Race and the Newsroom: Why it's Important to be Aware of the History of News

Alex Semancik

as477018@ohio.edu

Diversity in the newsroom is a very essential part of journalism today. In a world that is being digitized and diversified by the day, having a diverse newsroom is essential to reach all of the public and reach them well. However, about three-quarters of newsroom employees are non-Hispanic white, compared with about two-thirds of all U.S. workers, according to an article from NiemanLab. 

The history of the profession of journalism in the United States offers some valuable insight as to why newsrooms today are dominated by white people, the majority of whom are men. Pre-World War I the mainstream press was nearly all white. The article from NiemanLab goes on to say the development of the Black press during the late 1800s and early 1900s overlapped with the emergence of American academic sociology — and that wasn’t a fluke. 

Black researchers and academics used the early Black press to promote their research and findings. This however was limited to an extremely small group of readers and an even smaller, more exclusive group of writers. Blacks with little or no education essentially were given no way of receiving or participating in news. The Black papers may not have reached many, but their ideas were very important in shaping the role of diversity in mainstream journalism. The papers "made no pretenses at objectivity" and instead directly challenged the marginalization that African Americans faced not just in regard to the press but in all walks of life. 

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Black papers grew immensely during World War II. The U.S. was likely occupied by the ongoing war and was fairly unified for the time being. Some papers had a circulation of more than 350,000 in one city alone. This was great progress toward more diverse journalism for the Black community. However, after the war, the spread of McCarthyism throughout the United States in the 1950s led to a decline in Black press. Followers of McCarthyism specifically targeted prominent members of the Black press as "communists" or "socialists" and shut them down. The mainstream media recruited the rest throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

In the years that followed McCarthyism, Blacks and other minorities in the United States were gradually more integrated into the mainstream media. Is it enough though? The fact that 75% of newsroom employees in the U.S. are white makes it seem that it is not. The history of news and media in the United States is almost exclusively dominated by white people. Newsrooms in America should learn their history and do more to be inclusive and increase diversity in the workplace.