Malena Amusa

Newsroom Diversity takes a Dip

Every year the American Society of Newspaper Editors tracks newsroom diversity around the country. This year’s report showed a slight decline in the percentage of journalists of color in newsrooms around the country. Today, people of color represent 13.62 percent of newsroom staff, that’s down from 13.87 in 2006.

There’s an interesting caveat: of the nearly 2000 full-time web journalists, roughly 16 percent are people of color.

The report also found that the number of newspapers with “no minorities” on their staff increased.

“392 newspapers had no minorities on their full-time staff. This is an increase from last year when 377 daily newspapers had no full-time minority journalists. The majority of these newspapers have circulations of 10,000 or less.”

Overall, there were 3,056 blacks, 2,512 Hispanics, 1,864 Asian Americans and 332 Native Americans, compared with 3,050 blacks, 2,474 Hispanics, 1,768 Asian Americans and 309 Native Americans in 2006.

Catch up on what some panelists at ARC’s Facing Race Conference had to say about race and the newsroom here.

Posted at 7:44 AM, Mar 30, 2007 in Permalink | View Comments