Why the Akron Beacon Journal remains focused on diversifying its newsroom

It's been a painful month for our community.

A month where events again illustrated the importance of our Beacon Journal newsroom representing the diversity of the Greater Akron community it strives to serve.

It's challenging for white reporters to truly understand and capture the frustrations the Black community is confronting following the June 27 Akron police shooting death of Jayland Walker and many years of injustices. It's hard to truly walk in another person's shoes, understanding their experiences and sensing what they feel and see every day.

That's why we've emphasized improving the diversity of our newsroom along with efforts to ensure our content serves all of Akron, especially the 30% Black population in the city that's not always been fairly represented in our content.

We've launched a new Black-owned business series that's proven to be popular with all readers, restructured our reporter beat assignments, conducted a mobile newsroom at a branch library and worked to build relationships with community leaders. We're also always seeking diverse voices for our opinion section online and in print.

Staff diversity in transition

In 2020, we also publicly committed to publishing a statistical breakdown of our newsroom by race and gender on an annual basis. Our goal is to match the region's diversity by 2025. 

We are updating our progress today along with other major publications within the USA TODAY Network.

Status report:Gannett newsrooms making steady progress in overall diversity

This year's snapshot as of July 1 shows 88% of our staff was white, while the Akron area is at 72%, according to the latest U.S. Census figures.

Meanwhile, only 5% of our newsroom is composed of Black staff members, below the 17% of population regionally.  Additionally, 2.4% of our staff is Asian, Hispanic or two or more races, numbers that nearly match the population.

Those numbers represent a period of transition in our newsroom following some resignations and don't include a Black reporter who joined us this week and an editor arriving next week. Diversifying our leadership team also has been a key need and focus.

Kenyona 'Sunny' Matthews:We owe Jayland Walker justice. We owe him grace.

We're working on developing more reporting talent in our community, including the addition of freelance community columnist Kenonya 'Sunny' Matthews, who will be writing for us twice a month. I've also met with two other aspiring reporters who we are working to provide freelance opportunities.

We've made some progress in employing more women in the newsroom with growth from 36% in 2020 to 42% today. Female leadership has grown from 29% to 43% this year.

We can do better

Our journalists work and live in our community and care passionately about serving everyone. They embrace all forms of diversity and seek to accurately portray all people and issues, including those in the LGBTQ+ community. 

Their dedication was evident in the past month as we diligently sought to ensure all points of view were included in our coverage of the Walker shooting. They covered protests, sought interviews with key leaders and requested public records to better help all of us understand what happened. 

To me, our team performed admirably covering a complex story that demanded accurate, fair and timely reporting.

Still, there's no substitute for ensuring our staff matches the diversity of our community.

Michael Shearer is editor of the Akron Beacon Journal and BeaconJournal.com and northern Ohio regional editor for Gannett’s USA TODAY Network. He can be reached at 330-996-3750 or mshearer@thebeaconjournal.com.