The majority — 63 per cent — of US newsrooms have at least one woman among the top three editors’ positions. But when it comes to persons of colour holding senior ranks, the percentage slips to 15 per cent.
This is the first time that the question about women and minorities in leadership was asked in the annual census conducted by the American Society of News Editors (ASNE). This year, 965 out of 1,373 daily print newspapers responded to the survey.
The number of journalists from the minorities US dailies have, however, increased by a couple of hundreds in 2013 even as newsroom employment declined by 3.2 per cent. “Some editors are doing a better job of recruiting and retaining journalists of colour,” said Karen Magnuson, editor of ‘Rochester Democrat and Chronicle’ and chair of the ASNE Diversity Committee. “You can’t grow the numbers without being effective on both fronts.”
There are about 36,700 full-time journalists employed by the nearly 1,400 newspapers in the US. That’s a 1,300-person decrease from the 38,000 employees recorded in 2012. Currently, about 13.34 per cent are ethnic minorities, and up from last year’s 12.3 per cent.
There is also a link between newspaper circulation numbers and additions to the workforce. Staffers at newspapers with daily circulations of more than 500,000 were up by 5.8 per cent, and, interestingly, those with numbers under 10,000 had a 2.7 per cent gain. All other circulation categories saw declines in overall employees, with the biggest drop, 16 per cent, among newspapers selling between 100,000 to 250,000 copies a day.
ASNE’s goal is to have the percentage of minorities working in newsrooms reflect the percentage of minorities in the nation’s population by 2025. Nowadays, minorities represents 37.02 per cent of the population; that number will increase to 42.3 per cent by 2025, according to the Census Bureau.
