Hispanic workers are underrepresented in the media industry compared to their representation in the rest of the U.S. workforce. Unfortunately, little progress has been made over the past decade when it comes to this under-representation, according to a new report on workforce diversity by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The report includes an analysis of data collected between 2010 and 2019 by the U.S. Census Bureau, as well as data from other government agencies. Media industry subsectors studied include radio and television; cable and other subscription programming; motion picture and video; newspaper and periodical publishing; internet publishing and broadcasting, and sound recording.
The overall percentage of Hispanic employment in all aspects of the media industry over the past decade was 12%, compared with 17% for all industries. Hispanic women were even more under-represented, making up only 30% of Hispanics employed in media occupations. The report finds only an estimated 1% increase in Hispanic representation in media fields from 2010 to 2019, compared to the 3% overall Hispanic employment increase during the same period.
A big part of the problem is lack of representation at top levels of leadership, where there is most opportunity to shape the future of the sector. Only 4% of senior executives and managers in media companies are Hispanic, the report found, based on analysis of 2014-2018 data from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
Invisible women
The lack of representation is even more stark when it comes to Hispanic women. According to Census Bureau data drawn from 2015-2019, 10% of all media occupations during that time were filled by Hispanic people, and only 3% were Hispanic women. The disparity varied by subfield. For example, while 12% of media photographers were Hispanic, only 2% of those were women.
Of the 11% of actors that were Hispanic, only 4% were Hispanic women. Just 14% of television, video, and film camera operators and editors were Hispanic, of which only 3% were women. However, Hispanic women were more equally represented compared to Hispanic men in writing, editing, and news journalism.
Challenges to representation include:
Financial hurdles to entry and retention in media fields
Barriers to media-related education, including cost and awareness
Access to professional networks and internships
Difficulty meeting union requirements such as work experience levels
Lack of diversity among talent agents and other decision-making roles, which can result in the perception of lower demand
Representation matters
While Hispanic people remain under-represented in media careers, they are actually over-represented among consumers of motion pictures. According to a 2021 study by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, 25% of movie-goers during 2007-2019 were Hispanic, generating in 1.7 trillion in consumer spending. However, only 4.2% of directors of the 100 top grossing films during that time were Hispanic (61 out of 1,447) and only three were Hispanic women.
A recent Nielson report reinforces this unbalanced situation. It found that, while all audiences are leaning into streaming, the story is more pronounced for Hispanic audiences, as 43.6% of Latinos’ total TV viewing in July 2022 was attributed to streaming platforms. However, the report also found that many Hispanics feel that accurate representation is in decline.
The Annenberg study also found that roles available to Hispanic performers often stereotyped Hispanic people as criminals or foreigners. Not only do Hispanic audiences deserve to see themselves fairly and accurately represented in media, but all audiences benefit from experiencing more realistic and multifaceted perspectives.
The data gap problem
A big problem for federal oversight is the data gap. FCC and EEOC efforts to enforce anti-discrimination and EEO rules have been hampered by problems sharing data among agencies, the unreliability of self-reported data from media companies, and a lack of data on union compliance and union member demographics. The federal report recommends better data sharing between the EEOC and FCC regarding discrimination charges filed, and an improved approach for obtaining demographic data from unions.
What can be done?
Federal agencies are conducting compliance evaluations, random audits, and periodic reviews, sharing best practices, and operating a training institute. The FCC formed a federal advisory committee that advises on issues such as how to facilitate entry of small businesses owned by women and people from historically disadvantaged groups into the media industry. The Department of Labor (DOL) sponsors apprenticeship programs, and the FCC started an incubator program for radio broadcasters.
Meanwhile, major media companies have announced measures including:
Targeted recruitment efforts
Partnerships with multicultural advocacy organizations
Processes to identify and address pay inequity
Targeted development programs, including incubators and apprenticeships
Strategic succession planning among leadership
Incentives for leadership such as making achievement of diversity and inclusion objectives a factor in determining performance bonuses
Funding initiatives such as allocating funds to support content created by members of underrepresented groups
For the next decade to result in more progress than the last, media companies need to hold themselves accountable for reaching the representation goals they’ve set and publicized.
