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Why are the minority voices in journalism fading?

By Ethen Lieser

“One of my first jobs was at the San Antonio Express-News. A cartoonist drew a caricature of me in buckteeth, dressed as a Kamikazi pilot buzzing a tower and yelling “Banzai!” to illustrate a first-person story I had written about learning to fly a plane. This was terribly embarrassing to me, and I protested. Despite the fact that I am not Japanese, I told my editors the cartoon perpetuated a stereotype. At the time all the editors at the paper were white men. I was the only Asian on staff. I was told I needed to find my sense of humor and was dismissed. This was in 1976.”
— Esther Wu, a fourth-generation Chinese American and columnist for the Dallas Morning News.

The minority journalist steps out of her house. She sips her morning coffee, jauntily walking to her office. Her shoulders are hoisted high. She whistles a happy tune. On her way to work, she passes many Asian Americans, busy with their day’s activities. These are the people who breathe life into the community. They are the inimitable cog.

She enters the newsroom, but she doesn’t see faces like her own, or like those of the people she just passed outside. She’s alone.

Marian Liu will be taking her journalistic talents to the San Jose Mercury News this summer. As an intern at the Oakland Tribune, a paper which serves a large Asian American population, Liu was the only Asian American on staff. Photo by Ethen Lieser.

That minority journalist is Marian Liu, who just graduated from U.C. Berkeley and completed the Chips Quinn Program internship at the Oakland Tribune. Despite the overwhelming presence of Asian Americans in Oakland and the surrounding Bay Area, Liu was the only Asian American reporter on staff.

“The Oakland newsroom didn’t look that much different from the newsroom where I worked in Detroit,” Liu says. “But you think it should have been because California is more diverse.”

Just 22 years old, Liu, a Chinese American, has interned at several newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and Detroit Free Press. A summer internship at the San Jose Mercury News is next on her to-do list. She is bright, articulate, and possesses an insatiable desire to be a great journalist. She looks like she’s definitely on her way.

Great! Right?

But according to the 2001 American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) report, the Marian Lius are toppling like trees in the Amazon rainforest. The number of minorities (click to see graph) holding full-time newspaper jobs fell from 11.85 percent to 11.64 percent this year, the first downfall in 23 years. In the past year, the 600 minorities hired at daily newspapers failed to offset the 698 minority journalists who left the field. The retention rate also dropped from 96 percent to 90 percent.

“[The newspapers] hire white males (click to see graph) because that’s who they are and who they feel most comfortable with,” says Lydia Chavez, an associate professor at U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Chavez, a veteran journalist in her own right, worked for the Albuquerque Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and Time magazine before she came to teach at Berkeley 10 years ago. During her stints at those publications, she saw first-hand the necessity of minority journalists in newsrooms, especially in their ability to give voice to underrepresented communities. As an associate professor, Chavez tries to cultivate a unique curriculum, such as classes on reporting in Hong Kong and Latin America, which appeal to and challenge students of color.

More importantly, however, is Chavez’s effort to diversify student representation in the Berkeley journalism program. Out of the 64 students in next year’s incoming class, there are 10 Asian Americans, five Latinos and eight African Americans.

“We try to go to the undergraduate schools where we think minority students are enrolled in greater numbers,” Chavez says. “This is a state university, so we’re supposed to reflect the diversity of the state. We’re not using race as a criterion, but we are looking for people who offer different experiences to journalism, and that makes it a richer experience here.”

More at the Top, and a Little Sensitivity

The overriding issue isn’t the number of minority journalists being hired, but the lack of people of color in upper management. Without such editors and developers of talent, newspapers are losing the fight in retaining quality minority journalists.

“I think newspapers are getting better [on diversity], but I think they have a long way to go,” Chavez says. “There is always this push to hire minorities at entry-level, but they don’t push and move people up … The more minorities you have at the higher-level and key positions, the better off the paper is going to be.”

Liu was fortunate enough to work under a Japanese American editor when she was interning at the Los Angeles Times. She recalled a tense situation when she desperately wanted to cover a story about a Web site that was slamming Asian Americans. Though the top editor refused to run the story, Liu, with the help of her editor, finally convinced him that it was a worthwhile topic.

“Having an editor that was a minority was more helpful because she was like a mentor,” she says. “She was open to doing stories on Asian American issues. You knew she would back you up if you really wanted to do a story.”

But Liu’s experience is an anomaly. Among 13,728 newspaper supervisors in 2001, only 214 — or 1.6 percent — are Asian American, while according to the latest census, APIs make up some 4 percent of the U.S. population.

For Neal Justin, the TV critic and trends editor at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, it’s bridging the gap between the editor and reporter that’s most important.

“Ignorance is the key problem,” says Justin, 33, who is South Asian. “I find editors wanting to be culturally sensitive, and most have the best intentions about promoting diversity in the paper. But in the long run, I truly believe it’s impossible to provide balance unless there are people of diversity in the newsroom speaking up and making decisions.”

