Via the Nation Institute, a new study shows that minority employees of newspapers have been disproportionately hit by the drastic layoffs in that industry, according to the American Society of Newspapers and Editors. About 800 lost their jobs last year, which brings their representation in newsrooms to just about 13 percent of all positions.
It's even worse if you're talking about supervisors; minorities account for 11 percent of all supervisors in newsrooms, which hasn't really changed in three years.
That's especially bad given that the recession has hit black and Latino populations particularly hard, and it's not like newsrooms were doing so great on the diversity front anyway (even if plenty of people fail to understand why this is a problem). At The Washington Post, for example:
The Washington area has an exploding Spanish-speaking population. Yet Hispanics on The Post's staff include only eight reporters and four supervising editors. Similarly, African Americans account for about 12 percent of the staff, but the African American percentage of the population in parts of The Post's core circulation area is more than four times greater.
Newsroom diversity is less about who's covering what particular story (though sometimes that matters) and more about the editorial decisions newspapers make, the way they treat those stories, and the faith the public has in them.
-- Monica Potts