When it comes to the representation and visibility of women across all media platforms, the industry still comes up short. That’s what The Status of Women In the US Media 2021, a report by Women’s Media Center (WMC), — an organization founded by Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda, and Robin Morgan — found. Among the U.S.’s top five Sunday news shows more than two-thirds of the guests were men, and most of those guests were white men. While research into gender representation in prime-time broadcast and cable news, print, digital, and wires found that women told only 41% of stories, and just 15% of sports stories.
“This report will help to hold news media accountable for the persistent inequalities in media,” said Steinem in the report .“ Women must be visible and powerful in all aspects of media if American society is ever to be a real democracy.” While the struggle continues, strides are being made — thanks, in part, to top down initiatives.
The gender gap is closing — slowly
According to the Global Media Monitoring Project, things are slowly improving globally. However, the numbers make the U.S. media look like a beacon of hope in terms of inclusion and equality. Between 1995 to 2020, across 120 nations, the number of female news sources and subjects increased from 16% to 24% in newspapers, 15% to 24% in radio news, 21% to 26% in TV news, and 25% to 27% online.
Coverage during Covid-19 was particularly startling, with WMC reporting women comprised just 5% of experts in science, technology, engineering and math, and a third of people quoted in 146,867 articles about the pandemic, in the likes of The New York Times and USA Today.
“One productive step forward would be for media companies to release employment numbers by gender, race, and position,” said Julie Burton, President and CEO, in WMC’s report. “This transparency would allow comprehensive tracking of progress or regress for diverse women in the workplace. We recommend that managers and editors establish standards that require producers, bookers, and journalists to make sure the experts interpreting news stories include representative numbers of women and people of color to ensure that stories are told with authenticity and accuracy.”
Driving diversity with data
The WMC has a database for this exact purpose. SheSource connects journalists, bookers and producers with more than 1,000 female, media-friendly experts in a number of fields, ranging from politics to technology. It is these experts that a growing number of media organizations are seeking out and putting center stage. The BBC launched its 50:50 Project in 2016 to push for gender parity in its content using a data-driven methodology to monitor its content. What started in one newsroom has become a global initiative, used by 150 external partners, spanning 30 countries. These include the Financial Times, Australia’s ABC News and Times Radio, as well as partners in academia, conference businesses, law, public relations and the corporate world.
“It is well established in the BBC and we have got 750 teams filling in spreadsheets every day of every month,” says Miranda Holt, 50:50 External Partners Lead. “It’s very empowering to content makers, because it’s about what you can control. For example, we don’t count politicians or people in the news, but we do count the number of women we interview about that news. It’s about collecting data to effect change.”
In the most recent Impact Report report in March 2022, 61% of all BBC teams reached 50% representation of women in their content. While external partners (of whom 70 out of 145 shared their data) showed a 73% improvement in female representation, after one year of sharing data.
Bloomberg’s New Voices is another successful initiative, which has already made significant strides in amplifying the voices of women. Since launching in early 2018, outside guest appearances of women on Bloomberg Television have increased from 10% to 26%. The program has also provided media training to over 180 women all around the globe, who have gone on to appear more than 530 times on Bloomberg Television, as well as other media outlets.
Equity at every level
Another way to ensure gender equity in content, is to ensure equity in content creators. If the newsroom doesn’t reflect society, the content it produces isn’t likely to either. Even though women outnumber men in journalism programs and colleges, they become the minority voice soon after entering the workforce. On average, women represent 41.7% of newsroom employees and produce 37% of reports. Furthermore, men account for 69% of all newswire bylines published by the Associated Press and Reuters, 63% of prime-time news anchors or correspondents, and write 60% of all online news.
Emma Tucker is the first female editor of the Sunday Times in 100 years and says she is all too aware of the impact her newsroom has on its readership. “We are very conscious of the need to diversify our newsrooms,” Tucker says. “It’s a work in progress, but we are aware of it. For example, we encourage applications from as broad a pool as possible to our graduate and apprenticeship schemes and we are making strides there. We know that if we want to grow our audience and build new cohorts of Sunday Times subscribers, we need to produce content that matters to a more diverse audience.”
