Employment of Women and Minorities
In the 2001 Impact study from the Readership Institute, one of the many topics examined was diversity in the newspaper workplace. The four categories used were News-Editorial, Advertising, Circulation and Marketing. The percentage of nonwhite employees averaged 21 percent, ranging from a low of 14 percent in News to about 27 percent in Circulation and Marketing. At the supervisory level, the average was 4 percent, with a range from 2 percent in news to 6 percent in marketing. At the level of top administrative executives, there was 7 percent diversity. Overall gender diversity averaged 55 percent male, mirroring the composition of the national workforce. There was a wide variation among departments, however. Men outnumber women roughly 60-40 in News and Circulation, with the percentages reversed in Advertising and Marketing. At the top executive level, men occupy 68 percent of the positions. The highest percentage of non-white men is in Circulation. The highest levels of non-white women were in Marketing. Smaller newspapers — those with less than 50,000 circulation — tend to have less ethnic diversity and higher percentages of women.
In another recent study from the Readership Institute of diverse markets, it was found that while 33 percent of the population in these areas is people of color, only 20 percent of the photos in the paper show people of color.
The latest American Society of Newspaper Editors' annual survey shows that the percentage of minority journalists in the newsrooms of daily newspapers increased in 2003 from 12.53 percent to 12.94 percent. The number of minorities totaled 7,016, with 495 hires and 334 departures. The percentage of minorities who are supervisors rose slightly to 20%. Of the 935 newspapers participating in the survey, 373 — or 40 percent — report no minority staffers. The majority of these papers have circulations of 10,000 or less. Other detailed findings of the 2004 newsroom employment survey include:
- The percentages of Asian Americans, Hispanics, African Americans and Native Americans in newsrooms all rose slightly from a year ago.
- The percentage of minority interns (32.2 percent) rose slightly.
- Almost 55 percent of all minority journalists work at newspapers with circulations exceeding 100,000, emphasizing the need for more minority journalists at smaller-sized papers.
- The percentage of women in newsrooms remained at 37 percent last year. Interestingly, these figures are pretty close for both large and small newspapers. Women represent 34 percent of all newsroom supervisors, slightly up from last year.
- Of the 20,168 women, 16.3 percent are minorities.
- The minority retention rate dropped from 97 percent last year to 95 percent this year.