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 6—Job Satisfaction Issues in the Newsroom
Journalists are overwhelmingly satisfied with their choice of newspapers as a profession, but in answers about specific aspects of their jobs, many seemed to contradict that blanket approval.
In 1987, the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ national survey of newsroom employees concluded that newspaper journalists were “a happy bunch.”1 Wrote ASNE Executive Director Lee Stinnett, “While there are widely varying viewpoints and attitudes within the newsroom, this study does reveal a prevailing spirit of optimism among the people who populate today’s newsroom.”2 There were problems in the newsroom, acknowledged Stinnett and others who conducted the study – communication, pay and management high on the list – but overall, the Changing Face of the Newsroom report was upbeat, positive and optimistic.
But some of the responses to the ASNE study indicated clouds on that sunny horizon, some potentially seriously dunderboomers. Among these were expressions of exclusion by minority journalists who, though just as committed to their profession as their white co-workers, felt themselves blocked from opportunities for career advancement. The obstacles, they said, included newsroom politics, issues of race, structural impediments and other factors unrelated to their performance or abilities.3
As the newspaper workforce slowly adapts to become more inclusive, more representative of diverse segments of an increasingly pluralistic society, new pressures and tensions crop up in the newsroom. There are indications that the climate in America’s newsrooms is not as sunny and clear as the 1987 ASNE study seemed to conclude. Newspaper journalists do, indeed, love the business, but regardless of their race, they express growing frustrations about how the business is run, how their newspapers perform, the impact of economic and social forces on the news product, and how an increasingly corporatized newspaper industry chews up and spits out talent.
For journalists of color, day-to-day workplace frustrations are amplified. Dealing with issues of race and ethnicity on top of the “normal” day-to-day tensions inherent in the job add up to anger, disillusionment and disenfranchisement. Many minority journalists carry with them a sense of personal mission that most white journalists do not share, a purpose beyond general journalistic altruism to serve society, to expose wrongs and to do good. For journalists of color who know themselves as members of social underclasses, or at least lesser classes, in America – whatever the Constitution or federal judgments may say to the contrary – ethnicity provides impetus and purpose to their careers beyond that of most of their white colleagues. For this and other reasons, minority journalists often carry with them ambitions greater than those of white journalists. For these newsroom professionals, the combination of heightened ambition and career expectation, thwarted by organizational constraints that favor entrenched white males, may result in an equally heightened sense of frustration and dissatisfaction on the job.
In many ways (to adapt Gertrude Stein), a journalist is a journalist is a journalist, people with common tasks and many goals in common. A white male desk editor in his 40s, responding to this survey from an East Coast newsroom, wonders why we can’t stop hassling over questions of diversity and just get on with the job of journalism. “Frankly, I’m tired of people identifying themselves with groups or subgroups,” he said. “How about this – We’re all journalists; get the job done and let’s go home.” In many ways, he and others in the industry who feel the same are right; why must race complicate what essentially is a pretty straightforward job, to report, write and publish the news?
But, as Roz Bentley, a black female reporter from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune said on a recent National Public Radio series on race in America, “They just don’t get it!”4 For all journalists, the job is primary. For minority journalists and all people of color, however, race defines their personal and professional lives, while for most members of the dominant white culture in America, ethnicity is at best an intellectual issue. But for members of ethnic and racial minority groups, race is a central part of themselves that they cannot put aside like a sweater and just “get the job done and go home.” For journalists of color as for the growing proportion of the larger population that journalists cover, race is integral to the jobs they do, how they go about getting the jobs done and, for many, the homes they go home to.
A “Race-Neutral” Measure of Job Satisfaction
In this survey, a series of questions sought to evaluate, as “race-neutrally” as possible, respondents’ overall job satisfaction before moving on to questions of how diversity is playing in and influencing American newsrooms. The questions asked respondents point-blank how satisfied they were with their choice of a newspaper career, whether they plan to stay at their current newspapers, whether they see themselves remaining in the news business down the road, what their professional goals were and how confident they were about attaining them.
In many ways, these 11 opening questions getting at how happy journalists are in their professional skins elicit conflicting signals. On the one hand, newspaper journalists are overwhelmingly satisfied with their choice of newspapers as a profession, but in answers to specific questions about specific aspects of their jobs, many respondents of all races seemed to contradict their earlier blanket approval.
Sixty percent of respondents in ASNE’s 1987 study said their jobs met their expectations; 81 percent said they liked their current job more than any of their previous positions.5 Seventy percent of California Latino journalists responding to a summer 1990 study by the California Chicano News Media Association and the Center for the Integration and Improvement of Journalism at San Francisco State University said their jobs in both print and broadcast had met their expectations.6 Those questions really asks how satisfied respondents were with their jobs, but they will serve as comparison points.
If anything, journalists in 1991 say they are even more satisfied with their choice of a newspaper career than previous studies have indicated. In response to the point-blank question, “How satisfied are you with your choice of a newspaper career,” nearly 90 percent of all 1,328 respondents said they were very or somewhat satisfied; just 1.8 percent – 24 journalists – said they were very dissatisfied. As Table 24 shows, there is near-absolute unanimity among whites and nonwhites, men and women, on this question. Although whites overall are more likely to be “very satisfied” than nonwhites with their choice of careers in newspapers – 53.3 percent to 46.6 percent – composite satisfaction scores combining “very” and “somewhat” satisfied responses are 89.4 percent for whites and 89.5 percent for minorities.