Holt agrees it makes good commercial and economic sense to increase female representation in the newsroom and beyond. While 50:50 is about content and not about content creators, it naturally has a knock-on effect.
“The BBC has set new targets for the end of 2023 for our workforce to aim for 50% women representation, 20% Black, Asian and minority ethnic, 12% disabled and 25% from lower socio-economic backgrounds,” explains Holt. “These figures are based on the demographics of the UK, and as the national broadcaster it’s the people of the UK who pay for BBC content, so we have to represent them. And senior leaders are being held to this.”
Leadership is at the heart of a recent report by Reuters Institute, which analyzed the gender breakdown of top editors in 240 major online and offline news outlets in 12 different markets, across five continents. The results are shocking with women representing just 21% of the 179 top editors, despite the fact that, on average, 40% of journalists are women. The good news is that the U.S. and U.K. appear to be flying the flag for female leaders in the media, as half or more of new top editors appointed there in the last year were women.
Closing the pay gap
Not only are there fewer female reporters, they also earn less than their male colleagues, according to the WMC report. At the Associated Press there is a pay gap of $15,000 between white, male journalists and black, female reporters, while female reporters on the LA Times take home $14,334 less than their male counterparts. Similarly, at the New York Times, for reporters with annual salaries of $150k or more, only 36% are women. Working at the Washington Post? Women can expect to be paid 86 cents for every dollar white men are paid.
However, there are exceptions. Walt Disney Co. has just released data on employee earning by race and gender for the first time, revealing that women earn 99.4% of men. However, as Natasha Lamb, a managing partner at Arjuna Capita who put forward the proposal for the report, points out: “Disney is stepping into an elite group that are showing leadership on pay equity.” Transparency, it seems, is still a rarity rather than the norm.
While we should applaud these organizations working toward gender equity there is still much work to do. One reason could be that leaders in news media across the world believe their organizations already do a good job in terms of gender diversity, and therefore do not collect or make available data about their diversity. Or they don’t even have anyone formally in charge of this vital process.
But this has to change. Greater transparency is key, with media companies releasing employment numbers by gender and position. While creating new talent strategies to support and promote women in media, will ensure the “pipeline” excuse is buried deep underground, once and for all. According to Katica Roy, the founder and CEO of Pipeline Equity, these strategies should include hiring, pay, promotion, performance, and potential.
Representation leads to engagement
The word “engagement” is constantly used in media circles, but you can’t engage with your audience without representing the diversity of their communities. “Ultimately, any company that creates content should be thinking about how they appear to the external world, and how they represent society fairly,” says Holt. “This leads to diversity in the workforce at every level in a dynamic way, by identifying people, progressing people, and retaining those people. Only then can the media and its content truly reflect and represent women. Only then we will truly have gender equity.”
DCN’s editorial director Michelle Manafy interviews Nicole Carroll, the Editor-in-chief of USA Today and Aja Whitaker-Moore the Executive Editor of Axioson Newsroom innovation: What’s the future of storytelling at the Collision conference, which was held in Toronto, Canada June 22-24, 2022.
[Full transcript below.]
WATCH/LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Michelle Manafy
I’m back! But I’m in good company. I’ve got some terrific speakers here joining me to talk about newsroom innovation. If we could, I feel like the topic is just huge. If maybe you’d like to kick us off with what the heck does it even mean?
Nicole Carroll
You know, I think innovation now, in the olden days, it was always tech and what’s the next product? And what’s the next thing? And I think now honestly, it’s about engagement is like how do we truly authentically engage with our audiences. And that could be tech that could be in person storytelling, that could be, you know, lots of different ways. I also think innovation always is just about to keep moving forward, you know, every generation of journalists is going to do it a little bit differently. And I think we’ve got to find our way. So, I think about innovation, not just in a technology sense, but literally everything we do in hiring, and how do we fund our journalism? How do we connect with our audiences? We’ve got to keep moving forward.
