COMMENTARY: Liz Courquet-Lesaulnier is the managing director of Word In Black.
May 25 marks four years since the murder of George Floyd — and the start of America’s most recent “racial reckoning.” Those were heady days: well-meaning white Americans flying Black Lives Matter flags in their windows, painting the phrase on buildings and streets and storming Black bookstores, buying books about how not to be racist.
Or, at least, how to be less racist.
News organizations, too, joined the ranks of corporate entities making big promises about diversifying staff. Recruiting, hiring, and keeping Black reporters — and diversifying newsroom leadership — were hot topics at journalism meet-ups and conferences.
How’s that working out? Spoiler alert: Not so good.
A 2022 Pew Research Center survey of 12,000 journalists found that only 6% of reporters were Black — and 76% were non-Hispanic white. Pew found newsrooms continue to be more non-Hispanic white (and male) than the U.S. workforce as a whole.
Then came layoffs. In 2023, as profit-thirsty corporations and Wall Street hedge funds took over journalism, just over 20,000 media positions were slashed. If trends continue, it’s estimated another 10,000 jobs at newspapers and TV stations could be eliminated this year alone.
Remembering all those post-George-Floyd promises, I give an extra side-eye to the steady stream of Black journalists taking to social media to announce “some personal news” that they’re leaving the profession.
It begs the question: How many Black journalists are left?
Each round of layoff announcements stings. We shake our heads and take to our group chats to debate with our journo friends about what exactly is going on in our profession. We worry about what it means when newsrooms gut political reporters in an election year, leaving them even less equipped to hold people in power accountable to democracy.
I have extra questions, however, when those political reporters happen to be Black — and were the only Black reporter left in an outlet’s D.C. bureau.
In January, after the Los Angeles Times decimated its newsroom by slashing 20% of positions, the LAT Guild, the union representing newsroom employees, noted the layoffs had a disproportionate effect on reporters of color — including the loss of more than a third of the paper’s Black staffers.
The layoffs meant “the company has reneged on its promises to diversify its ranks since young journalists of color have been disproportionately affected,” the Guild wrote in a blistering statement. “The Black, API, and Latino Caucuses have suffered devastating losses.”
Executive editor Kevin Merida — the first Black journalist to lead the paper, which won three Pulitzer Prizes during his tenure — resigned shortly thereafter.
This in Los Angeles, a city whose majority population is people of color. This in a city that has burned twice — the Watts Uprising in 1965 and the 1992 LA Uprising — because of racial harms done to Black people.
And an undiverse newsroom does serious harm.
A Pew survey released in fall 2023 looked at Black folks’ attitudes toward news coverage. It found 63% of Black adults “say news about Black people is often more negative than news about other racial and ethnic groups.”
Nearly 60% of respondents said “news only covers certain segments of Black communities,” and a majority said mainstream coverage is missing information and is rooted in stereotypes.
It’s tough to trust your local paper when it reports racist half-truths. And Black folks notice when the few Black reporters covering their community are shown the door. Folks might ask themselves why they should subscribe or donate to a publication that’s quick to boot Black journalists who covered their neighborhood without being racist or racially insensitive.
Of course, not every Black journalist is laid off. Some quit because they can no longer stomach on-the-job racism.
In 2022, The Washington Post Guild released a report that found one in three Black reporters quit voluntarily. The Guild’s Black Caucus also interviewed more than 30 current and former Black employees of the paper. Along with frustrations over next-to-no Black people in leadership, they were fed up with racial microaggressions from colleagues in their own newsroom. Black journalists at one of the nation’s flagship newspapers “felt that their credentials were constantly questioned and that the legitimacy of their work was challenged more often than their non-Black peers,” according to the report.
The Guild Black Caucus found this culture was “driving Black talent away at a time when the newsroom’s leaders are desperately trying to attract younger, more diverse audiences who want to see more representation both in the news we tell and who is reporting it.”
Indeed, Black Gen Zers who could be the Post’s next Pulitzer winner or investigative ace are likely looking at their student loan debt — of which Black college graduates have significantly more — and then looking at starting reporter salaries, where Black journalists typically earn far less than their white peers. Knowing Black folks have less generational wealth to help pay soaring housing and food costs — and then looking at who gets laid off or leaves — probably makes it an easy decision for them to avoid journalism altogether.
Ultimately, journalism leaders must ask themselves some questions: Do they want young Black people in their newsrooms or not? Do they really want diverse newsrooms, or was it just post-Floyd lip service? Do publishers want veteran Black journalists to stay, and help run things? If so, what needs to change on a systemic level beyond sound-bite promises?
It’s no secret that, with diverse newsrooms, inaccurate, stereotype-laden “parachute journalism” — the sort of flimsy, superficial coverage that outraged Black folks after Floyd’s death — becomes less likely. But unless we take a good hard look in the mirror at what’s going on in our own house, it’s only a matter of time until history repeats itself.