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Print this pageMinority journalist numbers dwindling
Of the 5,900 newsroom jobs eliminated at American daily newspapers in 2008, 854 were minorities
Of the 5,900 newsroom jobs eliminated at American daily newspapers in 2008, 854 were minorities, according to a census taken by the American Society of News Editors. The overall drop from 2008 left 46,700 journalists on newspaper staffs at the end of 2008. That includes 6,300 minority professionals.
ASNE, which has conducted a census of newsrooms since 1978 as a means of measuring minority employment, also found that the percentage of minorities in newsrooms stood at 13.41 percent, a decline of .11 percentage points from a year ago.
Since 2001, Latino journalists have increased by only 23, Native Americans by 44 and Asian Americans 167. The number of Black journalists decreased by 539.
The overall job loss was the largest one-year decline in employment in the history of the ASNE census and followed a drop of 2,400 a year ago. Since a modern era peak of 56,400 reported in 2001, newsroom jobs have decreased by 9,700. The highest employment level in the survey’s history was 56,900 reported in 1990.
Other findings:
• 458 newspapers responding to the census had no minorities on their full-time staff. This number has been growing since 2006.
• While the ASNE benchmark for 2009 called for 522 newspapers to have achieved parity with the percentage of people of color in their communities, only 111 have done so.
