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Boucher

Rosemary Boucher

Professor Pantalone

Journalism 410

April 22nd, 2019

Representation in the Newsroom

Since the 2016 presidential election, the trust between journalists and the communities

they cover, have been a struggle and there are a few reasons why. In a Columbia Journalism

Review article by Jelani Cobb titled “Missing the Story,” Cobb details one problem he has

noticed that he believes has exacerbated this distrust. The problem is of underrepresentation of

minorities in the newsroom.

Cobb begins his article remembering a story he had read about the frequency of robberies

in the Bronx and how the story focused on the reactions of the victims to hold on to their money.

While reading the story Cobb recalls his time living in that community and knows that for many

of those people that money also represents their ability to get another paycheck and their

reputation as an easy victim. He notes that the reporter was white and the community mostly

black and latino, and attributes this to the difference in his understanding and the response of the

reporter.

Cobb goes on to explain a few more examples of the negative effects of

underrepresentation. One example is that of his job at the City Paper. He explains that the editor

at the time, David Carr, wanted to repair the papers reputation with the black community within

the city. Carr started a payed internship with the intent of hiring people who he believed would

tell the story of underrepresented people in the community. The internship was offered to Cobb
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and was to help make the paper better by telling different stories rather than just diversifying the

employees. Cobb also notes the coverage of the 2016 presidential election and how the coverage

of the election was mainly one-sided in perspective, and points out that most political coverage

has a racial aspect to it.

All these things point to Cobb’s thesis about media outlets that underrepresent minorities

tend to underserve those same minorities. The stories are not relevant to them and often don’t

express their same views on issues. This leads minorities to distrust media outlets and to look

elsewhere for information and news, which means that news outlets no longer become the

monitors of power for these people.

Cobb notes that while many people would say that diversity is important very few

newsrooms are diverse. As of 2017, only 16.6% of daily newspaper journalists were people of

color and more than 37% of the population of America are people of color. Cobb also says that,

while diversifying newsrooms would not completely fix relations between journalists and their

communities, it would be of great help.

Cobb presents quite the argument for underrepresentation in the newsroom. He does offer

a few examples that he finds of how underrepresentation affects media coverage and notes that

many newsrooms are predominately white. He has the example of the Bronx story that points to

the difference between community and coverage, the internship at the City Paper that helped tell

stories that were missing from the paper, and the 2016 presidential election that refused to point

the central role of race in politics. Cobb also presents statistics that support his claim that

newsrooms are overly white and points out that many people like diversity, but do nothing about

it.
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Cobb’s claim that diversity in the newsroom allows for better understanding of

communities is valid and important. If people are not being represented in their news then the

news is not something they’ll listen to. This discredits media outlets and doesn’t allow them to

act in the capacity outlined in the nine principles, such as a monitor of power and a forum for

compromise and criticism. While there is nothing within the principles that specifically talks

about diversity, it does keep inline with loyalty to citizens. If, as journalists, we truly are to be

loyal to our citizens, then we would want them to receive the best coverage that is relevant and

representative of who they are.