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TABLE 24: Journalists’ job satisfaction by race, in percentages
Q. How satisfied are you with your choice of a newspaper career?
Whites Minorities All
Very Satisfied 53.3 43.6 50.1
Somewhat Satisfied 36.1 44.9 39.1
Somewhat Dissatisfied 9.1 9.0 9.0
Very Dissatisfied 1.5 2.5 1.8
Composite responses
Very/Somewhat Satisfied 89.4 88.5 89.2
Somewat/Very Dissatisfied 10.6 11.5 10.8
N=1326; X2=13.166; d.f.=3; p=.0043; Missing = 2
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There is no gender gap apparent in responses to this question, as Table 25 shows: Men’s and women’s composite satisfaction scores are within one-tenth of a percentage point of each other. Of all gender/race subgroups, Latino women are least satisfied with their careers, if an 86.6 composite satisfaction rating can be called a poor showing. Among all subgroups, white women and Asian American women express the higher degree of satisfaction with their career choices – 90.9 for both groups.
If expressed career satisfaction equates to job satisfaction, and if happy workplaces are productive workplaces, this would seem to be dazzlingly good news for the industry as a whole and its managers. When the additional variable of newspaper circulation size is factored in, nothing changes; although most newspaper journalists seek to climb the career ladder to larger newspapers, they are no more or less satisfied with the newspaper profession at 1 million-circulation papers than they are at 50,000-circulation papers.
TABLE 25
Abandoning the newsroom
So if minority journalists are so satisfied with their career choices, why aren’t there more of them? One traditional answer to that question has been that journalists of color have a low survival rate in newspapers, that they wash out or are forced out by an industry that won’t let them succeed. In its 1985 “Quiet Crisis” study, the Institute for Journalism Education reported that “minorities had left the profession at three times the rate of whites – and ... nearly twice as many planned to leave as whites.”7 Shaken by that dire evaluation, the newspaper industry based many of its subsequent efforts at recruitment, training and retention of journalists of color on the assumption that minorities were more likely to leave the business than whites. That conclusion was easily believable at newspapers already sparsely staffed by minorities; in a newsroom with only a small handful of nonwhite employees, the loss of just one to another newspaper or field was instantly obvious.
Two summer 1990 studies came up with similar conclusions. A survey returned by 265 members of the Asian American Journalists Association found that nearly 36 percent of respondents said they were likely or very likely to leave the newspaper business within the next five years.8 A simultaneous study of 118 Latino journalists in California by the California Chicano News Media Association found that 20 percent of respondents thought they’d leave journalism in the next 10 years. 9
The earlier ASNE study didn’t ask that question, but 49 percent of all journalists in that study said they planned to leave the newspaper business in their 60s or later, although minority respondents gave a different response. While half of whites said they’d stay in the business until retirement age, minority respondents were spread more or less evenly, equal percentages saying they expected to leave in their 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s – not a very conclusive answer. In answer to a question that asked whether respondents planned to make journalism their career, 74 percent of whites and 67 percent of minorities said yes; 4 percent of whites and 7 percent of minorities said no.10 The question of whether journalists of color are apt to leave the industry at greater rates than whites remained murky.
For that reason, particularly in light of the recent surveys of Asian and Latino journalists, this study included the AAJA question to see if minority respondents would confirm that large percentages of journalists of color planned to abandon the profession in the next several years. The answer: No.
As Table 26 shows, journalists in 1991 apparently are fairly devoted to the profession, regardless of their race. Despite some gloom about the future viability of the newspaper industry, dissatisfaction with working conditions – hours, pay, stress and autonomy – and widespread unhappiness with newsroom managers and the “corporatization” of American journalism, most plan to stay in the business. In response to the question, “Do you think you’ll still be in newspaper journalism five years from now,” more than four of five journalists – white and nonwhite – said they are likely or very likely to stay in the business. Although almost one in five minority respondents – 18.5 percent – said they were unlikely or very unlikely to be in newspapers in five years, so did 14.3 percent of white journalists. Certainly, the fact that 18.5 percent of minority journalists are thinking seriously about leaving the business should be of concern to the industry, which has said it is trying so hard to hire and retain journalists of color, but next to the AAJA’s 35.8 percent who said they would leave in five years, this is good news. Overall, whites were more enthusiastic – 42.5 percent said they were “very likely” to remain in newspapers, compared to one-third of minorities – but most journalists of all races say they intend to stay.
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TABLE 26: Journalists’ likelihood of remaining in newspaper journalism, by race, in percentages
Q. Do you think you’ll still be in newspaper journalism 5 years from now?
Whites Minorities All
Very Likely 42.5 33.3 39.4
Likely 43.2 48.2 44.9
Unlikely 9.9 14.4 11.4
Very Unlikely 4.4 4.1 4.3
Composite responses
Very Likely/Likely 85.7 81.5 84.3
Unlikely/VeryUnlikely 14.3 18.5 15.7
N=1322; X2=13.27; d.f.=3; p=.0041
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The picture becomes somewhat less robust, however, in considering responses by both gender and individual ethnic minority group. As indicated by Table 27, some groups clearly are at greater risk than others. For one thing, although more than 80 percent of all female respondents say they’re very likely or likely to remain in the business, that vote of confidence is less enthusiastic than it appears. Only 27.5 percent of all women say they’re “very likely” to be in newspapers in five years, compared to a heartier 41.9 percent of men. This may be only a question of degree, but it will bear watching. Note that the largest percentage response for all women is “likely,” while “very likely” gets most of the votes from three of four of the male respondent subgroups.
