Pease: “Still the Invisible People” Ch 9: Redefining America’s News

“Still the Invisible People”
Job Satisfaction of Minority Journalists at U.S. Daily Newspapers
By Edward C. Pease (©1991)

Doctoral Dissertation
E.W Scripps School of Journalism
Ohio University • Athens, Ohio

CHAPTER 9—New Perspectives Redefine America’s News

“Any news that is race-neutral can be covered well by any good team of journalists.
A fire is a fire. Where the problem begins is with interpretation of events and issues, and selection of what receives attention and what is ignored.”

– Black male GA reporter, 30s
Mid-sized Southern daily

The whole point of increasing and retaining diversity in the newsroom is to make newspapers better equipped to cover a changing American society. Even though what often happens is that newcomers are expected to adopt the perspectives and values of the old guard, the object of a multicultural newsroom is to help newspapers redefine what’s news in a changing marketplace that in many instances in the 1990s no longer resembles the one many journalists are accustomed to.

A discussion of how ethnicity contributes to the job of newspaper journalism is appropriate here. Many newspapers seem to view the hiring of minority journalists as so many notches on their guns for the consumption of corporate overseers or industry critics. What’s too often lost in such evaluation is an appreciation for what people of color can bring to the news product. While they are changing the overall skin tone of the newsroom, journalists of color also are changing the way their newspapers cover society, just as the Kerner and Hutchins reports envisioned.

For one thing, the new perspectives minority journalists bring to the newsroom enable newspapers to cover segments within the community they’ve never reached, a major economic consideration in a time when minority populations are outstripping whites. That is not to say that minority journalists’ only value is as reporters in a minority affairs pigeonhole. Different perspectives on the news desk and the copy desk can help find new angles on stories, and can help well-meaning but monocultural reporters and news managers avoid inadvertent offense or embarrassment through ignorance. For the most part, as an Asian American journalist from New York City writes, “News people still are Eurocentric,” and journalists of color can help.

The different perspective on the news, the non-Eurocentric way of looking at events, can mean that an ethnically diverse newsroom can generate new and different kinds of stories from events that white journalists may have seen 100 times and view as routine. “It’s a question of perspective,” wrote a white male reporter from Houston, describing how a black colleague’s viewpoint on a bridge contract made it more than routine. “A big story in Texas over the past two years has been a controversy over the use of South African steel to build a state highway bridge in Houston,” he said. “The story was there and obvious to for all reporters, but it was a black reporter who saw its significance and turned it into a major story.”

In an effort to explore this question of defining and redefining news, this survey asked respondents to comment on this statement: “News is news. Racial background has nothing to do with how well a good journalist can cover a news story.” It is not a simple question, respondents said. Many filled the questionnaire margins and back with thoughtful discussions on how perspective helps – and hurts – journalists as they define the news.

Responses generally fell in four areas: 1) The importance of perceptions and how they affect the way journalists approach news; 2) Redefinitions of news; 3) Journalistic objectivity and professionalism; and 4) Ethnicity as both a tool and a barrier in reporting.

The thoughtful and detailed comments of two journalists – one a woman Asian American business reporter from the Pacific Northwest and the other a black male general news reporter from the South – summarize the parameters of the issue. The question is complex, as these journalists and their colleagues explain. At issue are traditional, predominantly white, male ways of covering communities and viewing the larger world; for some from the old “Front Page” mold, suggestions that things might be done differently carry implicit threats and implicit criticisms. In some ways, these journalists agree, news is news, but only in a very limited sense. The Asian American business writer commented:

Sure, anyone can cover a fire or handle a council meeting, but most newspapers have a history of ignoring news that doesn’t occur in the traditional, white male middle-class background. That’s because newsrooms traditionally have been dominated by white, middle-class males. A lot of people bemoan the end of the good old news days, where newsrooms were smoky joints always rattling in deadline frenzy. They forget that much of today’s journalistic workforce – women and people of color – would not have been welcome in that environment.

For the Southern black male reporter, those definitions of news and how to interpret it and transmit it to what kind of audience are at the core of the question of how newspapers perform in an increasingly pluralistic society. He agrees that the problems of perception begin after the breaking news event. The issue is not professional tools, but attitudinal equipment. He wrote:

Any news that is race-neutral can be covered well by any good team of journalists. A fire is a fire. Where the problem begins is with interpretation of events and issues, and selection of what receives attention and what is ignored. I believe the race of a journalist plays an important role in how that journalist interprets events, and in what that journalist considers important and unimportant.

“The problem is compounded when an issue is directly related to race,” he added. “Compare the coverage of affirmative action or alleged police misconduct by a black-owned newspaper with that of a white-owned newspaper you will find two very different views.”

1. Objectivity and Professionalism

“All people carry with them wherever they go all the cultural baggage
– including biases – that they have accumulated over a lifetime.
Objectivity does not exist. Fairness can.”
– Male Latino desk editor, late 30s

Phoenix

Predictably, some respondents found this question of the influence of personal characteristics such as race a violation of the journalism they had learned. “News is news,” a Southern white state reporter wrote. “Race is not important in news judgment.” Like the desk editor who said he wishes we could stop worrying over issues of race and just do the job and go home, these respondents say the good journalist is neutral, objective and even-handed. A good journalist, they said, can cover anything.

“A good reporter has no race during working hours,” wrote a white male Midwestern reporter in his early 40s, speaking for many of his colleagues. Alternatively, a white female features writer from Michigan said, “a good journalist should see beyond color.”

Others acknowledged that background influence perceptions, but “an open, agile mind has no skin color,” as a white male copy editor wrote from Texas. “What we are may affect how we cover a story,” a white male manager from Michigan agreed. “A good journalist is a good journalist, however, and should be able to cover a news story with objectivity.”

This is the key to good journalism for many of these respondents. “The key word is ‘good’ – someone who can write accurately despite personal filters (which we all have) and who is hired for skill, not skin,” wrote a Midwestern white male reporter in his late 40s.

Further, said others, sensitivity and adaptability is what journalism is all about, reacting to circumstances and thinking on your feet. A male Hispanic manager from Chicago wrote, “If you are good, you will learn the cultures of other racial/ethnic groups.” A white male AME from the West Coast agreed: “A good reporter can learn the sensitivity to cover any story,” he said. And a white female reporter from Texas added, “Any journalist should be able to cover any ethnic community if they do sufficient research and apply some empathy.”

Finally, some respondents were offended by the implication that some people may be better equipped than others to cover some kinds of stories because of their backgrounds. A journalist is, after all, a journalist, they said, or should be. “I am insulted by the notion that only minorities can adequately cover minority news,” a female Asian American section editor from Los Angeles wrote. “A good journalist, regardless of racial background, brings a racial sensitivity to the story. A good journalist is capable of a breadth of reportage.”

A white male features writer from the Upper Midwest agreed. “It is true that minorities have special insights into minority problems, but a good black journalist should be about to cover a meeting of white folks, and a good white journalist should be able to cover a meeting of black folks,” he said, concluding, “And somebody who has never collected stamps should be able to cover a philatelists’ convention.”

2. Definitions of News

“News is defined by a forty-something white male.”
– Black female bureau reporter,
30-something, New York

What those arguments miss, say other respondents, is the degree to which individual background colors, filters and ultimately skews news coverage, if everyone deciding what news is comes from the same mold. “People of different backgrounds bring different perspectives to newsrooms that are necessary if papers are going to present a full spectrum of news instead of only a middle-class white perspective,” a black female metro editor from the East Coast wrote. The issue, she and others say, is not training, professionalism or even empathy and sensitivity, but diluting the selective perceptions that traditionally have defined news with some different perspectives.

“A mix of race, background, gender, etc., is critical in deciding what is news,” wrote a white female East Coast reporter. Further, a black male reporter from Philadelphia added, “No journalist is objective. Everyone brings his or her own biases to the business. The more people with more perspectives and sensitivities in the newsroom, the more the news will be all the news there is.”

That exactly has been the problem, these journalists are saying; what appears in American newspapers as, presumedly, “all the news that’s fit to print” has not been all the news there is – much information about events that are intensely important to segments out of the white mainstream does not see print. In fact, they say, the perceptual blinders of newsroom gatekeepers and decision-makers have meant that newspaper readers see only a narrow slice of what news there is. “News is what we say it is, and who we are defines what we think to be news,” a white male desk editor in the Pacific Northwest wrote. And, says a black male city desk editor, “Newspapers routinely fail to include minorities and people who are poor or working class from the mainstream of their coverage. News is what a white, middle-class male says it is.”

It’s not that there isn’t other news of consequence out there, these journalists say; it’s that the gatekeepers don’t recognize its importance in the lives of people who aren’t like them. “The more important question is whether the story will ever be assigned at all if it deals with minority matters,” wrote a white male arts reporter for a mid-sized Western daily. That’s the real problem, agreed a Latino reporter in Houston: “The way news is judged for importance largely has to do with what newsroom people are familiar with,” he said. “We write more about the white middle class, in my estimation, because newsrooms are largely filled with white middle-class people.”
Taylor Branch, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63, writes in his preface that, as a white man, he had to come to grips with this question of limited perception. “Almost as color defines vision itself, race shapes the cultural eye – what we do and do not notice, the reach of empathy and the alignment of response.”1
Some of the traditional gatekeepers in question are becoming increasingly aware of the perceptual blinders resulting from their backgrounds and upbringing. “I can’t help but admit that I’m a middle-aged, middle-class white male and I may not be as sensitive to some issues as someone of a different race or gender,” a copy editor for a Southern mid-sized daily wrote. “Our society is changing; newspapers must reflect that change or become obsolete.”
In an increasingly diverse America, where most people are not white, middle-class men, a new definition of news is needed. That’s the true value of increasing ethnicity in newspaper newsrooms, these journalists say. “News is made by people of all colors,” a black female editorial writer said. “It takes people of all colors to convey the issues.”
Newsroom attitudes need retooling if newspapers are to keep pace with the changes in society, an Asian American assistant city editor from San Francisco said. In order for newspapers to redefine news to fit American reality, newspaper people have to re-educate themselves and re-examine their perspectives. “Being well intentioned is not enough,” she said. “If reporters and editors spent as much time educating themselves about people of color as they do about domestic politics and sports, there’d be fewer shallow, insensitive and offensive stories about matters of race or ethnicity in newspapers.
“Ideally, there’d be news stories that help all segments of the community better understand each other and one another’s needs and concerns,” she concluded.


3. Perspectives and Perceptions of the News

“Journalists are also human beings, and humans bring to their work
the racial baggage of their upbringing and prior perceptions. This is why
we need diverse newsrooms, to gain a diverse level of understanding for the communities we cover. We do not always reach this in day-to-day coverage.”

