If magazines want to make their staffs more inclusive, it requires more than good intentions and a broad commitment to diversity. "To use the 12-step language, first you have to name the problem," says Monika Bauerlein, co-editor of Mother Jones, which has improved diversity in the past several years through concerted recruiting efforts, yielding 12.5 percent of its 40-person staff who are members of racial and ethnic minority groups. "Diversity is something that we emphasize in every posting and that we look to as an important part in the candidates that we talk to."
So what happens if you stress diversity and still end up with an applicant pool that is almost exclusively white? "If you care about a diverse newsroom, you need to constantly be looking down the pipeline," says Ann Friedman, former deputy editor at the Prospect. "It requires you to be actively looking for new staff members, not just perusing the résumés that roll in." That means looking outside one's existing social network and actively asking minorities to apply. When the pool of applicants for the Prospect's writing fellowship was male and nearly entirely white, Friedman says she turned to the blogosphere, which is where the magazine found talented writers like Adam Serwer and Jamelle Bouie. "There are all sorts of nonwhite, nonmale writers all over the Internet," Friedman says.
Besides scouring the Internet, magazines can also increase the number of people of color who apply for fellowships and positions by reaching out to journalism departments at historically black colleges and Latino-serving institutions as well as professional organizations like the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and the Asian American Journalists Association. But the work doesn't stop there. "Even after you find someone you think will be a good fit in your newsroom, if your newsroom is mostly white and male and straight, you'll probably have to convince them they'll be welcome," Friedman says.
But cultivating diversity also means thinking differently about a candidate's qualifications. Because the barriers for entry into journalism are higher for members of racial and ethnic minorities than for other groups, they often come to the process with less journalism experience than their white counterparts.
"The pitfall many managers fall into is thinking that the most qualified candidate is the one with the most experience," says Buzzfeed deputy editor Shani Hilton, who has written about newsroom diversity, and is African American. "But experience isn't the only metric. We're hiring for a mosaic of reasonsits not just your clips, but also how you are in newsroom, who recognizes you and also how good you are at Twitter and on the Internet." Recruiting and investing in minorities at the entry levelincluding intern positionsis crucial if the industry hopes to make progress down the line; today's interns are tomorrow's editors.