Michelle Manafy
Aja, anything you want to add to that?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
No, I mean, I think you’ve covered a lot of it. And from the actors perspective, you know, we’re a startup. And so everything that we do is kind of innovative, in our opinion. And we were born of, you know, we thought a problem, which was, there’s too much information, and people don’t know how to keep up with it, they don’t know how to access it. And, you know, we think that our promise is innovative in the sense that we came up with a new format, came up with a new delivery mechanism, and are coming up with new ways to reach an audience on an everyday basis. So that’s our version of innovative, I think.
Michelle Manafy
So let’s go back to Axios then for a second. How do product and editorial work together in your organization, and how do you drive innovation in that relationship?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Yeah, I mean, pretty closely, because, you know, like I said, you know, we are focused on smart brevity and packaging things in a way that people want to digest them. And that means that we’re mobile first. And that means that everything we do has to be looked at from a product perspective, how are we delivering lists in a mobile friendly format? How is our app working? How are we delivering products to people, you know, in the way that they want them. So we work really closely together with a product team that I think understands journalism and understands news in a way that is really important.
Michelle Manafy
I mean: easy for you to say, “built from the ground up.” But let’s talk about USA Today. Like, is there a tight integration of product and editorial, editorial, huge,
Nicole Carroll
we’re, you know, we’re one of the OG startups, but we were actually smart, brevity 40 years ago, and we’re pretty, you know, made fun of because of that. So I’m you know, I’m glad to see the world has, you know, come around to that you can get good information in smaller amounts of words or video. So I, I’m really proud of the work we’ve done. But yes, we are really tight with our product teams, the fact that we just want to call with them this morning. You know, we’re constantly looking at not here’s what we should do. But what is the outcome you’re looking for? And then working together? How do we get to that outcome? We try not to go into it with the solution you go into it with what’s the outcome you’re looking for, and what do we need to bring to that equation?
Michelle Manafy
So one of the things you touched on in like your “what is innovation” was: staffing, diversity, leadership, those those issues… Can you tell me a little bit — let’s start with USA Today — about how you’re approaching leadership and recruiting with an eye to fostering innovation to fueling it.
Nicole Carroll
It’s never been more important to recruiting and what we’re doing right now. And I don’t know if how many of you are in the industry. But there’s the great journalism shuffle going on right now. I mean, everybody is moving somewhere else. Right now, there’s a real fight for talent and leadership. And I think people want to be part of authentic companies, who are really trying to again, I always say our job is to spread truth, you know, to engage with our audiences. And so showing a path having mentorship programs showing an opportunity for leadership, showing industry leadership is really important to creating the culture that will keep people in our organization. We’ve made the pledge at Guenette, that we want our newsrooms to reflect our communities by 2025. And we measure ourselves every year against that benchmark around racial diversity. I measure it every quarter at USA Today and report that to the staff. I think it’s really important we hold a mirror up to ourselves and be really honest about how we’re doing.
Michelle Manafy
How about Axios? What what what is the approach? How are you thinking about like, what is this newsroom? What is the staffing what does the leadership mean, to our ability to be innovative?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Yeah, I mean, I think we we agree at that at the start the diversity of our newsroom should reflect the diversity of our audience. And that will then you know, result in diversity of coverage and that’s really what we’re striving towards. You know, our founders are committed to that goal as well. You know, in the fall, we’re releasing a smart brevity book. And they dedicated the proceeds the advance from that book to fund a fellowship program that we’re really proud of where we’re focusing on hiring from diverse communities in underrepresented backgrounds, to mentor them into Axios. And focusing on developing a beat developing the next generation of leaders that we think is, you know, missing from journalism right now. And it’s something that is a part of, you know, our newsroom recruiting our newsroom leadership. Axios is led by two women of color. And myself, and our editor in chief, Sara Gu. And it’s something that we you know, walk, talk, live, breathe and think, is the future of innovation at our company and everywhere, so we’re really focused on it.
