Diversity in the Newsroom -- Why it's Important

Anna Azallion
aa384716@ohio.edu

Diversity is a topic that comes up a lot these days. Every industry is striving to be diverse, including journalism. It may seem like the answer to the question, "why is this important?" is obvious, but if it's obvious, why has newsroom diversity lacked for far too long?

So, why is diversity in a newsroom important?

Source: Columbia Journalism Review

The Editor-in-Chief of Buzzfeed says it's important ethically, but it's also important to reach more readers.

Part of the goal of journalism is to report on things that matter and to represent, in an unbiased way, the voices of those who won't necessarily be heard on their own. Journalists aren't supposed to advocate for them, but tell their story and leave it up to everyone else to do something or not.

Basically, the goal of journalism is to represent everyone, but how can journalists represent everyone if the newsroom isn't representative of everyone?

The Guardian pointed out in an article that when newsrooms aren't diverse, they can miss facts that are important to the story.

The article talked about a different article that reported on a string of robberies in a rough neighborhood. The article said many victims refused to give up their belongings to the robber even if they didn't have much on them; in some cases, the victim only had a few dollars. The overwhelming theme of the article, according to The Guardian, was that your life is worth more than a few dollars and those victims were foolish to have resisted the way they did.

The author of The Guardian's article said they had lived in a similar type of neighborhood and that the article about the string of robberies was missing a key perspective. The Guardian's article pointed out that the few dollars a victim refused to give up may have been their only way to get to work.

When the goal is to be unbiased, I think it's sometimes easy to think that anyone can do the job. In the case of the article The Guardian was talking about, a reporter who was from a similar neighborhood couldn't share their perspective without editorializing so it's easy to think that someone completely unfamiliar with the realities of a rough neighborhood like that can tell the story just as well.

Yes, the journalist can't share their perspective, but they can ask the right questions. In the case of this story about the string of robberies, it would be so easy to talk to a victim or talk to someone else in the neighborhood and ask, "why would you risk your life for the few dollars you had in your pocket?" or, "Why did you react the way you did to the suspect?" From questions like those, I think you would get the information needed to bring in the perspective The Guardian was talking about. A victim might answer and say, "The $5 I had in my pocket was the only money I had left until I got paid at the end of the week. If I gave up that money, I wouldn't be able to eat or get to work."

The TED Talk above was given by a woman in Columbus. She talked about statistics and why diversity in a newsroom matters. Many of her points, echoing the things I've discussed above and expanding on them.

I think the next key question is, why aren't newsrooms more diverse? I mean, it's 2019, what's the problem?

Poynter says, it's journalism culture that's to blame. The article from Poynter says newsrooms put the responsibility of diversity on people of color when they should be putting the responsibility on the people who have dominated newsrooms since the beginning: straight, white, men.

I'm sure there are other reasons as well, but I also think many organizations are working to improve diversity in their newsrooms.