Transcripts For CSPAN2 National Press Club Discussion On Diversity Inclusion In Journalism 20240712

The National Press Club Journalism institute, and were very happen happy to be hosting this program on newsrooms after thews summer of protests, has anything really changed. Thank you to National Press club members for pairing this program rtin partnership with us and wih e e communicators committee. Its going to be an interesting and informative conversation first among our wonderful panelists, and then we hope youll join in using the q a. So im going to turn this over to our moderator, michael mccarter, who is usa today managing editor of standards, ethics and inclusion. But first, i want to say begun aglcome and thank you to our panel amanda barrett, Deputy Managing Editor of the associated press, Renee Sanchez, editor and Senior Vice President at the minneapolis star tribune, and Dorothy Tucker, Investigative Reporter in my hometown of chicago and president of the National Association of black journalists. Thank you all for being here. And michael, over to you. Thank you for having me x thank you again to our panelists. Thank you for everybody who has joined used today. I hope you get us today. I hope you get a lot out of this conversation. This is important, and we have a great group of panelists that will dig right in. So i want to kick us off with kind of an overarching question here. Newsrooms have been announcing a lot of great changes over the last few months. There are new diverse few leadership missions, their new task forces, theyre creating new prompts. But after years of inequities in our american newsrooms, some have even characterized it as systemic racism in american s wsrooms, has anything really hanged . Amanda, id like the start with you. Sure. Thank you, michael, and thank you to everyone for having us here today for this very important conversation. I would say that things are starting to change. Because there was so much conversation, so much conversation inside our l wsrooms particularly as we were all covering the summer of protest, and it started some soul searching. But we are nowhere near done. I think we have started and were thinking and were starting to make change, but my concern is how do we make the rmange permanent. How do we really try to not only reach different communities, but also gives more people power in newsrooms and hear their voices and bring them into discussion making about what we dow Decision Making about what we do. So thats where my mind is. Okay. Renee . Do you have any thoughts on that is . Yeah. You know, i agree with amanda. The only thing i would add is that, you know, were taking a first set of steps that we think can be meaningful, but theres a huge, enormous, a real burden of proof on to the point of how do we sustain it well and how a year from now can we credibly say there has been change. I guess i would say, or michael, the first the only really evident change so far is i think in our newsroom given the magnitude of what happened here in minneapolis is that we are daring to listen much harder. Even when we think were listening, to listen harder to the journalists of color, to some of the nuances of issues beyond kind of the obvious shortcomings. And so that has been, i think, an important part of the process so far. And i hope it may well fuel significant change. Excellent. Dorothy, do you have thoughts on this one . Yes. I think the protests fueled a racial reckoning in newsrooms across this country just like we saw in other industries. I think that we definitely see it in the newsrooms. I, what i see is black journalists who are coming together, who are joining together and demanding change with the newsrooms. Theyre demanding equality. Theyre demanding better assignments. Theyre demanding that managers listen to them. And because of that, i see that there are more hires. We were talking about this other day at nebj. We put out a lot of congratulations to this person, to a this person, we are seeing some movement. I think managers are hearing, you know, to renes point, theyre hearing the voices of black journalists and other people of color in particular and responding. And if they arent harding it, seeing thing hearing it, they are seeing things around the country, and they are nging proactive. So i think there is some movement. The question to, like amanda said, is how do we sustain it, and i think one of the ways is to say to our black journal u. S. Es in particular and to others as well, dont stop screaming. Just keep pushing. Dont sit back and say, okay, you know, we have one new manager in, were good. No. We have to keep up the fight, you know . We have to keep it up. So thats one way. There are a number of other ways that i can talk about later, things that i think we should do to address systemic racism, but ill stop there for now. Okay. I appreciate that. Well, when you talk about sustainability and keeping it going, why should journalists of color in the industry the now believe that anything will change Going Forward especially if you give our history . If we go back to historical data, and ill just use all of our organizations have challenges, but ill just use the as and e as an example right now. Back in 1978 they vowed to achieve parity in newsrooms with demographics of the unitedew states by the year 2000. It is 2020. And in 2020 were saying, the organization is saying they will reach parity by 2025. We seem to be kicking the can down the road. What will make this stick . What will make this sustainable . What will make the change be permanent . Ill start with you again, dorothy. One of the things that will make the change and i dont know that i can say permanent i think one of the things that will make this fight more constant is that were frustrated now. I think because of the protests, because of what is happening , because of the unrest in this country, because of the racism, we are frustrated and we are perhaps more determined in that there are more of us who are in the newsroom and who are more aware. If you look at in 1978 and that was just about thetime that i came in , i was the only woman in the newsroom. There were no others. Fast forward to today and were definitely not the only one in the newsroom but there are more of us and what im seeing is that literally, i have chapters reaching out to me every day saying that we are getting