– Black male assistant managing editor, mid-40s
Eastern metro

One of the functions of the new generation of journalists of color is their re-education of white colleagues in the newsroom. Working side-by-side with someone who isn’t just like you can yield a wider perspective on the world and forces a reassessment of traditional norms that always had been accepted as truths, journalists say. It’s not that traditional news definitions are being discarded, they say, but expanded to become more inclusive of a broad society.
“What’s most important is how the minority community perceives the news product, minority hiring commitment and coverage of their community,” a Southern white male editorial writer said. Such perceptions of the product and clear commitment to ethnically diverse staff in positions of responsibility may help determine many newspapers’ future. “Newspapers have perpetuated a white, male, middle-class, liberal slant that may be contributing to decline in readership,” a male Asian American business reporter commented. “A reporter/editor/publisher from an ethnic background would bring diverse perspectives that may be problematic to deal with, but better reflect society.”
White journalists say they may have a lot to learn. This comment from a white reporter in her late 30s who works in a diverse metropolitan area is typical: “We need people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds to ensure complete coverage of a diverse community,” she said. “We need more than WASP perspectives.”
“Black, brown, yellow and red perspectives are quite different from my white one, I have found out, just as it is with different religions and sex lives,” a white male reporter wrote from Houston. From Minneapolis, a white male reporter in his 30s reflected, “Race has nothing to do with one’s competence as a journalist; it may have a great deal to do with one’s perspective, however.”
A white sports copy editor for one of the country’s largest dailies said she sees part of her job as being a watchdog on the male gatekeepers. “Sure, a good reporter/editor can handle any story,” she said. “But women and minorities in the newsroom can help assure that biases don’t creep in, and they can raise issues not apparent to white males.” An Asian American reporter for a Western daily says she also performs that function, since she is the only minority reporter at her paper. “As a minority, I know I see the world from a different perspective than mainstream society,” she said. “Some stories need that insight.”
This question of perspective strikes at the heart of how newspapers must change to serve society and survive as vendors in the information marketplace. “People of different backgrounds bring different perspectives to newsrooms that are necessary if papers are going to present a full spectrum of news instead of only a middle-class white perspective,” a black metro reporter from the East Coast said. There are plenty of jobs for all kinds of people in newspapers, she added, because there are so many stories out there not now being covered. “Reporting the news is one thing,” a Latino metro reporter from Washington, D.C., said. “Interpreting the news is better served by a racially and culturally diverse staff.”
Diverse individual experience should be seen in the newsroom as the asset it is, other journalists say. Different perspectives are needed “for the same reason that a wealthy person may find it difficult to empathize with someone receiving food stamps,” a black female columnist from Philadelphia wrote. “The majority race never confronts the wholesale obstacles minorities face, so how can they automatically know what issues to consider, sources to tap?”
A white newsroom manager from California said knowledge of such issues only helps the newspaper. “A good newsroom needs people of many different interests and backgrounds – that’s always been what newspapers were all about,” he said. “Such people make the newspaper more ‘whole’ by suggesting and pursuing different stories and angles others wouldn’t have thought of.”
An Asian metro reporter for a mid-sized Southeastern daily says she doesn’t think her paper’s managers have considered how one-dimensional the newspaper has become, in part because of the lack of newsroom perspective. “Most of the reporters and editors are isolated from the minority community,” she said. “They live in non-integrated neighborhoods; their social circles are non-integrated. How can you see all sides if you look through only one window? One view doesn’t mean you see the whole picture.”
Lack of such breadth of experience frequently results in insensitivity in coverage that can only alienate readers. “I’ve seen how badly a white journalist with no experience or sensitivity can handle minority-oriented issues,” a black Cleveland copy editor wrote. “The ignorance is appalling.” A Latino business reporter from Southern California agreed: “I’m sick and tired of these ‘white bread’ reporters,” she complained. “They come from nowhere and don’t know much about anything except what they know from school. It’s like they have no ethnic or cultural background at all.”
A Hispanic reporter from Southern California agreed: “Sensitivity has everything to do with how well a good journalist can cover a story,” he said. “Sensitivity to racial issues should be part of a good journalist’s tools.”

4. Ethnicity as a Journalistic Tool

“Race doesn’t dictate how well a journalist covers a story,
but it can influence how he/she covers it. Also, how the story is played.
We need those different approaches and appreciations.”

– White female copy editor, late 20s
300,000-circulation Midwest metro

Another of the journalists’ themes concerned how much different ethnic perspectives may benefit a newspaper. As American culture becomes more multicultural, they point out, people who understand the various new, non-Eurocentric cultures and speak their languages – both literally and figuratively – will not only be useful, but essential. “I know that my race allows me greater access to minority communities as opposed to my white counterparts,” a black female reporter from New York said. From the West Coast, an Asian American general assignment reporter added, “I speak Mandarin Chinese, and that extra skill gives me a HUGE edge in covering Asian stories.”
In the 1990s and beyond, these journalists say, multiculturalism in the newsroom is as much a journalist’s tool and skill as typing, note-taking or interviewing. “Multicultural awareness greatly enhances one’s ability to establish rapport, interpret verbal and non-verbal signals, gain access to and report the story as the people involved experience it,” a Phoenix copy editor commented. “Those without multicultural awareness are imprisoned in their own perceptions and can report nothing else.”
“Some stories require special knowledge or sensitivity,” an Asian American reporter in her early 30s said. “Just as some reporters are trained for some tasks, some reporters who have different cultural backgrounds can share a better perspective.” Enlightened newsroom managers should view multicultural training and sensitivity as assets to be developed, not only in minority journalists, but among all newsroom personnel.
“A white reporter might fail miserably covering a black issues, just as a black reporter might be stonewalled in a racist small town city council story,” a white female reporter from a major Midwestern city wrote. “What is important to a thriving newspaper is that we have all voices on board and learn to employ those with special insights and experiences appropriately.”
To cover the various cultures in a community, reporters need to have been there, these journalists say. “Unless you’ve been there – been poor, been minority, your family denied advancement based on ethnicity, etc., how can you possibly cover a story or be emphathetic to those views, to what some people have been through?” a female Latino makeup editor asked.
Having been there means not just speaking the language, although that’s part of it, but knowing the culture and developing sources. Wrote a white female desk editor from Southern California, “Several of our minority reporters and editors have produced excellent stories generated by close contacts with the minority communities. Those contacts are nearly impossible to cultivate for an outsider.”
“Access is often critical,” a male Hispanic reporter agreed. “Access across racial and cultural barriers is difficult and can lead to an inaccurate or misinformed story. It’s the newspaper’s job to help a community communicate across those barriers, and a culturally diverse news staff can help accomplish that.”
Interpreting the news, understanding the news and knowing who to talk to outside of city hall – all these are supposed to be basic functions of a “good” journalist. Many of these journalists say, however, that those basics are getting more complicated in a more diverse society. “Accessibility and empathy play a major role in the gathering of information to present the reader a full picture,” a white male photographer from Texas. “It is a rare journalist that can cross completely the racial and social barriers associated with so many issues. The human element cannot be ignored, and to provide a balanced picture, a newsroom must be balanced.”
Finally, some minority journalists warned that balancing the newsroom should not mean another newspaper industry quick fix – hiring minorities to cover minorities while the rest of the paper goes on as before. One of the issues that raises the greatest resentment among some minority journalists is the assumption that because they are black or Asian or Latino, they are fit only to cover ethnic issues. “So why do they always send minority reporters to cover urban riots?” one black woman from Cleveland asked pointedly.
“I am insulted by the notion that only minorities can adequately cover minority news,” a female Asian American wrote from Los Angeles. “You don’t have to be black to cover poverty in the ghetto; you don’t have to be Asian to cover immigration problems; you don’t have to be Latino to cover gang violence. And you also don’t have to be white to cover major city, state and national stories.”
It is not uncommon for newsroom managers to assume that minorities are interested in covering ethnic communities. Some are. Other minority reporters sometimes are suspected of having gotten too cozy, too invested in the minority communities and issues they cover. Newsroom managers should take care not to make assumptions in either direction. “I have seen minority reporters assigned to certain stories because of language or serious cultural reasons,” an Asian woman from New York wrote. “Sometimes this can be helpful, as long as the reporter is not pigeon-holed. Caucasian reporters are not usually questioned about their objectivity, and minority reporters – if good journalists – should not be questioned about their ability to be fair just because of their race.”
From this discussion of the value of ethnicity in the newsroom from many of those closest to the subject, some conclusions and concerns should be clear. The rapidly and radically changing American demography requires that American newspapers, if they are to retain audience, must just as quickly and radically change in their definitions of news, audience and coverage. Hiring journalists of color has more benefit for newspapers than simply as a line on the newsroom manager’s end-of-year MBO form. Not only are minority journalists people, too, they are journalists, too, and potentially invaluable assets in newspapers’ efforts to remain relevant and useful to the evolving communities and society they serve.

Coverage Questions: “Those who don’t see themselves reflected”
A variety of studies of minority coverage and content in newspapers over the past several decades has made the following points:
1. That in sheer volume, general news content about people of color in this country tends to account for between 3 percent and 6 percent of the total newshole;2
2. That much of what coverage there is about minorities in newspapers is negative – drugs, crimes, arrests and failures; some studies have made the point that the media serve to perpetuate failure by showing minorities predominantly in a very negative light;3
3. When the news media do portray people of color in positive circumstances, it tends to be as an anomaly, a minority who made something positive of his or her life out of a sea of negatives, thus reinforcing the idea that most minorities fail.4
Other content studies have shown generally that, in the years since the Kerner Commission placed a large part of the blame for the urban violence of 1967 at the door of the newspaper business, newspaper coverage of minorities is still very much separate and unequal.5
Respondents to this survey were asked to assess their own newspapers’ performance in this area, on the premise that those who cover the news in a community may have some thought about its emphasis and direction. Although these results don’t amount to any kind of scientific evaluation of the performance of the newspapers for whom these 1,328 journalists work, it may be taken as an in-house referendum.
In the previous section, both white and nonwhite respondents discussed the importance of reaching out to the community. This question asked them simply, “How well do you think your newspaper covers minority communities and issues within your coverage area?”
The respondents broke along racial lines, as Table 53 indicates, with whites generally thinking their papers’ local coverage of minorities was pretty good and nonwhites finding it pretty bad. Most whites – about 41 percent – said they think their papers cover minorities “pretty well,” while most minority journalists – about 48 percent – say the coverage is “marginal”; nearly a quarter of minority respondents said their papers’ coverage was poor. That is

________________________________________________________________________
TABLE 53: Journalists’ judgment of their papers’ coverage of minority issues, by race, in percentages