Michelle Manafy
Alright, so let’s shift gears a little bit. We there’s been a kerfluffle, of late around the social presence of journalists online, rather spectacular, blow up, in fact, quite visibly on social media. For for Axios, let’s start there. How are you balancing the desire for reporters to have a social presence to leverage that social presence? With your standards?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Yeah, and when I think we’re, we’re not like, any, you know, we’re similar to every other media organization out there, that’s figuring out, you know, how to balance that, but we’ve been really proud of our track record so far, you know, in the past five years, you know, we we’ve really just said to our staff, we trust you. You arer adults. Represent yourselves represent Axios the way that you, you know, would expect to in public. And that’s actually what’s happened. So I think we are, you know, proud of how we’ve done it so far. And we’ll continue to act accordingly on social platforms, and still be able to share our journalism with the world engage with people in a responsible way. And I think we’re all doing that.
Nicole Carroll
I know that at USA Today, the social presence is a big part of the work. So how are you setting your standards and communicating to your staff that this is important? But you still have to represent our brand.
Right? I mean, we know that, you know, our integrity and our fairness. And all of that is just the bedrock of what we are. And so we want to make sure that we represent our way ourselves that way. On social, we tell people, we want you to bring your authentic selves, we want you to bring your lived experiences. But obviously, we can’t slip into advocacy. And I say this all the time: The power you have as journalists, to choose stories to tell stories to spread stories, is so much more power than you’re going to have in that tweet. And so you know, again: Bring your true selves, bring your authentic selves, but but let’s not tip into advocacy that could harm the integrity of our brand.
Michelle Manafy
So I think another issue digitally in particular is the 24 hour news cycle, right? We’re all facing this kind of pressure to constantly be online, constantly be informing our our consumers. But how are you balancing the 24 hour news cycle with your again, with your standards and your goal to provide actual, trustworthy news?
Nicole Carroll
Well, we’re really lucky and that we’re spread across the country from, you know, Washington all the way to LA. And then we also have a London bureau. So, we really are on 24/7, which, which makes things a little bit easier. But you know, I tell people 100 times out of 100, I’d rather be second than wrong. 100 times out of 100. So if you’re ever in doubt, don’t do it. Double check it triple check it, I’m going to be fine. If we’re last as long as we’re right.
Michelle Manafy
I see a lot of scoops and exclusives at Axios. So how about you? Is there a difference there? Is there pressure?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Yeah, Imean, I think that our philosophy is a little bit different. We’re not there to deliver you every piece of news. We’re there to deliver you what you need to know, and the things that are important. And so I think that our model is a little bit different in that we package our version of the 24 news cycle into a newsletter suite. So if you’re getting Mike Allen’s AM, and PM and Finish Line newsletters, that’s what we call our daily essentials. And he’s set a really diverse kind of breakfast table for you in the morning. Happy Hour, four in the evening. And he’s telling you the stories that you need to know and so we’re curating that and packaging that I think in a different way than you know, a news wire or or a news organization that’s giving you breaking news 24/7.
Michelle Manafy
It’s interesting. We used to call those “newspapers” where we curated what you need to know i the course of a day. I do think it’s interesting. The last panel was very much touching on this deluge; this fire hose, and how we can discern. And of course you know, I advocate for trustworthy sources like y’all.
Nicole Carroll
Yeah, absolutely.
Michelle Manafy
All right. So, innovation in delivery and formats. I know you specifically mentioned Axios being mobile first. And I think that’s for a little while there that was almost a cliche industry. But I think it’s, it’s a given, is it not? Are you thinking a lot about innovating in terms of say, Tik Tok? Let’s just throw out like, are you looking at new formats?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Tick Tok? Not so much. Not yet. I mean, we have experimented, I think on all the platforms, you know, we do Twitter spaces, we do curated videos on You know, on Instagram, I think Tik Tok is an amazing platform. And a lot of I think publishers have figured out a great way to do it. But I think it actually is we, you know, right now, you know, we really are interested in podcasts, we’ve found a way to tell long form stories in smart brevity, through audio, which, you know, is is challenging, but we’ve done it with our How it Happened podcast series. It’s got, you know, 3 million downloads, and it’s really resonating with the audience. And we also have, you know, a daily podcast that we think is, you know, really innovative and how we’re telling stories in, you know, 10 minutes a day, and our audience is telling us, you know, they can’t get enough of it. So, I think that’s definitely interesting to us. You know, we just hired our first SEO editor and we’re really focused on you know, packaging our stories for social and, you know, making sure we’re we’re meeting people where they are.
