Parity Project Newspapers Outpace Industry Trends

Six of the eight papers that joined NAHJ’s Parity Project in 2003-2004 have experienced gains in employing journalists of color. Four papers reached their high-water diversity marks in December 2004.

The figures for the Parity Project newspapers stand in contrast to the majority of U.S. newspapers which reached their diversity peaks prior to 2004. This conclusion was reached by NAHJ after analysis of a study conducted for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundations by Bill Dedman of The Boston Globe and Stephen K. Doig of the Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

The study, released in June, found that only 18 percent of U.S. dailies recorded newsroom diversity highs at the end of 2004.

The four newspapers in NAHJ’s Parity Project that reached their high-water marks were the Rocky Mountain News (14.1 percent), the Ventura County Star (21.2 percent), the Corpus Christi Caller-Times (25 percent) and the San Angelo Standard-Times (37.7 percent).

“The Parity Project has been a critical part of our effort to improve newsroom diversity,” said John Temple, editor, president and publisher of the Rocky Mountain News. “The partnership with NAHJ put a new emphasis on this issue and gave us help in recruiting and developing future employees that we would not have had otherwise.”

Two additional newspapers also recorded increases in their employment of journalists of color. At the Abilene Reporter-News in Texas, the percentage of journalists of color has increased from 10 percent in 2003 to 12.5 percent in 2004.

At the Naples Daily News in Florida, the percentage of journalists of color increased from 2.4 percent to 3.3 percent since joining the project. However, the paper is far from reaching its high-water mark which occurred in 1994 when journalists of color made up 23.8 percent of the newsroom staff.