Q. How well do you think your newspaper covers minority communities and issues within your coverage area?

W M All
Very Well 9.6 3.8 7.6
Pretty Well 40.7 25.2 35.5
Marginally 39.3 47.7 42.2
Poorly 10.4 23.2 14.7

Composite responses
Very/Pretty Well 50.3 29.0 43.1
Marginally/Poorly 49.7 70.9 56.9

N=1311; X2=70.265; d.f.=3; p=.0000; Missing = 17
________________________________________________________________________
not to say that whites think their newspapers’ are going a great job in this area; in the composite responses, about half of whites said coverage was marginal or poor, compared to almost 71 percent of minorities. Whites were, however, about three times as likely as their nonwhite co-workers to say they thought their papers covered minority communities and concerns “very well.”
One black male reporter from the Southeast explained white perceptions of coverage issues this way: “Whites sometimes don’t see this [coverage] as important because their subconscious sees their reflection – white males – often in the paper,” he said. “It becomes a problem to those who don’t see themselves reflected.”
A black reporter for one of the country’s largest papers said coverage is a priory upstairs, but not in the trenches. “The top managers seem to be sensitive to coverage issues, but there are many middle managers who push coverage just to satisfy their bosses, not because it’s the right thing to do,” she said.
Table 54 indicates the break-down of responses on newspaper content and coverage of minority issues by both race and gender. Overall, there is a slight (4-point) gender gap, the product entirely of some disagreement between minority men and women over just how poor or marginal newspaper performance is. White men and women agree; in the composite responses, about half say their papers’ coverage is very or pretty good and half say it’s marginal or poor. A gender gap does exist among Latinos and African Americans, with women in both groups saying they think coverage is 8 percent to 10 percent worse than men in those groups. Although between two-thirds and three-quarters of all minority journalists in the study rated



Table 54
their newspapers’ coverage of minority issues marginal or poor, black men were most outspoken; almost one-third said coverage was poor.
A Native American desk editor, working for mid-sized Southwestern daily in a major urban area with large Latino and black populations, commented, “African Americans, who are regularly shut out from newspapers, rightfully demand more coverage. Our paper, like so many others, is 99% white bread.”
In examining responses to this question by circulation size, a pattern develops in white assessment of newspaper coverage of minority issues, as Table 55 shows. White journalists’ assessment of press performance rises by nearly 50 percent from the smallest circulation category to the largest, from a 43 percent very/pretty good rating to about 65 percent. Does this indicate white judgment that larger papers really do a better job of covering minorities? Their nonwhite colleagues don’t think so; across all four circulation categories, two-thirds to three-quarters of minority respondents say coverage is marginal or poor. At the two middle circulation levels, minorities’ assessment is worse than at the largest or smallest circulation levels, while white journalists at the 100,000-250,000 level seem to think their papers’ coverage somewhat better than than white colleagues at the 250,000 to 500,000 level.
Commented an Asian male photographer from the Midwest, “I talk about this often with co-workers in the newsroom. Sometimes it feels like talking to a rock – they just don’t understand what I saying.
“We have a long way to go at this paper before the news really reflects what’s happening in the community,” he said.

TABLE 55

CHAPTER 9 – REDEFINING AMERICA’S NEWS
NOTES

1. Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), p. xi.
2. See, for example, Carolyn Martindale, “Coverage of Black Americans in Four Major Newspapers, 1950-1989,” Newspaper Research Journal, 11 (3): 96-112; Carolyn Martindale, The White Press in Black America. (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1986); Carolyn Martindale, “Changes in Newspaper Images of Black Americans, Newspaper Research Journal, 11 (1): 40-50, Winter 1990; Carolyn Martindale, “Coverage of Black Americans in Five Newspapers Since 1950,” Journalism Quarterly, 62:324-325 (Summer 1985); Edward C. Pease, “Kerner Plus 20: Minority News Coverage in the Columbus Dispatch,” Newspaper Research Journal, 10 (3): 17-37, (Spring 1989); Michael Ryan and Dorothea Owen, “A Content Analysis of Metropolitan Newspaper Coverage of Social Issues,” Journalism Quarterly, 53:4 (Winter 1976), pp. 634-647; Paula B. Johnson, David O. Sears and John B. McConahay, “Black Invisibility: The Press and the Los Angeles Riot,” American Journal of Sociology, 76:4, p. 707, 712; Thom Lieb, “Protest at the POST: Coverage of Blacks in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine,” presented to the Minorities in Communication Division of AEJMC, 1988 National Convention, Portland, July 1988.
3. Ibid; Marilyn E. Gist, “Minorities in Media Imagery: A social cognitive perspective on journalistic bias,” Newspaper Research Journal, 11 (3): 52-62 (Summer 1990).
4. Gist, ibid.
5. For example, see a report from the Multicultural Management Program, “Analyzing Multicultural Content,” 1989. (University of Missouri); David Shaw, “Negative News and Little Else,” Los Angeles Times, December 11, 1990, p. 1; David Shaw, “Newspapers Struggling to Raise Minority Coverage,” Los Angeles Times, December 12, 1990. (Four-part series December 11-14, 1990.)

Pease: “Still the Invisible People” Ch 8: Would You Want Your Kid Doing This?

“Still the Invisible People”
Job Satisfaction of Minority Journalists at U.S. Daily Newspapers
By Edward C. Pease (©1991)

Doctoral Dissertation
E.W Scripps School of Journalism
Ohio University • Athens, Ohio

CHAPTER 8—Would You Want Your Kids Doing This Job?

Journalism is fun. It’s exciting. It seductively powerful. It’s ego-gratifying. And, as J-school teachers tell students, it’s an excuse to mind other people’s business.

At an early 1990 meeting on retaining minority journalists held at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, an Asian American reporter for Reuters News Service was talking about her 18-year-old daughter, who recently had entered college. Like many freshmen, her daughter was shiny and excited with her new experiences; she thought she wanted to go into journalism. The Reuters reporter sighed. She was terribly ambivalent about the prospect of her daughter entering journalism, she said; it’s an awfully tough business, and if she herself had it to do over, she wasn’t sure she would.

Perhaps the ultimate test of anyone’s judgment of a thing is whether they would recommend it to someone they love. Would you want your parents or your kids or your sister to partake of this or experiment with that? Answering “Yes” is an ultimate vote of confidence. Which parts of your own life would you really recommend to your children – Your college? Your first marriage? Where you live? The car you drive? Your profession?

Based on the comments of that Reuters writer in Florida, this survey asked newspaper journalists to vote on their profession. The question asked, “Would you want your child to go into newspaper journalism as a career?” and then asked respondents to explain their answers. If those who work in a profession are its best ambassadors, these responses may give some indication of why the newspaper business is having trouble finding new recruits. From these responses, newspapers looking for fresh, smart talent should bolt the doors and not let their newsroom employees out of the building.

Some respondents said they had no kids; others wrote they didn’t want any kids. Still others checked neither yes nor no, writing instead that the decision would be entirely their child’s, which were coded as a “yes.”

Despite the enthusiasm for the profession they expressed in a 90 percent satisfaction rating (see Table 24), newspaper journalists are just as ambivalent on this question as that Reuters correspondent in St. Petersburg. Only half say they’d want their children to follow them into the newspaper business. Like the Reuters reporter, journalists at American newspapers waffle when asked to recommend the profession to their children. And there are only small differences by race: About 56 percent of white journalists and 51 percent of minority journalists say they’d want their kids to go into newspaper journalism careers. Respondents to the summer 1990 survey of California Latino journalists in both print and broadcast also demonstrated ambivalence on this question: About half answered “Maybe” when asked if they would want their child to become a journalist; 34 percent said yes.1

In this study, however, newspaper journalists weren’t given the “maybe” way out, expressing their ambivalence in a tie. If the 54 percent-to-46 percent results on this question were election totals, we could call this 8 percent plurality a near-landslide victory for the newspaper profession, but as a career recommendation, such ambivalence indicates the newspaper profession a sorry loser among those who practice it.

Those who say they would want their kids in the newspaper business offer some predictable and genuine reasons why. The newspaper supporters fall generally into two camps: The Good-Timers, those who think newspaper work is “as much fun as you can have with your clothes on. And get paid for,” as a white female reporter from Missouri wrote; and the Altruists, those who think newspapering is important work necessary for the democracy – “Journalism offers an opportunity for work that makes the world better,” as a black religion writer from California said.

Those who say they would not want their children to pursue newspaper careers also fall generally into two groups. One group is the Burnouts, those who cite stress, long hours, lack of advancement, poor salaries and strain on family as unbearable. This white male Southern reporter with 18 years in the business is representative: “This business destroys families. Satisfying, well-paid jobs are few, competition is backbreaking, management is insensitive, hours are long and stress is high.” The other nay-sayers are the Doomsters, who see newspapers dying off within a generation because of declining readership, the impact of electronic news media, corporatization and newspapers’ failure to adapt to a changing society. The words “dying,” “decline,” “failing,” “dwindling,” “doom” and “extinction” run through these journalists’ comments: “Will there be newspapers in 25 years?” an African American woman from Cleveland asked succinctly. “It’s a dying business!” wrote a white male reporter from California who, after 10 years in the business and a graduate degree, says he’s unlikely to be in the newsroom in five years. “Being a newspaper reporter is like being a cowboy on a dinosaur ranch,” he said.

For minority journalists, the question assumes additional aspects. Wrote a black man reporter in his late 30s, “Unless you’re a white male, there’s no point. Your ideas are not respected and multiculturalism is a farce. Perhaps, as newspapering’s ivory (I emphasize the color ivory) tower sinks farther into irrelevance to U.S. society, this will change, but probably too late to save newspapers.”

Broken down along gender lines, race lines and circulation lines, newspaper journalism is only a marginal winner at best in this straw poll, as Tables 51 and 52 indicate. Women overall, largely on the optimism of white women, are more supportive than men of the idea of their children pursuing newspaper careers, but only slightly, as Table 51 shows. White women are strongest on the question, nearly 63 percent answering yes; among women, Latinos are least enamored of the idea, nearly 52 percent saying they would not want their kids in newspapers. But Asian American men are the most negative about having their children follow in their footsteps – almost 57 percent said they would not want their children to pursue newspaper careers. Other men are marginally supportive of their kids trying newspapers, with black and Hispanic men slightly more positive than whites.

The vote among minority journalists on this question improves somewhat as circulation levels increase, as Table 52 indicates. The 60 percent “No” vote by journalists of color at smaller newspapers is consistent with other findings of dissatisfaction at this level; that negativity decreases by about 14 percentage points among minorities at the largest papers in the sample, perhaps a function of better salaries and other working condition factors.

