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Diversity in the newsroom
Posted by Steven A. Smith | 11 Nov 5:44 PM
Good evening,
Regular poster David Brookbank generated a lively discussion in The Vox Box (the blog produced by the high school students who produce The Vox monthly newspaper) about the seeming lack of diversity on The Vox staff.
The initial thread can be found here. A fresh second thread can be found here.
I thought I'd outline a few things the SR does about the staff diversity issue.
First, I agree with Brookbank, who argues the need for a diverse news staff. One of our values states we will reflect the life of our community every day "in all of its wholeness and complexity." That diversity goal cannot be met when the staff makeup represents only a certain segment of the community.
Through the years, I have been active with some of the organizations Brookbank cites as calling for greater newsroom diversity, particularly the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Diversifying the newspaper industry cannot happen without significant programmatic efforts. I agree with Brookbank on that score. Left to happen by chance it can't happen, certainly not at an acceptable pace.
Newsroom diversity, in my view, includes not just race and ethnicity, but gender, religious and faith background, educational diversity and even political diversity. A good newsroom represents many, many different aspects of community life and culture.
But racial and ethnic diversity is hugely significant and requires special work on the part of journalists, particularly in a homogenous community such as Spokane.
The diversity effort begins with programs that help develop young journalists. The Vox, not yet a year old, is far more diverse already than Our Generation, the program that preceded it (at least in my experience here). The Vox recruiting process recognizes the need for diversity in that we actively seek out students from all area high schools. I don't know the ethnicity of all Vox staff. But at the last general staff meeting I attended, I saw quite a bit of apparent racial and ethnic diversity. That will increase, by the way, as The Vox's reputation grows and being part of the staff becomes more attractive to more students.
In addition to The Vox, we have a feeder program that generally involves younger students, an Explorer Scout post devoted to journalism. Some explorers will eventually move into Vox staff positions. Our first meeting of the year, a few nights ago, attracted 50 or 60 students, again quite a mixed group.
We also support a high school "urban journalism" workshop at the University of Idaho every summer and also provided faculty for a similar program at the University of Oregon until the program's main sponsor pulled the plug two summers ago. Urban journalism workshops are designed to attract and motivate, as well as instruct, minorities interested in a journalism career.
We make sure our winter and summer interns are diverse. Both myself and Managing Editor Gary Graham have worked for years with the Chips Quinn intern program which places minority interns in newsrooms. Over the years, we've hired several Chipsters to full-time jobs, including our first Islamic staffers (though both left to get married).
All of the above is fine as far as it goes.
But it isn't enough. We know that and will continue to work for greater newsroom diversity.
For those who think this is reverse racism -- well, I'm with Brookbank on this. To accept the concept of reverse racism, you have to reject the notion of white privilege. I don't.
In any event, the Vox dialogue was a good one, worth checking out. I'm proud of our Vox staffers. The best and the brightest. And if there isn't enough diversity just yet, there will be. You can count on it.
steve
There are 5 comments on this post. (XML Subscribe to comments on this post)
Steve Smith and David Brookbank are absolutely right on this...a no brainer really. As I enter this post on Sunday evening, I am writing my stand-up comedy routine. This issue made me think that the time has almost come when we can forego the ubiquitous "Hayden Lake Skinhead" jokes. Enough time has gone by....BUT.... Since I am a white man who is tall and from a good family...I have had all the advantages many people of ethnic background only dream of. I know that I was out of touch and I have a dramatic example of my own ignorance and subtle racism back in 1984 at Weber State University. I was in the dorms(promontory towers)where all the scholarship athletes were. On my floor were many black basketball and football players. One, a linebacker named Randy Brown, a gregarious black man...well....let's just say Randy taught me that the "N" word was not appropriate for me to use....eventhough Randy used it as an adjective, noun and even a pronoun. Hearing this, and keep in mind golfers were not "real athletes" back then.....I used the phrase "Shoot Negro"...but the first word represented a pile of dung and the second was the "N" word. I had heard Randy use it 50 times a day in the same context....BUT.... I was tackled and held to the ground where Randy articulated the reason my use of the word was not cool...and further, he went on to explain my lack of diversity having grown up in Lake Oswego, Oregon ...where the only blacks seen were the NBA player/coach, Lenny Wilkins and his son(we played on the hoop team together).
I did not have the diversity I needed to understand what Randy knew all too well. I tried to explain that my first best friend was Lenny Wilkins son(Also named Randy, now an attorney in Seattle)...so what was the response ? I then explained I also used to get kicked out of church for complainig about Mormons not allowing blacks to have the priesthood until 1978... SO WHAT !
Randy Brown and Randy Wilkins...they both taught me about diversity. I see the Spokesman writers frequently. Som(Isamu)Jordan is one of the best. I wish we heard more from Muslims and Mormons, since both religions are misunderstood. Diversity in race, religion, politics and every element of life and society is vital to a healthy and vibrant newspaper trying to survive the information war against the instantaneous internet.
The Spokesman is making all the right moves and I have to hand it to them. The more diverse, the more interesting the reading material. I say bring on the most divergent views possible and let the chips fall where they may. My hat is off to the Spokesman-Review.
KUDOS !
David Howard Elton
Spokane
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Good Evening... A gentle reminder that the Spokane Task Force on Diversity was heretofore the Spokane Task Force on Race Relations.. Race is one small, very small part of diversity... Ethnicity is a very small part of Race... and it does not include all of the diverse places some one may have lived, or experiences that have broadened their horizons..
So as an example on this veterans day.... A person who has served the country as a soldier may or may not have seen combat.. may or may not be an enlisted person or a volunteer, or a draftee, may be an officer that went to OCS or an Officer that got a direct commission or an officer who had a father that got him a soft job as a pilot in the air national guard... all are veterans but not all have equivalent experience and so have a diverse view of what service really might have entailed for other's that served.
If you apply the metaphor to any class, be it race/religion/sexual preference/gender we are each and every one unique and valuable in our mix of society... and we are all connected by our humanity. Gus
The loss of Virginia de Leon from the Spokesman is certainly a loss of diversity for the reporting in our community.
She is a great reporter. The reporting of the Spokesman will certainly suffer from her loss.
Steve,
You talk the talk on diversity, yet your newsroom just lost Virginia and Thuy? What do you have left -- one, maybe two non-white journalists in the newsroom? Oh, I suppose you count representing Denmark as being diverse. Yep. I realize it's not just about ethnicity. So, how many non-University of Oregon graduates have you hired? Way to go! Your reputation is just soaring!
You'll be seeing Virginia de Leon's byline again very soon. She wasn't laid off, she left voluntarily and on very good terms. She will continue to write for us on a freelance basis, most likely beginning in January.
Not having her in the newsroom is indeed a tremendous loss. But she's not going away completely...
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Steve Smith has been editor of The Spokesman- Review since July 2002. Before coming to Spokane, he served as editor of The Statesman-Journal in Salem, Ore., and The Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colo. Smith is married to Alexa Conway Smith, an independent computer consultant and has two children by a previous marriage, Sam and Alissa.