2009 was not a good year for the journalism business, and numerous jobs were lost. But the National Association of Black Journalists says the cuts disproportionately hit its constituency, approaching 20% of all who went into 2009 with a newsroom job.
NABJ says that 19.2% of African-American journalists were cut from the workforce during the year, a negative increase of over 6% from the previous year, and it says that since 2001, over 30% of all African-America news positions have been lost.
“It is a travesty that minority journalists are being disproportionately cut in newsrooms across the country,” said NABJ President Kathy Y. Times. “Despite the economy and cutbacks, we must try to keep our newsrooms at least on parity with the communities we serve.”
“This is a key goal in NABJ’s mission, and we will continue to search for new ways to highlight this gap until it is closed,” added NABJ VP-Print Deirdre M. Childress. “As the diversity of the American population increases, it is equally important for us to see that change reflected in American newsrooms so that stories can be told from all perspectives.”