together and we are going and demanding to see more people of color in management positions. Were demanding to see more people of color in decisionmaking positions and i think thats why youre going to see a change and its because of thenumbers, its because of the time and its because of the frustration. And young people in particular , they are not as educated as we were. Theyre not willing to sit back and say if i do the right things long enough, my time willcome. Theyre speaking up and i like that. I like that theyre saying wait a minute, ive done all these things. I want my turn now. Iwant my opportunity now. So its a different time and i am prayerful that it will make a difference, that it will sustain. Renc, whats it look like for you . Lets be honest, i think there should be skepticism. If you look over recent years or even the decades, gains are very incomplete, its gradual. I dont think theres a magic bullet and were not approaching it that way as we renew this work with i would say greater urgency than ever. The way where thinking about it is that you know, they have to rethink and have a lot more intention around everything from the pipeline of Young Journalists to developing midcareer journalistic positions of leadership. And it just the full spectrum list you might say in the hope that in all those ways, there will be gains. You know, the one other thing i would say that is different compared to any point that ive seen so far is that here in our newsroom, we are working directly in and constantly with several leaders of journalists of color in our newsroom and whats been great about it is that it started very much as a shared partnership. For example after two months of listening and really trying to get more deeply at the issues before we put out an action plan, i let the leaders of that group line by line and call out what was maybe tone deaf to put forth emphasis on other things we really trying to do this together, not just as a Leadership Group responding to particular new questions ordemands. Theres a couple of things at play here. First i think for a key, this went from being a newsroom conversation to a company conversation. A lot more people started talking about their experiences and feeling like a half a lot of opportunities for they werent heard and so i think there was a groundswell of sharing that really helped us when we started thinking about how can we change the way we operate and how can we think about the audience that we want to reach, bringing different perspectives and voices to the and actually telling some unusual stories. And we heard back from customers thatthats what they want. Theres a business imperative here we should not ignore. For us, our customers tell us that we need to be given a total picture of the communities that we can. Give a diversity of voices and opinions and different people are coverage. So having that kind of response helped us think about holistically how we can change our operation to do better. But there is still skepticism. Theres definitely skepticism and i thinktheres going to be. We have to show our work and we have to be really serious about making change and show commitment as leaders of our news organizations in order for people to see that change is happening. I think if we dont dothat , youre not going to see the support of the community and edelman did a survey and found that people want to know that the brand they support is conscious, is socially conscious. They want to know that the manufacturers who makethem have a diverse company. So the Community Looks at the news industry the same way. And its important. So to amanda it is about the body and mind and i know that we may not be able to see these changes happen today or tomorrow, but i think its different this time. You have Companies Like the star tribune and the ap putting together an action plan. Where 50 years ago individual companies are not putting together an action plan area there was a mandate from the Turner Commission and a mandate from the asa need to do the right thing and make some changes but now individually these companies are putting together a plan to make a difference what we have to do is make sure that they carry out those. Dorothy, i want to stick with this topic for a few more minutes because you mention something that ive heard numerous times. You said when you first came in you were the one. I believe that there are still numerous newsrooms out there where there are still a one and ifyou are the one , you dont have a collective to go to management and say i want this change or we need this change. We have journalists of color leavingthe business. How do we model newsrooms of all sizes to keep journalists of color in the business, to train them to provide them mentorship and to help promote them or give them career plans that will help them achievetheir goals. And i dont mean just from, reporter to seasoned reporter, but to editor, to executive editor, to general manager and dare i say into the boardroom . What do we need to do toget to that . Two things. First i think its kind of different questions here. There are many newsrooms that there is still only one. You remember the case in kenosha wisconsin where the editor quit because of an inflammatoryheadline he did not want. He was the only black editor, the only black person in the newsroom and now equipped over that. And there are many cases where there are one but the difference today is when i started there is one in the newsroom but we are much more connected because of a ja and all the other organizations. There is an opportunity for even if you are the only one to network with others and others will support you. My job as president is to be the backdrop, is to be the support, is to be the voice when you need it. To your other question about what do we do , i can tell you that there are a number of programs that Companies Already run and im sure that our mentorship programs, that our fellowship programs. Help people get in business. They give them an opportunity to get an internship and an apprenticeship and to get that first job and then to move up. The problem is that theres a gap. They get in and then there is , many times there is nothing to do can to continue that mentorship. To continue that relationship, to continue to give them opportunity so after four or five years, six years, they leave. Because they