Each daily newspaper in the United States now has a Web page comparing the racial diversity of its news staff and the community it serves, part of a new report for the Knight Foundation on 1,413 newspapers and their circulation areas.
Find your local newspaper in the report by clicking on your state's name in the list on the left side of the website.
Scroll down the main page to find more tables of data from the report.
The report is intended to help journalists and readers discuss how well their newspaper's staff reflects their community.
The Knight Foundation asked journalists Bill Dedman and Stephen K. Doig to add context to the annual survey of newspapers by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE). Highlights of their report:
This year only 13 percent of newspapers responding to the survey have reached ASNE's goal of parity between newsroom and community non-white percentages. That's up slightly from last year's 11 percent.
The nation's 374 all-white newspapers are listed in the report. (And that's not counting the 481 newspapers that didn't reply to the most recent ASNE survey.) Their editors reported no employees of black, Hispanic, Asian, or Native American descent in any job as a newsroom supervisor, reporter, copy editor, photographer or artist.
Although many of these all-white newspapers are small, they have a combined weekday circulation of 3,790,285 -- well more than USA Today and The New York Times combined.
Nor are all the all-white newsrooms in all-white communities. The list is led by The Independent, in Gallup, N.M., where the circulation area is 93 percent non-white.
Some newspaper companies are doing much better than others at hiring and retaining minority employees. Gannett Co. is the leader, measured by a Newsroom Diversity Index, which compares the share of jobs held by journalists of color with the non-white share of the population in the newspaper's circulation area. Gannett's index is 88. (100 equals parity with the circulation area.)
Gannett is followed by:
- Knight Ridder (Calif.), 76
- McClatchy Co. (Calif.), 72
- New York Times Co., 66
- Advance (Newhouse) (N.J.), 65
- Cox Enterprises (Ga.), 60
- Freedom Communications (Calif.), 60
- Pulitzer (Mo.), 55
- Tribune Co. (Ill.), 54
- Ogden Newspapers (W.Va.), 52
- Scripps (Ohio), 52
- Community Newspaper Holdings (Ala.), 51
- Liberty Group Publishing (Ill.), 51
- Washington Post Co., 50
- Belo (Texas), 49
- Dow Jones (N.Y.), 47
- Copley Press (Calif.), 41
- Hearst Newspapers (N.Y.), 40
- MediaNews Group (Colo.), 40
- Lee Enterprises (Iowa), 38
- Hollinger International (Ill.), 36
- Media General (Va.), 33
- Morris Communications (Ga.), 26
- Journal Register (N.J.), 19
- Paxton Media Group (Ky.), 5
(These are circulation-weighted averages, with larger newspapers in the group counting more toward the average.)
While the non-white share of newsroom seats has risen generally, most newspapers are below their peak, as measured by ASNE's surveys from 1990 to 2004. (The slippage would be even greater if the increase in minority population were taken into account.) The nation's four largest newspapers have slipped:
USA Today had its highest level of journalists of color in the 1994 report (employment at the end of 1993),
The Wall Street Journal in the 2000 report,
The New York Times in last year's report, and the
Los Angeles Times in 2000. Other papers in the top 25 that are below their peak level are:
- New York Daily News (peaked in the 1995 report)
- Chicago Tribune (1998)
- Newsday (2002)
- San Francisco Chronicle (1998)
- The Arizona Republic (last year)
- The Miami Herald (1999)
- Minneapolis Star Tribune (2001)
- Cleveland Plain Dealer (1995)
Papers in the top 25 that reached their peak employment of non-whites this year are:
- The Washington Post
- Houston Chronicle
- The Dallas Morning News
- The Boston Globe
- The Philadelphia Inquirer
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution
- Detroit Free Press
- San Diego Union-Tribune
- The Oregonian
- St. Petersburg Times
For every newspaper, the online report has a Web page giving details on the population of the circulation area, and the paper's year-by-year responses to the ASNE survey. In addition, for the 857 papers that file audited sales reports by ZIP Code, the report shows the racial and ethnic breakdown in each ZIP Code, the household income, and sales per household. Online maps for these papers allow a reader to view the newspaper's circulation area.
Newspaper editors, newspaper readers and community leaders can use the report to discuss such questions as:
- In which communities and neighborhoods does our newspaper sell well? Poorly?
- Are the low-sales neighborhoods explained by household incomes? By competition from other papers? Do race, ethnicity, and language play a role?
- Does our newspaper have more or fewer readers in minority areas than we had thought?
- Is our newspaper missing a business opportunity? Would having more reporters and editors of color help the paper get more news of interest to readers of color? Even with the current staff, what steps can the newspaper take to raise its awareness of news of interest to all readers?
- When did our newspaper's non-white staffing reach its peak? What has happened since? What are the barriers to hiring and retaining journalists of color?
- What explains the persistent number of all-white newsrooms, even in communities with many readers of color?
Since 1978, the American Society of Newspaper Editors has urged editors to improve news coverage by employing at least enough minority journalists to reflect their diverse communities. This year again ASNE reported slow progress in total non-white employment, as a result falling further behind the growing non-white population of the nation.
But not all newspapers are alike. The report for the Knight Foundation, now in its second year, gives updated answers to these questions:
- How many communities are still getting their news from all-white newsrooms?
- How close are most newspapers to parity with their circulation areas?
- How many newspapers are increasing their employment of journalists of color?
- How many newspapers are at their high-water mark?
- Are the larger newspapers the ones with more diverse staffs?
- Which newspaper companies better reflect their communities?
This article was originally published at this site.
