A Diversity Formula That Really Works?

Posted Feb. 9, 2004

By Mydria Clark

The strategy was simple.

“We went after the worst,” said Juan Gonzalez, president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and founder of the Parity Project, a national effort to increase the number of Latino newsroom hires and to improve coverage of the Latino community.

NAHJ President Juan Gonzalez

“We didn’t start with papers that had good record or a fair record,” he said. “If we could solve the problem in the worst places, we could solve it at other places.”

Double Digit Increase

The strategy appears to be paying off. Since its launch in April 2003, the first two newspapers to participate in the project—the Denver Rocky Mountain News and the Ventura County Star in Ventura, Calif.—have increased the number of Latinos and other minority journalists in their newsrooms by an average of 41 percent, NAHJ recently announced.

The Rocky Mountain News reported an increase of more than 36 percent - going from 8.5 percent minority journalists in December 2002 to 11.6 percent the following year. At the Ventura County Star, the percentage of minority journalists went from 11.8 percent to 17.2 percent in one year, an increase of 46 percent. Both papers are owned by E.W. Scripps, which, according to research done by NAHJ, has six newspapers in which Latinos were severely underrepresented on staff in relation to their cities’ large Latino populations.

Where other diversity efforts have floundered or failed, the Parity Project has succeeded – and rapidly. The American Society of Newspaper Editors has been trying to improve diversity in the nation’s newsrooms since 1978, but the percentage hovers around 12 percent year after year. Last year, the percentage of minorities in newsrooms across the country went up only about half of one percent, from 12.07 to 12.53 percent, after a small decline the previous year.

Three Principles

Gonzalez said the Parity Project is different from other diversity initiatives because of three main principles – systematic analysis, holistic solutions and a results-oriented approach.

“Before we began the project, we did a data analysis of the fastest growing Latino populations compared to minority staffing [in local newsrooms],” he said. Then, at an ASNE meeting last summer, NAHJ presented a list of 57 cities with the biggest diversity problems at their newspapers.

Community Partnerships

Newspapers and media companies that volunteered to participate in the Parity Project were asked to partner with the cities’ local journalism schools, businesses and Latino community leaders to set specific goals.

To address parity in hiring, the project uses a formula based on the newspapers’ turnover rates and projected figures for the cities’ Latino population.

“If they make a third of all their hires Latino on a consistent basis over a certain number of years, they’re going to reach parity pretty quickly,” Gonzalez said, assuming a good number of qualified Latinos apply.

Long Term Monitoring

NAHJ is monitoring the newspapers’ progress every six months for about five years, until parity and improved coverage are achieved, Gonzalez said. In five years, the organization hopes to double the percentage of minorities in the nation’s newsrooms, he said.

In exchange for their participation in the project, NAHJ gives Parity Project partners incentives, such giving them good booth placement at job fairs and encouraging NAHJ members to apply to work at the newspapers.

“We treat them like first-class passengers in NAHJ,” Gonzalez said.

Among the major newspaper chains with “bad” newsrooms, NAHJ found that Lee Newspapers had three, Freedom Newspapers Inc. had three and MediaNews Group had eight, which was the highest.

Scripps "Volunteered" Its Papers

E.W. Scripps Co. owned six, including the Rocky Mountain News and the Ventura County Star. After learning this, Scripps partnered with the Parity Project and made all of its papers participate.

“We sort of got told, ‘You’re doing this’,” joked Tim Gallagher, editor of the Star. Gallagher said his paper has attempted diversity initiatives in the past, but he described them as “good intentions with poor executions.”

“Our intentions needed the structure and the pressure of the Parity Project to change things systematically,” he said.

A New Journalism Academy

Scripps also started an Academy for Hispanic Journalists at the Rocky Morning News to give recent college graduates or early-career journalists a place to further develop industry skills.

Photo credit: Judy Walgren/Rocky Mountain News Sarah Langbein

Sarah Langbein, 23, is the first participant in the academy. She is most recently from Fort Collins, Colo., where she studied journalism at Colorado State University and worked at the Fort Collins Coloradoan.

Langbein, an NAHJ member, said she first hesitated before applying to the academy.

“I was worried people wouldn’t take too kindly to me getting this job, thinking that the only reason I got it was because I was Hispanic,” she said.

But great mentors and a friendly work environment were enough to take her fears away, she said.

“The publisher and editor really believe in having a diverse newsroom,” Langbein said. “I think that’s why people here are okay with the concept.”

Attention to Retention

Hiring a diverse crop of journalists is not the only goal of the Parity Project. Retention and outreach are next on the project’s agenda.

“You have to hire people, you have to retain more of them, and you have to increase the pipeline of people coming in,” Gonzalez said.

Plans for retention have already begun at the Star. Gallagher said one way the Star hopes to keep its new employees is by providing each of them with an official, staff-appointed mentor. Meanwhile, a Parity Project subcommittee, comprised of 20 people from both the staff and the community, is developing more retention policies for the newspaper.

Extending the Pipeline

NAHJ plans to sponsor a leadership institute where working Latino journalists will be trained how to move into management and how to deal with their frustrations without leaving the industry.

To increase “the pipeline,” Gonzalez said NAHJ would look for ways to support high school journalists and keep them interested in the industry.

“The problem is that [some] high schools don’t have a budget to print a paper,” said Gonzalez. To address this problem, the Parity Project will work to leverage the resources of ASNE’s high school programs.

Since 2001, ASNE has partnerships with daily newspapers that help high schools launch or improve their student newspapers. The Parity Project will require all participating newspapers to print a high school newspaper on its presses, Gonzalez said.

In the near future, NAHJ hopes to get more news organizations to participate in the Parity Project. Last week, the North County Times, a Lee newspaper in Escondido, Calif., signed on to the project. Gonzalez said he would like to see a television station volunteer to participate within the next year.

Mydria Clark is a new media intern at the Maynard Institute. She attends the University of California-Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. She will intern at CBS News in New York this summer.