The Lack Of Diversity In Journalism
By Denis Johnson
One of the problems that is still lacking in the Journalism industry is the lack of diversity when it comes to their employees.
A lot of newsrooms across the United States are still predominantly white. It’s mostly white people that work in the media.
The American Society Of News Editors talks about the lack of diversity in Journalism. It measures the women and minorities working in US newsrooms. It shows the different newspaper industries that have more white people working for them than minorities.
In 2017, 81 percent of people who were employed at The New York Times were white and 7 percent of their employees were black. Even the people who buy their newspapers are predominantly white. According to the Newspaper Diversity Society 61 percent of their audience is white and 13 percent of their audience is black. I believe that if you’re going to have an industry not just the newspaper industry but any industry, the ethnicity that dominates the most will have the most impact when it comes to who watches or supports what you do.
Most of these newspaper industries still hasn’t adjusted to new times. In this generation a lot of things in life is diverse. Our schools are diverse, the places where we work are diverse and some sports teams are diverse. I believe that there are a few factors that play into this.
The first factor is connection and what I mean by that is the people that you know who work in the newspaper industry. If you have a relative or know someone really well that works in the newspaper industry, then it’s easier for that person to get into the business. If you don’t know anyone in the newspaper business than it’s harder for you to get into the newspaper business. Like in the survey it showed the New York Times having mainly white people working there compared to minorities, it’s very hard for a minority to get the position because they don’t have anyone who’s also a minority that works there.
The other factor that I believe plays a role in this is adjustments and what I mean by that is the way our society has evolved when it comes to reading newspapers or working at a newspaper company. Most minorities don’t buy newspapers.
Due to world that we live in because of technology, most minorities can get their news elsewhere via social media. It is easier to get the news in other ways. The majority of these newspaper companies have an “old school’’ mentality. A lot of their employees are middle aged white men.
Also that’s another problem in the newspaper industry the lack of women working there. I find a huge problem with that because it shows that we still haven’t accepted the fact that woman should be equally qualified to work in the newspaper business or any business for that matter just as much as a man could.
So it’s not only just the lack of diversity that’s a problem in the newspaper business it’s the lack of women working in it as well. The newspaper industry is slowly dying but that doesn’t mean that there should be a huge difference between white people who work at a newspaper industry compared to minorities and the ratio of men working there compared to women.
