Chasing Newsroom Diversity: From Jim Crow to Affirmative Action

Notes

Notes Introduction: The Black and White of Newspapers 1. A 1955 Lincoln University study reported that twenty-one black journalists were employed at white-owned daily newspapers, while earlier studies placed the number at twelve in 1952 and fifteen in 1948. Armistead Scott Pride, “Low Man on the Totem Pole,” Nieman Reports, April 1955, 21, quoted in David R. Davies, An Industry in Transition: Major Trends in American Daily Newspapers, 1945–1965 (PhD diss., University of Alabama, 1997) chap. 6. 2. American Society of Newspaper Editors, Problems of Journalism: Proceedings of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 15–17, 1948: 99. Until 2004 the ASNE self-published bound transcriptions of each year’s convention proceedings. Hereafter, references to volumes in this series will be abbreviated as Proceedings. 3. The American black press is usually dated to the publication of Freedom’s Journal in 1827. For comprehensive histories of the black press, see Armistead A. Pride and Clint Wilson II, A History of the Black Press (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1997) and Roland E. Wolsley, The Black Press, U.S.A. (Ames: University of Iowa Press, 1990). 4. Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung, Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, For The United States, Regions, Divisions, and States, U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division, Working Paper Series no. 56, Table 1, September 2002. 5. Edward Seaton, “Some Light on ASNE’s Revised Diversity Goal,” American Editor 791 (May 1998): 2, and Diversity Committee Report, Proceedings, April 8–11, 1997: 232. 6. Mary L. Dudziak argues that civil rights reform was, in part, a response to growing international concern that racial inequality robbed the United States of the moral Mellinger_Chasing text.indd 183 10/24/12 4:28 PM authority to lead the fight against Communism after World War II. She cites the foreign policy implications of Truman’s initiatives and identifies them as the beginning of civil rights reform. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2000), chap. 3. 7. President Warren Harding, a newspaper publisher, was a member of the ASNE, although he died a year after its founding and there is no record that he spoke to the organization. Calvin Coolidge, who occupied the White House between Harding and Hoover, is not on record as addressing the ASNE. 8. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy , vol. 1 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishing, 1996), 29. 9. Ibid., vol. 2, chap. 42. 10. Led by Robert Hutchins, the University of Chicago president, the commission emphasized the need for accuracy in news reporting and the constitutional obligation to provide forums for a broader diversity of information and opinion. Commission on Freedom of the Press, A Free and Responsible Press (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947), 20–21. The indignation in the ASNE’s response to the report was noteworthy. Crafting its public rebuke of the commission’s meddling in press affairs consumed a good portion of the organization’s convention business that year. According to Arkansas Gazette editor Harry Ashmore, the Hutchins report caused defensive ASNE members to “huddle rumps together, horns out, in the immemorial manner, say of the National Association of Manufacturers faced by a threat of regulated prices.” Columbia Journalism Review (Summer 1967), quoted in Paul A. Pratte, Gods Within the Machine: A History of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 1923–1993 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995) and James Aronson, The Press and the Cold War (Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill Co., 1970), 266. In addition, Norman Isaacs comments upon the editors’ “visceral” reaction to the report. Untended Gate: The Mismanaged Press (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 103. 11. Theodore Peterson, “The Social Responsibility of the Press,” in Fred S. Siebert, Theodore Peterson, and Wilbur Schramm, Four Theories of the Press (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 74. 12. National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Report of the National Advisory Commission of Civil Disorders (New York: New York Times Co., 1968), chap. 15. 13. Proceedings, April 25–26, 1924: 57. 14. See chapters 2 and 3. 15. Proceedings, April 25–26, 1924: 56. 16. In 1924, the ASNE board decided that newspapers in cities with populations greater than 100,000 each could have four ASNE members, papers in cities with populations of 75,000 to 100,000 could have two, and papers in cities with 50,000 to 75,000 in population were allotted one member...