The slight, 5-percentage-point gender gap apparent between the responses of all men and all women in the study on this question grows when the variable of race is added. Although white men and women respond almost identically, there are sizable gender gaps within all three ethnic minority groups. More than one-fifth of all minority women say they’re unlikely or very unlikely to be in the business five years from now. These relatively weak responses may be of concern, particularly in light of the AAJA study finding. Of all the subgroups examined, Asian American women are least committed to a future in newspaper journalism. More than one-fifth – 22.4 percent – say they are unlikely to be working for newspapers in five years, as are 21.9 percent of black women and 20 percent of Latino women. If there is attrition among minority journalists in newspapers in the near future, it seems most likely to be women of color. The industry as a whole and individual newspaper managers will have to consider whether loss of one in five minority women is acceptable in ongoing efforts to expand the nonwhite presence in the newsroom.
The danger zones are more obvious when newspaper circulation size is considered. Not surprisingly, the minority journalists most at risk work for the smallest newspapers in the sample. More than 26 percent of minority respondents working for papers of 50,000 to 100,000 daily circulation say they don’t see themselves remaining in the industry five years from now (see Table 28). Their white co-workers are half as likely to be considering a career change. Since smaller newspapers are the traditional “farm system,” avenues to train and season journalists for larger papers in the industry, this finding has implications beyond the newsrooms of papers in that circulation category. From the results in Table 28, it appears that white journalists working at newspapers of 500,000 circulation and larger are least likely to consider leaving the industry, but nearly 19 percent of their minority co-workers are thinking about making a change. Interesting, the two groups most at risk – most likely to say they’ll leave the business within the next five years – work for the largest and smallest papers in the sample; overall, both whites and nonwhites at the 100,000-250,000 circulation level say least likely to be thinking about leaving the industry.
TABLE 27, TABLE 28 Here
In its 1985 “Quiet Crisis” study, the Institute for Journalism Education asked journalists if they “eventually will leave newspaper journalism”; 36 percent to 41 percent of minority journalists said “yes,” compared to 22 percent of white journalists.11 Although it is difficult to compare the open-endedness of “eventually” with the specificity of “five years,” the theme is the same: Journalists of color, painfully rare in many newsrooms and entirely absent at more than half of U.S. daily newspapers, still are at risk in 1991.
“Job-hopping” and career advancement
The “Quiet Crisis” study also examined the question of whether nonwhite journalists were more likely than their white counterparts to be “job-hoppers,” changing newspapers often. Both that study and this one found that minority journalists tend to have worked for the same number of different newspapers as whites.12 As reported in the demographics section earlier, however, because whites tend to be older and farther along in their careers than minorities in U.S. newspapers, journalists of color may yet have more opportunities to “job-hop” before their careers become as settled as those of many older white journalists.
In fact, minority journalists in this sample say they are much more likely than whites to change newspapers in the next five years, as Table 29 illustrates. This finding may be both reassuring and frustrating to newsroom managers. On the one hand, taken in the context of the stated intention of the majority of nonwhite newspaper journalists to remain in the industry, these results about job-hopping can be seen as good news; minority journalists, in time-honored newspaper tradition, aggressively use smaller newspapers as stepping stones to larger ones. That is, journalists of color are not leaving the industry as a whole, even if they are moving on from one newsroom to another.
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TABLE 29: Journalists’ likelihood of changing newspapers in the next five years, by race, in percentages