dont have a role model because nobodys given them the opportunity. There is more hiring at the top because the road up is too long that is going to be 10, 12,15 years before you get there. [inaudible] bring them in. You know, dare say they get to theboardroom , higher than right at theboardroom. People of color have thatkind of experience. Theyve been in the industry long enough. They can come in and as an executive editor, they can come in as general editor so just start there. We shouldnt always have to start up, we should be able tostart at the top as well. Renc, looks like you had something to say. I think thats a great point of emphasis. What were thinking about, what were striving to do with more intensity, to do it better is frankly to increase the accountability and to increase accountability on this issue in every Single Department of the newsroom. Not to simply say this is a newsroom thing, its a features thing. Its a photo thing area its a metro news thing. A copy desk thing so what were trying to do is get a plan going and it is in motion now in which the new leadership position we have on these issues is to kind of lockin a quarterly meeting with the leaders of each department and be able to ask questions like where are you now as compared to where you werelast quarter with the Development Plan of journalist x. Where are you now with recruiting on the job you know that is coming up this summer. Things like that and what were hoping is that if we can increase accountability in each department, in a structural way that over the next year a lot more will bloom and then that Critical Mass will i think my hope anyway when presented journalists of color coming in at all different stages of their career. They see the commitments, they see themselves, they see peers like them and thats the challenge before us and its pretty stark. Amanda, did you have any thoughts on this particular question . It evidence we all struggle with is lets face it, journalism was not always great athelping people create career paths from the getgo. Thats just a basic issue that we have. But we really have to focus in and think about how we can create assignments for people. Give them opportunities, create new leadership opportunities. Ross, i know we can be very hierarchical and we have committees, but theres always peopleon the committees. Can we pull some other people in . Can we give them a chance to leave, give them a chance to try something new because we know that we need them to build those skills, we need them to be leaders in the newsroom and the not so distant future. So i think all of us, its incumbent upon us as news organizations to really help someone, help our black staffers, all of our staffers but particularly our minority staffers find a way forward, develop the skills they need and dorothy is so key about recruiting at all levels. Ims with the idea that the only way we can bring in minority journalists is to bring them in on entrylevel reedit there are plenty of people like me who been in business 30 years. In doing work for a longtime. Why are they not getting the cost . Why are not they not being considered . Thats something we have to focus in on because typically, what happens is no higher there friend. We have to break through that and as renc said, you have to hold them accountable. We have to say no, youre not going to gohigher your friend. We need to look at the panel of people that are being interviewed for jobs and be more demanding that people are out there recruiting all different kinds of people so that we can bring those voices into our company. Recruiting efforts and i just want to say this amanda, its exactly what i wanted to say. Recruiting efforts is key. Or one of the keys for sure. We have to make sure that you are searching beyond your small circle and that means you out to organizations like the aw j. We have 1400 members, we have databases of producers, databases that were developed now as freelancers. We have to tell their butt we are beginning to get calls. Now more than ever because i have pretty much been jumping on, take me, take me. Ive been saying come to us, come to us, we have the talent but i want the industry to know that we are a resource and its the same thing for any agency, so i think these companies have to be very mindful and very, when they go to say were going to fill this position, dont just make a phone call. Go to the universities as well. Dont just call your friends because sometimes its a question and the Companies Say why is it that we keep hiring people who look like the managers wealready have . Why do we keep hiring white people who look like white people . Thats the question i didnt mean to interrupt you there but thats the question i was about to ask. I have been asked in other newsrooms how do we trust the process if the same leadership is in place that peter got us to this position or has maintained this position and amanda, to your point there hiring their friend. I also want to make sure there are systems in place and i want to know what you all have in place your shots, i like to know the systems in place so its more than a really room, anyone whos not familiar with the rooney rule , it requires you bring in a candidate of color, a minority person to interview for any headcoaching job but as ive seen it and ive seen this happen innewsrooms , the candidates are brought in to check off a box and the conversation is had, they walk in the front door, the conversation is had had their walking and the next thing you knowtheres the back door and there out and we did our job. What are your shots doing to ensure that the managers have the right training. They have the right understanding. They have the right decision to understand the needs to diversify newsrooms and it look like you are ready to speak. I think thats a great reference. I have literally invoked the rooney rule here to our leaders because on the one hand it sounds great but where are we ask years later when you look at the landscape of professional football and headcoaching and it could easily be argued that hasnt been that effective because to your point, its kind of a box checking exercise so we have invoked that directly as a clear sign of how this can go way off track or start as strong rhetoric and have no consequence sowhat were trying to do , to be honest obviously where just kind of renewing our