ASNE board sets strong diversity example for industry

Commentary

By Wanda Lloyd
Executive director, Diversity Institute at Vanderbilt University

11.20.01

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There is good news on the diversity front.

In a year when the number of journalists of color in U.S. daily newspaper newsrooms is down, when surveys report that journalists of color are leaving the business faster than their white colleagues and when many journalists of color say they find it difficult to have conversations about race in newsrooms, there is a glimmer of light that sends a strong positive message.

Rick Rodriguez, executive editor of The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee, was elected to the leadership ladder of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Rodriguez, who was picked by the ASNE board (of which I am a member) as treasurer-elect, will be the first Latino to lead ASNE when he becomes president in 2005.

In April, when Diane McFarlin, publisher of the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune, ascends to the presidency of ASNE, the organization’s leadership will be two women, an Asian-American, an African-American and a Latino.

(Serving with McFarlin and Rodriguez as officers will be Peter Bhatia, executive editor of The Oregonian, Portland, as vice president, and Karla Garrett Harshaw, editor of the Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun, as secretary.)

Think of the symbolism. Think of the significance.

In the 1970s, when ASNE launched programs and started monitoring the number of journalists of color (then mostly African-Americans) in daily newspaper newsrooms, young people of color had few role models in daily newspaper newsrooms.

I know because I was one of them.

Growing up African-American in the Deep South in the 1950s and 1960s, I dared to dream of someday working for a newspaper. It was a dare because no one on the inside told me I could do it. There were no African-American role models and few women at my local daily newspaper.

Significantly, the top leaders of two other newspaper organizations are led by African-Americans. Orage Quarles (publisher of The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.) is president of the Newspaper Association of America and Caesar Andrews (editor of Gannett News Service) is president of the Associated Press Managing Editors.

Today young people have only to look at the industry’s top organizations to find role models. Oh, that the rest of the industry would reflect the ASNE leadership roster. The ASNE board has made a strong statement to the industry: We can do it. Join us.

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