Time-Out for Diversity connects census data, community coverage
By Beverly Kees
freedomforum.org
10.10.01
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Results from the 2000 Census gave Time-Out for Diversity a second — more precisely, a third — wind. The census gave newsrooms a better look at their changing communities and prompted a third round of discussions and actions to improve coverage and accuracy.
The St. Cloud (Minn.) Times discovered a large population of young people who brought new diversity to its area. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram took a close look at the language used in describing race in stories. AP bureaus compared their statewide coverage to issues surfacing in changing demographics.
The results of Time-Out III in 2001 for Diversity and Accuracy will be released this week at the annual Associated Press Managing Editors conference in Milwaukee. Partners in the project are the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.
Time-Out began in 1999 to examine issues of credibility and to better diversify newsrooms and news coverage.
In that first Time-Out, 2,000 journalists, from 153 newspapers and news organizations and 43 Associated Press bureaus, took time out during a week in May to explore how accurately their news coverage reflected the diversity of their communities. Participants looked inside at their staffs and content and outside at the people in their circulation areas. The exploration led to a variety of efforts to improve coverage.
“As we headed into this year, the question arose within our organization: Has Time-Out served its purpose? Is it something we should continue, or should we move on?” said Suki Dardarian, assistant managing editor/metro of The Seattle Times. A member of the APME board of directors, she helped direct Time-Out for three years. “No one wanted to end it; the Time-Out conversations and sessions had inspired conversation, debate and coverage changes in many of our newsrooms.
“We knew that, this being a census year, we could connect our newsroom discussions with the demographic news in our communities," she said. "We also established an alliance with the Maynard Institute to focus on training for content audits.
“The two elements — the census and audits — were a wonderful match,” she said. “As we learn more about who lives in our communities, the natural questions that follow for a newsroom are: Are we covering these emerging communities? Are we writing for those people? How will these demographic changes affect life in our communities?”
Participating newspapers and news services, which report on their efforts to Time-Out sponsors, found they could do more to respond to changing communities.
In Minnesota, Rene Kaluza, news team leader/training editor at The St. Cloud Times, said, “We have a huge population of young people, and that is where a good chunk of our racial diversity is. We have a university here, and we’d like to target them as readers.”
Times editors found that their location was among the top 10 growth sites for immigrants in their state. Somalis make up one of the largest groups of immigrants, along with a growing population of Russians.
As the paper approaches its content audit, "the general sense among staff is that the paper has provided typical coverage of these populations, but not provided coverage that would serve those populations,” Kaluza said.
“We are reviewing all of the beats in our newsroom. The intent is to incorporate diversity into all of the beats.”
In Montana, the Associated Press staff was aware that the largest minority group in the state was American Indians. The surprise in the latest census was the aging population overall.
Chief of Bureau John Kuglin, based in Helena, said: “Reflecting census findings showing the rapid growth of upper age brackets — with the median age rising by nearly four years, to 37, in the past decade — the staff this year discussed how to cover senior citizens.”
Verner Bertelsen, president of the 3,000-member Montana Senior Citizens Association, met with the AP bureau staff. He told the group that the No. 1 issue for Montana seniors used to be the high cost of prescription drugs. "Do we buy drugs, or food? Now, with utility deregulation, the question is do we pay our gas and light bills, or eat?'' he said.
The discussion evolved into a plan “to devote more time to writing about issues of concern to seniors," Kuglin said. "One specific idea that we will follow up on is a takeout (thorough examination) on the trend of building upscale apartments and condos for the elderly, and the shortage of housing for senior citizens with low incomes."
At the Detroit Free Press, Public Editor John X. Miller said in his newspaper’s Time-Out report that the newsroom had gained information on the changing racial communities around Detroit and the declining population inside the city limits. Previous content audits showed an absence of women and varied sources in the paper, and the newspaper has added two diversity beats and created a handbook on covering Arab-Americans.
“We recognized that a renewed effort to audit the newspaper was needed to more accurately reflect the changing the market, our readers and to broaden our sourcing,” Miller said. “After previous audits, we had failed to make substantive changes in coverage and approach. Our goal now is to focus on deepening primary and secondary sources, adding different voices and perspectives to stories and images, exploring parts of our community that have been mostly absent from the newspaper, and audit the newspaper regularly to evaluate and adjust coverage."
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram publishes a twice-weekly Spanish language newspaper, has a staff committee working to improve coverage of the Hispanic community, and is considering having in-house Spanish classes for staff members. A subcommittee of a companywide diversity committee conducts quarterly or semiannual audits of all three editions of the newspaper.
For Time-Out III, City Editor Jean Marie Brown organized a Star-Telegram newsroom conversation about words the newspaper uses when writing about race and ethnicity.
In particular, she wanted to look “at how we describe race in stories, especially when we use euphemisms, such as 'inner-city,' 'at-risk,' 'minority-majority' (and) how we describe people in stories and briefs. Often when we describe whites, we don't mention race, just physical description, but with others, we mention race or ethnicity. Even then, this is not necessarily insightful or specific. After all, what does a Hispanic man look like?”
The key to this conversation, she said, was “to keep it focused on how we practice good journalism. The fact is when we over-generalize or use euphemisms we often erode our credibility with readers.''
For the conversation, the newspaper used a diverse panel of staffers who could talk about race for different perspectives, and brought in Keith Woods, an ethics faculty member at the Poynter Institute.
Woods and Brown “talked for about an hour about how to frame the conversation," Brown said. "He stressed what I already mentioned: that this had to be a conversation, not an indictment or something that would make people feel singled out. I passed out two of Keith's essays, "The Language of Race" and "Racial Identification Guidelines," both of which are available online.”
"I introduced the conversation by acknowledging that we all stumble when it comes to race," said Brown. "Then I talked about how our credibility with readers is at stake when we write something that doesn't ring true to readers, or if they think we're saying one thing and we think we're saying something else. The panelists took it from there.
“There was no shouting, no one was attacked and, after the formal conversation ended, people continued to talk about race," Brown said.
Said Dardarian, “As I read the Time-Out reports from newsrooms, I continued to be impressed with the breadth of interest and a commitment to the premise of Time-Out. But even more, I was touched by the passion and determination of journalists across this country to make this work.
“Most editors already understand the responsibilities we have to more accurately reflect and cover our communities,” she said. “But inspiring an equal or greater commitment from one's newsroom is a much more daunting challenge, particularly in times of shrinking resources. Time-Out has worked because it's given editors a way to transform that commitment into inspiration and motivation of their staffs. It enables them to stop, deliberate, celebrate, debate and commit to improvements.”
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