Newsroom Diversity—The Poynter Project (2001)

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The News and Race Models of Excellence Project
Connecting Newsroom Attitudes and News Content

By Edward C. Pease, Erna Smith, Federico Subervi, and Brenda Cooper
©2001

Pease, News & Race project director, is professor and head of the Department of Journalism and Communication at Utah State University; Smith, associate project director, is professor in the Department of Journalism at San Francisco State University; Subervi, associate project director, is associate professor in the Department of Radio/TV/Film at the University of Texas-Austin; Cooper, project research associate, is associate professor in the Department of Journalism and Communication at Utah State University.

Introduction
What is the connection between attitudes in the newsrooms of U.S. newspapers and TV stations regarding race and the actual content of their news products? Can we make a link between the newsroom climate regarding racial diversity—how journalists “see” issues of America’s changing demographics, and the impact of those changes on their jobs, lives and the news they cover daily—and what appears in the morning paper and on the evening TV news? And what can we learn about the successes and mistakes of news organizations as they struggle in some of this country’s most racially and ethnically diverse communities with the thorny and often divisive issues of race in America in the 21st century?

Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, several institutions across the country launched training programs for minority journalists. This was in response to plaints from the news industry first voiced by editors in The Kerner Commission report in 1968: “We can’t find qualified Negroes.” Ten years later, on the anniversary of the Kerner report, the American Society of Newspaper Editors—at the tireless urging of then-Oakland Tribune owner and editor Robert C. Maynard, among many others—enunciated its “Goal 2000” plan to recruit minorities into the news business.1 The goal was that the demographics of newspaper newsrooms should at least match the racial makeup on their communities by the turn of the century. In 1978, 4 percent of newsroom staff were journalists of color.2

By 2000, however, newspapers had fallen far short of ASNE’s target. ASNE’s annual Newsroom Census found that the percentage of journalists in U.S. daily newspaper newsrooms was 11.85 percent, compared to the overall U.S. population of about 28 percent minority. Ominously, the number of African-American journalists at daily newspapers dropped slightly in the 2000 Census from the previous year, indicating that Blacks are leaving the business faster than they come in. 3

The reason cited for such slow “progress” in expanding coverage of an increasingly multicultural America and in getting journalists of color into the news business is the same today as it was in 1968. News businesses “can’t find” minorities who want to work in journalism and they also have trouble keeping the journalists of color they do recruit. That also was an explanation for why study after study of news content in America keep showing there was so little content in newspapers and TV news about people of color, and why so much of that content was negative and reflected poorly on people of color. The problem remains that newspaper and TV news operations “can’t find” and can’t hold onto people of color to work in their newsrooms.

This has been a pattern of the American press and television news. Generally reflective of the mainstream power structure, those who run newspapers and TV news operations rarely see and almost never know people who aren’t like themselves—overwhelmingly White and male. And even if they are well-intentioned, those White male reporters and editors and anchors don’t—can not—have enough perspective to avoid insensitivity to people whose lives, experiences, perceptions and values differ so much from their own.

The TV news industry reports much better figures for inclusivity. The Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) reported in its 2000 newsroom census that the percentage of minorities in TV news hit 21 percent, an all-time high.4 The greater reported staff diversity in TV news may be in part due to FCC license requirements that TV newsrooms broaden racial representation in their newsrooms.

Both ASNE and RTNDA, along with various other organizations, vowed in 2000 to redouble efforts at minority recruiting. RTNDA entered into a partnership with UNITY, the umbrella organization for the four minority journalists associations, to pursue new methods for expanding workforce diversity. ASNE has set new benchmark goals for the diversity of newspaper newsrooms—a new “parity” target by 2025, when the U.S. minority population is projected to reach 38.2 percent. The ASNE goal for the end of 2001 is 13.5 percent. 5 Meanwhile, organizations such as the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, the Ford Foundation, the Knight Foundation and the Freedom Forum all also continue to pursue aggressive diversity programs.

This report is part of such an effort, a national research initiative of the Poynter Institute’s Media Diversity—Beyond 2000 project, with funding from the Ford Foundation and additional support from the Maynard Institute, Utah State University, the University of Texas-Austin, the University of Southern California and San Francisco State University.

Historical Perspective
In the 1940s, novelist Langston Hughes created Jesse B. Semple, a Black man called “Simple” by his friends, whose front-porch commentary on life in Harlem included insights on life, race and the news. “The only time colored folks is front-page news is when there’s been a lynching or a boycott or a whole bunch of us have been butchered or is arrested,” Simple observed.6

Although it was not necessarily addressing directly questions of race in its 1947 report, the Hutchins Commission’s edicts for a socially responsible press—notably its statement that a responsible press must present “a representative picture of the constituent groups in the society”—set a framework for the Kerner Commission 21 years later, which did look particularly at race and the press.7

As the Kerner Commission commented in 1968, it’s as if people who aren’t White “do not read newspapers or watch television, give birth, marry, die or go to PTA meetings.” One Black man, interviewed by Kerner investigators, said, “The average Black person couldn’t give less of a damn about what the media say. The intelligent Black person is resentful at what he considers to be a totally false portrayal of what goes on in the ghetto. Most Black people see newspapers as mouthpieces of the “power structure.” 8 In 1990, a Black journalist said, in response to a major national survey, “We’re still the invisible people.” 9 This is consistent with a new study by veteran TV broadcaster and network executive Av Westin, who wrote in the April 2001 issue of Brill’s Content that, because of TV news’ “ratings-obsessed culture,” skin color has everything to do with what appears on the evening news. “Every week, every day, stories about African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians are kept off the air,” wrote Weston, a former top executive at ABC News and 20/20, among other positions. “Based on the anecdotal evidence I encountered, I feel confident that racism is alive and well in many television newsrooms around the country.”10 Today, even as the latest U.S. Census figures show “minorities” becoming the majority in many urban areas and even in some states, press portrayals of people of color are still characterized by the same pathological perspective.

Marilyn Gist, a press scholar from Seattle, says negative press images of people of color stem largely from ignorance. However well intentioned reporters and editors may be, their views of the world are anchored in their own experiences, which are largely White. “For much of its history, this country was mono-cultural and, with the exception and frequent exclusion of African Americans, it was racially homogeneous,” she wrote. “It is rarely necessary to think of one’s culture, values and perspectives when they rarely contrast with those that may be different.” As a result, she says, those who are gatekeepers in the predominantly White press naturally view events in the context of their own “perceptual biases and cultural anchors.” 11

Those perspectives do not reflect social reality. Media gatekeepers cannot see the world from the breadth of perspectives that exist in the communities their newspapers cover. This lack of understanding means that the news media may often offend, and may drive away readers and viewers of color even as their communities become increasingly diverse.

Since the late 1970s, news businesses have tried to make changes. A Latina editor from Texas told researchers in a 1988 survey of minority upper-echelon newspaper executives that newsroom diversity can help newspapers stop blundering around in the dark. “You don’t drive a car, don’t read a book with one eye covered,” she said. “Without a newsroom that reflects your community, you’re covering that community with partial vision.”12

The reasons to change the way the news business does business in American were and are both moral and practical: “Moral in the sense that what is proposed in the hiring, advancement and retention of minorities and women is simply a matter of being fair,” said David Lawrence Jr. in 1990, then-publisher of the Miami Herald. “Practical in the sense that it is absolutely crucial to the future of our business. . . . My own life experiences do not provide a complete and unabridged perspective on what is important to others in this world,” he said. “That is why I must ‘people’ my newspaper with folks who know something more about many things than I.” 13 Ten years later, Charles L. Overby, chairman of the Freedom Forum, said the same thing in calling for a “massive joint diversity effort” to address the problems of covering all of America. “Race is still the most divisive aspect of American society,” he said in 2000. “Paying attention to racial issues in the newsroom is more than good social policy—it’s good business.” 14 In 1993, Robert C. Maynard had expressed similar sentiments when he said, “This country cannot be the country we want it to be if its story is told by only one group of citizens. Our goal is to give all Americans front-door access to the truth.”15

News executives recognize these issues. “Race is not a minority issue,” Gerald Boyd, deputy managing editor of The New York Times, said in 1997. “It’s the most important domestic issue this country faces.” 16 Three years earlier, former Milwaukee Journal editor Sig Gissler called it “America’s rawest nerve and most enduring dilemma.” 17

Certainly, the dilemma endures. A 2001 study that most U.S. Whites think Blacks are doing just fine: “Whether out of hostility, indifference or simple lack of knowledge, large numbers of White Americans incorrectly believe that African-Americans are as well off as Whites in terms of their jobs, incomes, schooling and health care.” In reality, according to the study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, The Washington Post and Harvard University, this perception among Whites is wrong: “The economic and social distance between Blacks and Whites is far from closed, except in the minds of many White Americans.” 18

Clearly, the disconnect across racial lines that has so long characterized American society persists, not only in the society at-large, but in the national news media whose job it is to help Americans talk to one another. In the news business, this disconnect has long been in evidence in what journalist and educator Chuck Stone has called the “tortoiselike” progress in all the areas in which the news intersects with American society.19 In the newsrooms of America, even those that have managed to make significant gains in the hiring of journalists of color, it’s sometimes as if White journalists and their minority co-workers are on different planets. The Associated Press Managing Editors reported in 1996, “America’s newsrooms are two different worlds. The newsroom experiences of White journalists and of minority journalists contrast so sharply that they are nearly mirror images of each other.” Citing the “wide perceptual gap” identified in The Newsroom Barometer study five years before, the APME said newsrooms have to get “on the same wavelength. This is important both for internal newsroom operations and for news coverage.” 20

The perspectives of newsroom managers also make a difference in terms of hiring and retaining newsroom staff. Ellis Cose, then-director of the Institute for Journalism Education, found in a 1985 study that minority journalists are more mobile than their White counterparts—more likely to “job-hop.” 21 The Newsroom Barometer study in 1991 found the same. Part of the reason seemed to be that journalists of color were in such demand that they were more likely to be hired away by other newspapers than Whites; the other part of the equation, as Pease reported in his Barometer study, was that minority journalists thought that their predominantly White managers not only didn’t value them, but had doubts about their abilities. 22

Only about 9 percent of newspaper newsroom managers are minorities, and most of those are in mid-level positions; in TV newsrooms, RTNDA reports that 14 percent of news directors are minorities.23 A survey of minority journalists at the 1999 UNITY conference in Seattle found that having a minority executive in a decision-making capacity could make a significant difference in how the news organization perceives diversity issues.24

Retired TV executive Av Westin, in interviews of 100-plus TV news executives last year, found what he considered to be evidence of systematic racism in TV newsrooms : “It’s our dirty little secret,” one source told him. Driven by news staffers’ perceptions that news about people of color reduces all-important Nielsen ratings, trying to air stories that focus on minorities—apparently especially Blacks—can threaten their jobs. “[T]he crushing quest for ratings” means that “race is a criterion for story selection,” Westin reports. “On the local level [as opposed to the networks], closet racism is manifested by news departments that will not cover murders or kidnappings in their minority communities but swarm over similar events in the white sections of town.”25

A news director at a New York City network affiliate, an African-American woman, told Westin: “We don’t like discussing race even in our newsrooms because it can make us uncomfortable, and if we’re uncomfortable, how do we make a team? . . . I maintain, however, that when dealing with issues regarding race, the newsrooms themselves first have to be prepared to deal with issues of race before covering issues of race.”26

Clearly, the climate regarding race is critical in determining the final “complexion” of the news product.

Aside from the staffing and management issues, the more fundamental question becomes what the news product looks like—what’s in it, and how does it reflect and serve the people and the communities it covers? The other question is whether management and staffing decisions regarding racial diversity actually have an impact on the news product in newspapers and on television.

The News and Race Models of Excellence Project
This research project attempts to take previous studies of content and newsroom attitudes a step farther, to see what the connection is between the climate in the newsroom regarding race, and the content of the newspaper or evening newscast. The News and Race Models of Excellence Project, envisioned by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies with support from The Ford Foundation and The Maynard Institute, was designed to evaluate the American press’s progress in its efforts to cover the face of America in communities whose demographics, as the most recent U.S. census attests, are rapidly changing. The challenge was not only to find the recipes for success to report news in some of the most dynamic and racially and ethnically diverse communities in America, but to take a look inside some of the best newspaper and television newsrooms in the United States—what is the climate as regards race and news in American journalism in 2001?

Past research in this area has included innumerable audits both by newspapers and TV companies themselves and by scholars, of the content of newspapers and television newscasts. There have been only a few major studies of newsroom culture and of news people27; even fewer studies have looked at the sociology of race and gender in the newsroom and the issues of job satisfaction of minority journalists.28 Beyond these efforts, no research as far as we can determine has attempted to connect attitudes in the newsroom regarding race issues in hiring and in content, with the actual content of the news product. Thus, the question here is whether connections can be made linking a) management efforts regarding racial diversity in hiring and content, b) staff attitudes regarding issues of diversity in the work place and in the performance of the news organization, and c) the actual content of the news product.

One key hypothesis of this project is that diverse newsrooms with staff who are open to and accepting of issues of racial diversity and inclusivity will be likely to create an editorial product that is more diverse, more sensitive to issues of multiculturalism, and better able to cover the changing demographics of the communities in which they operate. Thus, we theorize, the closer together White and minority journalists are attitudinally regarding race, the more effectively they will be as a team in confronting and exploring these issues both in the workplace and in the content of their news product. The farther apart they are attitudinally, we suggest, the less inclusive their news product will be.

In this report on the results of the News and Race Project, we examine the connections between newsroom attitudes regarding race and the actual content of the newspaper or newscast. How do the attitudes of journalists and the “climate” regarding issues of race in the newsroom play out when it comes to what the news staff covers and how their communities are reflected in the news? Can the quality and quantity of news that reflects an increasingly diverse America be predicted in any way by the attitudes and sensitivity of journalists in the workplace regarding issues of racial diversity? We believe the answer is yes.

Methodology
The News and Race Models of Excellence Project selected six metropolitan newspapers and six major-market television news stations as partners in the project. The newspaper and TV partners operate in some of the most diverse cities across America, including New York, Detroit, Seattle, San Francisco, Tampa, El Paso and Dallas (see “About the News and Race Project,” Appendix). The news organizations were selected on the basis of a) their reputation and record in areas of diversity performance, and the recommendations of informed experts; b) geographic location; c) ownership; and d) the demographics of their areas of operation.

In the initial phases of the study, candidates to be news organization partners were surveyed and selected. Because the goal of this project was to identify some of the best practices of newspaper and TV news operations as regards coverage of diversity, what we were looking for were exemplary newsrooms from whom other newspapers and TV news stations could draw lessons.

What were some of the “best” print and TV news organizations nationwide in terms of their hiring, retention and promotion of journalists of color, the climate in the newsroom for minority journalists, their performance in covering racially diverse communities? Candidates for the project were nominated by members of minority journalists associations and others both in the news business and in academe who are familiar with issues of diversity in the news business, and from a database of news companies and their diversity efforts that was compiled by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies as part of its ongoing Media Diversity—Beyond 2000 program.

We were looking for a small sample of newspapers and TV stations from across the country—this was not intended to be a generalizable picture of all U.S. newsrooms—on which we could focus intensively. We were looking for newsrooms with good racial diversity, located in communities that were themselves racially diverse; we also wanted a broad geographic range and a variety of corporate owners. 29

The first phase of the project involved research, with the assistance of each partner organization, on the 12 newspaper and TV companies—their ownership, employee demographics, company history, management policies and strategies regarding diversity, and any in-house efforts regarding diversity in hiring or content or outreach that might be relevant to the study. The second phase of the study was a year-long content analysis of the news product of each of the partner organizations. This resulted in a random sample taken between January 1 and December 31, 2000, of 52 issues of each of the six newspapers and approximately 72 newscasts from each of the six TV stations. These samples were analyzed closely for a wide range of diversity-related items, ranging from the race of the reporters to the tone of the stories and whether stories featured central involvement of people of color. In essence, we sought to answer the question, What was the “complexion” of the news content of these 12 major news products? The third phase was a survey of the journalists in the 12 newsrooms on their attitudes regarding issues of racial diversity in hiring, job assignments, the performance of the news operation and other matters: What was the “climate” in those newsrooms for people of color and issues of racial diversity?

Based on our investigations and the recommendations of colleagues who pay close attention to these issues, we recruited the following news organizations for this study.30

Newspapers
• The Dallas Morning News
• The South Florida Sun-Sentinel
• The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
• The San Jose Mercury News
• The Seattle Times
• The News-Journal (Wilmington, Del.)

TV Stations

• KRON-San Francisco
• KTVA-Anchorage
• KVIA-El Paso
• WFLA-Tampa
• WNBC-New York
• WXYZ-Detroit

All 12 news organizations agreed to provide company background and information on hiring and personnel practices, especially diversity policies and practices; to provide copies of the news product on the randomly selected dates identified by the content audit teams; and to circulate the newsroom attitude survey in their newsrooms.

Newspaper Content Audits
The six newspapers in the study were audited for the diversity of their content, with 52 issues of each newspaper randomly selected during 2000 and analyzed for the quantity and quality of their news coverage of communities of color. The coders, based at the University of Southern California and San Francisco State University, analyzed the “minority-related” stories and photographs appearing in the random sample of 52 issues of each of the six newspapers published between January 1 and December 31, 2000. The sample included roughly one issue per week of each newspaper over the year-long period. Only “minority-related” news published on front pages, section fronts or inside display pages without advertisements was analyzed. The largest home-delivery edition of each newspaper was selected for the audit; zoned issues or sections were not included.

“Minority-related” news was defined as photographs, stories, columns, reviews, editorials, letters to the editor and briefs that:
• referred to ethnic minorities and/or other ethnic/race-oriented issues (such as affirmative action, bilingual education, etc.);
• depicted an event, situation or issue that a person of color caused or clearly helped cause to become newsworthy; and
• was accompanied by a photograph that featured one or more person or persons of color who caused or clearly helped cause the situation depicted in the news story.

Not every newspaper could provide the issues on the dates sampled, but the percentage of missing dates for five of the six newspapers was not enough to affect the overall findings. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch provided only about half of the sample dates, however, so it was dropped from the overall content audit.