TABLE 51 here

White respondents basically are unchanged across circulation categories, with slightly more than half at newspapers of all sizes saying they would want their children to pursue newspaper journalism as a career.
________________________________________________________________________
TABLE 52: Would you want your child to go into newspaper journalism as a career? by race and circulation, in percentages

250,000- 100,000- 50,000-
500,000+ 500,000 250,000 100,000
W M W M W M W M All
Yes 55.3 53.9 57.3 54.8 54.1 47.2 56.5 40.0 54.1
No 44.7 46.1 42.7 45.2 45.9 52.8 43.5 60.0 45.9

N=1193; X2=7.103; d.f.=7; p=.5256 (NS); Missing = 135
________________________________________________________________________

Taken as a whole, the responses to this question are very troubling for the newspaper industry. Given human nature, it is perhaps not surprising that so many journalists in this survey voiced such great satisfaction with their choice of a career in newspapers (see Table 24); it would be difficult for anyone to confront the alternative, to say that his or her career had been a disappointing waste of time and energy. Further, despite the tendency of newsroom staffers to complain – “Journalists are professional kvetchers,” observes a white male West Coast feature writer in his 40s – it also is a human tendency to be as positive as possible about the situation in which one finds oneself.

Given those positive responses on the satisfaction scale, then, how should we interpret these responses, indicating so little support for the newspaper industry? Why would so many journalists who expressed such a high degree of personal satisfaction in their career choices switch to such negativity when asked whether they would recommend the field to their own children? Perhaps they think it’s too late for them to make a change. Or maybe they see only a few more good years in the profession before it slips quietly into inconsequence and is delivered to what one copy editor called the “graveyard for newspapers and other dinosaurs.” In any case, whether the nay-sayers base their advice to their children not to enter newspaper journalism on the profession’s poor working conditions or on its dismal future, the fact that nearly half of all newsroom rank-and-file vote no on this question sends a very scary message to the industry. If so many working newspaper people would tell those most important to them to pursue other fields, what message would they send to others in the society, to audiences in high school auditoriums, to candidates at job fairs, to strangers’ children?

Understanding why

Because so many of the 1,328 respondents to this survey took the time to explain their answers to the question regarding whether they’d want their children in newspapers, it is useful to review some of their open-ended comments. These statements offer some compelling insights into the morale, thought processes and priorities of those who populate American newspaper newsrooms. Their explanations of why they voted yes or no to this question tell much about how they feel about their profession, much more than the empirical results of responses to dichotomous questions or on five-point scales. These responses show where American journalists live, what’s important to them in their professional and personal lives as issues that most affect their work, how they evaluate newspaper performance and mission.

Some critics of newspaper industry efforts to “fix” shortcomings in coverage and content of all segments of society have suggested that simply hiring new troops will do little to alter performance if the troops remain powerless to effect change. For all newsroom professionals, as the discussions in this section illustrate, powerlessness is a central issue in their evaluation of whether they would recommend the profession to others. Many of these respondents took the opportunity in answering this whether they would want their children to follow them into the business to talk about their sense of powerlessness, of inability to control their lives.

THE YES VOTES

Anyone who’s taken a journalism history class or an intro to mass communication course knows the philosophical reasons for going into journalism. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, the marketplace of ideas, the watchdog on government. Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein. John Paul Zenger, Joseph Pulitzer, Ida Tarbell and Edward R. Murrow. Surveillance of the environment, entertainment, information, commentary on society. With some self-righteousness, journalists tell themselves they go into journalism to do good, to help the little guy, to serve the community and to right wrongs. Further, anyone who’s been in a newsroom knows the other part of the attraction: Journalism is fun. It’s exciting. It seductively powerful. It’s ego-gratifying. And, as newswriting teachers tell students, it’s an excuse to mind other people’s business, a license to ask strangers questions about intimate or deeply personal parts of their lives, a chance to crusade for Good. It is an opportunity for people who love language to use their writing skills in a stimulating environment, to see their words and names in print and to perform a critical function in society under the moral imprimatur of the First Amendment. Journalists have plenty of reason to feel good about themselves, as those who said they support their children’s choice of a newspaper career explain. Those respondents break down into the Good-Timers and the Altruists.

The Good-Timers

“It’s as much fun than you can have with your clothes on.
And get paid for.”

– White female reporter, late 30s
250,000 Midwestern metro

The profession traditionally has attracted free-thinkers, individualists, artists and poets. One senses that many of these are Good-Timers, journalists for whom newspaper work is fun and personally satisfying. For many, journalism was a way for new college graduates to apply their otherwise unmarketable BAs in English, art, political science or photography. These liberally educated college graduates discovered that newspapers would let them exercise the skills they loved while providing an alternative to being a starving poet or artist. Good-Timers enjoy their work mightily; they love language and ideas, they like people, they find writing and interviewing an excuse for being nosey and chasing gossip; they like knowing what’s going on in the world.

One African American former reporter-turned-educator says, “I know what I’d tell my son [who’s 2]: Newspapers are fun. They never really told me that at Indiana.”2 A journalism educator who exchanged the classroom for the newsroom after six years as a copy editor said, “I miss it. After three years in the classroom, I’ve gotten into the academic rhythm. I enjoy my teaching and my students benefit from my professional experience. But some days I wish I could read the wire again.”3

For these former journalists and those in this survey, the fun, excitement and challenge of newspaper journalism more than make up for its shortcomings. “It takes absolute dedication, and family life suffers,” wrote a white male sports editor from the West Coast, “but it’s satisfying, challenging and exciting. The pay isn’t what it should be, and the hours are hell on social and family considerations, but still, it’s a hell of a life. I enjoy going to work.”

A black female metro reporter working on the East Coast agreed that the profession’s pluses outweight its minuses. “I still think journalism can be fun, educational, challenging and rewarding,” she said. “It is one business in which people are paid to explore the world and have fun with words. Every business is going to have racism and sexism.”

“At its best,” a 45-year-old Asian features writer commented, “the newspaper business is exciting and provide a daily sense of accomplishment. I’m in it because I like to tell stories. I get paid to do what I like to do.”

“Many days I can’t believe I get paid to do this,” a Midwestern desk editor agreed. And a 29-year-old Latino reporter from Texas wrote, “Most journalists I know actually like their work. How many professionals can make a similar boast?” To which a New York copy editor supplied amplification: “It has its creative elements and satisfaction factor (e.g., my dentist says most dentists hate what they do).”

“It’s exciting, rewarding and something different happens every day,” a white female sports reporter said. Various others added: “Beats banking” or “Beats driving a truck. I think.” Said others, “Alternative to gangs or the Green Berets,” “Every day is different,” “fulfilling, exciting, life experiences” and “fun and socially useful.” “It’s never boring,” a white, 38-year-old female feature writer concluded.

Many respondents commented on the personal growth benefits of a newspaper career: “It’s a lifetime of exposure to fascinating aspects of life and affords one infinite opportunities for self-discovery,” a white women features writer wrote. A Northwest city hall reporter in her 30s agreed: “For 10 years, it’s been incredibly fulfilling for me. I’ve learned a lot, grown as a person and in my craft. I love it.”

“If my child chose journalism as a career, it would mean he or she has a love of language, a thirst for information and a working brain,” a Texas metro editor wrote. “It’s not mindless work.” A copy editor for a Midwestern metro agreed:

I believe journalists are intelligent, thoughtful, well educated and generally motivated by a sense of fairness. They think clearly and succinctly and make good conversationalists. Those are things I want for my child. And although I believe most journalists bring these qualities with them to start with, I really think journalism education and newspaper work develop them.

Many of the comments of the Good-Timers blur their border with the Altruists. For a great many reporters, after all, newspaper work is a license to do what you like to do and perform good works at the same time. For example, this Missouri reporter explained why he’d like his child in newspapers: “To help people, to right wrongs. And because journalism is a hell of a good time.”

“It’s many jobs in one: news coverage, education, a creative outlet, ‘do-gooder’ and still a sense of being able to change some small part of the world,” wrote a white female reporter in her late 30s from her paper in Tennessee. A black male sports desk editor with more than 10 years in the business agreed that this is an important part of what he would hope for for his children: “Because of what they could gain individually and be able to give back to society as a reporter/writer/ journalist.” And an Asian American reporter in the Northeast said, “On the right newspaper, journalism can offer a closeup view of current history. It’s an exciting, relevant profession and important for a free society.”

This combination of personal satisfaction and involvement in an institution critical to society makes journalism the best possible profession, many concluded, both fun and useful. “Reporting is honest, wonderfully creative work that forces people to be engaged in their world and communities,” a white reporter from the Pacific Northwest wrote. “It’s important stuff.” Others agree. “Few fields place an equal premium on truth, honesty and fairness,” a Pennsylvania metro reporter in his late 30s wrote. “The press is arguably the most important institution in a democracy.”

The Altruists

“This is one of the few career where you can still work your conscience.
Not many jobs offer that.”

– Black male desk editor, 40s
East Coast

This was a common theme among the comments of those classified here as Altruists, people who cite journalism’s importance to society as the primary reason for wanting their children in the profession. “It’s a wonderful way to perform a public service while constantly learning new things,” a white Southern woman wrote. “Newspapers are extremely important to a free society.” Even so, after more than 10 years as a reporter, she said she’s leaving the business to go to law school.

“It’s a critical public service,” one respondent wrote. Said another, “I still consider it a noble profession,” to which another added, “despite the negatives.”

“This is one of the few career where you can still work your conscience. Not many jobs offer that,” a black desk editor wrote. “Still a battlefield for underdogs, justice.” A female Hispanic reporter for an Eastern metro added, “It’s intellectually challenging. You can expose injustice at times and sometimes make someone’s life better.”

Said a female features editor in her 40s, “If his talents and interests are suited to the profession, I would want him to pursue journalism because I want journalism in the hands of people who seek and tell truth, and he is such a kid.” On that same theme, the father of a 7-year-old boy wrote, “It’s an honest, socially useful profession, but needs more honest, ethical participants.”

Altruists also pointed to other values of newspaper journalism: “Few careers allow an individual to influence the local and national agenda,” said one black woman. Said others, “impact society,” “help people,” “public service,” “vital to society,” “make social change.”

Still others saw their children as soldiers in the fight to provide nonwhite perspectives in the news and to help empower minority communities. Wrote a Hispanic metro reporter from Washington, D.C., “It is critical that Latinos and other minorities increase their numbers in journalism.” An African American reporter from Austin, Texas, agreed: “Only rugged determination and sacrifice will improve the climate for minority journalists and only by increasing our numbers will we have foot soldiers to fight for change from within.”

