African American Women in the Newsroom: Encoding Resistance

“The Paper Is White”: Examining Diversity Issues With the Next Generation of Journalists

“…In their reporting, journalists tend to use sources who are similar to them, which results in news sources that skew White, male, and official (Ford et al, 2020; Len-Ríos & Perry, 2020; Rodgers & Thorson, 2003; Zeldes et al, 2012). Journalists representing diverse groups who have labored to gain entry and advance their careers in mainstream newsrooms have drawn scrutiny for their advocacy (Nishikawa et al, 2009) and for pushing against stereotypical coverage and journalistic norms (Meyers & Gayle, 2015). Chief among these norms is objectivity.…”

An Intersectional Analysis of U.S. Journalists’ Experiences With Hostile Sources

“…Although commonly used to analyze media, intersectionality is less often used to understand news work processes, such as journalists’ everyday news gathering routines and interactions with sources. Given research finding that hiring more minority journalists does not lead to more diverse news coverage nor does hiring more women journalists lead to changes in news content or newsroom culture (which together resulted in news coverage lacking stories about women of color), Meyers and Gayle (2015) studied whether a journalist who identifies as a Black woman, and thus occupying two marginalized identity categories, would be more effective at producing change. They reasoned Black women journalists would have double the reason to push back on norms and structures and expected their articles to more often feature Black women’s stories.…”

“…But the participants noted that they could pursue stories about their community that White journalists might overlook as long as they stayed objective; they said they sought out community leaders as sources and tried to include diverse perspectives into their news stories, whereas White journalists might include only traditional, government sources in their stories. Both Meyers and Gayle (2015) and Nishikawa et al (2009) found that journalists said they frequently spoke up in their newsrooms when a story was ignoring a certain minority angle or when a story included a problematic cultural stereotype. In more recent applications of intersectionality, Peterson-Salahuddin (2021) theorized what intersectional journalism could look like.…”

“…The goal of this monograph is to illuminate the experiences of journalists who work with hostile sources, referring to people the journalist included (or tried to include) in a news story. It recognizes that White women have long faced harassment and gendered hurdles in the journalism field (Carter et al, 2019; Chambers et al, 2004; Harris et al, 2016; North, 2015) and that Black journalists and other journalists of color have been underrepresented in newsrooms (American Society of News Editors, 2019), faced discrimination (Douglas, 2021; Johnston & Flamiano, 2007), and taken on additional emotional labor (Meyers & Gayle, 2015; Nishikawa et al, 2009) such that Black women and other women of color working in the field have faced disproportionate levels of harassment (Chen et al, 2020; Gardiner, 2018). This project utilizes the feminist lens of intersectionality to explore how hostility is experienced in relation to journalists’ race, gender, and other facets of their identity, such as age and sexuality.…”

The Role of Minority Journalists, Candidates, and Audiences in Shaping Race-Related Campaign News Coverage

“…As Adams and Cleary (2006) point out, the issue of newsroom diversity has been explored since the 1960s, mainly in the form of descriptions of staffing levels in newsrooms and hiring, retention, and promotion issues (Bodinger-de Uriarte & Valgeirsson, 2015;B. Clark, 2017;Meyers & Gayle, 2015). A smaller body of work examines the impact of diversity-especially the impact of minority journalists on audiences (see Mastro, 2017 for a review) and news content.…”