounting for more than half of the 27.3 million gain in the total population. Latinos are part of this country’s landscape, like it or not.
The biggest threat to the demise of newspapers is not just the Internet. Newspapers are becoming irrelevant to a young and growing population of people of color who don’t see their reflections in them. I hope it doesn’t take Internet websites a halfcentury to understand the importance and value of diversity. Hispanic Link.
(Julio Morán, executive director of CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California, teaches journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. He is a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times and a member of three teams that won the Pulitzer Prize, including the Public Service Award for a series on Latinos in Southern California in 1984.)