An African American features editor in his 40s had a more personal reason for wanting his children to follow him into the profession: “I will need workers at my newspaper when I own it,” he said, “and we need many more minorities in the business.” And a black female copy editor from the South said her children could do a job that whites cannot: “I think it’s essential that minorities be represented on newspaper staffs and that they cover their own communities as well as other assignments,” she said. “They have an expertise that is unmatched by even the best white writer.”

Finally, echoing the charge of the Hutchins Commission regarding the press’s obligation to give voice to the concerns of representative groups in society, a Latino metro reporter in his mid-30s thoughtfully summed up what many others said about newspapers’ mission and responsibility in a diverse culture. He wrote,

I am a firm believer in public service. Moreover, if American journalism ever is to become an institution reflective of our increasingly diverse society, it must recruit more people of color. And if my child could help provide sensitivity and perspective to the white-male-dominated profession of journalism, then I would be all for her or his entry into the career, especially given the disgusting percentage of minority journalists in American.

THE NAY-SAYERS

The problems fall into two categories: 1. Working conditions – salary, long hours, high stress, feelings of lack of respect and wide-ranging unhappiness with management. 2. Fears that newspapers are dying.

Any industry that elicits a vote of no-confidence from its rank-and-file has to take some serious looks at its structure, procedures and premises. Nearly half of American journalists – 45.6 percent – say the costs outweigh the benefits; even given the potential personal and moral perks described above, they would steer their children into other professions. The problem areas? According to these 548 journalists who say they wouldn’t want their children in newspapers, the problems fall into two broad categories: 1.) working conditions – salary, long hours, high stress, feelings of lack of respect and autonomy, and wide-ranging unhappiness with the quality of newsroom management; and 2.) fears that newspapers are dying, that economic, social and industry changes place newspapers in their waning years as an American institution.

For convenience, let’s roughly categorize these in-house industry critics as the Burnouts and the Doomsters.

Complaints about stress, hours and salary are traditional and legion in the newsroom; those factors are one reason newspapering is known as a young person’s profession (see Table 6). Two-thirds of journalists who say they’d counsel their children not to join the industry cite these traditional working-condition complaints about newspapers. One journalism historian who spent about 15 years in the newsroom before making the switch to academia in his late 30s said he’ll never regret his time as a reporter and knows what he’d counsel his son about entering the business: “I’d tell him to do it for a while,” he said. “It’s great preparation for just about anything else. But I’d never go back. And I’d sure never want to grow old there.”4 Many current journalists feel the same. “I’m glad I pursued it,” said an African American reporter in Cleveland with 12 years’ experience, “but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

The other 37 percent of the nay-sayers – the Doomsters – cite more fundamental doubts about the industry as a whole as their reasons for not wanting their children to pursue newspaper careers. These 203 journalists say the industry is dying, or at least changing under economic pressures and corporate influences to such a degree that newspapers of the future will no longer perform those important functions that attracted them originally. For journalists who might once have Good-Timers, the remark of one white male reporter in his 40s – the age when most American journalists start thinking about career changes – is illustrative: “The profession is not idiosyncratic anymore,” he said. “Less room for eccentrics and oddballs. Less commitment to raising hell.” A white photographer in his 50s with more than 30 years in the profession agreed: “It’s no longer fun!” he said.

Beyond being less fun than it once was, these journalists said, newspaper prospects are dim. “Newspapers are a dying breed. In the next 20 years there will be few newspapers,” a 47-year-old white male features editor wrote. And, as another nail in the industry’s coffin, he added, “Americans are getting their news from TV.”

Perhaps most chilling about these responses of both the Burnouts and the Doomsters is that they come from the whole spectrum of newsroom employees. It cannot be said, for instance, that white male rank-and-file reporters in the early 30s with between five and eight years’ experience at two or three papers are most at risk; the nay-sayers’ club is open to everyone without regard for race, creed, experience level, gender or geography. The 548 journalists in this study who say they wouldn’t want their children to follow them into the industry are as diverse a group as people in newspaper newsrooms can be: about half white, half nonwhite; in their 20s to their 60s; working for both 50,000- circulation papers and 1 million-circulation giants; beginning reporters and seasoned veterans; women and men; Texans, Oregonians, Long Islanders, Illini and Floridians.

A closer examination of the nay-sayers’ open-ended comments on this question reveals a broad array of concerns.

The Burnouts

“If you get out before you’re 30 or 35, you can always get a real job later
– go to law school or something and then have a life.”

– Black female newsroom manager, early 30s
East Coast 500,000+ metro

Most of those – 63 percent – who answered “no” to this question about their children’s future pointed to environmental conditions in newspapers or structural characteristics in the industry that, they say, make their day-to-day lives miserable. They might be described as Fallen Altruists or former Good-Timers who’ve allowed their dues to lapse. As much as these 345 journalists might love writing and thinking, being involved and making a difference – the elements that first drew them to newspapering – other factors have gotten to be too much to bear. They wouldn’t wish this on their kids, they say.

A Midwestern white female copy editor with almost 10 years in the business echoed the sentiments of that Reuters reporter in St. Petersburg confronted by her daughter’s enthusiasm for newspaper work. “I’m ambivalent,” she wrote. “This can be a hugely rewarding business at its best. Unfortunately, it hits that place less and less often.”

Others agree. “While I enjoy my job and am happy with my career, if I had to start over now I’d pick another field,” wrote a mid-30s white female features editor for a mid-sized Southern daily. “The newspaper business is changing. The emphasis is on short info bites and graphics. If there’s no room for well-researched, comprehensive, well-written stories, there’s not much point in going into newspaper journalism. Unless, of course, you want to be a copy editor or a graphics artist.”

This sense of having had the ground-rules of newspaper journalism change on them was echoed by many of these journalists. “I’m not sure it’s as challenging and rewarding as I once thought,” reflected a white West Coast metro desk manager with more than 20 years in the business. A Native American local news editor, himself a second-generation journalist, wrote that he was disillusioned and dissatisfied after more than 10 years in the profession. “Politics, TV journalism, ass-kissing,” he wrote. “My father, who is about to retire, has worked at newspapers for nearly 50 years. He taught me to be a strong, unapologizing, righteous, responsible journalist. That amounts to nothing today.”

A black woman reporter in her 30s, working for one of the nation’s largest dailies, sees newspaper work as a preliminary to something else. “It’s a good way to learn about the world for someone young and without children,” she said. “If you get out before you’re 30 or 35, you can always get a real job later – go to law school or something and then have a life.” A black female newsroom supervisor at the same paper, who’s also in that precarious 30-to-35 age-range, also advised her child to look to other fields: “Not sure newspapers will be around; lawyers and doctors will,” she said. A white, 30-something business reporter from the Pacific Northwest had another suggestion: “Would prefer they have a more saleable skill,” he said, “like engineering.” From California, a white male sports reporter in his 40s sounded a different version of the same theme: “I think he has some mechanical aptitude, so I’m hoping he will be a plumber and support me in my old age.”

Newspapers early and then get out – that’s the ticket, said an Asian American metro reporter in her mid-30s who says she’s unlikely to remain with her 320,000-circulation California paper. “It’s a good career for young adults, but because of limited advancement possibilities and poor pay, I would not discourage my children from changing careers by their mid-30s,” she said.

“It is a marvelous, wonderfully diverse experience for a younger person,” agreed a white male photographer from Texas with more more than 10 years in the business. “But I would advise my child to have other career aspirations at ready for the burnout invariably experienced at the 7- to 10-year mark of a journalist’s career.”

Issues of Race in Choosing Newspaper Careers

For journalists of color, newspapers too often fall short of their mandate to serve all of society. “Newspapers are strange by nature of the fact that while they are watchdogs of prejudice in society, behind closed doors racism and sexism are extremely prevalent and there seems to be no recourse.” Agreed a West Coast city desk editor, “The business isn’t ready for African Americans who bring diversity of thought to the job.”

For some, the burden of being a minority in the white newspaper industry is one they would hesitate to wish on their children. “This is a difficult question,” wrote a black reporter in her 30s. “I’m tempted to answer yes because of the rewards offered by the career and the opportunity it presents to change stereotypical perceptions of minorities. But I don’t think I want my child to go through the same kind of newsroom struggles I’ve encountered and the frustrations I’ve had because higher-ups (white decision-makers) don’t share your views or understand your ideas because of their background.” A black editorial writer also said she’d hesitate to urge her child to fight the same battles. “I envision that newspapers will be no better at valuing diversity then than they are today,” she wrote. And another, a black reporter in Chicago with more than 10 years’ experience, answered this way: “Unless the percentage of minorities in the business increases, I would much prefer they go into some other profession and succeed for what they do and who they are, not be thwarted for their skin color.”

The key word to tell your children about careers in newspapers is “No,” an African American city reporter in the Southeast said. “No, no, no and No,” she wrote. “No money. No respect. No cultural diversity. Narrow-mindedness of editors who are groomed to be that way. No opportunity to advance. I would encourage my child, if he or she was determined to be in this business, to buy his or her own newspaper!”

An Asian American reporter in Washington, D.C., agreed. “Race is always a problem. It’ll hold you back no matter what your experience or background.”

And for all persons of color, an African American newsroom supervisor in the Midwest said, progress is slow at best. “Working at a newspaper is a humbling experience for a person of color,” he said. “Newspapers perpetuate stereotypes, distort reality in many cases and rarely appreciate diversity. Unless you can be satisfied with very small victories, infrequent though they might be, you might be better off trying a different profession.”

Frustrations with the Two Ms – Money and Mismanagement

Most of those in the Burnout category simply scrawled a dollar sign or other pithy epithets next to the question asking them to explain why they wouldn’t want their children to try newspapering. “It doesn’t pay the bills,” wrote one. “$, low satisfaction, publishers’ attitude of pushing profits over product,” said another. “Dead end.” “No family life.” “Personal toll.” “Stress stress stress.” “No security.” “It takes an incredible personal toll.” “Stress, $$$, satisfaction.” “Too much pressure. Pay not good enough. Too many injustices.” “No advancement.” “Hectic hours, poor pay.” “I’d tell him, ‘Your mother and I used to be married.’” “It runs you ragged.” “Miserable quality of life, and for what?” “Too little regard for the legitimate concerns, needs and fulfillment of people.” “Too little $. Too much frustration. Too many assholes.”

A 10-year veteran city hall reporter, a white male from a mid-sized Western daily, described his daily sense of being trapped. “Too few opportunities in better-paying slots; low pay, high exploitation in entry-level slots,” he wrote. “Not a day goes by when I don’t wonder if there might be another career for me, but I know of none for which I am so well trained, skilled, independent and get paid.”

