An Examination of Diversity Issues in SE Journalism College Newspapers

Newspaper Research Journal, Summer 2004 by Wickham, Kathleen Woodruff

RQ6:

Is the gender diversity of the undergraduate newsroom staffs in the Southeast Journalism Conference comparable to gender differences in the SEJ student population?

RQ7:

Is the gender diversity of the undergraduate newsroom staffs in the Southeast Journalism Conference comparable to gender differences at newspapers throughout the United States?

RQS:

Is the gender diversity of the undergraduate newsroom staffs in the Southeast Journalism Conference comparable to the gender differences in the United States as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau?

Method

During April 2002 the researchers conducted a nine-question telephone and e-mail survey of the 58 schools that participate in the Southeast Journalism Conference, a loose consortium of journalism programs located in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee. The SEJC includes colleges and universities with journalism schools, journalism departments and those offering just a few journalism courses. The schools in the conference are private (20.6 percent) and public (79.3 percent). Historically black colleges or universities account for 15.5 percent of the 58 schools.

Editors from 41 schools participated for a return rate of 70.6 percent. The majority of the schools that participated published weekly papers (27, or 65.8 percent), with 10 (25 percent) publishing more than once a week and four (10 percent) publishing less than once a week.

The results are limited because of the small sample size and reflect only those schools included in this study. The eight research questions and nine survey questions stem from the collaborative background of the research, which began as a graduate research methods class project. No advanced statistical tests were performed on the results because of the small sample size. The numbers are presented at face value and can only be evaluated within the context of this exploratory study.

Results

The underlying premises of this study is that professional newsrooms look to college newsrooms to prepare future journalists and issues of diversity are not and should not be debated from the perspective of a majority looking at a minority but rather people looking at people and viewing their issues and sources with equal validity.

The study found only four schools, or 10.2 percent, that participated had written guidelines that covered diversity issues at the student newspaper leaving 35 schools, or 89.8 percent, of the schools without written diversity guidelines. The results answered the first research question, which asked if college newspapers had written guidelines (meaning race, ethnicity and gender) with a clear negative answer. (See Table 1)

However, 72.9 percent of the 37 editors who responded to the question indicated their newspapers had ethics codes as seen in Table 2, answering RQ2 in the positive.

Yet, the results for RQ3, RQ4 and RQ5 indicate minorities are poorly represented in the three populations selected for comparison. The results for RQ3 indicate student newspapers are overwhelmingly white with minority percentages falling below campus percentages. However, minorities have better representation on college newspaper staffs compared to their peers employed by professional newspapers. But their numbers are still below national population figures.