Herald-Tribune makes progress toward diversity goals while continuing efforts

A couple of weeks ago, I checked in with one of our talented new reporters about how things were going. We talked about some stories, and she mentioned she was working on building a larger list of community sources — but that she needed to make sure she had more diversity in the group.

I so appreciated this commitment. This journalist knows that we can only do a good job of serving the community if we reflect and serve all parts of it. One way we do that is by reaching out to more community members as news sources who represent various racial and ethnic groups, women, members of the LGBTQ community and still others with unique experiences and backgrounds.

Another way we try to do this is with a pledge that we and all members of the USA TODAY Network have made: We are working to ensure our newsrooms will achieve diversity that matches the makeup of the community we serve by 2025.  

Diversity numbers for 2022:Reporting the Herald-Tribune's progress on newsroom diversity

Meet our newsroom:See staff directory for Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Each year, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, along with more than 200 other local news organizations in Gannett's USA TODAY Network, shares with readers the racial, ethnic and gender makeup of our news staff and its leadership. We seek to be transparent as we work toward our goal.

Why have this goal? Some people hold the belief that there isn't a need to discuss race at all. But just as with the stories and sources we choose, we believe that representation is an important value in serving a community fully and fairly as journalists. 

If our staff doesn't reflect the community, we are quite likely to miss stories that are important to key segments of that community. Our journalists work very hard to become experts at the subjects they cover, even when they cover groups different from them or topics new to them. But the more perspectives we have among our staff, including diversity in race, ethnicity, gender, age and life experiences, the more likely we are to better reflect the interests of our readers and attract readers from all parts of the community.

So let's look at where we are as of July 1, 2022, the date when our numbers were assessed.

First, we have some progress to be proud of. We have raised the representation in our newsroom of Hispanic journalists from 3.7% to 9.4%, more than doubling since last year. The 2020 Census showed that the number of Hispanic residents has grown significantly in the last decade in our region. Our newsroom is not yet at parity with the 10.4% Hispanic population, but we are much closer than we were last year. 

More from the editor: Tracking our progress on diversity, striving for more

Region grows, changes:U.S. Census data show Sarasota, Manatee added 131,435 people over the past decade

2021 Report:Herald-Tribune releases newsroom diversity figures

In addition, we've worked to add female representation in our newsroom. We've gone from 22.2% women in 2021 to 31.2% women in 2022. I joined our formerly all-male leadership team after last year's diversity census date, so this year we have 10% female representation in our leadership ranks, instead of 0. Far from parity, of course, and more needs to be done. In terms of racial diversity, our leadership team has only one minority member, the same as last year, though the percentage decreased because the team grew after last year's census with my arrival. 

Our newsroom overall remains slightly less racially diverse than our region, at 81.2% white compared to 79.7% for our area, though we have gone from 10.7% diverse to 18.8% in the past two years. We remain above parity in Asian representation but do not have representation among Native Americans or mixed-race individuals, who make up .2 and 2.7% of our region respectively. 

Unfortunately, amid staff departures and hirings, the percentage of Black staffers in our newsroom, while greater than the overall community number of 5%, has dropped from 11.1 to 6.2 %.

We continue to focus on diversity as a priority whenever we have the opportunity to hire a new journalist.

We also continue to discuss these topics regularly in our coverage. Here, we ask for your help. Are we missing stories about a part of the community we can do more to cover? Do you feel underrepresented by the Herald-Tribune's coverage? We welcome your story ideas and insights into your community. You can write to me at Jorsi@gannett.com, or our news director Victor Hull, victor.hull@heraldtribune.com to share news tips, story ideas, potential sources our journalists should know and feedback that can help our coverage be more inclusive.

The American Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau asks two separate questions, one about Hispanic origin and one about race, allowing individuals to self-select from multiple options. However, to compare with internal Gannett employee information that asks individuals to mark only one option, we used the following categories: Hispanic or Latino (for ACS, regardless of any other race selected), White (not Hispanic or Latino), Black or African American (not Hispanic or Latino), Asian (not Hispanic or Latino), American Indian or Alaska Native (not Hispanic or Latino), Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander (not Hispanic or Latino), or two or more races (not Hispanic or Latino). All information on racial identity is provided voluntarily by employees. Gannett also allows an individual to not disclose their race or ethnicity.