Newspapers’ decline hits newsroom diversity

The rapid decline of the newspaper industry is leading to many casualties, but here’s a new one to us – newsroom diversity.

New figures from the US show that ethnic minority journalists are losing their jobs at a faster rate than their white colleagues.

This story from The Atlantic reports that, while non-whites make up 37% of the general population, they represent just 12.37% of the population of America’s newsrooms, down from a 2006 high of 13.73%.

It would be interesting to see how UK numbers compare, but either way, this is another reason to lament the financial crisis facing the newspaper industry globally.

We touched on some of the other reasons in this recent post on the rise of hyperlocal news sites, and it’s an issue we’re keeping a close and concerned eye on.

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