Student Voices

Tiffany Black, University of North Carolina
Class of 2002, Interim Webmaster for NABJ
Goal: Content producer for a media Web site

Because my field is relatively new, people with my skills are in high demand. They don't stay with one company for long if another better offer comes along.

Rodney G. Thrash, Medill School of Journalism
Northwestern University, Class of 2002

In every newsroom I've worked in except the Dallas Examiner and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I could count the number of black reporters and editors on one hand. And I could take at least two of those five fingers away, representative of a phenomenon not new to newsrooms - black flight.

On the collegiate level, things aren't different.

At The Daily Northwestern, the student-run newspaper of Northwestern University, there were only three black staffers last spring and all three, including myself, left by the end of the school year. These statistics indicate that yes, there is and will continue to be a retention problem in newsrooms across the country if something isn't done.

I haven't even graduated from college yet and I have already questioned if I should remain in j-school and the journalism business because of an awful experience on The Daily. My freshman year, I was eager to work for one of the nation's premier collegiate newspapers. That excitement waned after my first month on staff because I realized how the cliquish white newsroom environment shunned me and other journalists of color. It got to the point where I dreaded going into the newsroom.

To make retention a bigger priority in newsrooms, mandated courses on diversity and race relations should be a part of every j-school's curriculum. Just as Law and Ethics in Journalism is mandatory for graduation, diversity courses should be mandated as well.

The reason ASNE continues to push back its deadline for parity in newsrooms is because those leading them have not been trained with issues pertaining to diversity. With a course like this, j-schools will graduate more understanding and accepting journalists who will make up more inviting and receptive newsrooms where journalists of all colors will feel welcomed.

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