Q. Do you think you’ll be working for your current newspaper in 5 years?
Whites Minorities All
Very Likely 22.5 13.5 19.5
Likely 42.1 39.5 41.2
Unlikely 23.7 30.9 26.1
Very Unlikely 11.7 16.1 13.2
Composite responses
Very Likely/Likely 64.6 53.0 60.7
UnlikelyV. Unlikely 35.4 47.0 39.3
N=1322; X2=22.763; d.f.=3; p<.0001; Missing = 6 ________________________________________________________________________ On the other hand, however, this amplified tendency to change newspapers may work against young, entry-level journalists of color. Minority journalists as a group do have some reputation – especially among managers and editors at small and mid-sized papers – of being too hard to hold onto and, thus, almost not worth the effort. One recruiting editor from Indiana probably was voicing the frustration of many like him when he said at a Cincinnati job fair that he had inteviewed several “bright” kids but probably wouldn’t hire any because they were “too good” to work for his paper. “They wouldn’t stay around long,” he said.13 Such frustration – it’s more than resignation when editors won’t even hire young minorities – among newspaper managers is understandable; it is always difficult to watch a larger “fish” cruise into your newsroom and gobble up your best talent. But it always has been thus; for managers to say they don’t want to hire the best talent they can get because they won’t stay is the same as adopting a policy to recruit mediocrity, and no one would admit that. According to this study, journalists of color are more likely to be “job hoppers” than whites, although at this point, whites and nonwhites have worked for essentially the same number of newspapers overall. Nearly half – 46.9 percent – of minority journalists say they’re unlikely or very unlikely to be working for their current papers in five years, compared to 35.4 percent of whites, as Table 29 shows. And this question also points up the existence of a gender gap; women overall are significantly more likely than men to leave their current jobs within the next five years – slightly more than 50 percent of women but just 39 percent of men think they’ll change newspapers soon (see Table 30). For both women and minorities, this finding may be an indication of dissatisfaction with their current positions or ambition to rise quickly in the ranks or both. TABLE 30 TABLE 31 Here Female Asian American journalists are the least satisfied of all groups with their current jobs; 60.6 percent say they are either unlikely or very unlikely to be working in the same place five years from now. Black women (46.3 percent) are the next most likely to change newspapers soon (see Table 30). Men generally are content with the status quo; more than two-thirds of white men, 65 percent of Latino men and 61 percent of African American men say they are likely or very likely to remain at their current jobs. Not surprisingly, anticipated mobility declines as circulation increases; that is, journalists at smaller newspapers are more likely to want to move on than those at larger papers. As Table 31 indicates, however, across all circulation categories, minority journalists are more likely than their white co-workers to think about moving on. A full 76 percent of minority journalists working for newspapers in the 50,000- to 100,000-circulation category say they’ll be leaving in the next five years, but so will about 51 percent of white journalists at the same papers. Even at the largest circulation category, however, minority journalists are still 11 percentage points more likely to change jobs in the next five years. There are a couple of possible explanations for this. As discussed, whites in newspapers are generally older than minority journalists, and so perhaps more entrenched in their communities, mortgages, families and other lifestyle considerations. Further – and perhaps more crucial to journalists of color – white newspaper professionals, especially white males, hold the best jobs in the newsroom. ASNE figures indicate that 85 percent of newsroom managers and executives – city editors and up – are male, 96 percent are white.14 Ambitious minority journalists may see few opportunities or openings available at their current papers, and so seek entry into managerial ranks by jumping ship. Why do they go?
Like that Indiana recruiting editor at the Cincinnati job fair, most managers would hold onto their top staff – white and nonwhite – if they could. But how? Many of the respondents in the 1987 ASNE survey said they’d like to work for a larger newspaper; more than one-third said they wanted eventually to be editor-in-chief.15 There’s little most newspapers can do about helping their employees attain those goals, but others might be more manageable.
For instance, almost a third of all ASNE respondents said money would be the primary reason to quit newspapers, although only 19 percent of minority respondents picked that reason.16 Journalists at only a very few of the largest newspapers in America would say they are satisfied with their salaries. Some comments from the present study may provide insights into a few of the rank-and-file frustrations surrounding money: “The pay is Gawd-awful,” commented a white woman metro reporter in her late 20s. Planning to leave the business in the next five years, she says she wouldn’t want her children to go into newspapers.
A 27-year-old male Latino reporter from Florida writes: “Unless you work your way into a position in the newspaper hierarchy, a majority of your younger years will be spent busting your butt, working long hours for minimal pay and with little or no appreciation. What can compensate for this?”
And an Asian American woman in her early 20s, thinking about hanging up her reporting job at a 75,000-circulation daily in the Southeast after less than three years on the job, has to work a second job to make ends meet. “The blood, sweat and tears shed in this career is nothing in a bank account,” she said.
But there are other reasons than money for journalists to consider leaving the field or changing newspapers. The 1990 AAJA study found lack of career advancement opportunities and a desire for new challenges were the most important reasons for those respondents to consider leaving the profession.17 In the ASNE study, journalists ranked a need for greater professional challenge second overall after money issues among their top reasons for considering leaving the business. Minority respondents, however, ranked professional challenge and opportunity for advancement the top two reasons, with money coming in third.18
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TABLE 32: Journalists’ reasons for leaving the newspaper business, by race, in percentages
Q. If you did leave the newspaper business, what would be the single most important factor in your decision?
Whites Minorities All
Financial Reasons 21.6 20.6 21.3
Seek Professional Challenge 31.7 35.5 33.0
Advancement Opportunities 5.7 16.5 9.3
Family Considerations 18.2 11.4 16.0
Other 22.7 16.0 20.5
N=1310; X2=52.202; d.f.=4; p<.0001; Missing = 18 ________________________________________________________________________ In the present study, respondents were asked to choose from among four options as the primary reason they would leave the newspaper business – financial reaons, greater professional challenge, greater opportunity for career advancement and family considerations. Overall, respondents said a desire for greater professional challenge would be the most important factor in their decision to try something new; money was the second most popular choice, with a combination of factors third. There was substantial agreement between whites and nonwhites on the leading reasons to consider leaving the newspaper industry, as Table 32 shows – about one-fifth of both whites and minorities said money and one-third said professional challenge. In the only area of notable disagreement, minority respondents were three times more likely than whites to select opportunity for advancement as a reason to leave the business, and white respondents were more likely to say family considerations might prompt a departure from the newsroom. This finding lends additional support to the premise that journalists of color are more career-oriented and professionally ambitious than their white counterparts. A desire for greater professional challenge is the leading factor for all race/gender subgroups, especially for black women, 45 percent of whom ranked it the most important factor if they were considering leaving the newspaper business (see Table 33). Among men and women overall, there appears to be a gender gap on this question, with men more likely to consider money matters and advancement, and women professional challenge and family. White women in particular leaned most heavily toward those two factors. Many respondents lumped several of the options together under the “other” category. TABLE 33 here Burnout, Disgust & Dissatisfaction
Besides indicating a combination of factors, many of those selecting “other” wrote in open-ended comments what factors are most likely to prompt them to change careers. Several noted that their jobs lacked sufficient autonomy, a job characteristic traditionally important to journalists. Other scrawled notes included: “STRESSSSS!” “Burnout.” “Need to do something ‘deeper.’” “Greater personal fulfillment.” and “Respect. Just some respect.” More than 30 respondents said they planned to go back to school or teach college; 11 complained of repetitive strain injury from constant use of video display terminals.