Michelle Manafy
I know that social audio has been really good for you guys too. How about USA Today. What do you do?
Nicole Carroll
Well, it’s funny: I was just checking or TikTok I think we’re just checking to see how many followers I think we’re over a million somebody check me so we’re over a million and when we you know, I love it. My son’s 16 He gets all his news on Tik Tok. So whenever we show up in his feed, he’s really proud. He’s like, there’s my mom. So I mean, we’re gonna be in the spaces where people are, we’re doing Twitter Spaces, we were on Clubhouse, we were doing all the things. Really, it’s because we just want people to know that we’re there with the information they need, again, whether it’s Instagram, or Tik Tok, or a newsletter, or a podcast. And it just helps the overall reach and hopefully, you know, to your point about trust and media, if they see us enough, if they see that we’re right enough, if they see that we’re responsible enough, I want to develop that trust. And so I think it’s not just about the audience. It’s about developing that relationship and trust and like, Oh, I’ve seen you three or four times now. You know, I I know your real I know, you’re a trustworthy news source. And that’s really important to me.
Michelle Manafy
Yeah and that’s interesting, because you both mentioned, you know, being where they are.
Nicole Carroll
Yeah.
Michelle Manafy
But then your values like perpetuated values and your ethos there to build that trusted relationship.
Nicole Carroll
Well, it’s funny when the last join some of the January 6, and we made some decisions about, you know, we didn’t errors, certain of Donald Trump’s speeches, because I did, they were misinformation, and we chose not to air them live. We would go back and we would package them so we could fact check them before we did it. I actually went on Tik Tok. And I told people why we were doing that. And I did a video like: Hey, here’s we may be hearing about this. And this is why we’re doing that we think it’s important to fact check before we put information out there. So it was kind of fun to be able to talk directly to that audience
Michelle Manafy
Addressing that that demand for immediacy. Head on,
Nicole Carroll
Right, exactly.
Michelle Manafy
We want it now. But here’s why we’re not.
Why don’t you tell me each of you just very quickly, a project or product that you’ve done recently that you feel is particularly innovative?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Sure. I mean, I think Axios local is probably our biggest project of the year. And, you know, talking about rebuilding trust, we want to meet people in their communities, and talk to them about the economic situation where they live, the lifestyle opportunities, where they live, also, the political landscapes where they live. So we’ve stood up in 17 cities, and we’re going to be in, I think, another 25 by the end of this year. So, we’re really proud of that expansion and trying to recapture some of what’s been lost in the local news landscape. And, you know, it’s really resonating with audiences, we’ve had over a million subscribers in those local markets, generated, you know, 5 million in revenue last year from loca. And so we think that’s, you know, a really big part of the future of Axios. And hopefully the future of restoring trust and journalism in America.
Michelle Manafy
No small feat.
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Yeah, just a little, just a little project.
Michelle Manafy
Just a Tuesday. How about at USA Today?
Nicole Carroll
Sure. Well, I really hope you guys will check out some of the AR we’ve been doing. And again, this leans more into the tech, but it’s really cool tech. So you can we did a series this past year on 1961 and the importance of what happened in 1961, around voting rights to what’s happening today. And our AR team built this amazing experience where you could actually ride the bus as it was being attacked by rioters and you can hear the story and you can you can you can hear we brought in historical video and audio. And you really feel like you can see the flames around you and you are really immersed in that experience. So, you know, again, we’re trying to bring the truth to people and help them understand news that empathy that you get from immersive storytelling is really important. Not just reading it; you’re experiencing it. So really proud of some of the work we’ve done on AR.
Michelle Manafy
That’s a great example. Just before we’re done here: How about something that you think that everyone is talking about in media right now, that maybe is hype or that maybe you’re a little skeptical about?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Just in general?
