2nd ASNE, APME 'time out' to push news diversity

Cheryl Arvidson
The Freedom Forum Online

04.11.00

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For the second straight year, reporters and editors in newsrooms across the country will take a break from their daily routine in mid-April and reflect on their organizations' success in reaching beyond the traditional white power structure to better reflect the diversity of their communities in their news reports.

"Time Out II," a joint project of the Associated Press Managing Editors and the American Society of Newspaper Editors, will be held the week of April 17-21. The Freedom Forum and the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education are partners in the project.

David Yarnold, APME diversity chair, says he expects participation in this year's Time Out to be about 15% greater than 1999, when about 200 newsrooms and more than 2,000 journalists took part in the exercise. Once again, the news bureaus of the Associated Press and Reuters and Newhouse, Gannett and Knight Ridder news services will join in the Time Out activities, he said.

And, for the first time, about a dozen educational establishments, primarily colleges or college educator organizations, will join in Time Out II, said Yarnold, who works for the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News.

"It just drives deeper into the journalism ranks the idea that diversity is a core component of accuracy," Yarnold said.

Each news organization has a great deal of freedom in the way it conducts the Time Out assessments, Yarnold said. Second-year participants are being asked to make a specific report on how they have done in terms of meeting commitments made last year. But beyond that, the news organization can discuss diversity issues over coffee with the editor, during brown-bag lunches, in staff meetings or in an educational setting.

For example, The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wash., will begin its week with a content audit of the newspaper, looking at types of stories, who's quoted in them, who's photographed to illustrate the news and who's writing the articles. The paper is also adding a map of the circulation area to its audit to examine where the stories originate.

"That is always a revealing and generally depressing exercise," Yarnold said of the content audit.

The Spokane newspaper also plans to have a speaker from the Poynter Institute discuss some of the areas of sensitivity that reporters and editors should be aware of when writing about gender, class, religion and sexual orientation. For example, Yarnold said, certain words may mean different things to different audiences, and the use of other words or phrases might convey a "sense of otherness" as opposed to a message of inclusiveness.

In addition, Gonzaga University in Spokane is hosting a community meeting on race relations, and the newspaper is encouraging its staff members to attend and will give them time off to do so.

The response to the second Time Out has been heartening, Yarnold said, but he added the jury was still out on whether the diversity initiatives will really work.

"As soon as we went to the APME membership last October and announced Time Out II, 55 papers signed up on the spot, so there's a lot of willingness in the industry," he said. "There's no doubt that the spirit is willing. Whether we're actually able to hire people of color and change the content of our newspapers is very much in question."

Asked what he considers the biggest problems, Yarnold cited the difficulty both in recruiting enough minority journalists to diversify newsroom staffs and in bringing about the fundamental changes in newsroom philosophy needed to diversify the product.

"Change is hard," Yarnold said. "Fundamentally, it requires changing your news sources, if possible — finding the sources' sources, digging deep into the community to break through (the layer of) elected white males, in many cases. When you dig deep into the community and find power centers such as churches, neighborhood organizations and community groups, the chances that you will find real voices of diversity are much greater than when you go to city hall."

If the diversity initiatives are to succeed, he said, "consciousness raising" and a commitment from top news leaders are essential.

"You constantly have to walk the talk," Yarnold said. "Every day you have to worry about the diversity of sources."

He also said he hopes that the Time Outs will continue as annual events in American newsrooms.

"I certainly hope that the Time Out week continues, because if we give up on it and assume that it will happen on its own and don't follow through … I think we will backslide," Yarnold said.

For its part in Time Out II, The Freedom Forum is providing funding for the publication of the week's findings, which will be released at the next APME convention in San Antonio, Texas, in October. The Freedom Forum also is posting essays on diversity written by Chips Quinn Scholars, a group of promising minority journalists, on the scholars' Web site.