If this year’s American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) convention is any indication, newsrooms have a long way to go on the diversity front. During the opening reception held in Washington, D.C., Capitol Steps comedy troupe performed a skit on U.S.-China diplomacy for the nation’s top editors. One of the actors, a white male who wore a black wig and thick sunglasses, played a Chinese official. Pretending to speak through an interpreter, he babbled, “Ching ching chong chong.”

Amy Leang, a 22-year-old recent Ball State graduate, saw the skit and felt compelled to write about her experience as a student journalist for the ASNE Reporter. Her story garnered national attention and put Tim McGuire, ASNE president and editor of the Star Tribune, on thin ice.

“My initial reaction [to the skit] was shock,” says Leang, who will be interning this summer at the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va. “I couldn’t believe it happened and that all these editors thought it was funny. Stabbed is kind of harsh, but I certainly felt dismayed and a bit disenchanted.

“Prior to that, I had a strong and naïve faith that because this industry sought more minorities, that meant it knew fully about them and why they were important to the field. If editors found that performance humorous, then perhaps they didn’t know people of color fully after all. At the time, it made me feel as though my presence was a joke.”

Meanwhile, McGuire refuses to answer questions posed by AsianWeek regarding the ASNE convention.

“I will let my two letters on the subject and my upcoming editor columns speak for me on that subject,” he says.

One of those letters was written to Victor Panichul, the national president of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA). McGuire writes: “You should know I have sent a letter to Amy Leang telling her ‘I am very sorry that you were subjected to personal hurt at the ASNE convention.’ I told her, that as a father of a daughter her age, I shudder at the thought of her going through such personal pain.”

However, in a Washington Post interview, McGuire refused to apologize for the skit, telling reporters: “Very few people reacted the way [Leang] did … I don’t think we can make an apology because we didn’t control anything.”

Fortunately, this drawn-out experience hasn’t deterred Leang from pursuing a career in photojournalism.

“It’s never been about the bureaucracy, but about going out there, making beautiful pictures and experiencing life,” she says.

What Parents Want

Many Asian Americans entering the field are discouraged by their parents, as well. Unlike engineering and medicine, Asian Americans generally haven’t considered journalism a status profession. In 1999, a VaultReports.com survey found that recent mechanical engineering graduates had the highest salary expectations — $42,173 on average — while journalism majors anticipated the lowest salaries — $27,727.

Moreover, a 1996 Ohio State University study found that graduates in that year with full time jobs earned a median salary of just $21,500. Four years later, the average salary for entry-level journalists was slightly above $25,000, according to a survey released by the University of Georgia’s James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication, Training and Research.

Against their parents’ wishes, Zoe Mezin, left, and Nina Wu took on journalism careers. They are among the small number of Asian American women working in journalism. Photo by Ethen Lieser.

Two Asian American reporters from the San Francisco Examiner, Nina Wu and Zoe Mezin, decided to become journalists despite pressures from their parents to join more lucrative careers.

Wu, 29, who started at the Examiner last January, possesses a cordial demeanor with a soft face that seems unable to say “No!” But that’s exactly what she said to her parents — and to law school.

“I come from a family of engineers and my cousins are doctors,” Wu says. “Of course, they wanted me to make a lot of money, but money is something that doesn’t motivate me at all.”

Liu, who double-majored in mass communications and integrative biology, chooses to stay in journalism, even if it means her bank account might teeter on empty for awhile.

“My parents still think I’m just in this [journalism] stage and I’m going to get out of it,” Liu says. “Mass communications just isn’t a major Asian parents would want their kids to get.”

Says Mezin: “Parents tend to brag about kids in the Asian American community. So growing up, I knew journalism wasn’t one of the coveted occupations. A part of me felt that my parents didn’t want me to enter journalism.”

Meanwhile, it took Wu over a month before she could bring herself to tell her parents that she was working at the Examiner.

“I think my dad’s proud,” she says. “He hasn’t said it, but I think he is.”

Not Just a Pipe Dream

Liu can clearly recall when she first wanted to be a journalist. It was during the summer before her junior year of high school. As a student volunteer, she was sitting in on a meeting for the San Francisco-based Pacific News Service.

A question was directed at her: “Why did Asian Americans assimilate so easily?”

All eyes were on her. She was the only Asian American in the room.

“I had to answer for the whole Asian American community,” Liu says. “I realized right then that we didn’t have a voice.”

Whether she knows it or not, she is helping build that voice. And maybe, just maybe, her dream will be realized: The minority journalist steps out of her house. She sips on her morning coffee, jauntily walking to her office. Her shoulders are hoisted high. She whistles a happy tune. On her way to work, she passes many Asian Americans, busy with their day’s activities.

She enters the newsroom, and she sees faces that look like her own, like the faces she just passed outside.

Marian Liu smiles.