intensity around getting much better but were already discovering challenges within challenges and some of them have the sort of relate to that as we talk to broad effective leaders we realize wait a second, if required, the same people are asking questions so we subsequently tried to break that down in small meetings of four, three or four people with leaders in the room of color so that there can be a direct reckoning about what is not right. And secondly, we appointed a new Senior Leader to help lead the way on these issues but weve already had to cant kind of ring a bell and say wait, the person in this job cannot suddenly have 510 tasks that everyone else gives them and they say weve got this person, theyre going to help me so were trying to create a culture of ownership, not box checking because i think that is the key rift and we will lock up in a year and have these feelgood box checks but change. I would agree with that area i think weve been doing training but ill be honest with you, there have been times when someone is a candidate and theyll say we cant hirethe person. And thats been a bit of a reckoning. That makes things tense, but we have to be firm if we want to bring in more diverse city into the company. And i think theres definitely power in that. Theres also power in just talking to people about what are you looking for . What are the exact qualifications because one of the things we found was that you know, there would be a list of qualifications and then someone would come along was a friend of someone who got something totally different. Thats what we say is what were basing a higher on. Well, that wasnt in the qualifications for the job. I think its about talking to folks honestly, Holding People accountable and really reviewing what theyre doing. Its not enough to just go out and hire them but we need to be stopping them and affecting what our progress is and what the problems are and seeing what we can six. And its hard. Its not an easy job because of course were all really busy. Theres a lot of news every single day area its very crazy but this is a high priority for us. And its something frankly that we have to do for our own survival. I think a couple of things. I think one of the things that we should consider and i know newsrooms are also doing this but id like to see more people do it is sort of for the middle managers, no matter how great they are to have an unconscious bias Training Area i think some of that is that managers, they dont realize what theyre doing. I think that helps so that there is kind of an education on training. I think something that would help the overall effort is the day job. As journalists we asked for the data all the time and newsrooms, Media Companies dont want to release what their numbersare. So how many people of color do you really have on the Editorial Staff . Why do we want that . So that when you talk about sustainability we want to be able to say we meet with you six months from now, you had to move the needlein order for us to know how far youve come we need to know where you are. So thatjust in case , what we see happening is that companies will put out a press release and say we hire this person, we hire that person but the numbers havent changed because they left three others because those three set up and left. It hasnt changed and where are these people that youre hiring . What positions are they in . That is something that beginning to push for we want the data so that we can see today and we can come back and look tomorrow what have you really done and where have you really made those changes that aregoing to make a difference. I think you hit on a very good point there. The transparency is vital to Holding People accountable and making sure that things do change. Im happy to say the company i work for just recently went through an audit themselves area they publicly vowed to reach parity by 2025 just like the Readers Association did. And i think its important that companies do that. But how do you continue to communicate internally and externally about our efforts while at the same time getting your audience engaged in the process . In order for us to have the inclusion of different communities, we have to get into those communities and i think weve seen times whether it was in st. Louis or whether it happens to be in town, we often are not trusted when something goes down in specific communities and its because we only show up when something goes sideways. Though how are we mitigating internally and externally and with our audience , how were trying to move forward and why its important that we do that. Offer a quick couple of quick examples that are part of forming at the top of our list that are cut coming fresh, one thing were going to do to that when exactly is form a kind of Committee Power in which we would have recurring meetings and be transparent about our weaknesses and blind spot and listen to the perception of those area i have a monthly newsletter that i send out to alsodrivers and that already chronicled some of them. Were going to do that in a regular way and that challenges, amanda said to this is not just internal challenges, its external in terms of coverage and we have a burden of proof to make sure our coverage does a much better job and is not sort of a crisis coverage we are a full spectrum in what we write about about Community Color so what we are shifting resources around and were doubling down on our coverage of race. Right now we have one reporter devoted to fulltime, obviously lots of people in various the but are going to shift things so that we have to in the hope that we can just do a better job of having more complete coverage, not just crisis coverage. So thats all were working on this fall and with the hope that next year we can really start to showsome gains. We have been having a lot of conversations and it naturally flowed out of the coronavirus questions when everyone went home, our Hr Department started gathering people to talk about their feelings because we were stressed trying to be parents andhomeschool and all those things. Then when the protests began we sort of naturally flowed into that. And they actually brought in doctor brown who left sensations for us around unconscious bias and white privilege, things of that nature and we were having those conversations and all of us news went through