A total of 4,531 “minority-related” news item were analyzed using a coding sheet consisting of 25 questions focused on the quantity and quality of the coverage (see Newspaper Coding Instrument, Appendix). Of those questions, 18 were about the news stories—e.g. story placement, length, topic, tone, minority group depicted in coverage and whether the news item was a photo, brief, column, editorial, review, brief, etc. The remaining seven questions focused on the ethnicity, gender and social role of the sources in the story.

To evaluate coverage quality, an analysis was undertaken of the amount and tone of “minority-related” coverage and the social role people of color played in the coverage. We chose to evaluate these characteristics because they mirror the most common criticisms about news coverage of people of color: That there isn’t much coverage and, when there is, it’s mostly negative stories depicting minorities either at risk or in trouble, such as young Black men being arrested. Each newspaper was ranked based on these findings and the rankings were compared to the newsroom “Race Climate Quotient” to investigate the relationship between newsroom attitudes toward race and the content of the newspaper.

TV News Content Audits
The “primary” evening newscasts of each of the TV operations were analyzed by a team from the University of Texas-Austin. The goal was to obtain from January 1 through December 31, 2000, a representative sample of at least one newscast per week for weekdays and one per month for weekends, for a total of 72 newscasts from each TV station. 30 The specific dates were randomly selected by the investigators at Texas and each station was asked to provide video copies of the newscasts that—at the time of the launch of this study—the stations they themselves thought had the largest audience. For most stations, that was the 6:00 p.m. newscast. While the goal was to obtain 72 newscasts from each station, due to either technical difficulties with tapes or missed dates at the source, a few programs could not be coded for five of the six stations. The content analysis was thus performed on 408 newscasts distributed as follows from each station: 71 from KVIA, 70 each from WNBC and WXYZ, 69 from WFLA, 66 from KRON, and 61 from KTVA. Altogether, these yielded 8,203 valid news stories (see distribution by station in Table TV1 in appendix).

At least two coders independently reviewed each newscast from start to finish. For the selected 8,203 stories, they coded, as per instructions in the coding guide, numerous variables such as length of news segment, main topic of story, number of minorities as anchors and reporters, ethnic/racial characteristics and number of minorities as newsmakers and/or sources in the news and the roles these held in society and in the news segment, and tone of the news about those minority newsmakers (see appendix for the full coding guide). The most important and discriminate variable was whether the news items had central involvement of minorities. The overall reliability coefficient for this assessment was 95 percent. For all other variables the reliability was comparably high.

Newsroom Attitude Surveys—Overview
At the same time, a sample of the newsroom staff at all 12 newsrooms was surveyed on their attitudes regarding their jobs, the role race plays in their newsrooms, and their station’s or newspaper’s perceived performance regarding the hiring, retention and coverage of racial minorities. The goal was to measure the “climate” in each newsroom for people of color, both employees and the increasingly diverse communities they cover.

The survey was designed to measure attitudes in the newsrooms of our 12 partner organizations on a range of topics relating to both job satisfaction and, especially, attitudes toward the role of race in the workplace and in news content. Aside from examining how race plays in the newsrooms of these six newspapers and six TV stations, we also sought to draw connections between attitudes about diversity among journalists, and the content of their newspapers and TV newscasts. But before we look at whether and how the newsroom climate regarding race may be a predictor of press performance in covering an increasingly diverse America, let’s look at some of the attitudes that prevail in these 12 newspaper and television newsrooms.

The three-page newsroom survey went to samples of the newsroom staff at all 12 news organizations. The survey instrument replicates Pease’s 1991 Newsroom Barometer Project survey of 1,328 journalists at 27 daily newspapers, which measured and contrasted the attitudes of White and racial minority journalists on diversity issues.31 The News and Race Models of Excellence survey included 51 questions: 13 dealing with general job satisfaction and retention issues in the news business; 32 dealing with issues of diversity and gender in the workplace and in the news business generally; and six questions on the respondents’ demographics. Respondents returned 980 valid surveys, which were coded and evaluated, 758 from newspaper journalists and 222 from television journalists.

Demographics
Just over 71 percent of respondents were White; 25,7 percent were journalists of color (about 5 percent did not self-identify); 53.9 percent were male, 43.9 percent were female (about 3 percent said they were “other”). White men had been in the news business longest—an average of just over 20 years; the newest arrivals among these respondents were Asian-Americans and Hispanic men, with an average of just over 10 years in the news business. Nearly 93 percent graduated from college, 59 percent with degrees in journalism.

Among the 758 newspaper respondents, 53.4 percent were male, 43.8 percent female; almost 73.5 percent were White; 24 percent were people of color (7.4% Black, 6.9% Latino, 4.8% Asian-American, 0.4% Indian), and 7.1 percent did not specify and were designated as “Other.” 32 The average age of the newspaper journalists was 38 years. About 76 percent had graduated from college, 27 percent had some graduate school; 64 percent had graduated with journalism/mass communication degrees.

Among the 222 television journalist respondents, 55 percent were male, 41 percent were women; 63.5 percent were White, 31.5 percent were minorities (12.6% African-American; 7.2%, Latino; 4.5% Asian; and 1.4% Native American); and 10.8 percent did not self-identify by race and were designated as “Other.”33 Their average age was 38. About 77 percent had graduated from college, 63 percent with journalism/mass communication degrees; 16 percent had at least some graduate school education.

The survey focused primarily on two areas: job satisfaction in the news business, and on the respondents’ attitudes toward the importance of racial inclusiveness in hiring and news content. This report will focus on the latter issues, but it is instructive to mention briefly some of the key findings as regards these journalists’ satisfaction with their jobs and careers in journalism.

Job Satisfaction
The survey asked respondents their views on 13 questions pertaining to their choice of a career in television or newspaper news, ranging from a series of basic satisfaction scales to questions about their career objectives and goals. Overall, three-quarters of these journalists said they were satisfied with their choice of a journalism career, and 65 percent said they expected still to be working in the news business five years from now (although about 60 percent of them said they probably would be at different companies by then). If they had it to do all over again, 65 percent of them said they’d choose a journalism career. These numbers represent some significant erosion in the level of job satisfaction of all newspaper journalists from 10 years ago, especially among African-Americans, which is consistent with the latest ASNE Census figures showing that Black newspaper journalists are leaving slightly faster than they are being hired.

Among TV journalists, African-Americans expressed the highest degree of satisfaction with their career choice—81.5 percent—compared to 74 percent of Whites, 70 percent of Asians and just 56 percent of Hispanics. More than 25 percent of White respondents said they did not expect to be working in TV news five years from now; nearly one-third of Hispanic respondents said they would not make the same career choice if they had it to do over again.

A more complete report on newsroom job satisfaction, in comparison with the earlier Newsroom Barometer study, will be made separately from this report.

Attitudes About Race in the Newsroom and in the News Product
The survey also asked 32 questions dealing with various aspects of how race “plays” in the newsroom. A much more comprehensive look at all those data also will appear in a separate report. But at this stage we can summarize our findings this way: In general, the radical disconnect in the attitudes of minority and White journalists that was discovered in the 1991 Newsroom Barometer report —what was termed a “perceptual gap”—still exists in 2001, but it is a narrower gap in these 12 newsrooms.

For the purposes of this report, we will look at just a handful of key questions that get at the attitudes of respondents toward diversity in hiring, advancement, professional opportunity and news content. Responses to these key questions help us construct a “Race Climate Quotient” that serves as a predictor linking the newsroom environment regarding racial diversity with the actual content of the news product. A critical part of the analysis of these responses is the comparison of attitudes expressed by White journalists with those of minority journalists. This is not to erect some kind of racial us-versus-them dichotomy or to create divisions between Whites and journalists of color, but to attempt to describe empirically the extent of racial perceptual and attitudinal disconnect that may exist in newspaper and TV newsrooms, and which may get in the way of effective coverage of an increasingly racially diverse nation. For the purposes of this discussion, we will focus on nine key questions that get at two aspects of journalists’ attitudes regarding race:
1) the journalists’ support for racial diversity efforts in the workplace and diversity content the news product, and
2) their assessment of their company’s overall performance as regards diversity.

The four questions that get at the journalists’ own support for diversity efforts ask how important the respondents considered certain initiatives (survey questions 18, 19, 24 and 25; see survey form, appendix). The five questions regarding their own company’s performance as regards race both in the newsroom and in coverage their community include questions about opportunities for advancement of journalists of color at their company, the company’s efforts to provide racial diversity sensitivity training, the importance of coverage of minority communities, and the all-important assessment of the “climate” for people of color at their company (see survey, questions 15, 21, 30, 37 and 41, appendix).

Responses to these nine questions were analyzed and a score assigned that makes up what we call the “Race Climate Quotient,” a description of the attitudinal “climate” regarding diversity in the 12 newsrooms in our sample.

The Newsroom “Race Climate Quotient”
The Newsroom “Race Climate Quotient” is designed to combine responses from these nine questions to assess in an aggregate way the level of agreement—or disagreement—between journalists of color and their White co-workers. The underlying assumption is that the newsroom “climate” in terms of openness and acceptance toward issues of race can be assessed not only through the direct responses of journalists to questions, but also by evaluating the extent of agreement or disagreement between White journalists and their minority co-workers. That is, if about the same percentage of respondents in each group expresses the same opinion on an issue, then it indicates that everyone is more or less on the same page, that they see the issue similarly. But if there is a large gap in the responses by race, then it may be said that an attitudinal disconnect exists between Whites and minorities. Clearly, this could contribute to the comfort level in the newsroom, which may, we suggest, also show up in the quality of news coverage about diversity and race.

Four of the nine questions that make up the quotient concerned the respondents’ attitudes toward efforts to improve diversity at their company; the other five questions focused on respondents’ assessment of how well their company was doing as regards racial inclusiveness in both the newsroom and in the news product.

The scale that resulted from this methodology permitted the 12 news organizations to be evaluated both independently and on a ranked scale. We have hypothesized a relationship between positive attitudes of these journalists regarding diversity, the climate of the newsroom, and the quality of coverage of diversity appearing in their news products. If Whites and minority journalists are in agreement—if they see these issues pretty much the same way—then we predict a better “climate” in the newsroom, which will result in better news content. (See Table 1).

Table 1: “Race Climate Quotients”
Support for Assessment of
Diversity Efforts Company Effort

All Respondents (N=970) +45.1 -80.3
All Newspapers (n=758) +50.9 -68.4
All TV stations (n=212) +28.9 -117.3

Newspapers
The Dallas Morning News +45.0 -99.8
The News-Journal (Wilmington) * +77.3 -89.6
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch +115.4 -118.9
The San Jose Mercury-News +26.8 -8.6
The Seattle Times +37.7 -103.5
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel +52.2 -57.0

TV Stations
KRON, San Francisco +32.8 -204.6
KTVA, Anchorage -32.7 -92.5
KVIA, El Paso -103.8 +4.1
WFLA, Tampa +73.6 -215.8
WNBC, New York +27.9 -41.8
WXYZ, Detroit -32.2 -214.6

(*Note: The News-Journal sample was small – 40 – and included only six minorities, so this comparison is difficult at best, and cannot be called representative.)

Explanation
What does this mean? The optimum score using this process would be zero, which would mean that Whites and minority journalists agree on the issues of support for diversity efforts and their company’s efforts or performance regarding diversity. The point is that everyone assesses the situation in approximately the same way and would be starting from the same place. A positive score means that minority journalists answered more positively than did Whites on these questions about race; so a positive score on “Support for Diversity Efforts” means that minority respondents are more supportive than are Whites of making efforts to improve diversity in both hiring and in content; a negative score for “Assessment of Company Effort” means that minority journalists think their company is doing a poorer job regarding diversity than White journalists do. (For example: In Table 1, the “support for Diversity Efforts” score for newspapers is +50.9, and for TV stations +28.9. This indicates two things: 1) that minority journalists both in newspapers and TV news are more supportive of efforts to improve diversity than are Whites; and 2) that White and minority journalists in TV newsrooms are closer in agreement on these topics (+28.9) than Whites and minorities at newspapers (+50.9). In their “Assessment of Company Effort” to improve diversity, both the newspaper score (-68.4) and the TV score (-117.3) are negative, indicating that journalists of color give their company a lower “grade” in its efforts toward diversity than do their White colleagues. But the “disconnect” between journalists of color and their White co-workers is greater in this measure at TV newsrooms than in newspapers: -117.3 vs. -68.4. Looking at the individual companies, the “disconnect” in support for diversity efforts is greatest at The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (+115.4) and at KVIA in El Paso (1.03.8); the greatest “disconnect” on how well journalists in these newsroom think their company performs on race matters is, again, at The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (-118.9) and at WFLA in Tampa (-215.8), WXYZ in Detroit (-214.6) and KRON in San Francisco (-204.6). What scores like this indicate is fairly substantial disagreement between Whites and minorities on issues of race.)

So each of these companies can be “graded” in terms of the degree of agreement that exists in the newsroom between Whites and journalists of color on how important diversity efforts are, and on how well the company is doing in this regard. The closer we get to zero, the more agreement across racial groups in the newsroom and then the better the “climate” for race in the work place. The overall level of agreement on support for making efforts to improve diversity is greater in TV newsrooms than at newspapers. But agreement on how well TV stations perform on race issues is worse than in newspaper newsrooms. Over all, journalists of color are more supportive of making extra efforts to improve diversity, and much more critical of the job their company is doing to improve diversity in hiring and in content.

There are exceptions: Among these six newspapers, The San Jose Mercury News responses demonstrate good unanimity in the newsroom in support of diversity efforts in general, closely followed by The Seattle Times; The Mercury News rates much better than the other five newspapers in terms of how well the newsroom staff thinks the company is doing in terms of its efforts to achieve racial diversity. Among TV news operations, New York’s WNBC, the network’s flagship station, ranked best in terms of agreement on the importance of diversity efforts; Anchorage’s KTVA, Detroit’s WXYZ and San Francisco’s KRON all were in a tie for second, fractionally behind WNBC. The WNBC journalists also rated their company well in terms of the job the station does regarding diversity, but best in this category was KVIA in El Paso, whose journalists are in almost complete agreement in terms of their assessment of their company’s performance in promoting diversity.

Table 2: Support for Diversity—Ranking
Newspapers
1. The San Jose Mercury-News
2. The Seattle Times
3. The Dallas Morning News
4. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel
5. The News-Journal (Wilmington, DE)
6. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
TV Stations
1. WNBC-New York
2. KTVA-Anchorage
2. WXYZ-Detroit
2. KRON-San Francisco
5. WFLA-Tampa
6. KVIA-El Paso

Table 3: Assessment of Company Efforts—Ranking
Newspapers
1. The San Jose Mercury-News
2. The News-Journal (Wilmington, DE)
3. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel
4. The Dallas Morning News
5. The Seattle Times
6. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
TV Stations
1. KVIA-El Paso
2. WNBC-New York
3. KTVA-Anchorage
4. KRON-San Francisco
5. WXYZ-Detroit
5. WFLA-Tampa

We predict that news organizations where journalists of color and their White co-workers are closer in agreement on issues of race will also have better content in their news product regarding coverage of their diverse communities. The news products of newsrooms where minority and White journalists are in more disagreement on these questions will be reflected in news content that is less complete, less positive in tone, less representative of diversity in their coverage areas. A key question of this study is whether positive attitudes in the work place regarding racial diversity issues can be a predictor of the performance of the news organization in terms of content about race issues and people of color. Can we link newsroom “climate” for race with the content of the news product?

The answer to that question from this small sample is “Yes” and “Sometimes.”

The Newspaper Content Audits
The rankings of the newspapers in this study are best understood within the context of the major audit findings over recent years for all the newspapers. More the half the coverage analyzed here (51%) consisted of photographs, followed by news stories (33%), columns (6%), briefs (4%), reviews and letters to the editor (2% each), and unsigned editorials (1%).
In the 4,531 items analyzed from the five newspapers34 in the study, Blacks were depicted in almost half the “minority-related” coverage (49%), followed by Whites (21%), Hispanics (10%), Native Americans (5%), Asians (4%) and people of other or mixed ethnic origin (5%).
More than half the stories had five or more sources, which is a good indicator of the depth of the coverage. But almost 60 percent of the minority-related coverage was about sports and entertainment, with an emphasis on sports. Other top news topics were crime (12%) and social welfare, mostly stories about poverty and race discrimination (11%).

The emphasis on sports drove the findings. Most of the people of color (30 percent to 40 percent) depicted in the coverage who could be identified by race were athletes and other sports figures, such as coaches, managers, executives and union representatives. An argument could be made that the emphasis on sports and entertainment reflects social reality and American preoccupations with music, MTV, Tiger Woods and Barry Bonds. But if we remove the sports and entertainment content from these finds, there is woefully little news content at these newspapers that reflects the day-to-day lives of people of color, coverage of where people really live, the more substantive social topics, and related portrayals of minorities in the American life.

Still, some promising coverage did emerge in the study that demonstrates how far some newspapers have come in improving the complexity of news about people of color. “Color-blind” feature/human interest stories depicting minorities comprised 8 percent of the total content. Furthermore, of that coverage, more than half was upbeat or positive in tone. These findings are in sharp contrast to numerous previous content studies, which showed that people of color were mostly depicted in a negative light and rarely in stories about their everyday life. However, the tone of coverage in this study varied sharply according to topic. Not surprisingly, sports news tended to be more upbeat, while and crime and social welfare news tended to be more negative.

The percentage of the total newshole devoted to “minority-related” coverage could not be determined in this study, because only certain pages of the newspapers were analyzed—the front page, section fronts and other prominent display pages. Some journalists might complain that much more content focusing on race and diverse communities appears on inside pages and in zoned editions, and they would probably be correct. But there is no question that the “face” of a newspaper—its view of the world and what’s important in it—appears on the front page and, to a somewhat lesser extent, on the front pages of the newspaper’s sections. And, since the importance journalists place on a story can literally be measured in inches, some insight into the weight the newspaper places on certain kinds of coverage can be gained by examining the percentage of longer stories in each newspaper.