Other nay-sayers think there’s got to be something better out there, and many say they’re determined to find it, if not for themselves, then for their children. “The profession is changing much for the worse,” wrote a white female metro reporter for a Western metro. “It’s tougher and tougher to make a decent living in a business run by corporations whose decisions may not be in the best interests of the paper and the community. Exceedingly poor management in the whole industry.”

The blame for much of what’s wrong with newspapers in the 1990s is laid at the door of management. Poor people skills, lack of management training, lousy communication skills, knuckling under to corporate pressure and general insensitivity to the legitimate and mounting concerns of the rank-and-file – the troops are ripe for revolt. “Newspapers are one of this country’s most important institutions, and one of the worst-run,” a white male political reporter wrote. “The most pressing problem is the lack of management skills, especially human management.”

An African American metro reporter from Texas agrees. He says he’s thinking of leaving the business in the next five years. “Too many mediocre middle managers destroy the careers of young, talented minorities,” he said. “I don’t want my children to have to endure what I’ve had to, and seen others put through.”

Although individual managers often are the focus of the complaints of these journalists, the Burnouts realize that a new corporate mentality – management-by-objective devised by faceless, non-journalistic “suits” in distant corporate offices – has created structural changes in the industry that victimize local managers as much as front-line reporters.

“Structural changes – the never-ending chain ownership expansion and more publicly held companies – will continue to change the nature of the industry and drive down the number of available editorial positions and salaries,” a Midwestern reporter in his mid-30s wrote. “The bottom line is falling on top of reporters and editors.”

Others sounded the same theme. “While newspapers are populated with many intelligent and caring people,” a Latino reporter wrote, “the industry is structured in such a way as to make them – almost without exception – very exploitive of people who only want to do a good job and are not concerned with climbing the corporate ladder.”

And a white male makeup editor in his 40s, working for a Midwestern paper, concluded that, for his child and for himself, the joys no longer make up for the frustrations in a new corporate newspaper environment. He wrote:

At most newspapers, journalism takes second place to corporate profits. Gannett and Knight-Ridder are two examples. That has forced many good reporters and editors out of the business. People are promoted according to their politics – i.e., are they members of the good old boy clique. Merit, talent and skill no longer play a big role in promotions. This is a tough business, and the roads to the top are littered with obstacles, more often than not placed there by management. This profession once was dedicated to enlightening the public, but all too often falls miserably short. I think there are more enobling pursuits.

“The ascendancy of marketing”

This industry preoccupation with profit was common theme. “Greed, corporatization, Wall Street and timidity are ruining the newspaper industry,” wrote a white female metro reporter in her 40s. “We don’t have to worry about fighting for the First Amendment – we’re giving it away for profits.”

Although the economic downturn of late 1990 certainly helped focus rank-and-file resentment on management policies, many of the complaints of journalists who say they see bookkeepers where editors used to sit are not new. “There’s just too much influence by the bean-counters,” wrote a white male sports reporter in his late 30s. “Newspapers in the U.S. have always been a place where characters and character could flourish. We’ve lost that, maybe for good. It’s tougher and tougher now to be creative, to go after the sacred cows.”

A large part of these journalists’ declining satisfaction with their jobs has to do with the focus of modern newspapers and what a West Coast newsroom manager called “the ascendancy of marketing.” Many newsroom professionals feel that newspapers are being taken over by “narrow-minded, short-sighted advertising men in the cloak of journalism.”

“Too few of the positions in newspapers have much to do with journalism,” wrote a white female features editor who’s thinking about leaving the business after more than 10 years. “Bottom-line mentality is influencing too many editorial decisions. Little real writing occurs on newspapers; we’ve become purveyors of information that we carefully package.”

Many newspaper journalists react strongly to that issue of “packaging,” focusing on how pressures from the electronic media helped produce a new age of newspapers that bears little resemblance to the profession they once loved. Few of these reporters want their children forced into the soul-less uniformity of journalism’s equivalent of fast food, what more than one respondent called “the McPapering of the newspaper industry.”

“Newspapers across the country are emulating USA Today and that’s a travesty,” wrote a Native American desk editor in his late 20s, voicing a common industry theme. “TV-in-print is not responsible journalism but, sadly, it is fast becoming the norm.”

One white male newsroom manager who might be described as another “fallen Altruist,” says this conflict between newspapers as a business and newspapers as a medium for social commentary is at the core of the complaints of both those who are burning out on the profession and those who fear they’re presiding over the death of a national institution. That’s why he says he’d counsel his children to look elsewhere regardless of whether they want to do good, or simply to do well.

“Newspapers are likely to be less read, smaller and less influential in the future,” he wrote. “Also, creativity is evaporating as marketing ascends. If you want to look at powerful newsroom dynamics, consider the tensions and uncertainties created by the ascendancy of marketing versus news/entertainment/honest/guts values, and the steep decline of readership.”

This evaluation lies at the core of the Doomsters, journalists who think mistakes by the industry – such as corporatization – coupled with changing market realities and habits of American information consumers, will result in the death of U.S. newspapers in the next few decades.

The Doomsters

“How much longer will there be newspapers, really?
Being a newspaper reporter is like being a cowboy on a dinosaur ranch.”

– White male state news reporter, 30s
Mid-sized California metro

It seems unlikely that newspapers actually will disappear in the next generation, but that’s what hundreds of journalists say. More than a third – 37 percent – of the 548 newsroom professionals who say they wouldn’t want their children to go into the newspaper business think the medium might not survive. The mere fact that 203 journalists – 17 percent of all respondents – took the time to write about concerns over the future of the profession should be a strong signal to the industry about the level of morale in the newsroom trenches.

Regardless of whether newspapers really do die in the near future, the fact remains that many rank-and-file journalists would discourage their children from entering the profession on that basis and feel strongly enough about the issue to write comments about it. This one is typical: “I have no idea what the newspaper industry will be like when they finish college in 20 years,” a white female copy editor wrote. “The profession will be much different, if it still exists. But the future certainly doesn’t look very bright for newspapers.” An Asian American desk editor from a major East Coast metro agreed: “I worry deeply about the future of newspapers. They are going to have to change drastically or die a painful death. I fear it’s already too late.”

This should be a clarion warning bell to those running the industry. If widespread, perceptions that newspapers have no future undoubtedly will torpedo efforts to recruit and retain talented journalists, making it more likely that promising entry-level prospects and experienced journalists alike will opt out of the industry for greener and safer pastures.

“I think newspapers are a dying breed of communication,” wrote a black desk editor from Philadelphia. A white male photo editor at a major East Coast metro agreed: “The future of newspapers never looked gloomier.”

The image that emerges from these journalists’ comments is one of resignation. For many of these doom-sayers, the end of their own careers and the end of newspapers as a major mass medium in America will occur at about the same time. “The future of the business is murky at best,” said one reporter. “It’s an industry under threat of extinction,” another wrote. Several wondered if there will be newspapers by the time their children were ready to look for work. “Opportunities will shrink significantly by the time my 7-year-old is looking for a job,” said a white male business reporter in his 40s. “Newspapering represented upward mobility for me. It won’t for my kid.”

“By the time my children are old enough to start a career in newspaper journalism, newspapers will be fossils,” wrote a Florida sports copy editor. On the same theme, a Latino male with more than 10 years in the business wrote, “No future. Newspapers are dinosaurs.” And a third agreed. “These things are dinosaurs,” a San Francisco reporter said. “He’ll be taking his grandkids to museums to look at them [newspapers] much as we look at stagecoaches.”

Many others worried that fewer newspapers in the future would mean fewer good jobs and even less chance of getting ahead than there it today. “Newspapers are dwindling,” a white male copy editor for a Texas newspaper wrote. I would not want my child to face a career where chances are that there will be fewer chances to advance in other careers.” Said a black New York features writer, “Newspapers will be obsolete by the time he reaches adulthood. I would prefer a career where my child had a chance of reaching the top of the ladder; this one may not even have a ladder by then.” “No decent jobs. No future,” said another. “This industry is killing itself by not looking at the big picture,” a Hispanic sports editor wrote.

“There are too few newspapers now, and they are dying off,” a white female reporter for a major East Coast metro wrote. “This is not a medium with a future.” A West Coast reporter in his late 50s agreed: “This is a dying, irrelevant biz that has lost its soul.”

A black reporter for a Southern paper said she wouldn’t wish the experiences of her 10-plus years in the business on her children, if she had any. Further, she said, there is little opportunity. “1. No money. 2. No chance for advancement. 3. People don’t read anymore, so why suffer through 1 and 2?” she wrote.

“Readership is dying. Newspapers too. RIP.”

Many of these respondents point to declining readership as a sure sign that the industry has no future. “Newspapers are declining so rapidly in circulation and revenue that it will be extremely difficult to secure a good job or keep it,” wrote a white male science editor. “Most people 40 years of age and under do not read newspapers.” Further, a Pennsylvania desk editor said, because newspapers haven’t done a good job of attracting young readers, there may be an entire generation lost to the medium, which may be enough to do newspapers in for good. “I see newspapers having a difficult time of it in the future,” he wrote. “Illiteracy is common; kids I know spend little or no time reading newspapers. If it isn’t electronic, they’re not interested.”

Others sounded this same lament. “Newspapers are a dying breed,” a black female metro reporter in her late 20s said. “The habit of reading newspapers is not taught to current and future generations.” Another in her early 20s agreed that too few Americans have the newspaper habit. “I worry because so few people my age depend on newspapers. I think newspapers are vital, must continue. But without change, I’m not sure that will happen.” Summarized one reporter succinctly, “Readership is dying. Newspapers too. RIP.”

Some blame the rise of television, others blame mismanagement and newspapers’ misguided attempts to beat TV at its own game. “If newspapers don’t reassert themselves as news products and stop trying to be TV or civic PR and all the other things they’ve become, newspapers are doomed,” a copy editor at a major Midwestern metro said. A white male business editor on the West Coast agreed: “We seem determined to compete with TV on its terms, a battle we are destined to lose.”

Television certainly is one of the culprits, others agree. “Sadly, this business is dying,” a black sports reporter in his late 30s wrote. “Too much competition from TV – fewer people rely on newspapers as their primary source of news.”

That competition may hold the answer for many of these journalists. “I don’t think there’s really much future in the business say, 10 years from now. People just don’t read anymore; TV is the name of the game,” a 27-year-old black male GA reporter from Ohio wrote. An older, white colleague added, with resignation, “As much as I hate to say it, I’d advise my kid not to try newspapers. Newsgathering, yes. Newspapers, not sure.”

Said another, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but TV news media is a better opportunity.” A Latino business reporter from the Southeast agreed. “I think the days of the general circulation newspaper are gone,” she said. “People will receive all their information through radio or television. If my children wanted to be journalists, I’d head them in that direction.”