faultlines training with the main institute. So we can start identifying our biases and start looking at ourcoverage in a different way. Ive been leading an effort to create what we are calling an inclusion champion, whenever we have something that we really need to drive downinto the organization , we create champions represent vertical or format regions or keys and those people are really having conversations on the front end of our stories about making sure that we are challenging our own assumptions about unity, trying to think about how we can bring different voices into our coverage, different perspectives and different sources. We look at some of our coverage, we see a lot of white men are the voices and we really get broader than that. So we got full are kind of dragging themselves into the organization and i feel strongly that lives at the senior manager level, were doing our jobs. It really needs to be driven by our staff and they are enthusiastic because a lot of them have these operations for a very long time. Wherever they come from, they felt that we are notdoing a good job in this area. So i think were off to a good start there. But we know that we are in a different kind of business because of course we are selling content to customers and we can help our customers because we can provide for them some of the different voices and perspectives that they may not be able to have because they may have a soft class. Heres what ill add to that. I think what we need to do is educate, make the reporters more educated about all the community. As in chicago when i was doing general news, i could tell you about the nuances of every community in the city. I had contactsin every community. I was frustrated when in so many black reporters are with the phone call that says hey, im covering this story in a community, what black person should i call, what Community Person should i call, where should i go i want to get this. I never had to ask those questions when i went to the white community. Why because anytime i went i collected that information. I had my, i had a rolodex in every community. And i made sure that i understood the history of every community and i think thats something that my colleagues didnt do because i was a fallback. They could call the black reporter and the black reporter would be able to answer those questions and thats just not fair. So i want to see these managers make everybody educated in every community so that any story that comes up, you are not going to make a mistake. Youre going to have enough knowledge about that community or perhaps understand theres somebody in the community who you can call so that you dont end up using a word or phrase, sending it to somebody. I second that and thats basic need building. If youre working your beat you should have a wide variety of content , of cross communities because otherwise how are we being sure youre telling the full story . Its really frustrating for black journalists when we get called in to be the voice or be the one to find resources, as a black journalist you always had to go out and learn about other communities and everyjournalist should be expected to do that. I will add onto that as well because as a visual journalist at the beginning of my career, we dont have a choice. We go everywhere. We talked everybody area i have covered planrallies because thats just what i had to do. I think that it is imperative. He said the building i think it is imperative that we encourage people and i understand were under covid so this may not apply in the current state we are in but i encourage everybody to go visit other communities and go talk to people physically not just pick up the phones because you dont get the same sense of smell, taste, sound that you do when you get it in person. I think its vitally important that then you understand some oh the nuances of every community and i will throw one more thing in there which goes to your point about you know, i think theres a fear factor or some reporters either that they are just nervous about being in certain areas but i will remember when i first got to cincinnati and i was asking someone how to get to the university of cincinnati from our neighborhood and they said well, get on this highway, go this way, get off on this exit about 3 miles this way what i found later is that the direct route to the university was straight up our street that the newspaper is on and you end up right on the university. The problem was you had to go through eight poor blackto community to get there and the reporter that i was talking to refuses or i dont know if they still do but at the time refused to go that way because it went through a black community. We have to make sure were understanding our staff as well as what is motivating them and how to encourage them to get over those fears because again, they dont get a choice of have to go. I know we are getting close on time and i do want to ask a few more questions. How are you currently getting your community to understand the need for Diverse Voices and diverse faces and Diverse People and topics in your particular markets . Pl again, i will throw out an example from two places ive been in my time and as editor i would get phone calls and if they were positive stories about minorities on the front page they would call me and say we dont need to see those people on our front page. Just printed newspaper. I would say well what do you mean they would say you know, these people. Funny thing to me and its not funny but i say it that way is that if there was ever a person of color that was being arrested, indicted, you know, anything negative i never got a phone call so how do you get our audience to understand that these Diverse Communities have positives images and not, some of the negative stereotypes that have been published over time are not with these communities are entirely made of just like no community is entirely made of any one a thing so how are youan getting, not only your staff because we realize thats a challenge but how are youo getting your audience who has been forever seen the same thing and i think a man that you pointed out that coverage is primarily ex, y or z. How do you get your community to understand and embrace the change that needs to happen . Amanda. Well i thank you have to accept that not everyone will embrace it. I will tell you, in my role