Diversity Workshop Celebrating 30 Years

An article by the NYDailyNew.com, covered a journalism workshop, helped to shed light on the struggling problem of diversity in newsrooms.

New York University's annual Urban Journalism Workshop is celebrating its 30th Anniversary this year. The workshop, offered to high school students around the country, is a week-long program that provides students with a crash course in newspaper reporting, writing and editing.

Program coordinator, Pamela Newkirk, spoke of diversity issues several times in the article, emphasizing the alarming decrease of minority journalists in recent years. The numbers in the aforementioned article placed the decrease at .82 percent; further showing that while African-Americans make up 15 percent of the population nationally, they only represent 4.68 percent of newsroom jobs in the United States.

While this article's main focused appeared to have been on the Anniversary of the workshop, I found the purpose of the workshop to be far more important. The numbers presented about the presence of diversity in journalism were alarming, and it would appear that if something is not done quickly, these numbers will continue to decrease.

Thus, it is great that the workshop is still running and able to celebrate a 30th year; however, the purpose of the workshop is far greater and it is important that their mission be carried out. If not, journalism, and all it stands for, is once again at risk of failing completely--as I have repeatedly stressed in my previous blogs.