“It was once, believe it or not, a noble profession”

For some, newspapers’ decline has been a betrayal of a public trust. “McPapering,” happy news you can use, brights, TV journalism and endless contests have replaced what newspapers in America used to stand for, some journalists say. With its loss of a mandate in America’s democratic marketplace of ideas in favor of the marketplace of profit, the newspaper industry has lost its dignity and, some of these journalists say, taken their own dignity with it. “Changes in the industry and its dominant focus on money mean there’s less focus on high quality journalism and making a difference,” one journalist said.

Another, a white male feature writer from the Southeast, was unequivocal and eloquent on whether he would want his daughter to consider newspaper work. “NO!!” he wrote. “It’s not the 1970s anymore. Journalism today emphasizes trends – pithy, clever, short takes on a consumptive society and endless inconsequential updates on life style and not life substance. I always suspected, when I saw the power of Watergate-era journalism, that it was only a matter of time before corporations – whether through direct ownership or by the influence industry of ad firms and PR groups – bought thought. That has come to pass. Which is OK, as long as newspapers cling to their independence and fight, but they don’t. What newspapers need are editors; instead, what they have are MBAs. To tell my daughter plainly, ‘It was once, believe it or not, a noble profession.’ No more.”

As a result, a black female local news reporter from California wrote, “Newspaper journalism has become routine, dull, petty, boring. The public has diminishing faith in journalists, and maybe they should. Most people have no respect for what we do. There are no heroes in journalism anymore.”

“The newspaper industry is dying,” a white male reporter for a major Western metro wrote. “We’re no longer idealistic. We don’t want to educate or illuminate for the public. We want to entertain, like TV and USA Today. Newspapers have lost their values – now we’re run by the numbers crunchers and the new breed of editors are either scared or could care less.”
This sense that newspapers have lost the values on which they were founded, and for which many idealistic new college graduates want to enter the profession, is at the heart of many journalists’ uneasiness with the industry and their own roles in it. As one upper-level supervisor wrote, “I’m not very sure anymore what we’re selling in the marketplace of ideas.”

An Asian American desk editor in his 50s might have been thinking over the recommendations of the Hutchins Commission – particularly those about the press’s responsibility to present the goals and values of all members of society – when he explained why he wouldn’t urge his child into newspapers.

“The more I remain in this profession, the more I realize that newspapers rarely perform the very necessary function given them by the Constitution,” he wrote. “Most mainstream newspapers are merely the organs of establishment and guardians of the status quo, not the defenders of the few, the weak.”

• • •

NOTES: CHAPTER 8 – Would You Want Your Kids Doing This?

1. California Chicano News Media Association, “Latinos in California’s News Media: A Status Report,” presented to the CCNMA state convention, September 21, 1990, Part 1.
2. Personal communication with J. Frazier Smith, then a faculty member at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, Ohio University, after an eight-year career as a reporter and desk editor for the Cincinnati Enquirer and USA Today. March 14, 1991.
3. Ted Pease, “Still on the Beat (or would be): J educators value professional involvement and want more,” Newspaper Research Journal, 11 (4): 52-63 (Fall 1990), p. 53.
4. Personal communication, March 16, 1991. Journalism historian Patrick S. Washburn is assistant director and graduate coordinator at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, Ohio University. After a dozen years in newspapers, Washburn abandoned the newsroom to return to school, earn a Ph.D. and start a second career in teaching.

Pease: “Still the Invisible People” Ch 7: Getting Ahead

“Still the Invisible People”
Job Satisfaction of Minority Journalists at U.S. Daily Newspapers
By Edward C. Pease (©1991)

Doctoral Dissertation
E.W Scripps School of Journalism
Ohio University • Athens, Ohio

CHAPTER 7—Getting Ahead: Factors and Obstacles in Newsroom Advancement

Q: “What do you think is the single most important factor in advancement at your company?”

A: “It sure beats the hell out of me!”

– White male business reporter, late 30s
250,000+ metro daily

Perceptions are tricky. Ask anyone. ASNE’s Changing Face of the Newsroom study found some evidence of how perceptions can torpedo even the best of intentions. “Of particular concern to editors should be the disparity of opinion between newsroom managers and their staffs over the effectiveness of management and the quality of the newspaper,” writes ASNE’s Stinnett in an opening summary. “Editors don’t think feedback is a problem, but their underlings do. Managers think newsroom morale is higher than apparently it is.”1

In this study, newsroom managers also take considerable heat from respondents. In response to the question, “What do you think is the single most important factor in advancement at your company?” some wrote: “Who knows?” “I wish to hell I knew!!!” “Self-promotion.” and “Incompetence helps.” Such confusion and frustration over what it takes to get ahead should be a signal to newsroom managers that, however clear they think the criteria for advancement are, the message isn’t getting through. “It’s really hard to figure,” wrote one respondent; said another, “I truly cannot tell.” Unclear standards breed the kind of resentment and even contempt from the troops that prompted these kinds of responses to questions about what it takes to get ahead: “Servility, dishonesty and sycophancy,” a reporter in his early 40s wrote; “Willingness to subvert your journalistic ideals,” said another.

The previous section examined journalists’ desire for advancement and professional growth and their respective levels of ambition. Part of their assessment in deciding what jobs they might want and how likely it is that they’ll get them must be an understanding of what factors are most important in getting ahead. From the input of the ASNE study and comments of respondents to this survey, there seems to be not only confusion over what it takes to get ahead, but differences of opinion over what tends to hold journalists back in the ranks.
The ASNE study asked its respondents which of four factors was most important in advancement: merit, convenience, politics and seniority. Merit – which probably should be the answer but too seldom is – was the response of 39 percent of whites; 32 percent of whites said politics. Minorities were less trusting: 24 percent selected merit, but 58 percent of all minorities and 64 percent of blacks said politics was the overriding factor in getting ahead in American newsrooms.2

In this study, most white respondents – 41.9 percent – say they think advancement is based on individual merit/talent/skill and 31 percent answer personal politics, both results mirroring the ASNE responses four years before, as Table 45 shows. Again, minority respondents are less trusting – one said “naive”– than whites; 31 percent said advancement decisions were made on the basis of merit, but more – 43 percent – said it was newsroom politics. As in ASNE’s 1987 results, this is bad news for managers; much of the rank-and-file think personnel decisions are made capriciously; combine two related categories, and you have half of all respondents saying managers arrive at promotion, assignment and advancement decisions on the basis of newsroom politics or whatever’s most convenient.
________________________________________________________________________
TABLE 45: Factors in newsroom advancement, by race, in percentages

Q. What do you think is the single most important factor in advancement at your company?

1991 1987a
W M All W M All
Merit/talent/skills 41.9 30.8 38.1 39.0 24.0 39.0
Seniority 4.2 4.8 4.4 7.0 4.0 8.0
Race 1.3 4.8 2.4 -- -- --
Politics 31.0 43.3 35.1 32.0 58.0 33.0
Mgt convenience 16.4 13.7 15.5 21.0 15.0 21.0
Other* 5.3 2.7 4.4 -- -- --

1991 data: N=1311; X2=42.773; d.f.=5; p<.0001; Missing = 17 * Other = combination of factors ; others wrote, “Who knows?” and “I truly wish I knew.” a = 1987 data from 1987 ASNE Changing Face of the Newsroom study. That study did not include “Race” and “Other” options ________________________________________________________________________ Not surprisingly, since the newsroom repeatedly is referred to as an old boys’ club, women are even more critical of managers and the weight they apparently place on personal politics in newsroom advancement. Women overall see merit as much less a factor in advancement than do men, 28.1 percent to 40 percent (see Table 46). One Hispanic reporter from Texas said she checked merit, “but I may be naive!” Another, a copy editor for one of the nation’s largest dailies, noted, “This question troubled me very much – I so wanted to check ‘merit’ and couldn’t convince myself. Politics has played such a large role here in the past, but that may be changing.” She’s not alone in that sentiment; more than 47 percent of women say politics are the overriding factor in advancement at their newspapers, compared to 36 percent of men. In another swipe at newsroom managers, 11 percent of all female respondents and 14 percent of males say most advancement decisions are made on the basis of whatever suits management’s convenience. And as noted in the results reported in Table 46, journalists of color tend to be more critical than whites of the importance of newsroom politics; thus, race in conjunction with gender yields some of the sharpest criticisms for the processes newsroom managers employ in making promotion decisions. TABLE 46 here Interestingly, few respondents see race as a dominant factor in newsroom advancement, although several said gender is an issue. A female copy editor from a Southern paper wrote that the dominant factor in the newsroom is “race and sex: white men advance under this management dictatorship.” Two other women, both from the East Coast, also assailed the good old boy school of newspaper management. One, a white reporter in her 40s, wrote that the most important factor in getting ahead was “Being a man, preferably the scion of a wealthy family.” The other, an African American metro desk reporter who said she was unlikely to be in the business in five years, echoed that point: “Whether one attends an Ivy League or other ‘ruling class’ school. And, of course, whether one is a white male.” More than half of black women and more than 60 percent of Hispanic women respondents said politics was at the heart of management decision-making. Several respondents pointed out that politics includes factors of race, gender and “management convenience, capriciousness and whimsy,” making that a potent and turbulent category indeed. Note that white men and women both ranked merit/talent/skill as most important, although sizeable percentages of both groups also cited politics. That newsroom politics may be more a function of gender than of race is illustrated by the responses of minority men to this question; although 40 percent or more of both black and Latino men cited politics as the leading factor in advancement, more than half of black and Latino women. Further, note the responses of Asian men and women; the attitudes of both of these subgroups closely resemble those of white respondents, suggesting that Asian American journalists may have an easier time than some other people of color in assimilating themselves into the newsroom political structure. Returning for a moment to the “haves v. have-nots” thesis, some support for the view of a newsroom caste system emerges from these findings. All newsroom journalists worry about the influence of newsroom politics in trying to assess what it takes to get ahead, but this factor is of greatest concern among members of “out” groups, people who are not white and not good old boys. Those who have newsroom power – whites and especially white men – are considerably less concerned about the political influence in advancement than those who do not – especially blacks and Hispanics. Along gender lines, the “haves” are men and the “have-nots” women, who are most likely to point to newsroom politics as the primary factor in advancement. In examining responses to this question by newspaper circulation in Table 47, an evolution in the workplace “education” of journalists of color is apparent. Minority journalists are largely in agreement with their white co-workers at smaller newspapers about the weight placed on performance – about 40 percent of both whites and nonwhites at 50,000- to 100,000-circulation size papers point to merit/talent/skill as the leading factor in advancement. In the largest circulation category, white respondents’ faith in meritocracy remains about constant, but many minorities have changed their minds; only 26.4 percent of journalists of color working for papers in the 500,000 and higher circulation range think merit is what it takes to get ahead in newspapers. TABLE 47 here Among both whites and nonwhites, the percentage of respondents saying politics was the leading factor also rises sharply with circulation, to nearly half of all nonwhite journalists and more than a third of whites at largest papers. Perception of management capriciousness – advancement for management convenience – as a leading factor declines as circulation increases among both whites and minorities, from about 20 percent at smaller papers to 12 percent to 13 percent at larger papers. The ASNE survey also asked respondents about their perceptions of obstacles to career advancement in the newsroom, as did the present study. In 1987, 56 percent of whites said competition from co-workers was the primary obstacle, but 36 percent of minorities said it was race; for blacks, that number was even higher, 46 percent.3 Responding to the same question, journalists in 1991 come down along somewhat similar lines (see Table 48). More than a quarter of white respondents say competition from co-workers is their biggest career obstacle, but nearly half of white respondents checked “other.” Most did not explain what “other” obstacle confronted them; many white respondents wrote that they had perceived no obstacles to advancement in their careers. Another 180 white journalists – 15.6 percent of all white respondents – listed various facets of newsroom or corporate politics. Other handwritten comments to explain “other” included a heavy dose of criticism, some very harsh, for “management bullshit” and “management caprices”; others suggested structural or geographic impediments to advancement; others said the block was a combination of the other factors. ________________________________________________________________________ TABLE 48: Obstacles to newsroom advancement, by race, in percentages