my inbox is ablaze and it is not always pretty. I think that, you know, you just accept it internally that you need to tell those stories and then we will start to hear from people if you are telling unexpected stories that you haventun t seen that youre gig a new perspective and you start hearing positive response from folks and i think, you know, we are or we have a chance to be an example and to really show the world and all its complexity and there will be some people thatso excepted and there will be people that dont. I also think the ability to bring in the perspectives of people who have not been represented and whose voices are rarely heard is very powerful and they need to see those images too. I think there is a lot of positive things that can happen here even if we get backlash. You know, i would simply add that its an all bead challenge and we would not be gaining ground, even as we thought thats a good idea so lets expand our coverage with another reporter and we will not gain ground if it looks like its the work of two reporters as compared to the reporter bucovering Small Business or a reporter covering schools, Public Health so its an all bead challenge but i also think in this moment in particular it really requires s something obvious and decisive. The community is not going to notice the stops in his Business Life and see theres bias streaming and the star tribune newsroom and i its vital but i dont think people will notice it. One thing we did that was highly noted and way overdue is that we debuted last weekend a metro columnist who is a local black journalist, lives in the community for 28 years and it was really heartening because his first column producing himself talking about the mission hes going to have literally was the most read story on our website the day it appeareded in hundreds of commes on the story largely positive and he himself got well over 101 emails from readers. Just the one of the initial signs but i think that is partly where trust building comes from and it has to be obvious and it has to be sustained and we hope that is one of the ways here that we cultivate more trust. I will try to add something different. Not just what we do like positive stories and more experts of color but what we stop doing and one of the thins that i see in newsrooms today is, did i freeze again . One of the things i see some newsrooms is to stop posting the mugshots. The media has really been responsible and bears some response ability for the negative stereotypes and for the perception communities have about black people. We are quick the police gave us the mugshots and were quick to put that on the front page and quick to put that mug shot on television you never come back and say well, one of the people who were up there they were since not charged. Its a cheat way out and especially on Television Just to fill the space and its unnecessary and we can tell that story without putting a mug shot up there and i think too often news managers really need to focus on that. I know in our newsroom we now have ado policy that we dont jt automatically put that mugshots out there and i see many newsrooms do that and i think that is the way to go. I will give you one example that happen in flint, michigan. There was a newspaper and there were three black men who were running for state representative and two of those men or actually all three of the men at one time when they were younger had been arrested for some small misdemeanor. What does the newspaper do in telling the story . They put the mugshots uppa ther. Its like ten or 15 years ago. Its that kind of just for the sake of doing it and the paper ultimately apologized because what they didnt use was a current photo that they had of n these candidates. Hau know . When you have examples like that i think we need to step back and look at that. I think the other thing that we sometimes do in media if there is a black victim in particular and, you know, that person has been shot or something tragic has happened why they died is the main story and what we will do is go back and look at their path and that past record. That may have or may include some crime they committed that has nothing to do with what happened to them today but we go back and we tend to do that more with lack victims then we do others. Just one other thing. You know, if there is a teenager who is missing or young person missing that poor black mother is screaming and hollering saying please do the story onn my black child who is not a runaway who is missing but that has to get vetted but we do the pretty blonde in a heartbeat. You seen those studies before so there is something that again comes to that unconscious bias and things that the media that we need to change to help see and help the communities see us in a different light and in a better light. Well, i do appreciate you all for all those answers and im sure that there is content that we have discussed that people can take away and use in their own daily lives or their own shops but i do want to ask one more question to each of you. What piece of advice would you give to organizations that need to or want to diversify their staff and their leadershipwa ranks . What can they do right now . I will, yeah, i will start. I mean, i think the single most valuable thing we did in this reckoning in the aftermath of george floyd skilling was frankly, shut up and listen in, you know the most profound thing that we spent myself managing editor, publisher we had two, two hour sessions outside because of covid beside the Mississippi River in a car and i said to the journalists of color who are leading their thoughtful reflection on this moment that im not going to say anything for a long time so lets drift and be honest and i really feel like from giving them the comfort tos say bluntly some things we didnt realize or had overlooked or were distracted by budget challenge here or there was very cathartic for them and vital for them and really starkly helpful for us. I cant stress enough that that act of shutting up and i said something the other day that listening is not waiting to speak but really being quiet and hearing the depth of the pain and discomfort about some of these issues so that would be my first piece of advice is really going to propel us to a more tactical things we have to do. I would like to see newsroo newsrooms, put all the