Others commented on their concerns about the character, direction and future of the newspaper industry, a topic that will receive considerable discussion later. Many criticized their newspaper’s management and corporate bean-counting mentality. “This newspaper is corrupt,” wrote a white male reporter for a Midwestern daily. A white reporter from the Pacific Northwest agreed: “The bottom-line mentality has ruined the business, caused decline in professional ideals,” she said.
A Hispanic male reporter from Texas said he was thinking about leaving because of his “disgust for idiot managers.” It’s a theme repeated by many other respondents, including one who voiced “dismay over the corporatization of the newsroom,” and another who lamented that “industry changes that focus more on money, less on quality,” and yet another who said she was “disgusted with changing priorities in news/advertising relations.”
Some journalists of color commented on how race worked against them in the industry. “I’m tired of fighting the same battles over and over,” wrote a black male Knight Ridder reporter in his 40s. A younger Hispanic reporter from the Southwest said he might leave because he was tired of “being hindered by the glass ceiling that many journalists of color run into.”
“Dissatisfaction with the way newspapers are going,” wrote a white female copy editor from the Midwest. “Too much emphasis on graphics, happy talk – emphasis on the story has been lost.” A white male reporter from California expanded that theme to address the question of newspapers’ mission and role in society: “I don’t expect to leave newspapers,” he wrote, “but if I did, it would be for a career that offered a greater opportunity to improve society. Right now, journalism seems to offer the best chance for changing the world.” But a reporter on the opposite coast disagreed: “I’m no longer able to serve the profession and society as desired.”
A white male reporter for a major metro California daily wrote, “I’d like to do more satisfying reporting that addresses the needs of my community instead of my paper’s marketing goals.”
Finally, two white female metro reporters, one from the South and one from California, sounded doleful notes. “They’ve made it less fun,” wrote the Southerner, who, after nearly 20 years in the business, said she was unlikely to be around in five more years. “They’ve just worn me down.” The Californian, in her late 20s and seventh year in the business, said, “This is one miserable career.”
Switching Papers
Another question sought information about why journalists might choose to change papers. Although it is a factor, money does not appear to be the primary motivation for most moves within the industry (see Table 34). As in the previous question about leaving the business, opportunities for career advancement clearly are more important to minority journalists than to their white counterparts.
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TABLE 34: Journalists’ reasons for changing newspapers, by race, in percentages
Q. If you go to another paper, what do you think will be the primary reason?
Whites Minorities All
More Advancement Opportunities 31.5 49.3 37.6
Better Editorial Product 20.4 15.6 18.7
Larger Community 2.6 4.1 3.1
Smaller Community 3.1 2.8 3.0
More Money 17.9 13.1 16.2
Other* 24.5 15.1 21.3
N=1270; X2=45.449; d.f.=5; p<.0001; Missing=58 * Other category = combination of factors ________________________________________________________________________ Both white and nonwhite respondents listed career advancement as their primary motivation in changing newspapers, but a much larger proportion of minority journalists selected this option, perhaps further evidence that journalists of color are more driven than whites in the newsroom. In the AAJA study, Asian American respondents listed advancement opportunities, professional challenges, career opportunities and collisions with management as their top four reasons for leaving journalism.19 The 1985 IJE study found minorities about twice as interested as whites in climbing the management ranks.20 And the 1987 ASNE survey found minorities twice as likely as whites to list publisher as the job to which they ultimately aspired.21 These results tend to support those earlier contentions that minority journalists are more ambitious than whites. Although all race/gender subgroups selected advancement opportunity as their primary reason for changing newspapers, as Table 35 shows, nearly 18 percent more minority respondents than whites selected this option. Indeed, half or more than half of all Hispanics and all African Americans said career advancement would be their primary reason for changing newspapers, compared to 32 percent of both white men and women. Among whites and especially Asian Americans, the quality of the editorial product – a better newspaper – was the second most popular reason for changing papers. Another look at those responses broken down across circulation categories indicates that minority journalists do not lose sight of their ambitions as they move into larger newspapers (see Table 36). Note that especially in the two largest newspaper categories, minority journalists are much more likely than their white counterparts to list career advancement as their primary concern. In all four circulation categories, white respondents appear slightly more conscious than nonwhites of product quality – “better” newspapers. Money, a perennial concern at smaller newspapers, declines in relative importance as circulation increases. Job Aspirations
In its 1987 study, ASNE found that about 35 percent of both white and nonwhite respondents aspired to editor; about one-third of both groups also aspired to middle management, about 30 percent to 33 percent. A considerable difference in ambition by race showed up at publisher, however; 8 percent of white respondents said they hoped to become publisher, compared to 19 percent of all minorities and 23 percent of blacks.22 These results underscored the findings of the IJE “Quiet Crisis” study, which showed minorities as much more interested in attaining management positions than whites.23
TABLES 35 & 36 here
This study sought to clarify these issues and asked respondents what newspaper position they hoped ultimately to attain. The eight options ranged from standing pat – “I’d be happy with my current position” – to “Own my own newspaper.” Although the options of editor, publisher or owning a newspaper attracted relatively few respondents individually, the combined Owner-Publisher-Editor response drew nearly a quarter of minority journalists, compared to 17 percent of whites.
