Diversity Should Be a Higher Priority
Do you have to be white to be in the investment business? One might have thought so reading The Times’ recent Investment Strategies Conference advertising supplement. Of 62 participants whose photos appeared in the section, the official conference program, all but three, including Times Business Editor Bill Sing, were white. (Two African American participants didn’t submit photos by publication time.)
The overwhelming whiteness of the 32-page section infuriated at least one reader, African American banker Raymond Ealy, who wrote: “I am deeply disappointed in your [Feb. 1] publication. The L.A. Times, despite its claim to be a world-class media company in a world-class city, was unable to locate any available ‘qualified’ minorities to participate in its investment seminar.”
Is this politically correct nit-picking on his part or a sort of racial profiling by The Times that contributes to the perception that racial and ethnic minority investment experts don’t exist? And does it matter? After all, the conference, held earlier this month, drew more than 6,000 attendees who liked the lineup of presenters enough to pay the $55 or $65 entrance fee for one or two days’ attendance.
It does matter. The Times serves a five-county area whose population is 44.2% white and 55.8% people of color. Los Angeles County alone is 67% Latino, Asian American, African American and Native American. The Times is obligated to serve such a diverse readership in an inclusive way, allowing all readers to see themselves reflected in the newspaper’s pages fairly and accurately. That means, as Ealy put it, that African Americans and Latinos aren’t always pictured only in association with “inferior educational systems, poverty, unwed mothers and crime.” So Ealy opened the section with anticipation and was disappointed in what appeared to be the exclusion of whole groups of people. It made him feel uncomfortable and unwelcome. “Turn it around,” he suggested. “Would white people feel comfortable [attending the conference] if all presenters were black and brown?”
One element that would have added to the section’s diversity--and did enhance the diversity of the conference itself--was a series of Spanish-language panels with eight Latino panelists. These were run by the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion, which is 50% owned by Times Mirror Co., the parent corporation of The Times. Yet the panels were left out of the official program. Marty Lieberman, director of The Times’ Consumer Events department, said La Opinion was one of several sponsors, including Morningstar and Charles Schwab, that independently presented panels or speakers not promoted in the program, which listed Times-organized events.
The Consumer Events department in December assumed full responsibility for the conference. Prior to that, the program was managed by journalists on the paper’s Business section staff, who continued to advise organizers on programming for this conference.
Diversity among presenters was important to Publisher Kathryn Downing, who “specifically identified the involvement of minorities in [the conference] as a goal,” said Nancy Budd, general manager of the Business section, who worked on the conference.
Why then wasn’t the conference more diverse? Organizers said they scrambled against a tight deadline and last-minute cancellations to fill dozens of panel seats. In the end, on the 32 panels and workshops organized by The Times, there were 100 participants, six of them people of color (three others who were invited declined).
“We couldn’t go out and say, ‘Let’s find some people who are associated with the financial industry who are diverse.’ We had to find people whose credentials qualified them for the conference,” said Budd, echoing Lieberman. Organizers said the main goal was to present “experts in their fields.” If some were minorities, that would be good. But, organizers said, there isn’t much diversity among the experts. “It’s a reflection of the pool more than anything,” Times Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer James D. Helin said. “It shows how sparse the pool is.”
Such thinking can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, leaving organizers willing to settle for a conference whose presenters were 94% white. In fact, there are many experts who are racially and ethnically diverse. Last year’s conference included 20 such speakers. A Page 1 story in The Times last October on banking, securities and investment firms courting Latinos was loaded with names of Latino experts in these fields. And among African Americans alone, there are several investment advisors--two of whom regularly appear on TV’s Wall Street Week and CNBC--and a successful black-owned growth fund as well as a statewide black investment industry group. Fannie Mae and American Express are managed by African Americans, and Merrill Lynch this month named an African American man to the company’s No. 2 position.
It’s true that the investment business, indeed the entire financial services field, is dominated by white males. Yet the customer base of clients, whose money is being invested, isn’t. This is particularly true in Southern California, where the population’s racial and ethnic makeup increasingly mirrors that of the world at large, a reality that’s covered extensively in The Times’ Business section.
Bottom line: This diversity also should be reflected in the program of any conference that carries the newspaper’s name.
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Narda Zacchino, an associate editor of The Times, is the readers’ representative. Call (877) 554-4000; fax: (213) 237-3535; e-mail: readers.rep@latimes.com; mail: Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.