faces on a screen of the people in the decisionmaking positions. Ho put the faces of their who decide what stories we cover and who decides, you know, who helped shape and look around that commitment right then and there to hire more people of color. I would say being honest and open and stop being defensive, just stop. We havent done it right. Make the people in your newsroom the sole care greatly about all these issues as we all have the ideas as leaders there is a lot of good ideas and there has been a lot of good learning across our company but i think we have to take off the defensive shield and joint efforts with our colleagues to make it better. Excellent. I did want to get tont a few oft the viewer questions that were out there and one question that was asked by holly is how you could touch on the coverage the summer and as some of you have mentioned they have added reporters covering diversity and new inclusion focused verticals but is this going to be a passing topic and how can you ensure that state . My apologies. T i have got to jump off and finish this story today so i planned an hour but i want to thank everybody and i will jump off befored you answer that question. Dorothy, thank you for being with us. Thank you. Thank you. You know, michael, i would say that it goes back to the point that i was trying to make about accountability that what we will be attempting to do across departments is assert that authority and havoc on abilities so we can say every six months lets pause it where weve been and what are we still missing where we have in games so one of the things in motion here would be a plan to have it we might call a rolling audit of coverage by department. I would say they had a team since 2017 and we really worked hard to weave them into all our coverage and lets face it, these kinds of issues are not signed line issues but the community and folks in those communities care about taxes and schools and Everything Else. I think for us it is also about accountability and looking at our coverage and weve started to know and really try to evaluate where our problems are and we havent started tracking things specifically we need to figure that out but weve been given great thought to how we can ensure that we are getting different kinds of voices into the content and also looking at areas where we might reach and how we can improve them. Okay. I think we got a couple more we look at. One reader, one viewer asks they are part of a committee in the newsroom that is formed back in july to address diversity and inclusion and pave the way for more Inclusive Practices in hiring within the journalists. They wanted to put out a joint statement with the leadership about the initiatives they were going to undertake but the management apparently has publicly released anything other than general ambitions and they want to keep specifics strategies and Everything Else internally and how important is it to share these tactics with the public and is it important to be specific versus saying we want to do better . Before you answer i will say be specific and we been saying weo want to do better so put something down, write it down, have a plan and a hope is not a plan. You must have a plan. Sorry, go ahead back to the panelist. Well, you know, amanda said it earlier like we got to drop the defensiveness. What is the wisdom in that . If you cant be honest now when can we be honest . We have miles to go and its of bedrock importance and here we have made gains and we have done some things right and its fragile but weve overlooked some things and or we have been distracted by some things and so yeah, you can be nervous and have some excuses but what is the point . The point is lets air ourselves to get much better and be authentic and part of being authentic is being transparent and specific and so whatof do we have to fear and i would rather trust the majority of our readers that challenge us in an appropriate way so i totally agree that i dont know where the question comes from so dont want to insult anyone but the specific is way better and why fear it . I would agree and i would think that if you need to get them on your side you are going to have to build bridges with some folks might be leaning your way and then use their influence to influence others. It may be just that there is fear and you can help them see their way through this. I would add that when we sat outside for a couple of hours i have to concede that my own sense of things has limits and flaws and i dont think i started in a bad place but t i s generally genuinely trying to sit there and listen to what i was hearing was extremely hopeful and so to the person asking that question i cant recommend highly enough insisting on a deep honest conversation in which your perspective is heard because mindsets can be changed or minds opened a little bit more by that and i dont think we would be where we are without that. Couple more here until julie pulls the plug on me but there was a good one from a journalist who says what would be your advice for student journalists of color preparing to and in some cases considering whether they should try to enter this challenging and complicated job market right now . I can. Be open to anything. That actually is something that i have applied my whole career. If there was an opportunity, i took it. It did not always make sense and i did not always know where it was going and so my career was like this jagged line and i suspect most peoples are. I think the open and be open to trying something t that you didt expect or didnt plan on and make good connections. You know the networking thing is so key and this is a small group of people in a Small Business and most of us know each other. Really worked the connections and work the networking because a lot of times how we get our jobs is through email. I would simply say if you care about these issues and if you enjoy this craft, now journalism needs you. We need, you know, that kind of perspective for the generation rising up because it wont be long before journalists like yol actually are leading things or presiding over other journalists in some way. It will always be hard we dont know where this is going and if we had this election one year from now how much marketability we have and how many we would have but when i look around the people i know in journalism i feel like a