Another newsroom hurdle?

When Daralene Jones first heard about the saga of Jayson Blair, her initial thought was: “Is this another way to try to bring another person of color down?” But after reading the facts about the young African American reporter for the New York Times whose acts of plagiarism and deception have rocked American journalism, Jones said, she concluded “it was inevitable that he was guilty.”

Nneka Nnolim’s first reaction to the Blair affair was feeling upset that a young black man had blown his chance at the big time. But as coverage of the incident has unfolded, Nnolim thinks that “it has become very sensationalized, and I think it’s taking on a bit of a racial undertone. That’s very troubling to me.”

For a number of young black journalists like Jones, a reporter for NewsChannel 20 in Springfield, Ill., and aspiring journalists like Nnolim, a journalism graduate student at Michigan State University, the Blair scandal has triggered feelings that range from sympathy and frustration to wariness and anger. In the days since Blair resigned under pressure and his former employer published a four-page spread chronicling the 27-year-old reporter’s transgressions -- which included plagiarizing the work of other reporters and making up sources -- young African Americans in newsrooms across the country have been trading phone calls and e-mails, swapping opinions and insights, and speculating how Blair’s actions may affect their careers.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a sense of siege, but there’s a real sense of concern that some of the fallout is going to come to us in particular,” said Peter McKay, a 27-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter.

Mashaun D. Simon, a third-year student at Georgia State University and a senior staff writer for the Atlanta Daily World, a black-owned weekly, said he’d discussed the matter with other members of the National Assn. of Black Journalists’ Young Journalists Task Force, on whose board he serves. Sentiment, he said, has followed a trajectory, from disappointment in Blair, to empathy, to concern that his behavior could be used as an argument against helping more minorities obtain careers in journalism.

“It kind of started off with everyone being either hurt or upset over what Jayson Blair had done, but then it kind of turned into supporting him,” Simon said. “Now we’ve kind of branched into making sure that programs like diversity or programs like affirmative action are not killed or not affected by this situation and making sure that young journalists in our organization know what’s coming next.”

The Blair incident comes at a time when the proportion of minorities working for U.S. daily newspapers has been growing, but relatively slowly. Between 1978 and 1993, the number of minorities in newsrooms rose from 1,700 employees out of a total work force of 43,000 to about 5,500 out of 53,600, or from 3.95% to 10.25%, according to a survey published last month by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. But in the last decade, that number has risen at a slower rate, to 6,900 minorities out of a total work force of 54,700, or about 12.5%. Of the total number of minorities working for U.S. daily newspapers, 5.5% are African Americans, 4% are Latinos, 2.6% are Asian Americans and 0.5% are Native Americans, according to ASNE figures. The country’s African American population is about 12%.

Fewer resources invested

Arlene Morgan, an assistant dean at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism who specializes in diversity issues, said she thinks newsroom diversity has been hurt by severe hiring freezes at many newspapers today, among other factors. Few newspapers are willing to devote the time and effort to minority journalists who want to pursue serious, in-depth reporting, she said.

Morgan said that minority recruitment and training programs can succeed if time is spent working with young journalists, training and nurturing them. Will the Blair incident taint these programs? “I hope not,” she responded. “I can point to dozens and dozens of people who are doing a great job.”

While changes in newspaper hiring policies brought more minorities into newsrooms in the 1980s and ‘90s, retaining them has often been a problem, according to groups that track the numbers. Zerline Hughes Jennings, a freelance writer for the Boston Globe, said she thinks that “newspapers need to do a lot more mentoring” of young black journalists. “I just think there should be a lot more tutelage going on.”

As the Blair story has been seized on and spun by columnists, talk-radio hosts and TV pundits, Blair’s failings have become the focus of a renewed debate over affirmative action and whether editors and publishers sometimes sacrifice caution and good judgment to the goal of making newsrooms more diverse. In an interview this week with the New York Observer, Blair rejected the idea that he had been an affirmative-action hire who wasn’t up to the job. Instead, he told the Observer, “Both racial preferences and racism played a role. And I would argue that they didn’t balance each other out. Racism had much more of an impact.”