Given the diversity of the communities in which these five newspapers are located, the prominence of news about people of color is not surprising. On the other hand, content audits of newspaper (and TV news) over many years have found that the percentage of news about minorities and diverse communities routinely has lagged behind the actual population, with the percentage of newshole covering people of color typically in the single digits or possibly low teens, in communities where the minority population is often much greater. In this study, other factors also bear noting. People of color comprised many of the top-ranking government and/or elected officials in the communities in which these newspapers were located. Also, during the time of the study, the publishers and/or senior editors of three of the five newspapers in the study were people of color, and the percentage of the newsroom staff at these newspapers who were minority also was up to three times greater than the average at U.S. daily newspapers overall. 35

To determine if a relationship exists between the “climate” for diversity in the newsroom and the coverage of racial diversity by these five newspapers, the amount and tone of coverage and the social roles minorities played in the coverage were analyzed for each newspaper. Table 4 ranks the five newspapers by the size of their minority-related stories. If the length of a story is an indicator of its importance, depth and completeness, then The South Florida Sun-Sentinel edged out The Seattle Times by inches in terms of the depth of its coverage of minority issues. Seventy-seven percent of the Sun-Sentinel’s stories about minorities were 10 column inches or longer, 76 percent at The Seattle Times and 73 percent at The San Jose Mercury News. In sheer number of minority stories and other items in the paper, however, the Mercury-News ran the most, followed by the Sun-Sentinel and The Dallas Morning News. The number of stories is more a function of the size of the newspaper’s newshole, however, than is the proportion of longer stories, which implies greater depth.

Table 4: Amount of Minority-Related Coverage

Stories 10 inches # Minority-Related
Newspaper or more news stories

South Florida Sun-Sentinel 357 (77%) 466
Seattle Times 238 (76%) 313
San Jose Mercury-News 346 (73%) 475
News-Journal (Wilmington, DE) 85 (63%) 135
Dallas Morning-News 192 (52%) 367

Using this ranking based on the proportion of minority-related news that ran long (10 inches or more), how does this measure of quality compare to the “Race Climate Quotient” rankings of newsroom attitudes? Table 5 compares the five newspapers on the basis of the proportion of longer minority news stories, with their rankings in the “climate quotient” (see Tables 2 and 3). In terms of the amount of minority-related coverage, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, The Seattle Times and The San Jose Mercury-News rank highest; in newsroom support for diversity efforts, San Jose, Seattle and Dallas rank highest, and in terms of how well the newsroom staff perceives the newspaper is doing as regards diversity, The Mercury-News, The Sun-Sentinel and The News-Journal rank highest (The Seattle Times ranks lowest on this measure).

Table 5: Amount of Minority News Coverage vs. Race Climate Quotients

The Race Climate Quotient rankings
I. Support for Coverage Amounts
1. Sun-Sentinel
1. Seattle Times
3. San Jose Mercury-News
4. News-Journal
5. Dallas Morning-News

II. Assessment of Diversity Efforts
1. San Jose Mercury-News
2. Seattle Times
3. Dallas Morning-News
4. Sun-Sentinel
5. News-Journal

III. Assessment of Company Effort
1. San Jose Mercury-News
2. Sun-Sentinel
3. News-Journal
4. Dallas Morning-News
5. Seattle Times

Although the rankings do not line up exactly, the findings suggest one indicator of inclusive coverage could be the attitudes and perceptions of people who produce it. The papers with the longest “minority-related” news stories also ranked high in the level of agreement between minority and White journalists on one or both of the “race climate quotients.” In other words, the more staffers who were on the same page regarding diversity efforts, the greater the quantity of coverage about people of color.

Obviously, news coverage is a product of many factors that have nothing to do with newsroom commitment to diversity. Deadlines, staffing levels, beat structures, uncooperative sources, the newspaper’s reputation in communities of color and even the way news is defined pose challenges to more inclusive coverage. But commitment, both from “upstairs” and among the rank-and-file, remains the first step in overcoming these challenges.

Tone of coverage
The coverage also was analyzed to determine whether it reflected well, badly, both or neither on the people of color it portrayed. A point scale was devised to rank the four tone characteristics (upbeat, downbeat, mixed (both upbeat and downbeat) and neutral). The points for coverage tone in each newspaper were totaled and divided to establish a mean score. The papers were then ranked for the overall tone of their coverage about people of color. In reading Table 6 below, keep in mind that almost half the total minority coverage in the five newspapers was upbeat and included sports and entertainment coverage; just over one-quarter of the total coverage was negative. Removing sports and entertainment coverage from the equation would sharply change these results.

Table 6: Tone of Coverage vs. Race Climate Quotients
The Race Climate Quotient rankings
I. Support for Coverage Amounts
1. San Jose Mercury-News
2. Dallas Morning-News
3. News-Journal
4. Seattle Times
5. Sun-Sentinel

II. Assessment of Diversity Efforts
1. San Jose Mercury-News
2. Seattle Times
3. Dallas Morning-News
4. Sun-Sentinel
5. News-Journal

III. Assessment of Company Effort
1. San Jose Mercury-News
2. Sun-Sentinel
3. News-Journal
4. Dallas Morning-News
5. Seattle Times

The strongest relationship between the content tone rankings and newsroom climate could be seen at the Mercury-News, but overall newsroom attitudes did not appear to be as good an indicator of the tone of the coverage as it was of the quantity of coverage.

Still, the overall findings on tone deserve special attention because they contrast sharply with past content audits that show minority news coverage tends to be negative. The sports coverage clearly affected the findings because much of it consisted of game stories in which minority athletes were both winners and losers. But even more “hard news” reporting on social issues in this sample was almost as likely to mixed (balanced) or neutral in tone than it was to be negative in tone; this is a change from most past content studies of minority news.

The tables below indicate how tone also varied according to race and ethnic group in each newspaper. The tone of coverage depicting Native Americans was the most negative (29%) and least positive (13%), but the number of exclusively “Native American” news items was fairly small: only 75 in all five newspapers over an entire year. Of those, The Seattle Times published 40, more than half “mixed” (ie. good news/bad news) in tone; two of the other papers had no positive stories about Indians at all, and the other two had one each. Tables 7-10 rank the five newspapers on the basis of the percentage of coverage of each minority group that was seen as positive or “upbeat.” These findings are contrary to many other content audits of minority news in newspapers, which has often been much more negative in tone than is the case in this sample. Overall, the tone of coverage of Blacks was the most positive. Note that half or more of the coverage of African-Americans in four of these five newspapers was positive in tone (see Table 7), although almost one-quarter of The Seattle Times’s coverage of Blacks, Latinos and Asian-Americans was seen as negative in tone. In three of the five newspapers, coverage of Latinos was fairly positive; somewhat less so at the San Jose Mercury-News; at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, one-third of the coverage of Latinos was seen as negative (see Table 8). About two-thirds of all minority news was about African-Americans; about 20 percent was about Latinos; 10.5 percent was about Asian-Americans; and 2 percent focused on Native Americans.

Table 7: Coverage Tone: Stories about African-Americans (ranked by percentage of positive coverage).

Newspaper Positive Negative Mixed Neutral Total
The Dallas Morning News 272 (63%) 88 (20%) 45 (10%) 29 (7%) 434 (100%)
The Seattle Times 291 (60%) 117 (24%) 60 (12%) 19 (4%) 487 (100%)
The News-Journal 145 (56%) 54 (21%) 28 (11%) 30 (12%) 257 (100%)
The San Jose Mercury-News 287 (50%) 66 (11%) 148 (26%) 78 (13%) 597 (100%)
The Sun-Sentinel 374 (47%) 204 (26%) 126 (16%) 88 (11%) 792 (100%)
All Newspapers 1,369 (54%) 529 (21%) 407 (16%) 244 (10%) 2,549 (100%)

Table 8: Coverage Tone: Stories about Latinos (ranked by percentage of positive coverage).
Newspaper Positive Negative Mixed Neutral Total
The News-Journal 24 (71%) 7 (20%) 2 (6%) 1 (3%) 34 (100%)
The Seattle Times 56 (66%) 20 (24%) 5 (6%) 2 (2%) 83 (100%)
The Dallas Morning News 103 (60%) 35 (20%) 29 (17%) 6 (4%) 173 (100%)
The San Jose Mercury-News 112 (44%) 33 (13%) 38 (19%) 33 (17%) 195 (100%)
The Sun-Sentinel 59 (30%) 65 (33%) 38 (19%) 33 (17%) 195 (100%)
All Newspapers 354 (48%) 160 (22%) 135 (18%) 88 (12%) 737 (100%)

Table 9: Coverage Tone: Coverage of Asian-Americans (ranked by percentage of positive coverage).
Newspaper Positive Negative Mixed Neutral Total
The Dallas Morning News 44 (66%) 9 (14%) 9 (14%) 4 (6%) 66 (100%)
The Sun-Sentinel 21 (47%) 14 (31%) 6 (13%) 4 (9%) 45 (100%)
The Seattle Times 26 (44%) 14 (24%) 8 (13%) 11 (18%) 59 (100%)
The News-Journal 17 (44%) 0 (0%) 2 (5%) 20 (51%) 39 (100%)
The San Jose Mercury-News 89 (42%) 47 (22%) 35 (16%) 40 (19%) 211 (100%)
All Newspapers 197 (47%) 84 (20%) 60 (14%) 79 (19%) 420 (100%)

Table 10: Coverage Tone: Stories about Native Americans (ranked by percentage of positive coverage).
Newspaper Positive Negative Mixed Neutral Total
The Seattle Times 8 (20%) 8 (20%) 23 (57%) 1 (2%) 40 (100%)
The San Jose Mercury-News 1 (11%) 3 (33%) 2 (22%) 3 (33%) 9 (100%)
The Dallas Morning News 1 (8%) 4 (30%) 7 (54%) 1 (8%) 13 (100%)
The Sun-Sentinel 0 (0%) 7 (58%) 4 (33%) 1 (8%) 12 (100%)
The News-Journal 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 1 (100%) 0 (0%) 1 (100%)
All Newspapers 10 (13%) 22 (29%) 37 (49%) 6 (8%) 75 (100%)

Although these findings at first glance do indicate some good news about these newspapers’ coverage of people of color—that is, that “minority news” seems to be more positive than was found in many past content studies—the “good news” is tempered by the fact that more than half of all people of color found in a one-year sample of these five newspapers were athletes and entertainers. In other words, although minorities are indeed finding their way more often into the pages of U.S. daily newspapers, and in more positive portrayals, they still are more often portrayed as “minstrels” and “comics” than as neighbors who live down the street, shop at the local market, punch a clock and take their kids to school.

Tone of coverage by topic
As noted above, news about people of color focused mostly on sports and entertainment, crime, social issues, and government and politics. Three other topics—social issues (mostly civil rights and poverty) and feature/human interest—also merit discussion.

To assess minority portrayals in the news further, the tone of news coverage was combined into two categories—positive and negative—for each newspaper. As the following two tables show, people of color were depicted most positively in feature/human interest stories, followed by sports news. The human-interest news finding is significant because these stories tend to be about everyday life, and one recurring criticism of news coverage is that people of color are rarely depicted as part of everyday life.

Most human-interest stories are overwhelmingly positive: These are the “happy news” features of the newspaper. The same is true of the feature stories about people of color in these five communities. It also is generally true that sports news tends to be positive news (although someone has to lose the game, the tone is still usually upbeat), except in the case of scandals or accidents involving players.

Table 11: Tone of Feature/Human Interest News about Minorities
Newspaper Total Stories Negative Tone Positive Tone
The San Jose Mercury-News 115 4 (4%) 111 (96%)
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel 91 8 (9%) 83 (91%)
The Dallas Morning-News 72 5 (7%) 67 (93%)
The Seattle Times 69 8 (11%) 61 (89%)
The News-Journal 26 3 (11%) 23 (89%)

Table 12: Tone of Sports News about Minorities
Newspaper Total Stories Negative Tone Positive Tone
The San Jose Mercury-News 313 47 (17%) 266 (83%)
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel 304 24 (8%) 280 (92%)
The Dallas Morning-News 229 13 (6%) 216 (94%)
The Seattle Times 223 43 (19%) 180 (81%)
The News-Journal 128 14 (13%) 86 (87%)

The most negative portrayals of people of color were in stories and photographs depicting violent crime and civil rights. The violent crime finding is not surprising but, at first glance, the tone of the civil rights news—that is, coverage of race discrimination—seems odd. Further analysis shows much of the civil rights news focused on affirmative action and, more specifically, the nationwide movement to dismantle it based on charges that it discriminates against Whites. Three of five newspapers in the study are located in states where either challenges to affirmative action were underway or had succeeded during the time period of the audit. It’s also worth noting that many of these stories also often depicted Whites as “victims” of affirmative action. This represents reversal of content audits conducted in the 1960s-80s, in which people of color were primarily depicted as victims of racial discrimination.

Almost all the “minority” news about social issues focused on civil rights and poverty. In some papers, people of color were more likely to be depicted in news about civil rights and poverty than in crime news. Virtually all the crime news was about acts of violent crime and/or court cases in which someone was being tried for committing a violent crime. Lastly, people of color were depicted as perpetuators and victims of crime but those most easily identified by race were perpetuators whose photographs sometimes accompanied the stories.

Table 13: Tone of Violent Crime News about Minorities
Newspaper Total Stories Negative Tone Positive Tone
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel 141 130 (92%) 11 (8%)
The Dallas Morning-News 52 50 (96%) 2 (4%)
The San Jose Mercury-News 51 44 (86%) 7 (14%)
The Seattle Times 28 17 (61%) 11 (39%)
The News-Journal 5 3 (60%) 2 (40%)

Table 14: Tone of Civil Rights News about Minorities
Newspaper Total Stories Negative Tone Positive Tone
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel 32 20 (63%) 12 (37%)
The Seattle Times 28 17 (61%) 11 (39%)
The San Jose Mercury-News 25 18 (62%) 7 (38%)
The Dallas Morning-News 22 15 (68%) 7 (32%)
The News-Journal 5 3 (60%) 2 (40%)

Table 15: Tone of Poverty News about Minorities
Newspaper Total Stories Negative Tone Positive Tone
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel 84 46 (55%) 38 (45%)
The Dallas Morning-News 59 22 (37%) 37 (63%)
The Seattle Times 58 17 (29%) 41 (70%)
The San Jose Mercury-News 46 4 (9%) 42 (91%)
The News-Journal 29 17 (59%) 12 (41%)

Social Roles
Generally speaking, people with higher social status, such as high-ranking officials, entrepreneurs and business executives, and public figures—professional athletes and other celebrities—are more likely to be newsmakers than “regular folk.” The same was true in our study of news coverage of people of color. One reason was the dominance of news about sports in these newspapers, but other contributing factors included an emphasis on government news; many prominent politicians in the communities where these newspapers circulate are people of color (eg. Washington Gov. Gary Locke), and so naturally appear more often and more prominently in the news. It should be noted that these data represent only news sources and photo subjects whose social status could be determined. In some instances, such a determination could not be made.

Overall Newspaper Content Conclusions
Newsroom attitudes regarding race seemed to be a strong predictor of diversity of content at The San Jose Mercury-News, whose coverage of people of color was consistently most positive in tone. Overall, the strongest relationship between content and attitudes was in the quantity of coverage. The newsrooms with the strongest agreement between White and minority journalists on issues of race were at the papers that appeared to have the best and most coverage of people of color and diverse communities.

The Television News Content Audits
In all, 8,203 separate news items from the six TV stations’ newscasts were analyzed for the amount and quality of their content relating to racial diversity. Because their selected evening newscasts were one hour long, as compared to the other stations’ 30-minute newscasts, WXYZ in Detroit and KRON in San Francisco aired most stories (see Table TV1, in Appendix). WFLA in Tampa aired the fewest news items, although WFLA often aired longer stories than many of the other stations. Overall, the stations with half-hour newscasts aired 18 stories per program, while WXYZ and KRON carried an average of 25 stories per newscast.

The number of stories sampled and coded was fairly evenly distributed across the year, as Table TV1 (see Appendix) shows.36 Thus, the random sample was representative across the year of the study. Generally, the number of news stories aired by each of the stations is fairly constant across the time period, although some fluctuations are evident, as expected. The proportion of all stories that had minorities as central players—“Central Involvement of Minorities” or CIM—also is fairly steady for each station throughout the sample period (see Table TV2 in Appendix). Had the number of news items with central involvement of minorities increased over the year, it could have been argued that the stations were artificially increasing their coverage of race because of the study. There is no evidence that this is the case.

Topics of all stories and CIM stories
Table TV3 (see appendix) shows the distribution of the newscasts’ content focusing on minorities by topic. Crime was the most common topic of minority-related news on WFLA’s evening newscast in Tampa. Sports was the No. 1 minority news topic at WNBC in New York City and at KVIA in El Paso. In San Francisco at KRON, the main minority news topic was features—stories about “everyday folk”—while at WXYZ in Detroit and Anchorage’s KTVA, news about social welfare was most common. Interestingly, some stations virtually ignored coverage of some of the topic areas: The category of hate crimes aside, just 5 percent of KTVA’s total coverage focusing on people of color was about crime, and only 3 percent focused on entertainment; just 4 percent of WFLA’s coverage and 5 percent of WXYZ’s focused on the role of people of color in politics and government. Also interesting is that a full 4 percent of the total WNBC coverage was about hate crimes affecting minorities.37

One striking finding from these data is the dominance that crime and sports have at all six of these stations when reporting news that have people of color as the central players. At all six of these stations, whose newscasts are supposed to be among the “best” in the nation in terms of how they deal with issues of diversity and race, minority-related news tended to be dominated by stories about crime and violence, or sports. As in the newspapers in this sample, where sports and entertainment made up 60 percent of the total news content related to people of color, minority-related news about crime or sports made up almost two-thirds of all the news content at these six TV news operations: 66 percent at WFLA, 61 percent at KTVA, 55 percent at WXYZ, 49 percent at WNBC, 46 percent at KRON, and 44 percent at KVIA.

