Piling on the ASNE census
Every year, ASNE surveys its members on the race and gender of newsroom employees and publishes the results. The results haven't made us proud recently, either in total numbers of journalists or increased diversity of newsrooms.
Alan Mutter calls it "a confounding statistical mélange of apples, bananas and bowling bowls." Gotta love that image.
I would go even further. It's a waste of time and a false indicator of the industry's health. And it is yet another morale downer.
National numbers don't mean anything. The numbers that are important are local. How many journalists are in the newsroom of your hometown paper? How many of them are women? Men? African American? Asian? Hispanic? American Indian? (Those are the categories on the survey. I know because I took it.) As it happens, the N&R has a higher percentage of minority journalists (15%) than the national average (13.5%). Makes it sound as if we're ahead of the curve....except that we're less than halfway to mirroring the percentage of minorities in Guilford County, our core market area.
Does it help me as an editor to know the national numbers? No. Its original goal may have been worthy, but we need to try something else.
While I'm here, some questions not asked on the employment census: How many newsroom staffers are digitally proficient? How many are paid what they deserve? How many would it kill you if they left the paper? How many would you hire if you had it to do over? How many would work elsewhere if they had the chance?
Now that is a census that would tell you something.
Comments (5)
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Forget about race, gender, or nationality - how about disclosing what percentage of your employees are left-leaning liberals.
Posted on April 15, 2008 1:30 AM
Left-leaning liberals? Yep. They are there and they are leading the charge for the liberal agenda. You betcha.
Not. I have worked in six separate newsrooms. None of them were organized enough to arrange a bubble bath, much less a liberal conspiracy. And I see no sign that the News & Record is any different.
Robinson's right - this survey has been useless for years. And those who keep putting it out there would do well by going out there and actually doing journalism instead of talking about it.
Posted on April 15, 2008 9:40 AM
Is that left-leaning Liberals as opposed to right-leaning Liberals?
Posted on April 15, 2008 8:55 PM
Holden,
Maybe you haven't looked at employment laws lately. Employers can't ask their employees what their political affiliation is. That's one reason you aren't going to see a survey of news employees' views. The other is pretty much as OldReporter says. And believe it or not, it really doesn't matter most of the time. I've never seen a reporter or editor say we should do something because it is in line with some political agenda. We're all much too contrary for that to happen.
Posted on April 19, 2008 7:42 PM
The average newsroom doesn't have to be "organized" to be liberal. It is inherently leftist because most people who go into journalism are of that persuasion. Sixty Minutes producer Mary Mapes spent 5 years trying to find dirt on President Bush's National Guard record, and she finally had to rely on obviously faked records to slam him. Meanwhile, John Kerry has still not released his military records. Nobody from the mainstream press ever asked about that. This is why those of us who are conservative rely so little on you guys for our information. I am a news and political fanatic, but I rarely look at newspapers or magazines any more. Who needs them?
Posted on April 20, 2008 2:03 PM