For my Master’s final project, I researched ideas that newsrooms can adopt to improve diversity and inclusion. I looked for initiatives in various industries around the world and found most of them in the United States and the United Kingdom.
I came down to a final list with 24 suggestions; the criteria I used for choosing was a combination between efficiency and viability, meaning good ideas that wouldn’t be immediately thrown away by editors. The list was designed considering the Brazilian media, but I’m sure the ideas could be applied to other media environments too.
— Have a journalist in charge of promoting diversity in the newsroom. Among the attributions of that journalist are pitching story ideas, finding sources, and participating in the HR recruiting process to make sure the company is doing efforts to bring more professionals from underrepresented groups onboard.
— Create a “diversity task force” in the newsroom with journalists that are highly engaged with this topic. Those journalists can have frequent meetings and communicate via a Slack channel. The task force will debate ways of having more diversity in stories; they will analyze the work that is being done and will serve as a “test audience” for stories that have to do with underrepresented groups before they get published.
Obs.: an important thing to note here is that task force members need to have a certain amount of time off their regular duties to perform this work — management needs to understand this — or else the professionals will end up overwhelmed and the task force won’t work properly.
— Depending on the size and dynamics of the newsroom, it can be easier to adopt a “step-by-step” inclusion plan, focusing on one type of diversity at a time. For example: first, a newsroom that usually interviews more men will focus on interviewing more women specialists. After that is incorporated into the routine, the next step will be doing more stories about the LGBTQIA+ community.
Obs.: this method is a controversial one. Some argue that diversity and inclusion should always be worked as a whole; for those, when you choose to work on only one underrepresented group you are actually creating more divide.
— Have periodic discussions with the team of journalists about how there is a thing called “overlap of diversities”: a white person with disabilities doesn’t face the same challenges as a Black person with disabilities, for example. The idea is that journalists are aware of this overlap and take it into account while doing their stories.
— Look for more specialists from underrepresented groups who can discuss various topics. Make sure that the team understands that this won’t affect the quality of stories, on the contrary; journalists will always interview the best sources on the topic. It’s just a matter of doing some effort to find more specialists instead of always calling upon the same sources.
— Depending on the structure of the newsroom, make it a voluntary decision of each team to join the efforts for diversity on stories, instead of making it mandatory for all teams.
Obs.: this is also controversial. The reason why some managers think this is a good strategy is that journalists usually don’t react well to impositions. Following this logic, presenting the reasons why diversity efforts matter and making it voluntary to join would create more engagement and better results than if rules were imposed.
— Coach experts who have a lot of knowledge but no access to a PR person or media training to help them feel more comfortable when talking to journalists and becoming better interviewees. Sometimes women and other specialists who come from underrepresented groups don’t feel confident enough in their roles of experts who concede interviews. Journalists can coach these specialists during meetings in the newsroom.
Obs.: of course this can’t happen when there is a conflict of interest, as it would be in the case of anyone linked to a political institution. But it is controversial anyway since some journalists believe it’s never ethical to coach an interviewee, no matter the circumstances.
— Invest in training journalists in areas like career development and leadership. These tend to be absent skills in most journalists, but especially in the young ones who come from poor regions and didn’t have access to a more comprehensive higher education. Training can help companies in retaining talents and promoting journalists, with more conscientious leaders who will open the doors for more talent coming from underrepresented groups in the following years.
— Have periodic meetings about themes related to diversity and inclusion with guest speakers (who should, of course, be paid, something that incredibly does not always happen!) and even journalists from other media companies who are specialists on some type of diversity. This is an easy way of sharing knowledge while also strengthening the market since it promotes encounters between journalists of different companies.
— Commit to the promotion of at least one professional coming from an underrepresented group from each team until a certain date — there absolutely needs to be a deadline for it to happen.
Obs.: some managers will argue that this is not possible, since there is not enough money in the newsroom for promotions. Some reporters also think the suggestion is nothing but ‘idealistic’ and not viable at all, since one of the main issues with journalism in Brazil is the lack of a concrete career plan and chances of growing inside the companies.
— Change the KPIs, the parameters used to measure the success of a story when analyzing one that is aimed at a certain community. An example: when publishing a story about a health concern that is specific to transgender people, companies should not measure success by the number of pageviews or other traditional metrics; instead it should be measured by the engagement it generates, by the impact on that specific community. If the article gets republished by a social media page that is dedicated to transgender people, that is a success. If transgender people email the reporter who wrote the story, that is a success. How that story performs with a broad, more general audience simply doesn’t matter in this case.
— Determine that at least one edition of the internship program will hire only Black people.
— While hiring interns, look for students in colleges other than the elite and more traditional ones. Some more accessible colleges in terms of cost and localization are the only way a lot of young people can get to higher education. And a lot of HR departments still insist on considering only students that managed to get into elite universities for internship programs, as if this was only a matter of meritocracy, disregarding social disparities in the country.
— Offer only paid internship opportunities. Unpaid internship positions exclude a high percentage of students who rely on nothing but their own paychecks to live and end up having to find jobs that have nothing to do with their field of study just so they make a living and even pay for their college education.
— Allow journalists, especially the ones who live far from the company, to work from home. This way the professionals don’t have to spend hours commuting and can contribute with story ideas about where they live that will enrich the journalistic work produced by the company. In newsrooms where most of the journalists live near the company (that tends to be located in the most central areas), the journalistic coverage is usually very limited to what happens in the surroundings.
— Allow employees from other sectors (including the ones that don’t require higher education) who are interested in getting to know the processes of journalism to spend some time observing how it is made and eventually support their decision of pursuing education to apply for different roles in the company.
— Have people with disabilities as TV hosts and on-screen presenters of videos in digital media.
— Have reporters from underrepresented groups covering various stories, not only those directly related to their communities. Also keep in mind that sometimes covering stories related to violence against a certain group can be a difficult situation for a journalist that is part of that group. Newsrooms need to be a safe environment with mechanisms and training for journalists to cope with situations like these.
— Besides having quotas for people with disabilities, allow them to compete with other candidates for positions as journalists in newsrooms. A lot of times the quotas are for other positions in newsrooms like assistants and secretaries. Some journalists can’t even apply to journalistic roles because the “positions are not for people with disabilities”.
— Combat ableism and stop writing stories that show “inspiring people who overcame their disabilities”. Although well-intentioned, stories like that reinforce the idea that disabilities are something people need to overcome and treat the characters like true heroes for performing normal day-to-day activities. Instead, focus on the mechanisms, the instruments that allow those people to live better lives, and how to make sure they are available for all.
— Routinely write stories about issues that are important to people with disabilities and not only for the international day of people with disabilities or other special days.
— Use the term “people with disabilities” while writing, avoiding other terms like “people with special needs”.
— Create special positions to be filled by trans people in newsrooms.
— Promote discussions about every group that composes the LGBTQIA+ community. Understand that every letter there represents a group of people with its own demands and challenges in the society and these singularities need to be taken into account for proper reporting about the community.