Table TV4 (see appendix) illustrates this rather grim picture of where these TV stations focus their news about race and communities and people of color. At WFLA, where news about crime was the most prominent category over all, minorities were more often featured in crime reports than in any other topic—39 percent of all WFLA’s stories that had minorities centrally involved were crime stories, and 30 percent of all WFLA’s crime covered featured people of color as the central characters. In other words, almost two of every five WFLA stories that featured minorities focused on crime and violence; the second largest category of minority-related news at WFLA was sports, with 27 percent of all minority news. Thus almost two-thirds—66 percent—of WFLA’s news about people of color was crime or sports. WXYZ in Detroit showed a similar pattern: 31 percent of its total minority-related news was about crime (33 percent of all WXYZ’s crime stories featured minorities), and 24 percent of all its stories that focused on people of color dealt with sports.

At three other stations—KRON, WNBC and KVIA—the No. 1 category of news with central involvement of minorities was sports, and No. 2 was crime. At KRON, 25 percent of all minority news dealt with sports, and 21 percent with crime; at WNBC, 30 percent of minority news was sports-related, 19 percent was crime; at KVIA, 24 percent was sports and 20 percent crime. At KTVA in Anchorage, fully 50 percent of all minority content was sports-related and 11 percent was crime (see Table TV4 in Appendix).

Also revealing are the categories of stories in which minorities were totally excluded. For example, minorities did not appear in KVIA stories about calamities and social interest; at WFLA, people of color did not appear in any stories on entertainment or the weather (although routine weather stories are typically race-neutral, unless the station had a minority weather person).

Length of stories in general and CIM stories
Another quantitative measure of the inclusion of minorities can be observed from the length of the stories in which they are included. Table TV3A (see appendix) presents the length of all the stories. At four of the stations—KTVA, KVIA, WNBC, and WFLA—most stories generally ran 31-60 seconds. WXYZ ran more short stories, about 20 seconds; and KRON ran most stories of 21-30 seconds in length (see Table TV5, in appendix).

The pattern is notably different for stories in which minorities are centrally involved (CIM). At four stations—WXYZ, WNBC, KRON, and WFLA—the “average” CIM story typically ran from 121-180 seconds. At KTVA, minority-related stories ran 31-60 seconds; at KVIA, minority stories typically ran 61-120 seconds (see Table TV6, in appendix).

WNBC’s longer stories, averaging 80 seconds, dealt with social welfare. Their fifty-five stories on hate crimes were given the same amount of time. Social interest stories were fewer, 21, and took up an average 78 seconds. WFLA also dedicated more time to the seven hate crime stories it aired; they lasted an average of 120 seconds. The pattern is similar for stories with minorities as central players (CIM), although a few anomalies appear. The weather reports aside, the longest minority-related stories tended to be social interest reports. For example, WNBC’s seven social interest stories with people of color as the focus lasted an average of 169 seconds; KRON’s 13 CIM social interest stories ran and average of 168 seconds; WXYZ’s seven CIM social interest stories ran an average of 163 seconds.

One exception to this pattern occurred at WFLA, where the longest average CIM story concerned hate crime, averaging 157 seconds. WFLA’s 12 CIM social welfare stories had the second average length (140 seconds), while its three social interest stories averaged 130 seconds. The other exception is KTVA, which ran one CIM story on a hate crime, 129 seconds. As noted above, KTVA had no minority-related stories in the social interest category.

It should be observed that KRON ran the most feature stories with central involvement of minorities¬—37—and these also ran long: 151 second on average.

Relating TV Content to the “Race Climate Quotient”
The content analysis of the TV news products offers additional perspectives on the connection between newsroom attitudes regarding race as reflected by the “Newsroom Climate Quotient,” and the actual content of their news products. The attention in this part of the report focuses on three variables in the content of a random sample of the newscasts of the six TV stations: the proportion of total stories that contained people of color or were about diversity issues, the social role or status of the minority newsmakers who appeared in those stories, and the tone of the coverage of the minorities. The combination of these factors help serve as an indicator of the “quality” of news reporting about people of color and issues of racial diversity appearing on these newscasts.

As for the question of whether newsroom “climate” can be linked to quality of content in TV news, the answer for this sample is “Sometimes.”

As will be noted below, the data show some connections, but not necessarily a direct correspondence between the stations’ “Race Climate Quotient” rankings and the quality of the diversity coverage in the selected newscasts. In other words, there are stations that stand out across the board as doing a better job in the actual reporting about minorities, regardless of the journalists’ perceptions about the coverage and efforts in their respective stations.

The proportion of stories about minorities
In order to assess the diversity of news reporting in the TV news stories, calculations were made about the percentage of the stories that had minorities centrally involved, and whether the involvement was “significant,” i.e., were people of color thematically or visually important in the story, not just passing mentions. This is essentially a quantity measure.

Table 16 below reports on the central involvement of news items with minority participants coded from the newscasts of each of the six TV stations. The first column contains the total number of news items coded for each of the stations. The second column shows the percentage of news stories that had people of color as centrally involved players in the event being reported, regardless of how many people where included and the role they played in the story. All other stories had no people or did not feature minorities, centrally or otherwise. The third column reports the percentage of stories for which the involvement of minorities was substantial, if not central to the event. The fourth column presents the number of stories with both “Central Involvement of Minorities” (CIM) and “Significant Involvement of Minorities” (SIM). The stations are listed in order of the highest percentage of stories with CIM and SIM; note that the rankings by CIM and SIM are exactly the same.

Table 16: Number and percentages of stories about minorities in the TV news programs.38
Total # of Percent Percent Number w/
Rank station/city news stories w/ CIM w/ SIM CIM & SIM*
1 KVIA/El Paso 1256 51 29 366
2 WNBC/NY 1268 50 27 344
3 KRON/SF 1474 43 22 328
4 WFLA/Tampa 958 37 19 180
5 WXYZ/Detroit 1921 36 18 349
6 KTVA/Anchorage 1326 19 7 86
N 8203 39 20 1653
(* CIM = Central Involvement of Minorities; SIM = Significant Involvement of Minorities)

Of the six cities, El Paso has the largest concentration of minorities within its broadcast area. Reflecting this diversity, KVIA offered the most news stories about minorities (366), and also the largest proportion of stories (29%) about people of color. Clearly, one would expect that quantity of coverage about people of color would be higher in areas with larger minority populations. In the “climate quotient” ranking, KVIA ranked lowest in terms of newsroom support for diversity initiatives, but No. 1 in the KVIA journalists’ perception of how well the company performs.
WNBC and KRON were second and third, respectively, in the proportion of stories in their newscasts with central or significant involvement of minorities (CIM/SIM). However, the minority population in San Francisco is greater than in New York, and so one might expect more stories about diversity in San Francisco. Thus, in this respect, WNBC’s newscast was proportionally more inclusive of minorities than KRON, as compared to the diversity of the population. Both WNBC and KRON rank high—tied for second—in newsroom attitudes toward the importance of diversity efforts; WNBC also ranked high in how well its staffers think the company is doing on diversity.

Tampa’s WFLA, with 19 percent of its stories having a significant involvement of minorities (SIM), is third in the proportion of stories about minorities, but aired fewer stories overall—almost one-third less—than WXYZ in Detroit. WXYZ, with 18 percent SIM, is fifth in the proportion of stories about minorities, but second only to El Paso in the actual number of stories it aired that included a significant presence and involvement of minorities. WXYZ is tied for top place in terms its staffers’ perception of the importance of diversity efforts, but tied for the bottom with WFLA in terms of how well the journalists think their station is doing in terms of diversity.

Possibly a reflection of the area’s demographics, Anchorage’s KTVA aired both the fewest stories featuring people of color (86 out of 1,326 total stories coded over the yearlong sample, or 6.5 percent of the total) of such stories as part of the total newscast. KTVA, which is last in actual coverage of minorities, is however close to the top of the “Race Climate Quotient” in the newsroom staffers’ perception of company support for diversity, and ranks reasonably well (“maybe a B-minus,” wrote one respondent on a performance question) in terms of perceptions of company efforts.

This first set of data would suggest that there is no one-to-one correspondence between the content in terms of central or significant involvement of minorities (CIM/SIM) and the stations’ rankings based on their newsrooms’ attitudinal support for diversity and the journalists’ assessment of the company efforts.

Content Quality
The next level of analysis turned to the assessment of the quality of the coverage of minorities. To this end, calculations were made based on the social role, or status, of the minority newsmakers 39 and the tone of the coverage40 of people of color.

Overall, New York’s WNBC and San Francisco’s KRON consistently stand out in these two indicators of quality of coverage of minorities, as offering more positive stories that feature people of color of higher social status. A middle ground is observed for Detroit’s WXYZ and El Paso’s KVIA.

The data from stations WNBC and KRON yield similar average scores—respectively 4.51 and 4.49—for the minority newsmakers, the highest average overall. When the analysis takes into consideration the topics of the news stories, WNBC and KRON also have the highest average scores for those that dealt with crime (respectively 3.4, 3.7), social welfare (5.2, 4.5), features (3.9, 4.7), sports (5.2, 4.7), entertainment (5.5, 3.8), and weather (7.0, 6.5).

Based on this set of data, it seems that the perception of support for diversity and the assessment of company efforts does correlate with at least one particular measure of diversity coverage—but only for WNBC, which ranked at the top in newsroom perceptions of support for diversity, and second in perception of the quality of the company’s efforts. KRON tied for a very close second in the efforts measure, but a distant fourth in terms of how well the staff thinks the company is doing. Nevertheless, KRON’s coverage of minorities—at least in terms of the overall average score of social role—is similar to New York’s. Detroit’s WXYZ merits mention because the average social role score of its news subjects (3.6) is third after WNBC and KRON. But at WXZY, the average social role scores are higher than at WNBC and KRON in the categories of politics and government (7.6), civil rights (5.1), and calamities (3.8). This means that there is some correspondence at least in terms of this station’s relative rankings on perceptions of support for diversity, and their actual performance on this measure of minority coverage.

The next station in the rankings of average social role score (3.4) is WFLA. But here again, the average scores rankings vary by topic. In terms of stories about calamities, WFLA ranks second (3.6) and third in coverage of politics and government (6.4), social welfare (4.4) and civil rights (4.0). However, WFLA ranks fifth or lower in the remaining topics. In essence, there is some correlation between this station’s coverage of minorities from this perspective, and its ranking in the newsroom’s perception of the company’s support for diversity.

The most challenging interpretation of the relationship between content and perceptions of support for diversity appears in the case of El Paso’s KVIA. As noted above, this station has two diametrically opposed rankings in the Race Clime Quotient — the least agreement of the six stations on the importance of diversity initiatives, and the closest agreement in the newsroom on the company’s performance. In assessing KVIA’s actual news content, the station’s newscast comes in fifth in the average score for the social role for the minorities in its stories. With the exception of a higher average score (5.3) for its four stories in the social interest category, the remainder of KVIA’s scores are at the low- to mid-range when compared to the other stations. When these data are compared to the first set on content—the percentage of stories about minorities—the contradiction is again evident. While KVIA aired the most stories about minorities, the social role of the people of color who are featured in those stories tends to be low; that is, people of color who appear in KVIA news are not of high social status—business people, politicians, movers and shakers who are prominent and respected in the community.
KTVA in Anchorage ranks last among the six in this study in terms of the average social role of the minorities appearing in its newscasts. This holds true for most topic areas, too, with the notable exception of politics and government (6.8, second after WXYZ), but KTVA aired only three stories in this category over the yearlong sample. Half of KTVA’s stories that featured people of color were sports stories; the station had no stories at all featuring minorities in the categories of entertainment, calamities or social interest, and only one with central involvement of minorities in civil rights and the weather. Thus, although KTVA’s journalists may perceive good support at the company for diversity and pretty good performance in terms of race, the station in fact covers very little in the way of stories that reflect well on people of color in Alaska.

Social role and tone controlling for race/ethnicity
One additional assessment of the quality of the coverage targets both the social role and the tone of the stories pertaining specifically to Blacks and to Latinos. The measures for social role and tone were the same as indicated above. However, for this analysis only the stories that were exclusively about one group were taken into consideration. 41

The tone of KTVA’s stories focusing exclusively on Blacks or on Latinos were very neutral, but the minorities featured in these stories were among the lowest social status of all the stations in the study: 1.75 for Blacks and 1.33 for Latinos. Of greater concern, however, is the fact that KTVA aired so few stories that focused on these groups over the year-long sample, no doubt an artifact of the low number of African-Americans and Latinos living in Anchorage: four stories about Blacks and three about Latinos.

KRON and WNBC again performed best with respect to tone in their coverage of African-Americans and Hispanics. At KRON, the average score of tone for Latinos was -.20 and for Blacks -.41. At WNBC, the average tone for Blacks was -.33, and for Latinos -.40. However, while the tone in the coverage of Latinos at WNBC was the best among the six stations studied, the social role they played in the news coverage was the worst, with a score of only 1.20. The score for the social role of the Black newsmakers on WNBC was notably higher at 2.36. At KRON, the scores for social role played by both Blacks and Latinos were similar: 1.94 and 1.90 respectively.

Meanwhile, WXYZ and KVIA stand out positively in terms of the social role of the minorities portrayed on their newscasts, but only for Blacks in Detroit and only Latinos in El Paso. WXYZ portrayed African-Americans of the highest social status of all the stations (2.50), but aired no stories exclusively about Latinos during the yearlong sample period. KVIA had the best average score for the social role of the Latino newsmakers (2.23), but the worst average score for the tone of the coverage about Latinos (-.50). The tone of coverage of Blacks on KVIA news was among the worst in the study at -1.00, although the average social role of African-Americans was higher (2.05).

Finally, WFLA has two notable and contrasting characteristics in the tone and social role scores of its stories exclusively about Blacks and about Latinos. On the positive side, the tone of stories about Latinos was neutral, but WFLA ran only four stories all year focusing on Latinos, who of course make up a sizeable part of Florida’s population. The social roles average of the Latinos who did appear on WFLA news was rather low (1.75). WFLA’s stories that focused exclusively on African-Americans had the most negative average tone of the stations in the study (-1.04), and those African-Americans who appeared in WFLA coverage also occupied the lowest social roles (1.75).

Conclusions
It is intuitive to assume that newspaper and TV news operations that cover communities with greater racial diversity should reflect that diversity in their content. But that has not always been true: Blacks, Asian-Americans, Latinos and other ethic and racial minority groups have long and often complained that they don’t “see” themselves on the pages of their newspapers or in their evening television newscasts. Content studies of the press over many years have confirmed this. Even in communities where the population has been substantially non-white, people of color and the communities where they live and work have been largely invisible in the newspaper or on TV, except when there’s bad news to report—crime, drugs, gangs and other social problems. People of color in this country complain, with some justification, that they are always portrayed in negative or comical frames in the U.S. media; journalists point out that often people of color do turn up as criminals, crime victims, poor people and others who are at risk in America. Statistics show that people of color are not always those most risky or at risk in our communities, but we do tend to see them that way, through the prism of the mass media.

In short, when people of color are in the news in America, it has often been because they are either a threat to society or are themselves at risk. It has not been a sympathetic image that the news media generally present, nor a realistic one. The press is, of course, free to cover whatever stories and issues it will. But when significant segments of society are ignored, the losers are both the people who are ignored and those who don’t know what is going on in neighborhoods that are socially and culturally different from their own. People who don’t see themselves or people like them reflected in the news stop taking the paper or watching the evening news, because they know the news is not going to be about them; they disassociate themselves from participation in the daily news, and so, too, from the larger society. This disenfranchisement from the commonweal represents a potentially dire threat to participatory democracy. People who do get the paper and watch the news may know little about the issues the society faces, and may know nothing about people who aren’t like themselves. As a result, they may also be uninformed and ill-prepared to understand when people unlike themselves complain about the slights and indignities of the communities in which they live. This has been clearly documented in the past: When social strife occurs, it is often because some parts of the society feel disenfranchised and ignored, and other segments of the community are surprised to hear it. The press and the mass media generally have not covered all of the society, and have not alerted the larger society to what’s going on. In the 1960s (and in the early 1990s in Los Angeles), the result was racial rioting, to the surprise and consternation of Whites. In 2001, that result could also occur, but more generally, people who disenfranchise themselves from the daily news also cut themselves off from the communities and the nation in which they live. Reaching all segments of the population is not only in the press’s moral and economic interest, but is critical to the function of democracy.

This study makes a first effort at connecting what news organizations say they’re all about regarding social and racial inclusivity, and their actual coverage of a demographically changing America. We have tried to evaluate the connection between the attitudes regarding racial diversity on the front lines—in the newsroom—and the actual content of the final product. In short: How do good intentions translate in terms of what goes into America’s newspapers and TV newscasts? At risk in a rapidly changing American society is participatory democracy itself.
This study of a selected group of U.S. newspapers and TV stations examined 12 newsrooms across the country on the attitudes of the journalists who work there toward issues of race, and then looked closely at the news content of their newspapers and TV newscasts over a full year. How do these journalists feel about issues of race in the day-to-day functioning of their newsrooms? And how is race framed in the content of their news product day after day?