As shown in Table 37, almost 30 percent of white respondents say they would be happy to “stand pat” in their current positions, followed by 21 percent who aspire to middle management positions – city editor, section editor, department supervisor. If whites tend to hold most of the power positions in the newsroom, it is not surprising that so many of them say they’re content to stay where they are. Besides owning, editing and publishing their own papers, minorities as a whole said they wanted better beats (19.4 percent) and jobs in mid-level management (18.9 percent).
The contention that minority journalists aspire to higher positions in the newsroom and in newspaper management than whites receives even more support in Table 38, which reports the responses on this question by race and gender. Black men express the greatest ambition to the highest levels in newspaper management; nearly a quarter say they want the top editing job, twice the percentage of white men. More than 37 percent of black men elect the owner-editor-publisher composite, compared to less than 20 percent of white, Hispanic and Asian men. Among women, blacks also are most ambitious; more black women say they want to be managing editors than any other subgroup, and almost 22 percent say they want one day to own, publish or edit a newspaper.
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TABLE 37: Journalists’ professional ambitions, by race, in percentages
Q. What newspaper position do you want ultimately to attain?
Whites Minorities All
Happy with my current job 29.2 11.2 23.3
A Beat Better 10.8 19.4 13.7
My Own Newspaper 3.8 5.7 4.4
Publisher 2.2 5.7 3.4
Editor 11.0 13.2 11.7
Managing Editor 9.4 12.8 10.5
Middle Management 21.0 18.9 20.3
Other* 12.7 13.0 12.8
N=1311; X2=75.127; d.f.=7; p<.0001; Missing = 17 * Other category includes 58 respondents (4.4%) who want to be columnists, 33 (2.5%) who want special projects, and a variety aspiring to other tasks, including graphics/photo positions, various non-news positions. ________________________________________________________________________ The most popular choice for white men and white women is to “stand pat” in their current positions, while the first choice for Latino and Asian women was a better beat – climbing the ladder – and for Asian and Latino men, mid-level management. The fact that so many white journalists generally are content with the status quo is doubtless a function of who holds the power in newsrooms today. The results reported in Table 38 indicate that career longevity may be a component of ambition; white journalists overall have less to strive for if they already hold most of the power positions. Not surprising, then, that whites say they’re happy where they are. Since minority journalists as a whole are younger (see Tables 6 and 7) and thus occupy lower rungs of the newsroom ladder, it is natural that they should aspire to step up. Table 38 here There seem to be two “safe” responses to this question for journalists who do not see themselves on the fast track. For women of color, the “better beat” response is popular, while Asian and Latino men and white women come down heavily for positions in middle management. One might speculate that these two categories are “safe” because they are reasonably attainable and represent not too much of a stretch from these respondents’ current positions. Anyone might reasonably expect a better beat, and middle management is a modest goal for anyone with ambitions beyond the rank-and-file. In an organizational structure in which there are certain accepted, if entirely unspoken, patterns of achievement and expectation for different kinds of people, the career aspirations of the “haves” and the “have-nots” might well reflect those unspoken realities. At one obvious level, the “haves” are the white journalists, who are content with the jobs they have; white women, however, perhaps don’t expect to be allowed to climb as high as white men, so they shoot for mid-level management. Generally, another have/have-not dichotomy exists along gender lines; women’s expressed aspirations are not as great as those of men, regardless of race. At another level, blacks feel themselves empowered enough to aspire to greater heights than other journalists of color, black men to the very highest newspaper management, black women to upper management and managing editor. In this stratified newsroom caste system, those with the most modest professional ambitions – Latino and Asian American women – are the have-nots at the lowest rungs of the ladder, with the fewest role models above them to seek to emulate. TABLE 39 here Interestingly, a larger percentage of minority journalists at smaller newspapers have higher aspirations than at larger newspapers, perhaps a function of naivete or inexperience. As Table 40 indicates, nearly 35 percent of minority journalists at papers in the smallest circulation category say they hope to own a newspaper or become publisher or editor; 23.6 percent of minority journalists at the largest newspapers in the sample share that career goal. The percentage of white journalists who say they want to own, publish or edit a newspaper ranges from 14.7 percent at the 100,000-250,000 circulation level to 21.1 percent at the largest papers in the sample. This is still a respectable proportion of white journalists with high aspirations, but smaller than the proportion of minorities with the same goals at all circulation levels. Note that whites at all circulation levels are most likely to say they are happy with their current positions, with mid-level management positions their next most popular ambition. At the top two circulation categories, minority respondents are most likely to say they want better beats – usually described as special projects or specialized reporting assignments – with middle management the leading goal at the two smaller circulation categories. More than a third of those respondents listing “other” as a choice indicated they wanted to be columnists; another fifth of the “other” respondents said they wanted to work on special projects and investigative teams. Chances of getting ahead
As some obscure bard once said, “Wantin’ ain’t gettin’.” Asked how they would assess their chances of getting the jobs they want, more than two-thirds of whites but less than half of minorities say they think their chances are excellent or good, as Table 40 shows. Almost 19 percent of minority respondents say their chances of getting where they want to go are poor. Journalists of color may be more ambitious than their white co-workers, but they are much less optimistic about succeeding, a finding with clear implications for their job and career satisfaction and, ultimately, for their longevity in the profession. Note in Table 40 that white journalists are twice as likely as minorities to see their chances of success as excellent, and minorities are twice as likely to see their chances as poor. In the composite responses, about 70 percent of whites said their chances of getting what they want in the industry are excellent or good, compared to about 45 percent of minorities who see their chances as fair or poor.
