Numbers Are Up, but Many Staffs Lack Diversity: Forty-Four Percent of Newspapers Report They Have No Minorities in Any Part of the Newsroom. (Diversity or Opinion)

Prince, Richard, The Masthead

Ten years ago, Lee Salem, then editorial director of Universal Press Syndicate, told the National Association of Black Journalists how hard it was to place black columnists without "credentials" or a "public image" in syndication.

"One of the problems we run into is that many op-ed page editors tend to put people and ideas they represent into boxes," Salem said in the NABJ Journal story headlined, "Papers Pass Up Black Columnists."

In 2002, says Salem, now the syndicate's executive vice president and editor, "I wish I could say that we're improving, but I can't. There's less space for op-ed writers, as more pages are going toward locals--the professor at a junior college who spent three weeks in Iraq and now is an expert on the Mideast. And they want distinct categories: 'I have a conservative, I don't need another: 'I have an African American, I don't need another.'"

No one knows exactly how many people of color are working …

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Publication information: Article title: Numbers Are Up, but Many Staffs Lack Diversity: Forty-Four Percent of Newspapers Report They Have No Minorities in Any Part of the Newsroom. (Diversity or Opinion). Contributors: Prince, Richard - Author. Magazine title: The Masthead. Volume: 54. Issue: 4 Publication date: Winter 2002. Page number: 5+. © 1999 National Conference of Editorial Writers. COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group.

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