SOME of the world’s biggest and most influential media companies based in the US have reported improvements in the diversity of their newsrooms.
Although white employees still made up 62 per cent and 63 per cent of Insider’s and The Washington Post’s newsrooms, respectively, in the first half of 2023, both publications did enhance the diversity of their editorial staff.
The Washington Post’s editorial and news diversity grew in 2023 as well.
The newsroom is now 63 per cent white, down by three percentage points from last year. Editorial leadership is now 69 per cent white, down from 73 per cent in 2022.
Thirty-five per cent of the editorial staff at Insider is classified as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour), an increase of two percentage points from 2022.
In its workforce diversity report, media company Gannett did not separate out its newsrooms.
The data has not yet been made publicly available by USA Today, Gannett’s largest news organisation (it was published on July 27 of last year).
There has been relatively little change in total staff diversity from year to year according to the yearly (or, in the case of Gannett, biennial) reports on the diversity of their workforces that Gannett, Insider, and The Washington Post have all released.
The newsrooms of media organisations which previously submitted their workforce diversity data in February and March 2023 experienced advances as well.
In 2022, 29 per cent of Condé Nast’s editorial staff were BIPOC, an increase of one per cent over the previous year.
The US news division of Vice Media Group had a 63 per cent white population, a one per cent decrease from the previous year.
Between 2021 and 2022, Vox Media’s proportion of white editorial staffers decreased dramatically, from 66 per cent to 60 per cent.
Since the publication of its previous report on January 1, 2023, Gannett’s overall workforce diversity has remained stable, with 71 per cent of its employees identifying as white as of July 1, 2023.
Insider employees are 36 per cent BIPOC, which is the same as previous year.
Insider does not break out its statistics by race or ethnicity, but rather by employees who are white or BIPOC.
Fifty-four per cent of the workforce at the Washington Post is white overall, a decrease of one per cent from the previous year.
At 83 per cent white, Gannett’s leadership diversity stayed the same from January to February.
The percentage of BIPOCs in leadership roles at Insider increased by one point from the previous year to 28 per cent.
Sixty-three per cent of The Washington Post’s leadership was white, a one percentage point decrease.
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