A Report for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation NEWS IN A NEW AMERICA ABOUT THE AUTHOR Significant research support for the appendices was provided by Knight Chair in Journalism Stephen K. Doig of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Sally Lehrman, the national Arizona State University, as well as Bill Dedman of The diversity chair for the Society Telegraph in Nashua, N.H., Bob Papper of Ball State University, Amanda Elliott of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for of Professional Journalists, Journalism Education and Kira Wisniewski of the University of is an award-winning inde- Miami. Feedback on the narrative was provided by Teresa pendent journalist who covers medicine and Moore of the University of San Francisco, Venise Wagner of San Francisco State University, Karen Reyes of AARP: The Magazine, science policy. and author Helen Zia. She has written for a wide range of publications including Scientific American, Denise Tom and Eric Newton edited the book. Health, Salon.com, Nature, Alternative Medicine, The Washington Post and the Los For the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation: Angeles Times. For 13 years she covered W. Gerald Austen, M.D., chairman, board of trustees AIDS, biotechnology, health policy and Alberto Ibargüen, president business as a columnist and reporter at The Michael Maidenberg, vice president and chief program officer San Francisco Examiner. Eric Newton, director of journalism initiatives Denise Tom, journalism program specialist Lehrman was part of a team that received Larry Meyer, vice president of communications and secretary a 2002 Peabody Award for a series of public Robertson Adams, communications associate/webmaster radio documentaries on human genetics. Caroline Wingate, editorial consultant The group also received a Peabody/Robert Design: Jacques Auger Design Associates, Miami Beach, Fla. Wood Johnson Award for excellence in health Printing: Rex Three, Sunrise, Fla. and medical programming and the 1999 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Silver Baton. In More information about Knight Foundation is available at 1995-96, she was a John S. Knight Fellow at www.knightfdn.org. Stanford University. Knight Foundation’s Journalism Advisory Committee members She is a USC Annenberg Institute for are: Rich Oppel (chair), editor, Austin American-Statesman; Justice and Journalism Expert Fellow and is Farai Chideya, host/correspondent, NPR West; John L. Dotson active in several organizations that promote Jr., publisher emeritus, Akron Beacon Journal; Geneva Overholser, Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting, diversity in the media. SPJ lauded her work University of Missouri School of Journalism; James V. Risser, in this area with its highest honor, the retired director, John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Wells Memorial Key. Journalists, Stanford University; Martin Baron, editor, The Boston Globe; Hilary Schneider, senior vice president/operations, Knight Ridder; Eduardo Hauser, founder/CEO, Mydya, a next- generation electronic publishing company. Copyright 2005 by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Miami, Fla. To request copies of this book or others in our journalism This book examines news coverage of a changing America. It series, contact [email protected]. You can download was commissioned in early 2004 by the John S. and James L. an Acrobat PDF file of this book at Knight Foundation as a fresh perspective on the issue of news www.knightfdn.org/publications. and newsroom diversity. The book also includes a guide to a variety of diversity programs and resources and the results of three surveys showing trends among American journalists and in newspaper and broadcast newsrooms. ISBN 0-9749702-1-2 2 CONTENTS From the Foundation 4 Foreword by Dori J. Maynard 6 Author’s Note 10 Chapter One: News in a New America 12 Chapter Two: The Human Factor 26 Chapter Three: Pressures in the Newsroom 44 Chapter Four: Reframing Diversity 60 Afterword by John L. Dotson Jr. 82 Diversity Resource Guide 86 Appendix I: Dedman-Doig Study of Newspaper Employment 107 Appendix II: 2005 Survey of Broadcast Journalists 121 Appendix III: The American Journalist in the 21st Century 127 Appendix IV: Study and Discussion Questions 130 Appendix V: Further Reading 133 3 NEWS IN A NEW AMERICA FROM THE FOUNDATION BY ALBERTO IBARGÜEN 4 FROM THE FOUNDATION he questions most asked around Knight So, in a world where my neighbors are not Foundation’s journalism program are: only possibly, but likely to be from another TWho, in the future, will give us the place or culture, it is essential that we information we need to succeed as a demo- find common ground. We need common cratic society? Who will connect the dots ground that allows the community to of information so that the towns and cities function by letting its residents and visitors we live in feel like communities … or, at see themselves as part of a shared universe. least, are comprehensible, not as a series of discrete and independent neighborhoods But to find common ground, we need a or interest groups, but as a whole? medium that paves the way. We need a medium that is the functional successor of In many important ways, this is what Knight newspapers or broadcast television, some- newspapers used to do. They gave readers thing that ties us together as newspapers a sense of shared experience by making and television used to. Whether it’s through what happened in one part of town some- a medium or multiple media, we need a thing that happened in my part of town method and platform; a way of getting there. because I read about it in my newspaper. They gave us shared vocabulary and shared As this book illustrates, U.S. newsrooms expectations. They defined community. still have quite a distance to go before they and the communities they cover are Who will help us know each other well fully served and capably observed. We enough to function as small and large don’t lament here the change in the media democracies, whether municipal, metropol- landscape. We need to celebrate the itan or national? And, as author Sally evolution of our media and encourage it. Lehrman asks in this new publication, will Darwin was roughly right: it is not the those sources of information provide us strongest of the species that survive, nor the tools we need to understand each other? the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change. In Knight Foundation’s home town of Miami, the issues of diversity, of communicating News in a New America adds multiple voices across cultural, ethnic and financial differ- and perspectives to this rich and ongoing ences influence how we think about the search for a new understanding. • role and value of news and communication. Three-fourths of us who live here were – Alberto Ibargüen, president born someplace else. Fifty percent of us John S. and James L. Knight Foundation were born in another country. Miami is a place worth knowing for what it represents about our globalized future. It offers daily examples about how disparate communities can come together and figure out how to live and work and progress together. 5 NEWS IN A NEW AMERICA FOREWORD BY DORI J. MAYNARD 6 FOREWORD ood journalists should be able to sometimes putting aside our need to agree tackle any assignment, whether it is and striving simply to understand. Gcovering their own community or covering a community with which they My late father, Robert C. Maynard, the have had little or no personal contact. former editor and publisher of The Oakland Tribune, used to say that a newspaper In short, they should be able to give us should be a tool for community under- news that is as American as America. standing, a place where you see not only your life, but also the life of your neighbor, That’s the ideal. accurately and fairly represented. I’m sure that if he were alive today, he would The truth is, we all have blind spots. include broadcast, radio and the Internet in that description. So it helps to make good journalism a group effort, to have colleagues – copy editors, These days that idea may seem a pipe city editors, producers and general managers dream, with blue state and red state with diverse backgrounds and different residents seeming to turn to very different points of view working as a team to help the sources of news – talk radio, cable tele- newsroom as a whole understand the vision, the Internet, the growing ethnic community as a whole. media that increasingly fills the needs of people who don’t otherwise see their lives Some newsrooms operate with a diversity accurately reflected. model of “us and them”: White men may feel pressured to accept African Americans, Yet it is that media fragmentation that Latinos, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, makes it even more urgent to work toward Asians, gays and women as equal colleagues, understanding. As changing demographics while those journalists may feel as if they collide with the ever-growing number of must work overtime helping white co- news sources, there is the danger that workers understand the world outside the “mainstream” media may become a niche mostly white newsroom. Journalists hired media in the not-so-distant future if we do for their diverse views, as well as for their not more accurately portray the daily lives skills, become worn down by countless of all citizens in all of our coverage. attempts to explain a story to an editor who doesn’t appreciate the basic idea that To understand some of the forces hastening different people can be interested in the dismantling of the mass media, one different things.