Q. What do you think is the biggest obstacle to your career advancement in newspapers?

1991 1987a
W M All W M All
Lack of experience 9.4 16.6 11.8 20.0 27.0 21.0
Lack training 4.9 5.0 4.9 13.0 7.0 13.0
Race 4.8 27.1 12.3 1.0 36.0 5.0
Gender 8.8 5.2 7.6 10.0 2.0 9.0
Competition 25.2 23.5 24.6 56.0 28.0 52.0
Other* 46.9 22.6 38.8 -- -- --

1991 data: N=1254; X2=173.322; d.f.=5; p<.0001; Missing = 74 * More than one-third of those who check “other” explained that they meant newsroom politics. Others – white respondents especially – said they had experienced no obstacles; the rest listed a combination of factors. a = Data from 1987 ASNE Changing Face of the Newsroom study. “Other” category not included. ________________________________________________________________________ Among minorities, race is seen as the biggest obstacle to advancement by 27 percent of respondents, lower than the ASNE study’s finding, as Table 48 shows. Another 23.5 percent of minorities say competition from co-workers limits their advancement, and 22.6 percent checked “other.” For about a third of these, “other” means office politics (7.8 percent of all minority journalists); like their white counterparts, many minority respondents who checked “other” say management was the problem; others say it’s a combination of factors. A combination of lack of experience and training is seen as the greatest obstacle to the career advancement of 14 percent of white respondents and almost 22 percent of minorities, down from about one-third in ASNE’s 1987 study. There also are gender differences in responses to this question, as Table 49 indicates. For both men and women overall, factors lumped under “other” – a combination of these five factors, plus complaints about management, newsroom politics and other issues – are seen by most respondents as blocking their careers: “It’s a combination of politics, competition and racism,” a Midwestern black male desk editor wrote. Beyond these other issues, however, most women see competition from co-workers as the biggest obstacle to advancement, followed by race and experience; 13 percent of women cited gender as the biggest problem. All males, influenced by almost half of black men, ranked race first after “other,” followed by experience and competition. Twenty-one men, including 15 white men, list gender as being a top obstacle to their advancement. These 15 men apparently are responding to corporate directives at some newspapers that favor female candidates for top positions. These policies, for the most part within the largest U.S. newspaper chains such as Gannett and Knight Ridder, have resulted in the hiring of women as upper-echelon managers and generated resentment among some mid-level male managers who might otherwise have been in line for those positions. “Males are being ignored for management positions,” a Southern white male sports reporter in his late 30s wrote. “Only women have been interviewed while in-house male employees are ignored.” TABLE 49 here For black journalists – men and women – race is seen as the dominant factor in the advancement process, more than for members of all other ethnic groups; 47.9 percent of African American men and 26.7 percent of African American women say race is the biggest obstacle they face in advancing their careers. Half of all Asian American men say their lack of experience and competition from co-workers are the primary factors slowing their rise through the ranks; two-thirds of Latino women point to race, competition and a combination of other issues. Predictably, the proportions of both white and nonwhite journalists who cite their own lack of experience or training drop as circulation rises, although minority journalists even that the largest papers are still more likely than white co-workers to say these are the roadblocks to their advancement. As Table 50 shows, minority journalists’ perceptions of the role of race in newsroom advancement increase by almost 50 percent from the smallest papers to the largest, while whites’ perception of race as a factor declines. Minority journalists appear to think competition from co-workers as an obstacle to thgeir advancement diminishes with circulation, while more whites at large papers than at smaller ones point to this factor. Identifying Roadblocks: Management, racism, reverse discrimination

Explanatory notes in the questionnaire margins point to newsroom politics, mismanagement, distant corporate control, and individual frustrations as major obstacles to their career progress, although white men wrote that they had risen as high as they want to go and either already occupied a top slot or had no interest in venturing into management. It’s instructive to look at these open-ended responses in some detail, since they provide both flavor and descriptive qualitative flesh to the survey’s quantitative bones.

TABLE 50 here

Although they’re a relatively small percentage of the total white male respondents, the 6 percent of white men who said race is a major obstacle to their advancement bear some examination. A sports reporter from the upper Midwest, checking the “race” choice, wrote: “I’m a white male.” Thirty-one other white males and seven white females also said race was a problem in their attempts to advance, indicators of perceptions of reverse discrimination. “Minorities have been promoted regardless of qualifications,” wrote a white male systems supervisor from the Midwest. Another agreed. “Managers seem to believe that minorities and women automatically are qualified for jobs, while white males must prove themselves,” a white male business reporter in his 40s with between 10 and 20 years’ experience wrote. “White males are frozen in place because better jobs are given to women and minorities. The paper should have the guts to reward merit without regard to race, gender.” Ironically, this is in reverse exactly what women and minorities have been saying for years.

Other written comments from respondents offer glimpses into the pressures at work in the newsroom trenches. As the 1987 ASNE report concluded, what we have here is a failure to communicate. From these open-ended responses – 133 of which said simply “politics,” or some variation – it is clear that there is great anger and frustration in the newsroom. Much of that anger is directed at local management and corporate directives. Structural problems – what one white male called “ossified existing hierarchy” – including mismanagement and corporatization, are killing the newspaper business, many rank-and-file journalists say.

Some respondents said they were their own greatest obstacle advancement: “I want out,” said one. Others cited family considerations, geography and outside interests. Still others said their own personality traits worked against their advancement: “Personal complacency,” said one; “My own aggressive style,” said one man, although another cited his “lack of aggression.” Others wrote: “lack ambition” and “sexual orientation.” A West Coast Asian American copy editor in her 40s pointed to “the glass ceiling current management has installed.” Another cited her newspaper’s financial straits. A white male metro desk editor in his late 40s said he’d hit a plateau: “Too many fairly young people above me,” he wrote.

Still, most of those who felt moved to write comments cited politics and attacked management and managers. “It’s a long-established management position here – Don’t rock the boat,” said a white male at a 250,000-circulation metro.

In the East, “the obsession with Ivy League education, when I went to a state school” is a roadblock to a black female metro reporter in her late 20s. But a white male copy editor in his 50s said the Midwest is no better, citing “the fair-haired, good old Yaley boy network.” And even in Texas, where good old boy usually means something entirely different than it does in most American newsrooms, a black male photographer wrote, “I didn’t go to the right school and I don’t go drinking with the boys!!”

Many are “reluctant to play the game.” An Asian woman reporter, for instance, says she’s “not good at the old boys network.” A Latino photographer in his early 30s cited what he called the “bigotry of good old boy networking,” and many just scrawled “cronyism” across the questionnaire. “I’m just not a skilled brown-noser,” wrote a white male desk editor from the Midwest. “I’m not a company man,” wrote another. Many others were even less circumspect; this male Latino local news editor from the Southwest is representative: “I have a low bullshit tolerance and I refuse to kiss management’s ass.”

Among those commenting on how their race or ethnicity affect relationships within the newsroom was this African American copy desk supervisor in his late 30s, who said, “Politics is a problem, including race.” A Latino feature writer from California agreed, saying race is a limiting factor in everything she does: “I’ve been told I’m ‘not dark enough’ or ‘we already have a Mexican, need a black.’”

A Hispanic metro reporter from Texas wrote about the confusing signals he gets from his editors. “Cultural differences and writing style, I think,” he said. “Despite my 10 years in the business, some editors consider me a lightweight, mainly because of my foreign accent and the way I write. They never complain about my writing, but when editing a story they are always asking, ‘How about if we say it like this instead?’”

And an African American metro reporter in her late 40s discussion thoughtfully how the newsroom culture and those who run it are so set in exclusionary ruts that few who are not white males can break through. The barriers are tradition, structure, race and gender in a confusing variety of doses. She wrote:

I think the biggest obstacle is a combination of race, gender and other factors. In one area, it has to do with how people socialize. I am not invited to the same parties and social functions as those attended by people who are in a position to hire or promote employees. Those events and situations usually are the province of whites, with white males as the dominant figures. I, as a black woman, am not privy to those encounters, where reporters’ careers and prospects are discussed. For example, my paper once conducted an internal survey on its hiring and promotions policies. One comment that stuck in my mind came from a national news editor who said the main way he learned of promising young local reporters was when his friends discussed their work at cocktail parties. This was a major factor in his hiring and promoting decisions, he said. He didn’t see what was wrong with his remark. Additionally, there is an urge for editors to want to assign black reporters to cover “black” news. I feel my career has suffered because I refused to be pigeon-holed that way. I have covered a variety of areas well, as my evaluations show. But I was never singled out as a “star” reporter because I did not want to cover shootings and the black underclass. The black reporters who do these stories about pathetic black life seem to be the ones who get ahead. White editors at my paper seem more comfortable with having blacks in these roles than with having minorities covering other serious issues.

• • •

NOTES: CHAPTER 7 – Factors and Obstacles in Newsroom Advancement

1. American Society of Newspaper Editors, The Changing Face of the Newsroom. (Reston, VA: American Society of Newspaper Editors, 1987), p. 13.
2. Ibid., p. 114.
3. Ibid., p. 115.
• Chapter 8.