Knox News holds itself accountable on the diversity of our newsroom

As part of our commitment to accountability, our newsroom consistently evaluates our own performance across an array of measures. One of the most important is ensuring we have a newsroom the reflects the diversity our community.

Every year, Knox News compares the makeup of our newsroom to the latest U.S. Census demographic data for our coverage area. Newsrooms across our company, the USA TODAY Network, do the same.

More:Gannett newsrooms making steady progress in overall diversity

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We share that information with you so you can see how we measure up. This year, as in the previous two years since we began this effort, the Knox News newsroom is more diverse than the community. Notably, we've increased the number of Black and Asian journalists in our newsroom.

It's good news we've been able to attract and retain a workforce that looks like our community, but there remains work to do. Our leadership ranks are 60% women, for instance, but entirely white. We under-index in the number of Hispanic/Latino journalists in our newsroom.

The point of this exercise is not simply hitting demographic targets, though. It's about making sure we're bring a variety of perspectives into our coverage decisions, and making sure we have journalists who have lived the same experiences of our community members. It helps us frame coverage that speaks to everyone we serve.

We'll continue to strive to tell the stories of our community in all their complexity, and to bring to this newsroom people who understand the variety of perspectives that make this place and this nation so strong.