SuperVision

By Butch Ward

Several years ago during a leadership seminar at Poynter, one of the participants approached me during a break.

"Can I tell you something about myself?" she asked.

"Sure," I said.

"I'm a conservative," she said as we walked past the library and the rows of books about journalism –- good, bad and ugly.

"And I'm the only one in my newsroom."

She paused, and before I could respond, added: "And none of the others know it. I wouldn't dare tell them. I'd never hear the end of it."

How about your newsroom? Would this editor feel comfortable revealing her political ideology to you and your colleagues?

Are you sure?

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I have two proposals:

First, I propose that it's time for journalists to stop wasting the precious few moments we have on this earth by denying that we are biased.

We just are. We're human. Besides, bias is not a dirty word. My biases, after all, help define me. And if I'm vigilant, they won't define my work.

But to be as vigilant as possible, I need help. Thus my second proposal:

Let's make our newsrooms safe for journalists to acknowledge their biases as a first step toward using them to improve our staff's work.

Let me explain.

On a day in August when I was in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to talk with the staff of The Oak Ridger about journalistic bias, another newsroom made news on Romenesko. Several members of The Seattle Times staff, responding to the announcement of Karl Rove's resignation, broke into cheers during the news meeting. The outburst prompted Executive Editor David Boardman to remind the staff in a memo to "keep your personal politics to yourself."

I agree with Boardman that partisan cheerleading among journalists is inappropriate. And I was impressed by something else he wrote in a memo to the staff:

"One of the advances of which I'm most proud over the years is our willingness to question and challenge each other as we work to give our readers the most valuable, meaningful journalism we can."

I've never worked in the Times newsroom, but I like the atmosphere Boardman described: a roomful of journalists so committed to the pursuit of excellent journalism that they're willing to challenge one another's assumptions, question one another's assertions, help one another acknowledge -– and compensate for -– their blind spots.

Now, what's the best way to achieve that atmosphere?

I ask that because my experiences –- and the last decade's newsroom scandals –- tell me that dynamic is not often at work. Journalists don't challenge each other nearly enough.

Yes, editors raise concerns: They question a story's facts or structure, a video's lack of context or quality. Sometimes they even question the overall direction of a reporter's coverage -- does it favor a particular group or point of view?

But too often missing are the other voices in the room -- the reporters, photographers, artists, online producers and others who have questions about their colleagues' work and keep those concerns to themselves (or at best, share them with one another during a lunchtime gripe session).

What does it take to create an atmosphere in which everyone in the newsroom can feel comfortable enough with their views -- or in their skin -- to speak out on behalf of fairness, accuracy, better journalism?

Boardman's right: We don't get that atmosphere by engaging in partisan outbursts. But I can't help thinking what an opportunity was squandered in that conservative editor's newsroom because she felt too insecure to say to her colleagues, "Listen, I have a problem with this story. I happen to share this person's point of view, and I can help you understand it. I can help you avoid faulty assumptions, if you want to do that."

I guess those exchanges can take place in a newsroom where no one knows what anyone else believes; but I'm not sure I buy the advantage in pretending we have no biases. Can we identify that middle ground between overt politicking and hiding our biases, in order to utilize the expertise our biases and interests might have driven us to obtain?

Can we master an admittedly difficult balancing act: how to bring our whole selves -- biases and all -- to the office, and put them to good use on behalf of better journalism?

To do that, a newsroom leader needs to start with an honest assessment of the room's diversity: not just how much diversity exists, whether it be political, racial, ethnic, lifestyle, whatever, but how safe it is for people to express their differences.

• Can they trust that their questions and observations won't be dismissed or ridiculed?
  
• Can they trust that their colleagues are open to different points of view?
  
• Can they trust that they won't be labeled troublemakers –- or, in the current vernacular of pop management circles –- assholes?

Sure they can, you say. In my newsroom, everyone is invited, encouraged, expected to speak up.

I hope you're right. But you might want to check.


A few years back, I was teaching in a newsroom when the subject turned to an 18-year-old woman who had been found dead. A person of color, she had been missing for several weeks before the police -- or the paper -- treated her disappearance with alarm.

I asked an editor, a white man, if he thought the paper would have treated the young woman's case with greater urgency if she had been a white prom queen.

No, he said.

I saw the two black staffers in the room look away; I asked if either of them had lobbied for more coverage sooner. No, they said.

I wondered what I would have done in their situation –- whether I would have felt safe in speaking up.

Let's be honest: In newsrooms all over America, political conservatives, people of color, those who are deeply spiritual, all have something in common. They are outnumbered. And all too often, the outnumbered are quiet. They abide by the majority's traditions, the majority's jokes, the majority's news judgments.

For their silence, our journalism loses.

And in the coming election year, our journalism cannot afford to lose -– especially not because we failed to listen to voices sitting right in our midst.

So I ask you:

Who is outnumbered in your newsroom?

Do you know who they are?

Do they feel safe -- safe enough to speak up and help their colleagues do their best work?