Diversity Diaries: Wanda Lloyd
By Wanda Lloyd
Executive director, Freedom Forum Institute for Newsroom Diversity
09.27.01
A few years ago as senior editor for newsroom administration at USA TODAY, I heard about a young African-American woman who was in town one day interviewing at another newspaper. A colleague heard she was a very good sports page designer. After confirming that we might be interested in meeting her, my colleague agreed to get in touch with her right away through a mutual friend.
The young woman agreed to meet with me that day. She brought work samples. My colleague was right: She was very good.
Not surprisingly, the candidate was not comfortable about coming to town to interview at one newspaper and then visiting another. But I convinced her to meet with some of our editors in sports that very day. After meeting with them, she came back to me smiling, but said she promised to return to the other newspaper for another round of talks. After that, she called me and I invited her back to my office. We talked about a lot of things, not the least of which was diversity.
To convince her we were the right place for her to work, I put her in a cab again and asked her to return to the other newspaper, go into the sports department and look around. "You'll understand," I told her. A while later she called me and said she looked around a room that wasn’t nearly as diverse as our sports section and entire newsroom, especially among the ranks of editors. "Make me an offer," she said.
We did, and she accepted.