________________________________________________________________________
TABLE 40: Journalists’ confidence about attaining career goals, by race, in percentages
Q. How would you assess your chances of attaining that position?
Whites Minorities All
Excellent 30.4 15.6 25.4
Good 39.3 39.6 39.4
Fair 20.9 26.1 22.7
Poor 9.4 18.7 12.6
Composite responses
Excellent/Good 69.7 55.2 64.8
Fair/Poor 30.3 44.8 35.2
N=1234; X2=46.51; d.f.=3; p<.0001; Missing=104 ________________________________________________________________________ Factoring in gender and breaking down responses by individual ethnic minority group shows that women are more optimistic overall than men, as Table 41 shows, and minority men are most pessimistic of all. Women, overall, are more optimistic about attaining their career goals than men: 64.5 percent of women and 55.6 percent of men say their chances are excellent or good. This is about the same size gap as that separating men’s and women’s aspirations to own, publish or edit their own newspapers; 15.3 percent of all women want the very top job compared to 25.5 percent of all men as Table 39 shows. One way to read this discrepancy in career optimism between men and women is to suggest that women are less ambitious or, alternatively, more realistic than men in their ultimate career expectations. Women, especially white women, are more optimistic, but also set their sights lower. Adding ethnicity to the gender variable results in a picture of minority men generally much less optimistic about attaining their career aspirations than minority women. Least optimistic are Latino men; although 39 percent say their chances of getting the jobs they want are good, more than half see their chances as only fair or poor, and only 9.7 percent say their prospects are excellent, the lowest excellent rating for any group. Black men and women more or less agree: about 55 percent of both groups rate their chances as excellent or good, although more African American menthan women rate their chances of attaining the positions they want as excellent. Black women are less optimistic at the other end of the scale as well, 23.6 percent saying their chances of getting where they want to go are poor, the highest poor rating of any group. About three of five Asian and Latino women see their chances of success as good to excellent, about the same as the rating for women overall. TABLE 41 & TABLE 42 here White women are the most confident of all race/gender subgroups, 76.7 percent saying they have excellent or good chances of attaining their ultimate career goals. More white women than any other subgroup also rated their prospects as excellent, 31.1 percent. Again, it is unclear whether this finding is an artifact of true confidence among white women in their ability to advance, or more likely due to a combination of realistic (and lower) expectations combined with a high level of satisfaction with their current positions. Not surprisingly, white males also express high confidence levels, 65.8 percent seeing their chances of attaining the goals they set as excellent or good; nearly 30 percent say their prospects for success are excellent. Since almost one-third of white men also say they’re happy with their current jobs (see Table 39), it’s easy to see how they might be confident of attaining the positions they want. Overall optimism declines somewhat as circulation size increases, as indicated in Table 42. Three-quarters of white respondents at the 50,000- to 100,000-circulation level rate their chances of attaining ultimate career goals as excellent or good, but that confidence declines to 67.9 percent among whites working for the largest papers in the sample. Minority confidence also declines by almost exactly the same percentage, from 58.7 percent at the smallest newspapers to 51.7 percent at the largest. Note the percentages of minority respondents who assess their prospects of attaining their ultimate career objectives as poor, more than twice as likely as whites. Whites are much more optimistic of attaining their career goals and much more likely of describing their chances of success as excellent. Another reason why minority journalists of color are more likely than white journalists to change newspapers within the next few years is that many more minorities think they won’t get a shot at that job at their current papers. More than 65 percent of minority journalists, but 49 percent of whites, think they’ll have to change newspapers to attain the positions they want. A positive response to this question may be interpreted in a couple of ways. On the one hand, journalists may look around them and see that the person sitting at the desk they covet is relatively young, healthy and has all his or her teeth. Further, there may be others in the newsroom who also want that position, and journalists – traditionally well attuned to politics – can make assessments of their chances of getting the job they want at their current papers based on their own observations. If they want that kind of job, they may conclude, it will have to be at another newspaper. As a sidebar to this reasoning, many newspapers tend to prefer candidates from outside to fill important vacancies. Another line of reasoning is the “the grass is always greener” mentality, particularly seductive to disgruntled staffers. It runs this way: “I hate it here. That guy is never going to die. Things have got to be better somewhere – anywhere – else.” Either or both of these arguments may be behind the journalist’s decision that his or her best and quickest avenue to success lies in another newsroom. Clearly, journalists of