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Journalism is too white

Anger inside Inquirer, NYT underscores larger media problem

  • Russ Walker
FILE - In this Saturday, May 30, 2020, file photo, demonstrators raise fists in the air during a march in Pittsburgh to protest the death of George Floyd, who died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers on May 25.

 Keith Srakocic / AP Photo

FILE - In this Saturday, May 30, 2020, file photo, demonstrators raise fists in the air during a march in Pittsburgh to protest the death of George Floyd, who died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers on May 25.

Join WITF on Wednesday, June 24 at 7 p.m. for a virtual sneak preview of the new American Experience series The Vote — a look at the culmination of the hard-fought campaign waged by American women for the right to vote. Afterwards, stick around as a panel of experts discusses the film. Register for the online screening here. If you can’t make it, you can catch the full broadcast premiere on WITF TV on July 6 & 7 at 8 p.m.— Russ Walker, PA Post editor

Keith Srakocic / AP Photo

FILE – In this Saturday, May 30, 2020, file photo, demonstrators raise fists in the air during a march in Pittsburgh to protest the death of George Floyd, who died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers on May 25. A black reporter from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was pulled from covering the city’s protests over the death of George Floyd, apparently because of a tweet. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic, File)

Newsrooms in the United States, by and large, are too white. I write this as a white man leading a small (but ferocious!) newsroom based in central Pennsylvania.

What do I mean by “too white”? The different newsrooms I’ve worked in over 25-plus years were predominantly staffed by white journalists. Without exception, the journalists in those newsrooms were professionals who adhered to the standards of their profession. The problem, of course, is that the mindset driving how those newsrooms decided what to cover was informed by white experience and a culture that evolved over the decades under the leadership of white male editors and publishers.

I began to understand a few years ago that too many newsrooms missed the chance to cover important and meaningful stories affecting individuals and communities of color. I know, because I’m guilty of making those mistakes — the result of my own failure to appreciate the importance of a news story that affected people of color. I failed, in part, because the newsrooms that I worked in did not have enough journalists of color.

We need more journalists of color. We need them in management roles. We need to hear their voices.

Over the past week here in Pennsylvania, two newsrooms have been rocked by the fact that their leadership was deaf to, or dismissive of, the voices of journalists of color. In one case, that of The Philadelphia Inquirer, the newspaper’s top editor resigned. In the other, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, reporters are in open revolt over management’s decision to bench an African-American woman reporter because she tweeted a funny meme.

There are links below to stories about what’s happening in those two newsrooms, as well as at The New York Times, where the editorial page editor, James Bennett, was pushed out after publishing an op-ed by a U.S. senator from Arkansas that urged the use of troops to end the protests.

What does journalism need to do? I hope that we use this opportunity — the protests driven by the killing of George Floyd — to hire and advance more journalists of color so they can remake the often too conservative (small “c”) culture in most newsrooms. More importantly, more voices of color making decisions about what people see and read in the news will mean journalism is doing its job — delivering the news about our shared experience, from every angle, inclusive of every creed and every skin color. —Russ Walker, executive editor (share your thoughts with me.)

Read all about it:

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Anthony Orozco / PA Post

Protesters march through the streets of Reading on Saturday. (Anthony Orozco / PA Post)

  • All eyes on Harrisburg today as Second Amendment activists vowed to continue with a rally outside the Capitol, despite the organizers’ move last week to postpone it after receiving threats. Harrisburg officials are concerned because the rally could lead to a confrontation between Black Lives Matter protesters and the largely pro-Trump gun rights crowd. Meanwhile, plenty of people want to know if someone or some group is hoping for just that — a confrontation between two angry groups, one of them heavily armed. The news service of the McClatchy newspaper chain looked into social media posts that urged both gun rights and BLM supporters to be at the Pa. capitol today: Why did this Facebook account steer gun lovers, George Floyd protesters to the same spot?

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