Press Release

NAHJ Frustrated by Lack of Significant Growth in Newsroom Diversity

Washington, D.C. - The National Association of Hispanic Journalists remains frustrated by the lack of a meaningful increase in Latino journalists and journalists of color working at our nation’s daily newspapers.

The percentage of Latino journalists climbed slightly from 2,323 in 2004 to 2,474 in 2005, according to the American Society of Newspapers Editors’ (ASNE) 2006 newsroom census released today at the group’s annual convention in Seattle. This increase signals that Latinos now comprise 4.51 percent of the newsroom workforce, as opposed to 4.29 percent last year.

For the first time in this year’s report, ASNE provided a breakdown of each participating newsroom by race. NAHJ applauds ASNE for this important step forward in its research. Understanding the makeup of each individual newspaper allows journalism organizations to work more closely with specific newspapers in order to increase their hiring of journalists of color.

In addition to the small increase of Latino journalists, the overall percentage of journalists of color inched up from 13.4 percent to 13.9 percent, representing an increase of 300 journalists.

This lack of newsroom diversity has resulted in newspapers that are struggling to remain relevant to the diverse communities they serve. This was highlighted when English-language media outlets were caught off guard by the massive immigration protest marches that occurred in recent weeks.

“Our community continues to change dramatically, and the industry’s failure to keep up with these changes adds to the major threats facing the long-term future of journalism,” said NAHJ Vice President for Print Rafael Olmeda. “We need to get even more aggressive about achieving these goals, making the case everywhere from high school classrooms to publishers’ offices.”

ASNE also noted that it failed to meet all five of its benchmark goals last year. For example, by 2005, the organization hoped to see 18.5 percent of the workforce comprised of minorities. The actual percentage was 13.87. The association hoped to reduce the number of newspapers with no minority staffers down to 275, but the actual number is 377. Also, ASNE hoped that the number of newspapers that reached parity with their communities would be 348, but the actual result was 145.

NAHJ believes that the future success of U.S. newspapers lies in their ability to accurately reflect and portray the communities they serve. Specifically, one of the association’s goals is to target English-language media companies that operate in communities with large Latino populations, but whose newsrooms lack an adequate number of Latino journalists.

To achieve this goal, NAHJ created the Parity Project in 2003 to help selected English-language media outlets develop closer working relationships with the Latino community to ensure better coverage and increased hiring of Latino journalists. The project serves as a link between the media and the Latino community they serve.

So far, 24 media companies have joined the project. Since its inception, 91 Latino journalists have been hired at partnering companies. NAHJ has also co-hosted 30 town hall meetings with partnering companies that were attended by more than 1,600 Latino community leaders.

NAHJ calls on media organizations to work with our association in order to reach out to the Latino community, to diversify newsrooms and to improve news coverage.