Editorial: Diverse newsrooms important to society

It’s still a men’s world in the national newspaper industry, even though it’s mostly women…It’s still a men’s world in the national newspaper industry, even though it’s mostly women who are trying to break into it.

Recently, Slate magazine featured an article about sexism in the news industry, profiling a 1970 lawsuit of female staff members against their male bosses at Newsweek. Although much has changed since then (women are not stuck filing papers and answering phones for male reporters and editors, for example), sexism in the news industry still exists. According to the article, 73 percent of mass communications and journalism majors are women, but only 22 percent of local radio employees and 40 percent of newspaper employees are women.

We think that these statistics about women’s role in journalism are troubling. We believe that a successful newspaper cannot accurately report on public issues without also accurately representing the public. To report news and share opinions best, newspapers have a responsibility to actively recruit people from a wide variety of political stances, age groups, gender identities and ethnic groups.

Also in the article, the author describes other ways in which sexism affects the newsroom as a workplace. Women sometimes face subtle sexual harassment in many media jobs — and, indeed, in many other American workplaces. Also, women still often do not hold upper-management positions in newspapers. When men control the hiring positions, women are less likely to become employed at those publications and move up the ladder. Having diverse leadership will translate into a more diverse staff, which is more likely to challenge gender, racial and other stereotypes.

Women, who, after all, make up the majority of journalism students in the country, should not have to fight to break into upper management of newspapers, and they should not have to fight against sexual harassment in their workplaces. Newspapers and other media sources need to more actively prevent and fight sexual harassment and try to more actively promote women to upper-management positions.

Also, despite the controversy surrounding affirmative action, we think it’s beneficial for newspapers to actively recruit people with a diverse newsroom in mind. Specifically, we think that newspapers should focus on recruiting people from a wide spectrum of political ideologies so they can most accurately reflect their readerships’ broad range of political points-of-view.

Additionally, according to the article, sexism in news affects more than just newsroom politics — less than a quarter of news stories were written about women. All newspapers and other news outlets should strive to give more space on the page and time on the air to women, minorities, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people and other groups who historically have received little coverage in the press. Doing so will ensure that the news is really representative of a population. And doing so will improve society, as well.