How media companies are trying to make their newsrooms as diverse as the markets they serve

Media companies are still at work to meet the pledges they made in 2020 to diversify their staff.

Publishers like BuzzFeed, Inc., Hearst, Vox Media, G/O Media and the Los Angeles Times have made incremental improvements, according to their latest self-reported data, with more non-white people in their workforces compared to previous years.

But this progress raises an important question: what should be considered the benchmark for media companies’ DE&I goals? While the latest U.S. Census numbers show the country’s population is around 62% white, the benchmarks at some of these companies seem to revolve around becoming more reflective of the markets and audiences they serve.

National numbers of working-age population can be “a good starting point” for publishers who have a U.S.-based audience, but it’s also important for companies with larger operations in specific markets to reflect those communities too, said Matt Krentz, DE&I global chair at Boston Consulting Group.

The L.A. Times, for example, compares its employees against the demographics of L.A. County, as benchmarks. Over the next four years, the company’s goal is to “achieve a newsroom where Latinos make up at least one-quarter of our staff,” its diversity report reads. To get to that goal, execs are planning this year to adopt a new candidate-sourcing tool to monitor diversity indicators for potential candidates for future roles, revamping job descriptions to ensure they use inclusive language, implementing metrics “to monitor adherence to recruitment procedures and hold managers accountable,” training managers on behavioral interviewing “to ensure that selection decisions are based on objective and fair criteria” — as well as creating new editorial positions to cover communities of color.

The goal at BuzzFeed is to have its “employee population represent the world around us and the audience that we are trying to serve,” said Dionna Scales, director of diversity, inclusion & belonging and learning & development at BuzzFeed Inc. While the company doesn’t have “a particular target number in mind,” Scales wants “to see diversity increasing” in three groups — race and ethnicity, gender and gender identity and representatives from the LGBTQ+ communities.

At Hearst, it’s a bit vaguer. When asked if the company has set goals on the path to diversifying its workforce, a spokesperson said: “Our overall goal is to show progress every year and come closer to mirroring the markets we serve.”

However, it’s not just about hiring more non-white employees. It’s also about retaining talent, and promoting them to senior roles, according to Krentz. “At the company-wide level, moving these types of numbers is difficult and takes time,” he said. Krentz identified three main factors to consider when working to improve workforce diversity: the people you hire, and the retention and promotion of those employees.

Below are some of the diversity statistics Digiday is compiling in a running breakdown of publishers’ self-reported data.