Exclusive Newsrooms: The Impacts of Diversity

 Eric Steere

es581519@ohio.edu

As time has passed and technology has advanced, journalism and news platforms have advanced as with them. Most of these changes bring about positive differences in how things once were in the past, like the wide availability in internet usage and online/broadcasted media becoming more accessible. 

There are some aspects to media production that have not changed as time progresses, which hold back the potential in newsrooms. The number one problem doesn't reside in the technology, equipment, location or anything material at all even. 

The main issue is the lack of diversity. 

Source: iStock

Currently, white Americans make up most of the country's workforce. In newsrooms specifically, three-quarters of employees in the United States are non-Hispanic white people according to a NiemanLab article by Clark Merrefield. 

With the considerable majority of newsroom employees being white Americans, they miss out on many potential different and valuable viewpoints that minorities may have. Diversity gives a voice to the unheard, and journalism could help them be understood. 

Speaking for other groups of people can also be dangerous, as the information could be incorrect when the storytellers themselves aren't the most familiar with the subject. An article from The Guardian by Jelani Cobb discusses this same issue, where someone is writing on a subject they do not fully understand, stating "The story, to me, spoke to the problem of what happens when the demographics of the Times - and American Newspapers in general - look nothing like the demographics of the communities they cover." 

The article continues to say that the people whom the information mostly pertains will be most unlikely to get to say anything about it. Newsrooms like this are exclusive to minorities or lesser-represented groups. 

Think about how many stories in America that have likely been inaccurate because of lack of information or simply just being unknowledgeable on the subject. Diverse newsrooms help cover for this, providing unique knowledge, viewpoints and other  useful experience. 

Thinking of newsrooms in terms of a team; a good team consists of a group of people who can each do their own job really well and work together to succeed. A good team does not consist a group of people who can all only do one thing.

This is why it is important to have diversity in the world of journalism; to get all different kinds of skills and knowledge together to produce true, factual, and unbiased work to benefit the public.