bell has rung and there will be more determination than ever to gain ground for we will see but i do think if you are a Young Journalist and if the moment in which you can be part of a positive force. I will echo what amanda and renee said sadly because i thi think, first of all, you should have your own mentors are now where the professors, whether other students you worked with and try to build your own board of directors for your life and your career and then start getting advice from them and bouncing things off them. Its ultimately going to be your decision because you have to be happy in your career and have to be happy where you go but a lot of times people can help you see that sometimes you have to make a left turn in order to go right and it is important to not turnr down an opportunity just because you cant seek to move down the board. You need to understand what is going on right now and how this may benefit you or help build your skill set as you areor getting ready to move forward in your career and the left turn may be the best thing that ever happened to you so i just though that out there as well. I havent had the plug pulled on me yet so i will ask another question here. So, there are two separate questions what i will ask at the same time. Do you recommend electing journalists of color as champions and should they be compensated for that extra labor and furthermore, how can we explain to journalists that it is not a black story and not a latino story et cetera but its an american story . Thats a twopart question. I will start sons i am the inclusion champion. S we, from a variety of grounds and one of those things that we need to be very mindful of is a lot of times we tend to frame the inclusion is blackandwhite and there are many types of inclusion, there is gender there is geography, there is class and there is ability which is something that came up in our Sports Coverage so there is a lot of different ways to be inclusive and there is age. We have a variety of people and so managers would ask them if they wanted to participate and we need to start with the core. They arent compensated monetarily but they are getting special training in different opportunities that other people might get and there is leadership opportunities. That is really been great for us and now it forgotten the second part of the questiont. [laughter] what was the second question, michael . There was the champions and then there was how did you get reporters to wrap their minds around and understand and this may be journalists that arent journalists of color that they are not doing a black story or a latino story but doing an american story . These are just stories of americans. I think that is where inclusion champions are viable for us because if i come to someone whos a reporter and say hey, youre not doing this right they will be scared and it is so much better if their peers talk to them about these stories. I do think of having the fault line training was good for us because it was a way of level setting and allowing us to have conversations about who are the audiences we are writing for, who are the voices that are valuable in our coverage and how you can bring different voices to the floor. I think for some people it is a struggle and it is not going to be a shortterm thing. It will take lots of discussion and backandforth and everyone has to be realistic about this when i think about this challenges i think it will take years. I feel like we can get there but as renee says its about changing mindsets. I would only add that even as we stay, for example, we need to think expansively about how we cover race, there is a point within that point which is, i think, the question to be asked is its not just saying we will turn to the lens to Racial Community acts or Racial Community wide be it black or latino but just within the fabric of the general coverage if youre running about schools or big Reading Initiative in suburban schools well, you know as part of taking a photo of a somali student as part of that story or weave it into the fabric of general coverage, not just isolated off on its own part because one without the other is incomplete and relegated as this other thing that if i am covering schools or covering health how do i have a diversity of voices in that perspective and images in that be regardless of what the person covering race is doing. That is the subtler fallenge but if you meet it then the full spectrum of your coverage gets better. I do appreciate everybody today and i wanted to, we really need to wrap up and weve gonee over and i do apologize but i want to be respectful of everyones time but i want to thank amanda and deputy manager and Renee Sanchez and the editor and Senior Vice President of the star tribune, Dorothy Tucker who had to jump off but is the president of the National Association of black journalists and i would like to also really think the Journalism Institute and the National Press club for putting this conversation on and i think its been absolutely wonderful and i dont say that as a moderator but as really someone who is about to throughout the question and listen to wonderful answers. Do appreciate everybodys time today and look forward to seeing you all in the future. Thank you, michael. You all have a wonderful day. Goodbye. You, too. You are watching cspan2 your unfiltered view of government, created by americas Cable Television company as a Public Service and brought to today by your television provider. Tonight on cspan2 a look at voter turnout in next weeks election with summer and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. In the Bipartisan Policy Center will look to expect the results come in on election day and foreign correspondence from the new york time cnn and economist discuss how the world views the u. S. And leadership under the trump administration. Max, eric holder former attorney general under president obama and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich joins the Washington Post to talk about election day and he discusses the trump administration, voter turnout and voter suppression. Stir gingrich explores the president ial race in georgia and president trumps message on the economy. This is 40 minutes. E in good afternoon, im bob costa political reporter at the Washington Post. Welcome back to the daily show and we launched the show just