Diversity: Employment

Alice Bonner

For 40 years after diversity finally became a principal value of American journalism in the late 1960s, news institutions endeavored earnestly, but with only qualified success, to make news coverage and newsroom staffing representative of society's diversity. The American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) defined diversity in 1978 when its members vowed to increase the proportion of ethnic minorities in daily journalism equal to their percentage of the population by the end of the twentieth century. The editors' manifesto, formalizing diversity efforts ASNE had begun in early 1972, quickly was followed by similar actions within other press organizations and journalism education groups who set goals and adopted similar diversity standards for racial and ethnic representation in their ranks. The Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) began tracking minorities in broadcast news jobs in 1972. By 1978, minorities made up about 12 percent of the U.S. population, but only about ...

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