Double Jeopardy in the Newsroom

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

Despite progress, minority journalists face stubborn obstacles

Mervin Aubespin, 45, was in the city room late one night at the Louisville Courier-Journal, where he has been a reporter for more than a decade, when an editor dropped by with an unusual request. The editor wanted Aubespin, who is black, to telephone a source on a story he had been covering since its inception, then hand the source over to a white reporter who would conduct an interview. Says the normally restrained Aubespin: "The assumption was made, purposely or not, that I was not able to ask the right questions. I got real evil."

Aubespin does not regard his employers as being fundamentally racist. Indeed, he says, "top management has made a commitment to bring blacks into the mainstream." Blacks hold 19 of 234 editorial staff jobs at the Courier-Journal and its sister daily, the afternoon Louisville Times; the minority representation of 8.5% at the two papers (including one Hispanic) compares favorably with a national newsroom average of 5.5%. But as Aubespin's story illustrates, even after minority journalists get hired, they face enduring problems in trying to win the professional trust of their colleagues.

Few newspaper editors are more aware of that problem than the Courier-Journal's managing editor, David Hawpe. On behalf of the Associated Press Managing Editors, he helped direct the first major poll of the attitudes of minority journalists in the U.S. Among the findings of the new study: some 92% of all respondents, and 100% of blacks, believed that race had played a role in their being hired; 75% of those surveyed felt that they did not have the same chances for promotion as white colleagues; 51 % said their editors "believe that minority journalists, as a group, are less skilled" than whites; and 10% said that they had been told openly that race was the reason they were refused certain assignments, notably on sensitive subjects including school desegregation. Summed up one unnamed respondent quoted in the survey: "I believe [white editors] expect less from minority staffers, and only if we do more will we be seen as equal."

The survey received replies from only 178 of the 600 minority journalists polled (of some 2,700 in the newspaper business). An independent sampling by TIME correspondents of minority reporters, however, found that they consistently voiced the same complaints, even if they worked for newspapers that took pride in being equal-opportunity employers. Said one veteran New York Times writer: "Editors cannot conceive of you in any other way than as 'a black reporter.' " Guillermo Martinez, a Cuban-born reporter for the Miami Herald, agreed. He contended: "We have to prove ourselves twice, that we are good journalists and that we deal objectively with issues of the Hispanic community." Asserted Robert Newberry, a black who is an assistant news editor of the Houston Post: "I have always felt that blacks had to prove themselves daily and give 110%, or be regarded as lazy, though a white colleague is not."

Most major papers insist that their affirmative-action programs explicitly favor minority applicants. Ed Storin, an assistant managing editor of the Miami Herald, reflects the view of many newspaper executives: "If we had a white person and a black person with the same abilities, we would definitely pick the black." As a result, minority journalists can often short-cut the traditional start in small towns and move quickly to big, well-paying papers. But they remain nonetheless a minority; 60% of the nation's newsrooms are all white, and integration has been stalled by economic hard times.

Once hired, minority journalists say, they are caught in an affirmative-action double bind: the same preference that helps them get in also leads white colleagues to doubt their competence. Minority reporters complain that for them there is often no middle ground: if they are not extraordinary, they are considered inferior. Editor James Squires of the Chicago Tribune seemed to validate that charge. Said he: "We get two kinds of minority reporters: superstars capable of doing any kind of story, and those who are there only because they are minorities."

Many minority reporters complain that they are "ghettoized" into covering the black or Hispanic community. Yet many also feel a moral duty to report stories that might otherwise be ignored. Debra Martine, 25, a Dallas Morning News reporter, summarized the dilemma: "I felt the newspaper was not adequately covering the black community. But after a while, the editors think that is all you are capable of doing."

Few minority journalists have risen into management jobs of even moderate power. Only one, Publisher Robert Maynard of the Oakland Tribune (circ. 179,000), runs a large paper with a predominantly white audience. Claims Maynard: "White males are often promoted on the basis of potential, but minorities and women need proven ability." Minorities hold three editorial management positions at the New York Times and Chicago Tribune, four at the Boston Globe, and four of 123 supervisory positions at the Los Angeles Times. Editors blame the dearth of minority managers on rapid turnover, particularly as promising reporters depart for better pay in television. Other factors are youth and relative inexperience: 73% of those who responded to the survey were under 35, and 67% had been journalists for less than ten years.

As minority journalists hired since the 1960s mature, their prospects should improve. Says Mark Ethridge III, managing editor of the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer: "We are doing much better at getting entry-and middle-level people. The next step is higher management." Minority journalists are not so sure. Les Payne, national editor of Long Island's Newsday and president of the National Association of Black Journalists, contends: "Some papers may be better than others, but we still have to break the pattern of inertia." --By William A. Henry III. Reported by Steven Holmes/Los Angeles and Don Winbush/Chicago

With reporting by Steven Holmes/Los Angeles, Don Winbush/Chicago

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