Overall, 76 percent of these journalists are satisfied with their choice of a career in journalism, but one-third of Blacks and one-quarter of Asian-American journalists are not. Thirty-one percent of African-American journalists aren’t sure if they’ll stay in the business, which is consistent with the latest ASNE census figures that show Blacks leaving the newspaper business as fast as they can be recruited into the newsroom. Nearly half of the Asian-American journalists in this study (47 percent) and more than one-third of Latinos (36.5 percent) say they are uncertain or definitely will not still be in the news business five years from now. This clearly signals a threat to news organizations seeking to improve the diversity of their newsrooms, and places in jeopardy ASNE’s goals of reaching 13.5 percent minority employment by the end of 2001, and parity with the U.S. population by 2025 (38.2 percent people of color).42 Over all, only two-thirds of these journalists say they would select a journalism career if they had it to do all over again. Only 43 percent say that journalism is a career they’d want their children to enter, another measure of career dissatisfaction; this is down sharply from 1991, when 54 percent of newspaper journalists in The Newsroom Barometer study said they would want their kids to follow them into journalism careers. 43

The Newsroom Barometer and other subsequent studies of newsroom attitudes have found substantial disconnects between Whites and minority journalists in their attitudes regarding the role of race in the work place. The same kinds of disconnects are still evident in these 12 newsrooms, although to a somewhat lesser degree than has been observed in previous research. In this study, African-Americans are eight times more likely than White journalists to perceive the existence of a “glass ceiling” at their company, barring the promotion of minorities; Hispanic journalists were three times more likely than Whites to say that this barrier to their upward mobility exists, and Asian-Americans four times more likely. Only half of Whites but three-quarters or more of minority journalists said they think efforts to improve racial diversity improves the news product. More than 90 percent of journalists of color said they thought it was important to hire and promote minorities, but only about three-quarters of Whites agreed. More than 60 percent of White journalists said they thought minorities get preferential treatment in applying for jobs in their newsroom; 37 percent of Whites, but more than half of Latinos and Asians and 85 percent of African-Americans said that newsroom managers sometimes have doubts about the abilities of minority journalists to perform their jobs adequately. And although all the journalists in this study said they thought their newspaper or TV station does a pretty good job in covering minority communities, they also agreed that the people in the minority communities in their areas probably thought the coverage was pretty poor. Finally, 72 percent of White respondents, 65 percent of Latinos and 72 percent of Asian-Americans said they thought the climate for minorities in their newsroom was supportive, but only one-third of African-Americans agreed. This finding underscores graphically the most recent ASNE newsroom census figures, which show African-Americans are leaving the newspaper business a bit faster than they can be recruited.

Future reports will discuss the findings of the newsroom attitude survey in greater detail. But for the purposes of this report, it is important to point out that, even at these “best” newspapers and TV stations, the attitudinal disconnect between Whites and many of their minority co-workers continues to be a part of life in the news business, as in America in general.

In this portion of the News and Race Models of Excellence study, we attempted to find a way to connect the attitudes in the newsroom with the quality of coverage of diversity in the final news product. Although our results are mixed—that is, agreement on diversity issues in the newsroom was not always a good predictor of more complete performance in covering diversity in the news—we believe that there is a discernible connection between work place environment and the amount and quality of the news about minorities that appears in the newspaper or the evening news. Clearly, another important factor in this equation seems also to be the presence of people of color as top news executives and managers, as has been found in other studies.

One thing does seem to be clear about these newspapers and TV stations: Across the board, these news operations included much more coverage of diversity communities than has been the norm in the U.S. press in the past and elsewhere in the country (although more than half of all this coverage of minorities focused on sports and entertainment). Clearly, these news organizations are among the “best” in this regard: Overall, 39 percent of the TV news and about 38 percent of the newspaper items coded for this study dealt with people of color, a vast improvement over other content studies that have found the proportion of minority-related news to be more typically below 10 percent of the total newshole. Obviously, this finding is in part an artifact of the diversity of the communities in which these news organizations operate, but it is also, we argue, a result of concerted and dedicated effort on the part of these newspaper and TV news executives to cover their communities more completely.

Some bullets about the content of the five newspapers in this study:
• The tone of the news coverage of people of color in these newspapers was, overall, far more upbeat and positive than previous newspaper audits have shown;
• Also encouraging was the percentage of coverage that was judged to be “mixed,” or equally positive and negative, suggesting fair and balanced reporting on issues of racial diversity;
• In this sample of newspapers, people of color were depicted in coverage of their everyday lives; in past content studies, minorities tended to appear in the news more often when they were in some kind of trouble or otherwise at risk;
• Although crime was still a leading topic of news about minorities in this study, this was primarily because of the focus of just one of the five newspapers; at the other four newspapers, crime news relating to minority groups or individuals less prominent;
• On the down side, although there were positive changes in coverage patterns of minorities in these newspapers, almost half the people of color in the news were sports figures. Framing people of color so predominantly as athletes or entertainers reduces them to curiosities or sources of amusement, as if—as the Kerner Commission observed in 1968—minorities don’t lead normal lives44;
• The dominance of sports news demonstrates the challenges even the best newspapers face in providing more accurate and complete portrayals of minorities in the news about America’s increasingly diverse communities.

Compared to previous studies, the TV stations analyzed here show a more inclusive picture of minorities in their evening newscasts. Previous studies have shown that people of color have low visibility on the evening news, and then usually in negative contexts. These six stations featured minorities in 39 percent of the time overall, and in significant roles as newsmakers 20 percent of the time (see Table 16). For some obvious reasons, in communities with greater diversity (El Paso, for example), the amount of news coverage featuring people of color was greater. But the presence of people of color on the evening news also was greater at stations whose overall quality of coverage was better, regardless of local demographics.

Other key findings about these TV newscasts:
• Latinos and African-Americans seem to appear most often in sports and in crime stories, even as crime rates nationwide are in decline.
• A difference from previous practices in the portrayal of minorities in news, and certainly when compared to findings from previous studies, is the lack of a dominating negative skew in the inclusion of minorities (in this case primarily Blacks and Latinos).
• Overall, San Francisco’s KRON and New York’s WNBC, the best of the stations studied, offer the most balanced approaches to the coverage of minorities across topic areas—e.g., crime, social welfare, sports, features and entertainment.
• Crime coverage was not positive, but was notably more neutral or even-handed at these six stations than has more typically been the case in U.S. TV news.
• There appears to be some connection between the attitude among the newsroom staff regarding issues of racial diversity, and the diversity of content of the final newscast. The stronger connection, however, may be between management dedication to diversity issues and the practices of the news staff, and especially the presence of people of color in decision-making positions in the newsroom hierarchy. This implies that, aside from the perceptions of the newsroom staff, management can have a significant role in the architecture of the daily news operations regarding diversity. It is not always clear that the newsroom rank-and-file understand fully that their bosses value diversity. For managers that already make diversity a priority, the challenge is to get that message across to the staff.

This initial report of The News and Race Models of Excellence Project offers some overviews of the results of this multi-faceted study. Future reports are planned detailing the newsroom surveys and the content audits of the TV newscasts and newspapers. As for this report, however, some conclusions stand out:
1) There is good news to report about the amount of news about people of color and the communities in which they live—at these news organizations, at least, coverage is getting better;
2) There also is positive news to report regarding the attitudes in the newsroom about issues of diversity: the newsroom climate is less chilly at these newspapers and TV stations than it was 10 years ago;
3) Management attitudes regarding the importance and role of news coverage of minorities and diversity issues clearly makes a difference, although it takes time and effort to change course;
4) Although perceptions and coverage are better (in some cases markedly better) at these news organizations, there still exist wastelands that need work: wide disagreements between Whites and minorities about the role of race in the work place, and coverage that casts people of color too predominantly as entertainment or criminals.
5) News managers have their work cut out for them to change attitudes in the newsroom regarding issues of race, and to get everyone on board to share a vision of how the press should serve an increasingly racially and ethnically diverse nation;
6) Although we have not discovered the straight-line correlation we had hoped for, it does seem clear that the degree to which news managers can communicate their vision regarding diversity to the newsroom, and the degree to which the journalists and other employees (including, for example, advertising people) buy into that vision, do make a difference in terms of the quality of news coverage that includes the full diversity of the communities that they serve and in which we live.

ENDNOTES

Acknowledgements: The researchers would like to thank many people at their various universities for their assistance in the data collection and coding and analysis for the data: At Utah State University, Nancy West for her work in data analysis on the survey portion of the study, and coders Reid Furniss and Siew Sun Wong; at The University of Texas-Austin, Sonya M. Aleman, Dr. Subervi’s research assistant; at the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of Southern California, Elena Munoz, Professor Smith’s project manager; and her student coders: David Harry, Mike Cisneros, Ann Fissekis, Soo Han, Nyeri Elliott, Nzinga Moore and Gerald Alexander. Thanks also to Keith Woods and Aly Colon at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies for their faith in the project and for their patience and support, and to Dori Maynard and Mark Trahant at the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education for their support in the final stages of the project. And we express our deep appreciation to the management and staff at our 12 partner news organizations for their cooperation with this research. Obviously, it could not be done without them. People too numerous to name at all 12 companies took lead roles as our contacts and coordinators for the project in their newsrooms, and we are in their debt for all their work in helping make this project happen.

1.) Lee Stinnett. “What the numbers say about employing minority journalists at daily newspapers.” American Society of Newspaper Editors [On-line: www.asne.org/kiosk/diversity/numbers.htm]. May 13, 1999.
2.) Ibid.
3.) Ibid.
4.) Barbara Cochran. “Diversity: Progress, Yet More Challenges.” Communicator (Radio-Television News Directors Association), July 2000.
5.) “ASNE benchmarks for 2000-2025 as adopted by the ASNE Board.” [On-line: http://www.asne.org/kiosk/diversity/benchmarksfaq.htm]. September 1999.
6.) Langston Hughes. Simple Speaks His Mind. (London: V. Gollancz, 1951).
7.) The Commission on Freedom of the Press. A Free and Responsible Press: A General Report on Mass Communication: Newspapers, Radio, Motion Pictures, Magazines and Books.
8.) The National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders. The Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968).
9.) Edward C. Pease. “Still the Invisible People: Job Satisfaction of Minority Journalists at U.S. Daily Newspapers.” Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Ohio University, 1991 (425 pp.); see also, Ted Pease and J. Frazier Smith. “The Newsroom Barometer: Job Satisfaction and the Impact of Racial Diversity at U.S. Daily Newspapers.” Ohio Journalism Monographs, No. 1, E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, 1991. (37 pp.)
10.) Av Westin. “The Color of Ratings.” Brill’s Content, April 2001. pp. 82-85; 129-131.
11.) Marilyn E. Gist. “Minorities in Media Imagery: A Social Cognitive Perspective of Journalistic Bias,” Newspaper Research Journal, 11 (3): 52-63, Summer 1990, pp. 58-59.
12.) Ted Pease and Guido H. Stempel III. “Surviving to the Top: Views of minority newspaper executives,” Newspaper Research Journal, 11 (3): 64-79 (Summer 1990).
13.) David Lawrence Jr. “Broken Ladders, Revolving Doors: The need for pluralism in the newsroom,” Newspaper Research Journal, 11 (3): 18-23, Summer 1990, p. 19.
14.) Charles L. Overby. “Massive Joint Diversity Effort Needed.” The Freedom Forum, May 30, 2000.
15.) Robert C. Maynard, address to journalism students, The Freedom Forum, 1993.
16.) The Missouri School of Journalism. Guide to Research on Race and News. (Columbia, MO: Missouri School of Journalism, 2000), p. 1.
17.) Sig Gissler. “Race—America’s Rawest Nerve.” Media Studies Journal, 1994.
18.) See Richard Morin. “Many whites see blacks as equally prosperous in U.S.” The San Francisco Chronicle, July 12, 2001, p. A7.
19.) Chuck Stone. “Journalism Schools’ Students and Faculty in the Year of Kerner Plus 20,” Kerner Plus 20. (Washington, DC: National Association of Black Journalists, 1988), p. 7.
20.) Associated Press Managing Editors. “Report on Race in the News,” 1996.
21.) Ellis Cose, The Quiet Crisis: Minority Journalists and Newsroom Opportunity. (Berkeley, Calif.: Institute for Journalism Education, 1985).
22.) Pease; Pease & Smith. op. cit.
23.) Cochran. op. cit.
24.) Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, Federico Subervi, Sharon Bramlett-Solomon and Don Heider. “Perceptions of Minority Journalists at Unity ’99 Regarding Minority Managers and Job Satisfaction.” Unpublished paper. 2000.
25.) Westin, op. cit, pp. 82-83.
26.) Ibid., pp. 130-131.
27.) See John W.C. Johnstone, Edward J. Slawski and William W. Bowman, The News People: A Sociological Portrait of American Journalists and Their Work. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976); David H. Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, The American Journalist: A Portrait of U.S. News People and Their Work. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986).
28.) See Don Heider. White News. Why local news programs don't cover people of color. (Mahwah: NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000); Rivas-Rodriguez, et al., op. cit; Lawrence T. McGill. “Newsroom Diversity: Meeting the Challenge.” The Freedom Forum, 1999; Pease, op. cit,Newspaper Research Journal, 11(3), Summer 1990; Clint C. Wilson II and Felix Gutierrez, Minorities and Media: Diversity and the End of Mass Communications. (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1985).
29.) We found it ironic that several of companies—both TV stations and newspapers—that were identified from various sources as being among the “best” in terms of their efforts toward diversity declined to participate. Some seemed to have been over-examined, and were tired of being research subjects. Others declined because of factors (such as moving into new facilities) that they thought would distract them and their staff from giving their complete attention to the project. But there also was a sense of reluctance among all of those who declined to participate that was, we believe, not unrelated to the sensitivity of the topic of the study—race, “America’s rawest nerve,” as Sig Gissler put it. This reluctance was drawn sharply into focus by the statement of the executive editor of one of the newspapers invited to participate. He decided not to participate, he said, because “We don’t know what you’re going to ask, and we don’t know what you’re going to find.” That, we think, is rather an odd statement coming from a journalist.
30.) According to the annual American Society of Newspaper Editors Newsroom Census 2000, the newspapers in this sample report the following percentages of minorities in their newsrooms: The Dallas Morning News, 17.0%; The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 13.1%; The San Jose Mercury News, 32.2%; The Seattle Times, 20.6%; The South Florida Sun Sentinel, 21.6%; The News Journal (Wilmington, DE), 15.3%. The national average in U.S. daily newspapers is 11.85% minority, according to ASNE’s 2000 census; the national U.S. population is approximately 28% minority races. The figures for each of the TV news organization’s newsroom demographics were not yet available.
31.) Pease, op. cit.
32.) The American Society of Newspaper Editors’ 2000 Newsroom Census reported the following newspaper newsroom demographics nationwide: Whites, 88.15%; African-American, 5.31%; Hispanics, 3.86%; Asian-Americans, 2.35%; Native Americans, 0.52%). “ASNE’s 2000 Newsroom Census,” op. cit.
33.) The Radio-Television News Directors Association reports that in 2000, TV newsrooms were 79% White; 11% Black; 7% Hispanic; 3% Asian; and less than 1% Native American. “2000 Women and Minorities Survey.” [Online: www.rtnda.org/research/womin/html.]
34.) Although six newspapers began the project, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch had to be dropped from the content analysis phase because of problems receiving the newspapers corresponding to the random sample — fewer than half of those newspapers were received by the coding team, and so the St. Louis data was deemed too incomplete to remain in the sample.
35.) See Note 29.
36.) While the goal was to obtain 72 newscasts from each station, due to either technical difficulties with tapes, or missed dates at the source, a few programs could not be coded for five of the six stations. The specific newscasts to be taped and subsequently studied were selected by constructing a composite year. The procedure entailed randomly selecting a day of the first week and then staggering the other days for the rest of the year. The first day selected was a Wednesday (January 6). Thus, the next day to be coded was the Thursday of the following week (January 14), then the Friday of the week after (January 22), and the Monday a week later (January 25), and so on. At least one weekend newscast per each month was also taped and coded. The first randomly selected weekend day was a Sunday (January 17). The others were selected by alternating between Saturday and Sunday, depending on which was most distant from the weekday included in the sample. The same pattern was followed for the rest of the year.
37.) Hate crimes, a distinct crime category examined in this study, was the topic of very few stories. WNBC, however, dedicated 4 percent of its total newscasts to such events; KRON 3 percent, and KVIA 2 percent. The other three stations dedicated less than 1% of their coverage to hate crimes.
38.) For this table and the analysis of the quality of coverage in the context of the “Race Climate Quotient,” we included only the stories that had both SIM and CIM. Thus, there are fewer stories in this assessment: 1653 total stories vs. 1691. This means that 38 stories included minorities in ways that were not significant to the story (see the explanation of CIM vs. SIM offered elsewhere in this text).
39.) Each identifiable newsmaker was categorized as having a certain social role. The main categories were: government employee/official, professional, and non-professional. For the statistical analyses, specific roles under each of these categories were assigned a numerical value of 2, 1, or 0. Government officials/employees, professionals, and sports and entertainment figures were coded 2. Criminals and crime suspects were given a 0. All others were coded 1.
40.) For each story, the coders evaluated the tone (positive, negative, or neutral) regarding the individual newsmakers, the tone of the visuals (background), and of the groups featured or portrayed. We also coded each story for its overall tone. The question was whether the story was positive or negative as regards the people portrayed in the story. Scores ranging from +2 or +1 were given to stories and players portrayed most positively, 0 for neutral stories or in which a clear balance was observed, and –1 or –2 for negative stories (see coding guide for the specific options for the various items coded).
41.) Stories that were about more than one group or newsmaker would not allow for this separate analysis because individual scores had to calculated for the tone concerning the specific minority group and/or newsmakers.
42.) “ASNE’s benchmarks.” op. cit.
43.) Pease, op. cit.
44.) The Kerner Commission, op. cit., remarked that press coverage of minorities in the 1960s seemed to imply that they “do not read newspapers or watch television, give birth, marry, die or go to PTA meetings.” Les Payne, a managing editor at Newsday, said in 1988: “The offering pattern has African-Americans disproportionately included in negative coverage—as prostitutes, drug dealers, welfare recipients, second-story men, unwed mothers. It is a strange place, this Black world the media project by commission and omission. Within the feature pages of many newspapers, snowstorms and floods rarely disturb Black residents. Gypsy moths don’t attack their lawns or eat the leaves of their trees. Their children don’t run away from home or go on vacation. Or get married. Or shop at suburban malls. Or ice skate. Or take in a play.” (Les Payne. “Desegregation in the City Room: 20 Years After Kerner.” Kerner Plus 20. (National Association of Black Journalists, 1988). pp. 11-12.) These data seem to indicate that even at “the best” U.S. daily newspapers and TV stations, similar patterns still hold true. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947).
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The Morbid Language of Newspapering

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As newspapers appear to be dying, it is an appropriate time to revisit the long relationship of the craft itself with death....

THE MORBID LINGO OF NEWSPAPERING

In newspapers death is not limited to the obit page. Journalists speak a jargon filled with images of death and violence.

First a beat reporter slugs his story. If the story is news, he writes in a style called a pyramid, which is a tomb, even turned upside down. The story begins with a news hook and ends with a kicker.

At the bottom of the story, the reporter writes "30," a telegraphic symbol for "the end" and a metaphor for death.

