Native American Journalists Association

The Native American Journalists Association encourages print and digital news organizations to complete the 2019 ASNE Newsroom Employment Diversity Survey as a means of maintaining transparency about the industry’s progress in diversifying the nation’s newsrooms.

NAJA also encourages LGBTQIA-identifying journalists to self-report their data using the anonymized survey created by ASNE. Editors and newsroom managers can assist in this process by forwarding the link to their newsrooms. The survey is designed for self-administration in light of the lack of federal workplace protections for queer-identifying journalists.

The deadline for completing both surveys is July 1.

Since 1968, the Newsroom Employment Diversity Survey has tracked data on the demographic composition of news outlets, issuing the challenge for newsrooms to achieve racial and gender parity with the communities they serve.

American Indians comprised 0.38 percent of employees reported by all newsrooms in the 2018 survey. In the 2017 survey, American Indians comprised 0.36 percent of employees.

Among newsroom leaders, American Indians comprised 0.49 percent in the 2018 survey – a decrease of 0.07 percent from the 2017 survey that showed American Indian newsroom leaders comprised 0.56 percent.

Among daily newspapers, about 22.2 percent of employees were racial minorities and 25.6 percent of employees at online-only news websites were minorities.

Women comprised 41.2 percent of daily newspaper employees in the 2018 survey and 47.8 percent of online-only news organization employees.

After piloting more inclusive efforts in 2018, ASNE is pleased to gather, integrate, and report data from LGBTQIA-identifying journalists in the 2019 survey.

ASNE will conduct a 30-minute Facebook Live session to answer questions and troubleshoot with survey respondents on Tuesday, June 11, at noon EST. Editors, human resource officers or other individuals tasked with collecting and reporting data for the survey are encouraged to participate and to submit their questions in advance to diversityresearch@asne.org. Priority will be given to questions submitted by noon on Monday, June 9.

For more information, please contact ASNE at diversityresearch@asne.org, or the survey’s primary investigator, Meredith D. Clark, Ph.D., at mdc6j@virginia.edu.