Battling Affirmative Inaction

By Laurence Zuckerman

"The journalistic profession has been shockingly backward in seeking out, hiring, training and promoting Negroes," declared President Johnson's National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Laying some of the blame for the previous summer's inner-city race riots on the "white perspective" of the press, the 1968 report concluded, "The painful process of readjustment that is required of the American media must begin now." Last week many of the nation's top news executives attended the 13th annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists in St. Louis to assess the progress of minority journalists in the 20 years since the report. The verdict: decidedly mixed.

While scores of black journalists are now employed by the country's most prestigious news organizations, both publishers and activists agreed that the gains have come too slowly. Minorities make up 25% of the U.S. population, but they account for only 7% of the nation's newsroom employees, vs. 4% in 1978. In TV news, black employees have not increased their ratios at all in the past 15 years, and in radio their numbers are declining. What is more, 55% of the country's 1,645 dailies still do not employ a single minority member in the newsroom. "Every year when roll call is made, there are only incremental increases in the number of blacks in print and fewer and fewer in broadcasting," laments Columnist Dewayne Wickham, president of the 1,700- member N.A.B.J.

The reasons behind the news industry's poor performance go to the heart of its clubby, old-boy traditions. After 1968, many news organizations were quick to step up black recruiting, sponsor scholarships and institute special internship programs. Even so, studies show that the average minority reporter quits journalism much earlier than whites do. Though some are lured away to more lucrative fields, many are frustrated by limited opportunities to move up. "People who have worked hard, been on the rewrite bank, done the police beat are not being promoted as fast as their white counterparts," charges Ira Hadnot, a vice president of the Institute for Journalism Education, a nonprofit agency that has helped train 400 minority journalists. Black men fare even worse than black women, says Ernie Schultz, president of the Radio- Television News Directors Association, in part because "white males feel threatened by them."

The secret to success in minority hiring and promotion seems to be simple: hard-nosed commitment. Gannett Co. Inc., the nation's largest newspaper chain and publisher of USA Today, is often derided for its stingy management, but its record in affirmative action is the industry's best. Seven of the company's 89 daily papers are run by minority publishers. The company / strategy: every manager's bonus depends in part on how well affirmative-action goals are met. "When others were talking about a desire to launch training programs for minorities in management," says Jay Harris, executive editor of the Philadelphia Daily News, "Gannett was naming editors and publishers."

New York Times Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the new chairman of the American Newspaper Publishers Association, says that improving racial diversity within the industry, and particularly within management, is one of the top items on his agenda. "I think it is absolutely essential that we do better," he says. Most other publishers agree. Nearly 100 news organizations were represented at the N.A.B.J. job fair, where a blizzard of minority resumes were traded. But for skeptics who have seen it all before, the proof is not in the prospecting but in the follow-up. Says Monte Trammer, the first black publisher of New York's Saratoga Springs Saratogian: "Affirmative action appears to be an area where whites are rewarded for intent and effort rather than results."

With reporting by Staci Kramer/St. Louis and Naushad S. Mehta/New York