The story fills a news hole, a shallow grave left by advertising.

Now a coven of editors works over the copy. Editors cut, kill and bury stories. They take dead stories and spike them.

Some editors, perhaps on the graveyard shift, have earned nicknames like "Hacksaw," "Butcher" and "Knife."

Editors also write cutlines, drop heads and jump heads. To save space they eliminate widows. They hold meetings called post-mortems where, bloody with red ink, they conduct autopsies on tear sheets. They take composed matter and decompose it.

Even punctuation is violent. Exclamation points are bangers or screamers! (When an editor yells, "Put a banger on that head," duck.) Stories are riddled by bullets.

In layout, editors sometimes bump heads. The result is tombstone makeup.

In the days of hot type, pressmen threw lead scraps into a bin called a hell box. Now we have computers and cold type. Stories are written on a terminal. Buttons on terminals say cut, kill, search and destroy, purge, execute and expire. Hit the wrong button on some terminals and "Fatal Mistake" flashes across the screen.

Sometimes the system crashes, dooming all stories to electronic oblivion.

Finally, a newspaper is put to bed and an editor yells, "We're dead for tonight." The next day, all stories in the edition are sent to the morgue. Then the undertaking starts all over again, the race toward deadline.

—Roy Peter Clark, news coach,
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies (~1980)

E.B. White—Some Pig!

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E.B. White defies categories, but he endures

By Ted Pease
©1985

[Note: This column appeared in the Dayton, Ohio, Daily News, October 7, 1985.]

E.B. White, that great man of American letters who raised curmudgeonly humor to an art form, died this week at 86 on his saltwater farm on the Maine coast. Suddenly, the English language feels unprotected.

For three decades he was the country's foremost defender of the language and one of its most able and subtle craftsmen. My fear is that with E.B. White gone, an era of golden prose is over, and American writing could sink into grey dullness. Not that there aren't many other fine writers out there carrying on White’s tradition, but it feels as if father has died.

White would have been the first to ridicule that. Writing about him is a hazardous undertaking; for one thing, White was a very private individual who took a Yankee’s dim view of prying, and I suspect that he would consider any posthumous tribute ghoulish. Or at least in poor taste.

Although White was without question one of the great scholars of the English language and the art of writing, that label — as all labels — would have offended him. He was a writer and humorist who ridiculed and resented those who sought to analyze his work. “Humor can be dissected, as a frog can,” he said, “but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to all but the pure scientific mind.”

Furthermore, he said, his writing in general and humorous writing in particular “won’t stand much blowing up, and it won’t stand much poking. It has a certain fragility ... which one had best respect.”

I take the hint, not just about White’s humor, but about his life as a whole. Even so, he’s dead now, who gave me so much enjoyment from my first reading of Charlotte’s Web as a child, to my latest consultation of The Elements of Style just last week, and I miss him already. I can’t let him go without saying so.

Readers and critics spent White’s life trying to pigeonhole him. He sometimes was dismissed as “just a humorist” by readers who finished his writing with an appreciative chuckle at his wit, but who missed the originality of thought for which White’s humor was but adornment.

White was a little prickly about being written off as a humorist, although he had a high regard for clever writing and would have taken a stick to anyone who called him “serious.”

“The world likes humor,” he wrote, “but it treats it patronizingly. It decorates its serious artists with laurel and its wags with Brussels sprouts.”

White used humor to open consciousness, so that as the reader warmed to his dry wit, White the philosopher was able to slip in nuggets of impeccable good sense and serious thought. But more than that, E.B. White was a magician with the language. The subject never mattered — he could write about pigs, Ferris wheels, raising turkeys, the World of Tomorrow, dentists, world war, television, deer hunting or the weight of possessions, and could produce in readers an appreciate grin for his virtuosity. His sentences still sparkle, his phrases compel, his imagery is sharp, unassuming and clean.

Everything he considered worth saying about writing is in his Elements of Style, an 85-page adaptation of William Strunk’s 1919 English class handbook. Strunk’s message is contained in the book’s rule 17: “Omit needless words.” White heeded the advice and reduced it further into a credo for writing and living: simplify, simplify.

It’s good advice in these days of information glut and societal extremes, but seemed somehow easier to follow last week, knowing that White was still with us, vigilant against excesses of life and language.

NewsHounds Syllabus (S09) Section 2

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JCOM 1130(2)—Newswriting

Professor Ted Pease (ted.pease@usu.edu)
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Spring 2009

Class times: MW 10:30-11:45 a.m.
Newsroom: AnSci 302
Office: 308B Animal Science (797-3293)
Office Hours: MW 9-10:30 a.m., and by appointment

Preamble: Some Wisdom

“Why should freedom of speech and freedom of the press be allowed?
Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized?
It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal than guns.”

—Vladimir Lenin, 1920

“Were it left to me to decide whether to have government without newspapers,
or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter.”

—Thomas Jefferson, 1789

“Question Authority!” –1970s slogan

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order,
you can nudge the world a little.”

—Tom Stoppard, playwright, 1967

“A sentence goes off course when it meanders toward its destination, gathering stray bits along the way.
Hitting the target always means perfect focus—clear head, clear eye, true aim.”

—Paula LaRoque, newspaper writing coach, 2007

“Writing is an important test of thinking. If you cannot express a point in writing,
you probably have not thought it through. A murky story is usually a sign
of muddy reasoning or, at best, a thought that is only half-formed.”

—William L. Rivers, journalism professor, 1979

• • • • •

Prerequisites:
Minimum pass in JCOM English-Grammar Proficiency Test (EGUT) through the main JCOM office; ENG 1010. Functioning brain and online computer connection.

What we do:
This is a writing course. It’s a reporting course. So, we report, we write. A lot. Write, write, write, write, write, write, write. Report, report, report, report, report, report, report.

Make sense?

In JCOM 1130, you will start to learn what news is and how to write it. For those of you who are really destined to be JCOM majors and who really will have mass communication careers—in print and broadcast journalism, public relations and other related fields—if I do my job and you do yours, this will be the most important foundation course of your college career. “No brag, just fact.” (Extra points for those of you who can identify that quote—email me.)

A guarantee: Even if you hate what we’re about to do and never take another journalism course again, if you do what I ask you to do during these 15 weeks, the rest of your college career (and your later career) will come easier. Because what newswriting is all about isn’t just news or writing—it’s about thinking and organization. You’ll gather information more efficiently. You’ll ask better questions. You’ll look at facts more critically. You’ll sift and make sense of information more quickly. You’ll synthesize the most important parts of your news story more effectively. And what you write will make more sense to those who read it. You won’t be smarter, but you’ll be better organized and have tools to make better use of the smarts you have. No brag, just fact.

That means that the base we build together between now and May—critical thinking, fact-gathering and writing skills—is important, because the habits and skills you develop here will stay with you. We’ll write a lot, learning what news is (and isn’t) and what newswriting is, learning how to examine masses of information critically and make sense of it for others who read what you write or hear what you say. Newswriting is a strange beastie with quirks and characteristics all its own, quite unlike the writing you’ve learned in your English classes. Some of you may have to unlearn some things you’ve been taught about writing and relearn journalistic methods for communicating information. It’s not rocket science, but there are some tricks to learn.

This syllabus should be considered our contract. We’ll fine-tune it as we go along; some things will be rescheduled, subtracted or added. But, basically, this is it: If you do what I ask you to do, you’ll be a better writer. If you don't do what I ask you to do, your grades will reflect that. OK?

Since this is a news course, and this is a journalism department, I think it’s reasonable to expect you to keep up with the news. To that end, I’ll require that you read a newspaper every day, preferably more than one, either in the dead-tree version (paper) or online. Make sure that you get to visit The New York Times, MSNBC, the Logan Herald-Journal, The Salt Lake Tribune, National Public Radio, The Utah Statesman, The Washington Post, KSL-TV, Slate.com, TheDeseret News, le Monde, CNN, the Hard News Café, the BBC ….. or some combination of that every day. There will be news quizzes, perhaps every class. They count. You also will begin receiving daily emails from the professor: Today’s WORD on Journalism, now in its 13th year, is a daily spam of wisdom on journalism, writing & etc., that goes to some 1,700 deranged subscribers worldwide. I urge you to join the discussion and see the archives at the website.

Required texts and whatnot:
• Tim Harrower, Inside Reporting (1st edition, 2007).
• The Associated Press Stylebook.
• Newspapers (online or dead-tree) and other local, national and international daily news sources. Watch both events, and how they are reported and written. Points for Stoopid Stuff.
• RECOMMENDED: Every writer should own and read (& reread periodically) The Elements of Style, by Strunk & White (available online here). Also highly recommended: On Writing Well, by William Zinsser, and The Elements of Journalism, by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. Full bibliography available.

Readings from the text will be assigned, and the schedule is outlined below. Most of the text material may not appear specifically on exams, but I will pop quizzes on you if it seems you are not familiar with stuff you should have read. The Stylebook should become your writing and stylistic bible—we will have weekly quizzes on that stuff. You may also want to purchase a paperback dictionary if you’re not such a hot speller (you know who you are!). Do NOT depend on spellcheck!

What you get:
A student who successfully completes this course—does everything that’s assigned on time—will be a better writer, a better critical thinker, a better synthesizer and consumer of news and information. Further, you will acquire an understanding of and competence in the following:
• News & feature values: What is and what isn’t news. And how to write both so people read it.
• News-gathering techniques: How to find and develop a story, how to find and use sources, how to obtain and confirm essential facts.
• Newswriting techniques: Once you have the facts, what do you do with them? Story structure & organization, writing clearly and concisely, interpreting and presenting facts for the reader, news style, surviving deadline pressure.
• Audiences: Who reads what you write and why? Framing stories for the audience.
• Editing & style: Newswriting mechanics—grammar, usage, basic copyediting and AP style.
• Journalism ethics: Not an oxymoron! (If you don’t know what an oxymoron is, look it up!) A free and credible press is essential to a free participatory democracy. Without credibility, journalism is just noise.
• Libel law: Basics of mass comm law, including libel and privacy issues.

Each week’s work will focus on reading, quizzes and filing writing assignments. We will discuss the writing assignments and then do them again; there also will be lectures and discussions of journalistic issues. This is a participatory class, so I expect you to raise issues and problems you see in the press. In addition, we’ll talk about current events and issues raised in the readings. During the latter half of the semester, you will start finding and reporting and filing your own stories—breaking news and features—which you will “publish” on the class website, NewsHounds1, for critique and feedback from each other. Reporting assignments may include covering speeches, meetings and news conferences; interviews, and developing in-depth feature stories. Good local stories will be submitted for publication to the Statesman or the Hard News Café.

Grades & assignments:
Grading in this course will be based on your production. Generally, all assignments are graded on a 10-point scale, with later, more complicated assignments weighted more heavily than the earlier ones. A 10 is publishable now (and not expected in this class), 9 is excellent (also rare), 7s & 8s are very good, 6 is OK but needs work, anything lower is below expectations. Some stories may be rewritten with my permission. Each story also will be graded on the basis of a) content, organization and structure, and b) mechanics (spelling, grammar, syntax, etc.).

Final grades will be based on your story grade average, compared with the rest of the class, and on your improvement over the quarter and progress toward meeting the professional standards expected of all journalists. The total grade will also include quizzes, a midterm and final, and other assignments. A significant portion of the class will involve give-and-take with me (the editor), your classmates (co-workers) and you (the reporter). We'll pick stories apart to see what works and what doesn’t.

Grading specifics (see Gradesheet):
• Basic assignments: 10 points each (including both content and mechanics)
• More advanced assignments: 20-60, depending on degree of difficulty
• NewsTalk: weekly discussions and participation count; details to follow.
• Spelling (SP#!!) errors cost 1 point each.
• Punctuation (PUNCT!) errors cost 1/2-point each.
• AP Style (STYLE!) errors will cost you 1/2-point each after the third week. (See Editor Notes.)
• Fact errors (FE*!!!) are good for a pink slip in the real world—here they’ll get you a zero (0) for the assignment. A factual error is defined as an error of fact (e.g.: a misspelling of a proper noun or name—Logan Mayor Randy Watson; President Barrack Obama; Utah Gov. Joe Huntsman, etc.) or a glaring error of fact (i.e.: “The Utah Jazz are the best team in the NBA” or, “The Cache Valley is renowned for its voluptuous citrus crop,” etc.). To avoid the pain that errors of spelling, punctuation, AP style and fact can inflict, keep your Stylebook close and consult it regularly, turn to dictionaries when in doubt, and always use your brains (or Google) to question “facts.”

Obviously, DEADLINES ARE ABSOLUTE. That’s why they’re called deadlines. In the real world, missing deadlines means you don't get in the paper; in JCOM 1130, missing deadline means zero for the assignment.

Housekeeping Details:
Some cautions, instructions and threats. Ask anyone; Pease is an irascible old poop and can be testy at times. Here are some suggestions:
• Visit NewsHounds1 and Today’s WORD regularly.
• Completing assignments on deadline is your responsibility!
• Some wise person once advised: “He who asks is a fool for five minutes. He who does not is a fool forever.” So if you’re confused, don’t be a fool—Ask the professor!
• Expect pop quizzes on anything from the news to geography.
• Online participation is mandatory.
• Consult your Stylebook regularly.
• If you're a lousy speller, use a dictionary religiously.

Attendance, Honesty & Other Stuff:
Attendance: To succeed, you must participate. Regard this class as a professional commitment; I do. Stay on top of the assignments and file your stuff on time. No make-ups. In the real world, you can’t make up a missed assignment, so don’t even ask if you can here.
If you have some emergency that prevents you from doing your NewsHounds work, let me know. If I think you have a reasonable excuse, we’ll figure out make-up work. In the real world, excuses don't count for much and are unbecoming to a professional: If you miss the story that often, you may soon be out of work.

Academic Honesty: The University expects students and faculty alike to maintain the highest standards of academic honesty (for a complete definition, see University Catalogue or the Code of Policies and Procedures for Students at Utah State University, Article V, Section 3). The policy states: “[C]heating, falsification or plagiarism can result in warning, grade reduction, probation, suspension, expulsion, payment of damages, withholding of transcripts, withholding of degrees, removal a class, performance of community service, referral to appropriate counseling” or other penalties as the university judiciary may deem appropriate.

JCOM Department Academic Honesty Policy: Because public trust and personal credibility are essential to journalists and other professional communicators, the JCOM department observes a zero-tolerance policy regarding academic dishonesty: As per the USU Student Code, any documented form of academic dishonesty—including plagiarism—will result in an automatic F in the course and a report to the department head, the dean of the college and the USU vice president for student services. JCOM students who engage in documented academic dishonesty may be dropped from the major, upon a hearing with the student, the instructor, and the department head. Any suspicious work may be submitted to a database that compares student papers to other student and published work in a web database.
If you have any questions about what’s acceptable work under strict codes of academic honesty, see the USU Code of Policies and Procedures for Students, or consult your professor. Any suspicious work may be submitted to a database that compares student papers to other student and published work in a web database. FYI: About plagiarism and how to avoid it, see http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/plagiarism.shtml

JCOM Advising: In order to ensure that JCOM students progress through the major efficiently, the JCOM Department requires that all students meet with the department’s adviser (Reid Furniss), or with a peer adviser or a faculty adviser, each semester prior to pre-registration. An academic hold will be placed on all JCOM majors and pre-majors each semester until students have obtained advising, either individually with an adviser or in one of several group advising sessions that will take place prior to the pre-registration period. Academic holds on student records will be lifted upon presentation of a signed advising form to the JCOM office. For questions, see the JCOM adviser.

JCOM course repeat policy: Students may take required JCOM classes only twice, with department permission; failure to achieve minimum grades (3.0 in JCOM coursework) will result in students being dropped from the major. Students who do not achieve a B or better in JCOM 1130 will not be permitted to advance in the major. Consult with the JCOM adviser on these issues.

Professional portfolios: JCOM students who have the best success in landing internships and jobs after graduation are those who compile a portfolio of professional-quality work. This portfolio may include work produced in JCOM courses, labs, and internships. You should make it a habit to maintain an ongoing file of coursework and other materials that will reflect the quality of your work—class essays and papers, newspaper clips, video or Powerpoint presentations, websites, fliers or brochures, etc. Start now so that you will have a comprehensive file from which to select your best work to make up a professional portfolio and WOW employers.

Decorum: We’re all in this together. That means that we will need each other to succeed. And that means that everyone is expected to treat everyone else with fairness, courtesy and honesty. Disruptive or disrespectful behavior will result in loss of points toward your final grade; repeaters will be dropped from the class. Please apply the Golden Rule.

Disability accommodations: If a student has a disability that will require some accommodation by the instructor, the student must contact the instructor and document the disability through the Disability Resource Center (7-2444), preferably during the first week of the course. Any requests for special considerations must be discussed with and approved by the instructor. In cooperation with the Disability Resource Center, course materials may be provided in alternative formats, large print, audio, diskette, or Braille.

Disclaimer: The instructor has no desire to offend anyone’s personal or cultural beliefs, and he apologizes in advance if he does so inadvertently. But students should be aware that journalism often deals with issues and content that some may find disagreeable—from profanity and offensive attitudes in sources to grisly accidents and other stuff that may make you uncomfortable. But that’s the business—covering society in all its grittiness, and helping readers/viewers/citizens make sense of the world around them. It’s a critically important job in a free society that sometimes requires the journalist to develop a thick skin, a strong stomach and a certain cynicism.

Finally, any rumors that you may have heard that Pease is a heartless, obdurate, irritable, demanding, tough, pugnacious, unpleasant SOB probably falls short (and wide) of the truth. The fact is that I will press you hard this semester to develop the level of professional skill required for success in a mass communications career. But if you're having a problem—with this class or anything else—please feel free to contact me for a talk, career advice, a coke, a crying towel or whatever.

Schedule:
The following detailed schedule outlines week-by-week assignments (subject to change).

