Nobody anticipated it would lead to a staff revolt and become a national story, part of an extraordinary week where the news media’s sluggishness in building diverse newsrooms became part of the national conversation.
Editors lost jobs at The New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Bon Appetit magazine and the Refinery29 website.
“Our communities are changing and our demographics are changing and we as a news industry have done a poor job of recognizing it,” said Katrice Hardy, Indianapolis Star executive editor and head of the diversity committee for the News Leaders Association.
“Whenever I’m in a gathering of the leaders of media I’m struck by the lack of diversity,” Dean Baquet, the first black executive editor of The New York Times, told Prince in 2015.
At the Inquirer last week, black reporters led a sickout following use of an insensitive headline, “Buildings Matter, Too,” on a story about about architecture damaged when protests turned violent.