The notion that Blair’s conduct could reflect badly on affirmative action and other minority-assistance programs frustrates and angers some young black journalists, who say they already feel they must work harder and perform better than their white peers just to be seen as worthy of their jobs.

“You’re lucky in that you’re going to get some job opportunities that wouldn’t be available to other people because of the color of your skin,” Jones said, the reporter in Illinois. “But there’s also that feeling of, ‘Am I going to be targeted because I’m a person of color?’ ”

Nnolim predicted that any black journalist who earns an internship from now on will be watched “like a hawk. That’s usually how it goes; when one black person messes up, all black people come under suspicion.”

Others said that since the Blair story broke, they’ve been taking extra precautions with their own work, double- or triple-checking quotes and facts. “I know that my work will speak for itself, but I’m being obsessively vigilant ... because I don’t want the assumption that I’m one of those young blacks with no ethics,” Jamila Bey, 26, an assistant editor on National Public Radio’s “The Tavis Smiley Show,” wrote in an e-mail.

A common refrain among black journalists, both young and older, is that Blair wasn’t an archetype but an aberration, a talented, highly ambitious reporter whose ethical lapses disgraced himself and cast a cloud not simply over one ethnic group but across an entire industry. Some of those interviewed cited Stephen Glass, the former New Republic writer who was fired for manufacturing quotes, subjects and, in same cases, entire articles and is now cashing in on his notoriety with a novel. If Blair is being held up as a symbol of black people, why hasn’t Glass been treated as an emblem of white ethics, they ask?

“I don’t think it’s an issue of race. I think it’s an issue of ethics and that anyone could have a lapse of judgment,” said Ethel Monique Johnson, 25, associate editor of upscale, an Atlanta-based magazine. She also said that although part of the blame obviously lies with Blair, those who let it go on for so long also have to be held to account.

Back in the Cooke days

For many mid-career and older African American journalists and former journalists, the events of the last few weeks have triggered memories of starting their own careers a generation ago, around the time when it was revealed that Janet Cooke, a black Washington Post reporter, had largely fabricated a Pulitzer Prize-winning story.

“Once again it’s that double jeopardy thing we have,” said Linda Jones, a reporter for the Dallas Morning News. “We always say we have to work twice as hard to prove ourselves.”

Neil Henry, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and former Washington Post reporter, recently wrote a piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education, “To My Former Students: How Race Works,” in which he warned that because of Blair, “Your every mistake will be magnified, your every step scrutinized, especially if you are young, smart, and ambitious.” But he urged his young colleagues to stick with their chosen craft: “You’ve earned your right to practice your brilliance.”

In a phone interview, Henry said, “From my vantage, what’s happening now has very little, if anything, to do with issues of diversity. It has a lot more to do with the corporate pressure of the New York Times and with somebody who was troubled and immature.” (Newsweek reported this week that Blair had recently been in treatment for “a history of alcoholism, cocaine abuse and manic depression.”)

Some other experienced journalists are urging younger colleagues not to be discouraged by the Blair situation. When Angelo Henderson launched his journalism career many years ago, he said, “I was really green and I didn’t feel like I got a lot of support from my direct editor.” There were few other African Americans in the newsroom where he worked, and at one point a boss told him he should look for another job because he wasn’t cut out to be a reporter.

In 1999, Henderson, then at the Wall Street Journal, won the Pulitzer Prize, journalism’s highest accolade, for feature writing. Now with the Detroit News, Henderson said he spoke last week with a young African American reporter whose editor had questioned him about a story he’d written “with a lot of attitude,” Henderson said. “He wasn’t sure if that was a Jayson Blair spinoff kind of thing.”

“Unfortunately,” Henderson said, “the negative stuff always sticks to African Americans.”

But DeLano Massey, 24, a reporter at the Belleville News-Democrat in Illinois, called Blair “just another pebble in the road” for African American journalists. “There’s going to be more struggles; it’s not going to end because of Jayson Blair,” said Massey. “I’ve got to continue to be on my game. I can’t sit in a corner and sulk.”