Week 1
Readings: Harrower pp 2,4, Ch 1; AP Style Starters; What Is News?; Today’s WORD; News: Paper/TV/Online
Exercises: News Quiz; Student Journalists News Attitude Survey (Harrower p. 14); AP Stylequiz1; Classmate Interview; leads1

Week 2
Readings: Harrower Ch 2; AP A-D; Writing News Primer; 50 Years of Photos (vid); Principles of Journalism; Today’s WORD; News: Paper/TV/Online
Exercises: File personal Profile on NewsHounds1 (see Peez Profile here.); News Quiz; Harrower, pp. 29, 32, 53-55?, 62-64; AP Stylequiz2

Week 3
Readings: Harrower Ch 3; AP E-H; Deadline Checklist (H57-59); Leads; Today’s WORD; Chancellor&Mears; News: Paper/TV/Online
Exercises: News Quiz; leads; AP Stylequiz3

Week 4
Readings: Harrower Ch 4; AP I-L; More on Leads; Nut Grafs; Bill Blundell; Today’s WORD; News: Paper/TV/Online
Exercises: News Quiz; Shorts; AP Stylequiz4; NewsTalk

Week 5
Readings: Harrower Ch x; AP M-P; Covering Speeches; Today’s WORD; News: Paper/TV/Online
Exercises: News Quiz; Speech? and/or shorts; AP Stylequiz5; NewsTalk

Week 6
Readings: Harrower Ch 5; AP Q-T; Today’s WORD; Midterm Prep; News: Paper/TV/Online
Exercises: News Quiz; Speech? and/or shorts and/or Wally; AP Stylequiz6; NewsTalk

Week 7
Readings: Harrower Ch x; AP Q-T; Today’s WORD; Developing story ideas; News: Paper/TV/Online
Exercises: News Quiz; shorts and/or Wally; Midterm; NewsTalk

Week 8
Readings: Harrower Ch x; AP U-Z; Interviewing; Journalistic Principles & SPJ Code of Ethics; Today’s WORD; News: Paper/TV/Online
Exercises: News Quiz; Outside Story #1; and/or shorts and/or Wally; AP Stylequiz7; Ethics Cases; NewsTalk

Week 9
Readings: Harrower Ch x; Today’s WORD; News: Paper/TV/Online
Exercises: News Quiz; Outside Story #2; and/or shorts and/or Wally; NewsTalk

~Spring Break!!!!~

Week 10
Readings: Harrower Ch x; Today’s WORD; News: Paper/TV/Online
Exercises: News Quiz; Outside Story #3; NewsTalk

Week 11
Readings: Harrower Ch x; Today’s WORD; News: Paper/TV/Online
Exercises: News Quiz; Outside Story #4; NewsTalk

Week 12
Readings: Harrower Ch x; Today’s WORD; News: Paper/TV/Online
Exercises: News Quiz; Outside Story #5; NewsTalk

Week 13
Readings: Harrower Ch x; Today’s WORD; News: Paper/TV/Online
Exercises: News Quiz; Outside Story #6; NewsTalk

Week 14
Readings: Harrower Ch x; Today’s WORD; News: Paper/TV/Online
Exercises: News Quiz; Issue/Profile Story; NewsTalk

Week 15
Readings: Harrower Ch x; Today’s WORD; News: Paper/TV/Online
Exercises: News Quiz; Issue/Profile Story; NewsTalk

Week 16
Today’s WORD
Final Exam

Nine Journalistic Principles

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Principles of Journalism
From the Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism

In 1997, an organization then administered by PEJ, the Committee of Concerned Journalists, began a national conversation among citizens and news people to identify and clarify the principles that underlie journalism. After four years of research, including 20 public forums around the country, a reading of journalism history, a national survey of journalists, and more, the group released a Statement of Shared Purpose that identified nine principles. These became the basis for The Elements of Journalism, the book by PEJ Director Tom Rosenstiel and CCJ Chairman and PEJ Senior Counselor Bill Kovach. Here are those principles, as outlined in the original Statement of Shared Purpose.

A Statement of Purpose

After extended examination by journalists themselves of the character of journalism at the end of the twentieth century, we offer this common understanding of what defines our work. The central purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with accurate and reliable information they need to function in a free society.

This encompasses myriad roles—helping define community, creating common language and common knowledge, identifying a community’s goals, heroes and villains, and pushing people beyond complacency. This purpose also involves other requirements, such as being entertaining, serving as watchdog and offering voice to the voiceless.

Over time journalists have developed nine core principles to meet the task. They comprise what might be described as the theory of journalism:

1. Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth
Democracy depends on citizens having reliable, accurate facts put in a meaningful context. Journalism does not pursue truth in an absolute or philosophical sense, but it can—and must—pursue it in a practical sense. This “journalistic truth” is a process that begins with the professional discipline of assembling and verifying facts. Then journalists try to convey a fair and reliable account of their meaning, valid for now, subject to further investigation. Journalists should be as transparent as possible about sources and methods so audiences can make their own assessment of the information. Even in a world of expanding voices, accuracy is the foundation upon which everything else is built—context, interpretation, comment, criticism, analysis and debate. The truth, over time, emerges from this forum. As citizens encounter an ever greater flow of data, they have more need—not less—for identifiable sources dedicated to verifying that information and putting it in context.

2. Its first loyalty is to citizens
While news organizations answer to many constituencies, including advertisers and shareholders, the journalists in those organizations must maintain allegiance to citizens and the larger public interest above any other if they are to provide the news without fear or favor. This commitment to citizens first is the basis of a news organization’s credibility, the implied covenant that tells the audience the coverage is not slanted for friends or advertisers. Commitment to citizens also means journalism should present a representative picture of all constituent groups in society. Ignoring certain citizens has the effect of disenfranchising them. The theory underlying the modern news industry has been the belief that credibility builds a broad and loyal audience, and that economic success follows in turn. In that regard, the business people in a news organization also must nurture—not exploit—their allegiance to the audience ahead of other considerations.

3. Its essence is a discipline of verification
Journalists rely on a professional discipline for verifying information. When the concept of objectivity originally evolved, it did not imply that journalists are free of bias. It called, rather, for a consistent method of testing information—a transparent approach to evidence—precisely so that personal and cultural biases would not undermine the accuracy of their work. The method is objective, not the journalist. Seeking out multiple witnesses, disclosing as much as possible about sources, or asking various sides for comment, all signal such standards. This discipline of verification is what separates journalism from other modes of communication, such as propaganda, fiction or entertainment. But the need for professional method is not always fully recognized or refined. While journalism has developed various techniques for determining facts, for instance, it has done less to develop a system for testing the reliability of journalistic interpretation.

4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover
Independence is an underlying requirement of journalism, a cornerstone of its reliability. Independence of spirit and mind, rather than neutrality, is the principle journalists must keep in focus. While editorialists and commentators are not neutral, the source of their credibility is still their accuracy, intellectual fairness and ability to inform--not their devotion to a certain group or outcome. In our independence, however, we must avoid any tendency to stray into arrogance, elitism, isolation or nihilism.

5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power
Journalism has an unusual capacity to serve as watchdog over those whose power and position most affect citizens. The Founders recognized this to be a rampart against despotism when they ensured an independent press; courts have affirmed it; citizens rely on it. As journalists, we have an obligation to protect this watchdog freedom by not demeaning it in frivolous use or exploiting it for commercial gain.

6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise
The news media are the common carriers of public discussion, and this responsibility forms a basis for our special privileges. This discussion serves society best when it is informed by facts rather than prejudice and supposition. It also should strive to fairly represent the varied viewpoints and interests in society, and to place them in context rather than highlight only the conflicting fringes of debate. Accuracy and truthfulness require that as framers of the public discussion we not neglect the points of common ground where problem solving occurs.

7. It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant
Journalism is storytelling with a purpose. It should do more than gather an audience or catalogue the important. For its own survival, it must balance what readers know they want with what they cannot anticipate but need. In short, it must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant. The effectiveness of a piece of journalism is measured both by how much a work engages its audience and enlightens it. This means journalists must continually ask what information has most value to citizens and in what form. While journalism should reach beyond such topics as government and public safety, a journalism overwhelmed by trivia and false significance ultimately engenders a trivial society.

8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional
Keeping news in proportion and not leaving important things out are also cornerstones of truthfulness. Journalism is a form of cartography: it creates a map for citizens to navigate society. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping or being disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map. The map also should include news of all our communities, not just those with attractive demographics. This is best achieved by newsrooms with a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives. The map is only an analogy; proportion and comprehensiveness are subjective, yet their elusiveness does not lessen their significance.

9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience
Every journalist must have a personal sense of ethics and responsibility—a moral compass. Each of us must be willing, if fairness and accuracy require, to voice differences with our colleagues, whether in the newsroom or the executive suite. News organizations do well to nurture this independence by encouraging individuals to speak their minds. This stimulates the intellectual diversity necessary to understand and accurately cover an increasingly diverse society. It is this diversity of minds and voices, not just numbers, that matters.

See also: Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics; the Hutchins Commission Report on a Free & Responsible Press

Chancellor&Mears on Leads

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LEADS: Getting it right
By John Chancellor, CBS News, and Walter Mears, The Associated Press

Every story has to begin somewhere. This is about beginnings—what journalists call leads.

The lead is how you start, which sounds simple enough, except that it isn’t. More wastebaskets have been filled with crumpled paper because of trouble with leads than anything else in newsrooms.

Leads are supposed to be brief, but not too brief. James Thurber once ran up against an editor who kept telling him the lead was too long. Finally, in frustration, he made it as brief as could be:

Dead.
That’s what the man was when he was picked up.

It was a joke, of course. Thurber wrote too well to end a sentence with a preposition.

At the other extreme, some reporters who aren’t kidding have tried to cram everything into a sentence. As in:

The mayor’s office announced today that the federal government will provide $136,000, the state will contribute &223,000 and the city will put up $735,000 to finance summer job programs that should make employment to 17,239 young people between June 15 and Sept. 5, mostly in public works projects.

That’s so bad it’s funny—but there are copy desks that inflict such writing upon readers.

Then, too, there are writers who wish they were poets. A little poetry goes a long way; too much chokes the lead. As in:

Jimmy Carter, the man who would be President, buckled on his political armor today and began his quest for the White House as a haze-shrouded sun rose over the magnolia trees in his small-town back yard.

It’s easier to write bad leads than good ones.

Leads are keynotes, the overtures, the tee shots of newswriting. Properly crafted, the lead answers questions before they are asked and promises more answers to follow. The lead sets theme and points the way.

That is a lot to ask of a sentence or two. But it is neither so awesome nor so mysterious as it sounds. A lead is simply a disciplined beginning.

One of the highest compliments in journalism is to have it said the writer got the lead right. No one gets it right every time; the selections of facts and the way in which they are packaged is too complex a task for perfection every time.

Getting it right means finding the phrase, the quotation or the fact that reaches the essence of the story.

Sometimes that is easy: a president is elected, a leader is dead, a war has ended. These stories are the exceptions. More commonly, there are competing sets of facts, all clamoring in the writer’s mind to go first.

In January of 1981, a day came when two competing sets of facts arrived on the same day, and each one was important enough to have dominated to news for most of that month. On the day when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated president, the American hostages in Iran were released.

Those two events within one hour produced the biggest news day in a decade. For each of us, it meant combining the two stories into a single lead.

MEARS: I put the two stories together this way:

WASHINGTON (AP)—Ronald Reagan became President of the United States on Tuesday promising ‘an era of national renewal’ at home, and restraint but never surrender abroad, his inauguration blending the passage of power weith a passage to freedom for 52 American hostages.

We had to revise the story over the course of that afternoon and evening to cover the latest developments as the hostages headed West and Reagan took over the White House. We even inserted material that night and produced what in wire service language is called a “news lead,” to cover the latest inaugural balls. I wish they were called dances. The note editors explaining what was new in that last story said simply: “To update with balls.”

The hostage/inauguration lead was difficult to handle. It wasn’t complex, in that anyone had to choose among competing facts, since only two really counted. Reagan was President and the hostages were out. It was the combination of all this happening at the same time that we had worried about handling for weeks. It got to be kind of in-house joke—what do we do it it all happens at once? So of course, it did.

CHANCELLOR: Nightly News had the same problem. We decided that the program would begin with Reagan taking the oath right at the very top, no announcer and no titles. But our first extended story was the hostage story. The reasoning behind that was that everyone had known since the previous November that Reagan would be inaugurated, but the hostages were not a predictable story, so we began with them.

I wrote: “Good evening on the 444th and final day of the hostage crisis, which is also the first day of the new Reagan presidency.”

Then we went right to the pictures of the hostages boarding the plane at Teheran airport. I did not know until I rolled the paper into the typewriter and sat there and said, what the hell am I going to write—and then all of a sudden it wrote itself. “Final” and “First” seemed to be the story to me.

MEARS: It took me a while to get things into a manageable set of words. There was so much to cover and so few words to do it. I needed to say that Reagan had been inaugurated, I had to give some sense of his inaugural address, and I needed to cover the hostages. It would have been easy if he had mentioned the hostages in his inaugural address, so of course he didn’t. I struggled. Then I hit “passage of power—passage to freedom,” which described both the combination and contrast. After that it all fell into place. That’s not unusual, in my experience; once you get a handle on the lead, and you’re satisfied with it, the rest of the story usually comes easily.

CHANCELLOR: The biggest stories are usually the easiest to write. The Germans have surrendered. John Lennon has been killed by a maniac. The stock market lost 40 points. The release of the hostages and the inauguration of Reagan were uncomplicated facts in themselves, which did blend into a coherent combination lead. Not all combinations are that way.

The best test to determine which competing facts gets top billing is to ask yourself: Which of the facts interests me most? Anyone who writes to inform must begin with more information that the reader or viewer. That rule seems obvious, but it isn’t always observed. And a failure to recognize the most important among competing facts will produce a lead that runs away from responsibility, a lead that says the writer is lost.

Anytime you pick up the paper and read that the White House has passed a complex tax bill, that story will tell you little. If it is too complex for the writer to explain in the lead, the story that follows will very likely be too complex to wade through.

There are differences between writing for newspapers and writing for television, but the fundamental obligation of the writer in either medium remains the same: get the essence of the story in the lead.

Choosing is the essence of leadwriting. Somewhere in any complicated story there are elements than lend themselves to simple, direct explanation. The job is to find them. A vague beginning usually means a vague story. The lead disciplines what comes afterward, and without discipline, the succeeding paragraphs are likely to be aimless.

The easiest place to begin is the nice, simple, factual lead: Four men with guns help up the Amalgamated Bank on Main Street this morning and got away with $50,000.

CHANCELLOR: The lead is: “From now on, students at Siwash will have to have their homework in on time.” And then, in a second sentence, you tell how that decision was made, and that takes you to the meeting of the faculty committee.

MEARS: The committee could have decided a dozen things, but if the homework decision is the one that affects the people who’ll be reading the story, that’s the lead.

CHANCELLOR: I have a kind of rough rule. I sometimes pretend I’m calling my mother. I say to her, You know what they did here at Siwash? They say the students have to get their homework in on time. She might say, Who decided that? And I reply, the faculty committee. And that’s the lead.

MEARS: What if you were forced to put it into a one-minute phone call – or less?

CHANCELLOR: If it takes one whole minute to say it or read it, you don’t have a lead, you’ve got more than 125 words, and the worst editor in the world wouldn’t let you put that lead in the paper. And if you’re rattling off at that rate, you surely don’t have it worked out in your head.

MEARS: I meant for that one-minute phone call to include some time for thinking. But I suppose you’re right; that ought to do be done before you get on the phone.

Working it out in your head makes it easier to avoid dressing up a lead with a word like “dramatic.” If the event being described is dramatic, the word is unnecessary. If the event is not dramatic, writing that it is won’t make it so.

Dramatic events produce such dreadful phrases as “emotional homecoming,” “solemn vows” and “major speeches.” “Homecoming” is an emotion word by itself. If vows aren’t solemn, they don’t count. No one ever admitted to making a minor speech. Writers are not salesmen for the events they recount. It is the description, not the shopworn adjective, that can make a lead extraordinary.

For example: Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated. Dramatic, ironic, tragic, shocking—all those words apply to what happened. But a lead can be fashioned without them: “Sen. Robert F. Kennedy died of gunshot wounds early today, prey like his president brother to the savagery of an assassin.” Writing that lead did not require a selection of facts. Writing that lead did require a selection of words. Using words like “dramatic” or “shocking” in that kind of lead is not only sloppy writing, it demeans the event itself.

Of course it was dramatic, and of course it was shocking. What why it went without saying. That is why it is not to say that it needed to be a lead without drama. But drama is in the telling, as in the masterful lead with which Douglas B. Cornell of the AP told of the burial of Robert Kennedy.

Robert F. Kennedy was buried on a gentle hillside Saturday in the uncertain light of a full moon and the flame flickering eternally over the grave of martyred President John F. Kennedy.

So, too, the day Richard M. Nixon resigned as president. The right lead was the simplest: Richard M. Nixon resigned today as the 37th president of the United States.

The reader comes soon enough to the fact that no president had ever resigned before. Say what happened and leave it alone.

CHANCELLOR: This is, perhaps, even more important in writing for television. Big news is very often bad news. Leads on these stories need to be spare and lean as possible. The viewer needs to know the facts, and needs a little time to let them soak in. It’s one thing to pick up a newspaper, read of some calamity in the headline, and go on to read the story itself. It’s another thing to watch a television news program. A reader can go at his own speed, but a viewer needs time to comprehend the news. Which is why I take my time with leads on really big stories, beginning with the basic fact, which just writes itself, then adding other facts as slowly and logically as I can. One way to help the viewer is to find a way to repeat the information contained in the first sentence in about the fourth or fifth (“Nixon’s resignation became official as he was flying to California,” not “It became official as…”). If it is done properly, the essential facts can be methodically outlined and reinforced in about half a minute of copy. And if you think that’s a very short time, stop reading now, look at your watch, and think of the things you could say about a big story in 30 seconds.

Being simple does not mean being dull. Even in the most uncomplicated leads, there can be tension and vivid contrast. When the 1968 Democratic National Convention delivered its presidential nomination to Hubert H. Humphrey, there was discord in the convention hall, and rioting in downtown Chicago, where antiwar demonstrators battled police. It was a night of ironies—a gently man reaching his life’s goal in circumstances that belied everything he had preached in a long political career.

