Will journalism schools continue to pursue students of color now
that the American Society of Newspaper Editors has scaled back its
commitment to diversity?
Journalism educators say they remain committed to increasing the
numbers of minority students and faculty members in journalism schools
despite a recent decision by the nation’s leading newspaper editors
association to scale back its twenty-year-old goals for increasing
newsroom diversity.
In 1978, the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) pledged
that by the year 2000, minority representation in newsrooms would be at
parity with national demographics. People of color currently constitute
roughly one quarter of the nation’s population. Their representation in
newsrooms, however, is only at 11.4 percent. In April, less than two
years before the year 2000 deadline, the society conceded its original
goal was unattainable, proposing a more “realistic” goal of 20 percent
minority representation by the year 2010.
“It’s too early to tell whether ASNE’s decision will have any
impact at journalism schools,” says Dr. Karen Brown Dunlap, dean of
faculty at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. She adds that
journalism schools “didn’t have that great a record to brag about
anyway. The will to [increase diversity] has not been there on a
widespread basis.”
About 6,000, of the nation’s 54,700 newspaper reporters,
photographers, and editors are African American, Hispanic, or Native
American, according to an ASNE survey (see Incredible Whiteness pg 40).
These constitute three times the percentage they had in 1978 when ASNE
set its goals. But journalists and educators say that the number of
minorities entering the profession has remained stagnant, while the
country’s minority population has grown far beyond the 15 percent ASNE
had projected for 2000. In 1994, nearly 26 percent of the nation’s
population were members of minority groups, but the number of minority
journalists increased just one-tenth of 1 percent in the last year.
And, indeed, the number of minorities who graduate from the
nation’s journalism schools has tended to mirror employment in the
nation’s newsrooms. In 1996. 8.9 percent of students who received
bachelor’s degrees in journalism were African American.
Educators cite many obstacles in recruiting minority students into
journalism schools. First, they note, minority students, like White
students, can choose many more financially lucrative careers than
journalism. Secondly, many said minority students were often reluctant
to move to the small cities or rural towns where many journalism
graduates often start their careers.