color see mobility as a way around the glass ceiling in their current newsrooms. Almost 66 percent of minority journalists think they won’t get where they want to go at their current papers and will have to seek the position elsewhere; 48.9 percent of white respondents think so. Returning for a moment to the question of the relative ages of different demographic groups in the newsroom (see Tables 6 and 7), it may be that whites are less likely to leave their papers in pursuit of the jobs they want for two very different reasons. Aside from the fact that white journalists, especially white men, already hold the jobs they want, whites overall are older and thus more entrenched and invested in both their current papers and their communities. TABLE 43 here Predictably, a combination of race and gender also affects perceptions of the most likely avenues for success. Men, more ambitious overall than women (see Table 39) but less confident about their chances of attaining their goals (see Table 41), also are more likely to believe they’ll have to change newspapers to get where they want to go. Confidence about attaining career objectives may be described as a function of several factors: personal ambition, current level of advancement, individual experience and talent, job availability and environmental conditions at individual newspapers. For journalists of color, race acts to lower expectations of success and raise the expectation that the job desired is unattainable without changing newspapers. As in earlier examples, the combination of gender and race results in minority men being less confident of advancement at their current newspapers and more likely to think they’ll have to leave to get ahead, as Table 43 shows. Of all the gender/race subgroups in the newsroom, only white women think they can attain their career goals at their current newspapers; white men are about evenly split, indicating confidence in their ability to get the professional advancement they desire without uprooting themselves and their families. Just as their confidence in their job prospects overall are low (see Table 41), Latino and Hispanic men are most convinced they’ll have to change newspapers to get where they want to go; as Table 43 indicates, three-quarters of Latino men think they’ll have to move to get ahead, as do more than half of Latino women. Overall, three of every five journalists of color see themselves thwarted in their career development at their current papers and think they’ll have to change employers to advance their careers. This holds especially true at smaller newspapers, where 86.7 percent of minorities think they’ll have to change papers to advance, compared to 54.5 percent of whites, as Table 44 indicates. Overall, regardless of the size of their current newspaper, journalists of color are more ambitious than their white co-workers but more convinced that they will be unable to pursue their career aspirations without changing newspapers. Taken as a whole, these results support the conclusion that journalists of color may be less accepting than their white co-workers of promises of future advancement and quicker to seek alternative avenues around perceived or real roadblocks to their career growth. Minority journalists place career advancement and professional challenge higher on their lists of professional priorities than do white journalists in this sample. Like their white counterparts, they are committed to the profession, but some journalists of color – particularly women, who combat both racism and sexism – are in particular danger of abandoning the business. Minorities overall have set their career sights higher than have whites, but they are much less confident than whites that they will attain the positions to which they aspire. Their best chance for success, minority journalists say, and the quickest path up the career ladder is at other newspapers. TABLE 44 here
• • •
NOTES: CHAPTER 6 – Job Satisfaction Issues in the Newsroom
1. Linda Grist Cunningham, in American Society of Newspaper Editors, The Changing Face of the Newsroom. (Reston, VA: American Society of Newspaper Editors, 1987), p. 8.
2. Ibid., p. 13.
3. Ibid., pp. 21, 108-109.
4. John Madison, “Race Relations,” National Public Radio, a four-part series broadcast on “All Things Considered” in January 31-February 4, 1991.
5. Changing Face of the Newsroom, op. cit., p. 110.
6. California Chicano News Media Association and the Center for the Integration and Improvement of Journalism, “Latinos in California’s News Media: A status report,” presented to the CCNMA state conference, September 21, 1990, p. 9.
7. Ellis Cose, The Quiet Crisis: Minority Journalists and Newsroom Opportunity. (Berkeley, Calif.: Institute for Journalism Education, 1985), pp. i, 6.
8. Alexis S. Tan, “Why Asian American Journalists Leave Journalism and Why They Stay,” commissioned by the Asian American Journalists Association, presented to the AAJA national convention, August 23, 1990, New York., p. 6
9. “Latinos in California’s News Media: A status report,” op. cit., p. 9.
10. Changing Face of the Newsroom, op. cit., pp. 114, 115.
11. Cose, op. cit., p. 16.
12. Ibid., p. 1.
13. J. Frazier Smith, “Latest twist on minorities front: They’re ‘too good’ to work at my paper,” ASNE Bulletin, February 1988, p. 30.
14. Changing Face of the Newsroom, op. cit., p. 17.
15. Ibid., p. 115.
16. Ibid.
17. Tan, op. cit., p. 11.
18. Changing Face of the Newsroom, op. cit., p. 115.
19. Tan, op. cit., p. 11, Table 2.
20. Cose, op. cit., pp. 1, 15.
21. Changing Face of the Newsroom, op. cit., p. 115.
22. Ibid.
23. Cose, op. cit., pp. 3-4.
• Chapter 7.