That could have been a “meanwhile” lead: Hubert H. Humphrey won the Democratic presidential nomination tonight. Meanwhile, there was rioting downtown Chicago, a few miles from the convention hall.

“Meanwhile” leads are lousy leads. You can do anything with “meanwhile,” but you’ll usually regret it later. The stock market crashed today. Meanwhile, snowed in Boise. “Meanwhile” is sometimes heard to avoid, and no one who writes can claim to innocent of using it, but it is best left in the dictionary.

MEARS: My lead on the Humphrey nomination went this way:

Hubert H. Humphrey, apostle of the politics of joy, won the Democratic presidential nomination tonight under armed guard.

That gets Humphrey trademark, the nomination and the tumult of the Chicago rioting into a sentence. It doesn’t refer specifically to the rioting, which comes in the second sentence, but it makes the point indirectly.

A lot of newswriting involves telling people something they already know. Between wire services bulletins broadcast on the radio and television network special reports that interrupt the soap operas, most people are going to know something big has happened. They hear it on their car radios, or other people tell them. Because of television, everyone gets to be something of an expert, and in many cases an eyewitness to breaking news. That makes more difficult the task of commanding attention in a lead. In many cases, the consumer is looking for confirmation and explanation of what is already known—possibly seen, live and in color.

Leadwriting becomes even more difficult when the story is not dominated by a single event, but describes an assortment of facts. That happens, for example, on a night of speechmaking at a political convention, or in crisis which brings reaction—or response—from other countries, or when a president sends one of his major messages to Congress.

MEARS: One of the toughest annual stories to write is the president’s budget message.

CHANCELLOR: Sometimes the budget doesn’t produce an overriding lead, so I write what you might call an omnibus lead. It says the president has made his budget proposals, and then I list the most important ones. It takes a lot of words, and it’s cumbersome.

MEARS: In my terms, that’s not a lead. You’ve got to choose. For instance, you may have to say the dollar figure is the important one, even though to many people that is not a meaningful figure. Nobody in the damn world understands $900 billion.

CHANCELLOR: It seems to me that one way of writing that lead is to find a shift in the way the White House proposes that the money be spent. The lead might that the president proposes spending more on defense, and less for the poor and the old.

MEARS: If that’s in there, that’s the lead.

CHANCELLOR: But suppose you’ve got four categories of that kind in the budget, and all are about equal in importance? You can’t explain them all in the lead.

MEARS: Then you’ve got to pick one.

CHANCELLOR: Maybe you’ve got to pick one, but in television I can come on and say, in effect, Hello, the budget: Here’s what they want to do to you and for you.

MEARS: I couldn’t write that as a hard news lead.

There are some leads that seem to be repeated again and again. The president gives his State of the Union address. If he’s a Republican, his party’s leaders praise it, and Democratic leaders don’t. The standard goes something like this:

Reaction to President Reagan’s State of the Union address varied along party lines tonight, as Republicans applauded while Democrats complained he ignored key social programs.

With variations, that is written annually. Change the name, reverse the parties, insert different grounds for complaint, and the lead will stand up in the next administration. And it will be just as dull the next time.

There’s a better way, and it is to find one or two politicians who said something that wasn’t predictable, something fresh and quotable. When the story is predictable, just pick what’s interesting. All politicians think they are interesting, and some of them occasionally are.

Not all stories are equally newsworthy. Sad to report, some aren’t very newsworthy at all—yet some in that category are unavoidable. People do need to know about an annual report from the governor’s office or the school board. It may not be exiting, but it goes with the territory. The job is to make it as interesting as possible. There is always—something buried in all those pages. Sometimes it takes quite a search, but it will be there and it will be the lead. Otherwise you’d wind up with copy that began: “The school board issued its annual report today and it was really dull.” That’s a good way to begin the search for another line of work.

It’s likely that a beginning reporter is going to be assigned some of those predictable stories. They are like slices of bread in the toaster: They pop up at intervals. IN a way they are drudge work, but they are also a challenge because it takes extra effort, observation and reporting to find their ingredients to make this year’s story different—better—than the one in the file from last year.

The city council members are sworn in, or the groundhog sees his shadow, or school opens with more pupils, or fewer, than a year ago. That property tax increase enacted six months ago takes effect tomorrow. It’s the Fourth of July and, just like last year and every year before, there’s going to be a parade.

Stories like that are routine, predictable and obligatory. They can be written from the files, with slight variations year to year. Or they can be written with some flair, by a reporter who tries to look beyond the routine and see something just a bit different.

For example, George Washington’s birthday used to be a big sale day in the Washington stores. There’d be lines of customers waiting for the $10 automobiles and the like. And there would be annual stories about the sales gimmicks. The stories were as predictable as the loss-leader bargains. But it was possible to change the far, as in:

WASHINGTON—That silver dollar George Washington is supposed to have thrown across the Rappahannock River might buy a brand new typewriter today.

Holiday stories are predictable. Christmas doesn’t change much from one year to the next, but it’s always in the paper. Parade stories are like that, or circus-coming-to-town stories. But news is about change, not about sameness, so the challenge is to find what is different this Christmas, or this parade, and write it.

Journalism is white-collar work, too often at blue-collar wages, and much of it is imprecise; that’s why it defies fixed rules. But there are some things to keep in mind. One of them is the definition of news, which depends on who’s doing the defining. Gerald Johnson, an editorial writer for the Baltimore Sun and a historian as well, once said: “News is what interests a good newspaperman.” James Reston of the New York Times defined news as a chronicle of conflict change.

People need to know about changes that may affect them. They need to know about conflicts, at home and abroad, because that affects them too. John F. Kennedy once said that domestic issues can be troublesome, but foreign policy can kill you.

If it’s interesting, if it tells of change, if it reports — or explains — conflict, you’ve probably got your lead. That’s as true of stories about the city council as of reports about the Kremlin.

There is nothing more humbling than to sit down at a desk stacked with handouts—our word for press releases—or speech texts, and be forced to sort out all the verbiage and turn it into a story to meet deadline. But there are few things more satisfying than the experience of wading through it all and finding a lead which gives coherence and structure to the whole uncoordinated mess of information. That involves not only the freedom to choose but the necessity of choice. A good journalist has the capacity for good decision, even when it runs against the grain.

MEARS: At one of John F. Kennedy’s early press conferences, I was just a cut above office boy in the Washington bureau, but there were two things he said that I thought were important. It was right after John Glenn’s first orbital flight, and Kennedy said he thought it was super that Glenn had circled the earth. And he also said that if Nikita Khrushchev came to New York for the UN General Assemble, he would like to meet him. That would have been a summit conference. Our guys kept writing that Kennedy thought it was just wonderful that Glenn had circled the earth. But I said, Excuse me, sirs, but don’t you think we ought to lead this story with the fact that Kennedy has just invited Khrushchev to a summit conference in New York? And they said, NO, you’ve got to go with the flow of the news. Finally, I sat down, with a certain temerity, for I was the junior man in the place, to write a sidebar on the summit story for I was the junior man in the place, to write a sidebar on the summit story. But they were right. The story that was printed the next day—not only the AP copy, but the Times, the Washington Post, UPI, everybody—was that Kennedy had hailed the hero John Glenn for orbiting the earth. And the invitation to Khrushchev was buried elsewhere. The reason was, the Glenn thing had been going on for days, and leads on that made the editors comfortable and the readers comfortable, and it was the guaranteed story that was going to get play. I still don’t think it was the news.

One kind of lead that can work well—although it has to be done with care lest it misfire—is that lead that plays off an adage or a cliché, slightly amended. It uses a familiar phrase in a new setting. So when Lyndon B. Johnson traveled to Independence, Missouri, to sign, in the company of Harry S. Truman, the bill that created Medicare, this was the lead the reporter wrote: President Johnson journeyed a thousand miles today to sign the bill beginning government medical care for the aged and share “this moment of truth” with Harry S. Truman.

That played off the Chinese proverb that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Some deskman took a single step of his own to undo it. He checked the mileage and changed the lead to say that President Johnson had journeyed 996 miles. Reporters talk with each other a lot about stories they are covering, but the good ones make their own decision, independently, about the leads they write and the way to tell the story.

This independence can be difficult, particularly in national political reporting or on any other story that draws a crowd of newspeople. Some of the reporters in the crowd will write safely, with the pack, emphasizing the same points, even writing similar leads. Seasoned reporters have been known to check the wire service leads to make sure their copy covers the same ground. That way, cocktails and dinner are not interrupted with a call from the editor, complaining that the copy doesn’t cover the same ground the wires do.

Candidates, especially presidential candidates, usually say the same things every day, and the reporters who trail them and write about them tend to develop a caste system based on seniority. Those who have been following the candidate longest become walking encyclopedias on what’s been said and what’s been done in the past. Let Ronald Reagan say he wants to withdraw the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty from the Senate, and these encyclopedias will argue that there is not news in that because he said something similar in Dallas five months earlier.

Ignore that kind of talk, and don’t let some other reporter’s judgment alter your own. If you’re beaten on a story, you’ll have to catch up—but choosing your own angle isn’t being beaten. You are not writing for people who have heard every word uttered by the candidate. If you’ve done your homework, you know what he said five months earlier. The basic point is that if it is interesting to you as a well-informed writer, it is likely to be interesting to a well-informed reader or viewer.

MEARS: I wrote a story on Reagan and the SALT treaty during the 1980 campaign. It was based on an AP interview, and it came at a time when President Carter was denouncing Reagan daily as some kind of warmonger. Carter kept citing his opposition to the treaty as evidence that Reagan would be dangerous in the White House. It was a point of dispute, of conflict, and therefore a natural lead. A day after it appeared, Carter was making speeches about the interview while Reagan’s people were trying to play down what their man had said.

CHANCELLOR: I read your story and gave it a pass because Reagan had said that five months previously. Sorry about that.

MEARS: That was your loss, not mine. I think you were wrong on that one, but we’ve all got to follow our instincts. Some days they’ll steer you the wrong way. I remember a day like that in 1964. Sen. Barry Goldwater was opening his campaign in the New Hampshire presidential primary. He had a news conference at which he talked about defense issues and also about the assassination of President Kennedy, two months earlier. Goldwater said that strategic missiles were not reliable weapons, and that the only sound defensive system would rely on manned bombers. He was an Air Force reserve pilot and he’d been arguing that way for years. It was old stuff. The Kennedy assassination was the most sensitive subject a politician could mention at the time. So when Goldwater mentioned it, I figured I had my lead. It was that Goldwater had accused President Johnson of joining a leftist attack on American conservatives by saying that an atmosphere of hate was behind the assassination. My mistake. A reporter who hadn’t seen or heard Goldwater until that day led his story with the missile comments. The Defense Department accused Goldwater of damaging national security. Suddenly it was the senator against the Pentagon, an instant conflict, and an old story made new. The story I dictated would up on the spike.

Leads con do wondrous things. Richard M. Nixon never said he had a secret plan to end the Vietnam War, but history will record that he said it. What Nixon said, in the cafeteria of a New Hampshire textile mill one winter day in 1968, was that as President he would end the war in the Pacific, and win the peace. But Nixon said he would not second-guess the Johnson administration by explaining how.

There were two ways to handle the lead. One was to quote what Nixon had said. The other was to paraphrase and characterize it.

The straight quote is, usually, preferable. But that day a rookie political reporter wrote that Nixon had said he had a secret plan to end the war, and that is what’s going to be in some history books.

MEARS: I stuck with the Nixon quote in the lead I wrote that day and got wiped out—everybody used the competition’s story. You learn some things by losing.

You’ll lose some, but you’ll win many more by sticking with the quote. It gives you an unassailable lead, for it is what the man said. Too many writers opt for the paraphrase to save a word or two. But the quotation tells it better in almost all cases. In the depths of Watergate, Nixon said, “I am not a crook.” That was the lead. Barry Goldwater’s 1964 assertion that “extremism is the pursuit of liberty is not vice” was a clear lead. So was Gerald Ford’s description of the situation when he replaced Nixon: “Our long national nightmare is over.”

If a quotation is both apt and graceful, it makes a natural lead because lead sentences are themselves best written when they are easy on the tongue. Whether you’re writing for broadcast or for print, it helps to read the lead aloud. If a lead can’t be phrased in graceful spoken English, it is not a well-crafted lead. It must be easy to say, as well as easy to understand.

MEARS: If you can say it, the likelihood is that it will read well. If it takes two breaths to say it, find the period key and use it. Although I have to admit some of mine require one very deep breath. If it sounds awful, it will read that way too. But be careful when writing in the company of colleagues. Read softly and be prepared to be taunted as a writer who can’t type without moving his lips.

CHANCELLOR: One of the most effective leads I ever wrote was on a study of dietary habits of the elderly poor. It read: “Poor people eat cat food.” The second sentence told how that had been learned.

MEARS: On some stories the words themselves give a particular flavor and texture to the lead. When the American hostages were released from Iran I used Biblical words, Old Testament words: “deliverance” and “passage.” I wrote that they had been released from “Iranian bondage.” I don’t read the Bible a lot. Those words just seemed to fit that day.

Writing leads for the ear, instead of the eye, often calls for different techniques. The British Broadcasting Corporation uses single words as signals on many of its radio broadcasts. The announcer will read: “Politics. The Labour Party today voted…” or: “Europe. The Commissioners of the European Economic Community…” or: “Football. Tottenham Hotspur last night defeated…”

The utility of these brief signals is obvious. The listener is told that the subject is being changed, and gets a brief idea of what the new subject will be. The writer of broadcast news must always be aware that he is competing for the listener’s attention.

CHANCELLOR: One of the most common mistakes in radio newswriting is the lead in which a key fact is stated only once and not repeated. For example: “Bolivian police today reported that 24 American tourists were rushed to hospitals with stomach poisoning after a Fourth of July picnic at the American embassy. Doctors say all will recover.” If you missed the first word, you’re lost. Better to say, “Bolivian authorities say all will recover.” That’s not very flashy, but it helps a listener who is already digesting, if you will pardon that word, the fact that a couple of dozen Americans got sick at a picnic at their own embassy. Broadcast news needs constant reinforcement.

Beware of leads that are too dense, too overladen with facts. Suppose the day’s big story is that inflation is down but unemployment is high. Here’s the way not to write it:

The government announced today that the rate of inflation calculated on an annual basis had declined from 4.6 percent in May to 3.5 percent in June, while unemployment continued at a postwar high of 9.2 percent during the same month, with more than 890,000 people out of work.

No lead needs that many facts. That one groans and creaks under the weight of everything that’s in the sentence. Better to write: “Inflation eased during June, but unemployment remained at a postwar high of 9.2 percent.”

The other elements need to in the story, but they shouldn’t be crammed into the lead. The better lead is brief and simple. It has the same elements, but without an overdose of numbers.

MEARS: Long leads are not a problem as long as they’re clear. The Associated Press once considered a ratings system for leads. You got points for short leads and short words. I went home and dug out the 10 stories for which I got the Pulitzer Prize and found they would have flunked. I called the people who were setting up the system and said, “I just wanted you to know I flunked.” The plan was never put into effect. Brevity is not the primary goal. Clarity is. The old rule holds that the shorter the lead, the better. That’s old enough to be forgotten. There are limits, but a 25- or 30 word lead is not necessarily better than one 35 or 40 words long. It needs to be simple and understandable, not necessarily short. A lot of editors will tell you two-sentence leads are against the rules. To hell with them.

CHANCELLOR: There are times when a lead just falls into your lap. When the French National Assembly voted to abolish the death penalty, I wrote: “The guillotine got the ax today in the French National Assembly.” But there are times when you simply can’t write a short lead. I remember the story of a frustrated lover who murdered his girl friend, cut off her head and mailed it to a former admirer, cut off her toes and five to the President of the United States and five to the President of the Soviet Union. All you can do with that one was to tell it just that way.

MEARS: One of our guys was saying that his favorite lead of all time was: “The nude body of a headless red-haired corpse was found today…” This came out as a funny lead on an awful story, but it wasn’t intended to be funny. You’ve got to be careful with words.

There are times when there is not a final story, but a lead must be written, nevertheless. An election has been held, but no candidate has been declared a winner. A jury is still out. The Boy Scouts are still lost. This kind of leadwriting calls for more imagination that the straight it-happened-today hard news lead, and yet the basic principle remains. If the election hasn’t been settled, write it that way, perhaps with some color thrown in about the candidates waiting. A lead on a jury unable to make up its mind can be dressed up with a phrase or two describing the vigil in the courtroom, but the story is still that no verdict had been reached. Something that hasn’t happened can be hard news. It’s a cliché, but it’s a story when the wedding doesn’t happen because the bride never showed up. The old newsroom line is about the reporter who didn’t file a story because the wedding never happened.

CHANCELLOR: There are times when you’ve got to write what I call a hedge-your-bet lead. I remember being on deadline in Jerusalem once, when President Carter and Prime Minister Begin were meeting on the Middle East peace talks. Israeli officials said that things had gone well, but Carter’s press secretary, Jody Powell, had confirmed that view after his public briefing by talking with Powell in his hotel room. I then wrote a hard lead that things looked very dark, and I showed it to Judy Woodruff, our White House correspondent. She said, “I know these Carter people. I think they’re conning us. I don’t think it’s as bad as it looks.” So I changed my lead to say that members of the President’s party were extremely pessimistic in contrast to some optimism on the Israeli side, and added that it seemed too early to say that Mr. Carter’s mission to Israel had ended in failure. The next day Mr. Carter went to Cairo, and a few hours after he arrived, his mission was a success. I had been saved by the caution of a colleague, and while the lead I wrote had a lot of on-the-one-hand and on-the-other hand in it, it was accurate. Sometimes you’ve got to hedge.

We have found that a way to write good leads is to think of them in advance—to frame the lead while the story is unfolding. This can be of a crucial help on a fast-breaking story, a briefing or an announcement that comes right on a deadline. When you’ve got to run to a telephone to start dictating, or when you’ve got to go on camera and start talking, the one thing you really need is to have a lead in your head. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but if you frame it properly, the rest of the story will flow from it in a natural and graceful way. And you can have that very special pleasure of knowing you got the lead right.