Michelle Manafy
In the digital media industry. Hype cycle?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
I don’t know,
Michelle Manafy
Alright, we can do NFTs? [laughter]
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Well, we do have a newsletter that covers crypto and I think we do talk about that, you know, quite a bit. And NFTs have their place in the crypto world.
Unknown Speaker 15:48
Oh ho ho. No, it doesn’t have to be NF T’s. Metaverse can do another one. You guys bullish?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
I mean, I think the Metaverse is interesting. If you think about it from the standpoint of like, we’re just building it now. You know, we don’t actually know what it’s going to be.
Michelle Manafy
Is it going to be the Facebook-averse. Is that? Or is it going to be an open platform?
Aja Whitaker-Moore
I guess it depends on who you ask.
Michelle Manafy
We’re not going to ask Mark. Apparently, he didn’t want to talk to us about this.
Nicole Carroll
Which is weird. So weird. I mean, I think we just have to keep moving forward. Like I said at the beginning in all these spaces, and here’s the cool thing, we get to invent them, right? We get to say what they’re gonna be. So that’s awesome. We’re like, you know, I know, there’s a lot of stress in media right now. But I’m really excited about where we’re at right now in media, we’re, we get to invent the future. And that’s pretty cool.
Michelle Manafy
All right. The very last thing: leadership, like if you are looking out into the industry, and you want to just impart one piece of wisdom about leading an innovative team, no pressure. Aja: pressure.
Aja Whitaker-Moore
I mean, I think it’s really just about having a culture of activation and being able to experiment with an idea and nurture it from experiment, you know, to fruition. I think we do that, you know, every day at Axios. And really, every day in media. Every day, we’re writing a story. It’s like, you know, where’s this going to take us at? Where’s this gonna go? And just continuing, you know, to do that?
Michelle Manafy
I love that.
Nicole Carroll
Yeah. I think it’s all about the people. No matter what you do, you’ve got to create the culture. You’ve got to believe in people you’ve got to have, I think I call realistic optimism. We are in a tough world. But you realistically have to think “we can do these things.” And you have to impart that to people. You have to have a culture of “yes, let’s try it.” What can you do? What can you do in a month? What can you do in two months? We have to keep moving forward.
Michelle Manafy
Love it. Well, thank you both. I sincerely appreciate this. It was a great conversation and went to fast.
DCN is proud to support our members and the health of the digital media industry overall. Thus, we are pleased to share some of the incredible work our members and other media companies are doing to recognize Juneteenth and its cultural significance in the American experience.
Anita Zielina founded the Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership at CUNY in 2019. Since that time, she has shaped the leadership skills of executives from local media, start-ups and major outlets such as The New York Times, Reuters, Bloomberg, and ProPublica.
“I just built the program that I wish I had a bit earlier in my career,” explains Zielina. Like so many in our industry, she says “I started out as a journalist and I never had the management training, the product training,” she says. “I never learned how to speak the language of the business and strategy side of things.”
An Executive MBA at INSEAD, addressed some of those needs, but “there was not one other person from media in my class,” Zielina observes. In a cohort of 120 people, all of her peers were from consumer brands, oil and gas consultancies, banks, and the like. Nonetheless, she says, “I loved the experience.” But she could see that there was a need for such a program tailored to the media industry.
Zielina has set out to fill this need at CUNY. She built a program offering elements of a traditional MBA – with classes on strategy and organizational change – alongside a “comprehensive leadership growth development program,” and a focus on media best practices.
In a wide-ranging interview, Zielina – who is returning to Austria to launch her own consultancy focused on digital and leadership transformation – shared her views on the key challenges facing the news and media industries.
Here are five of the core elements that emerged from our conversation, with a focus on supporting future leaders – and the challenges facing them – in the media industry:
1. Training the next generation of leaders
Zielina has extensive leadership experience in media including stints as Chief Product Officer & Editor-in-Chief Digital at the Swiss-based NZZ, Digital Editor and Deputy Editor-In-Chief at Stern the German current affairs magazine, and as an Editor at the Austrian newspaper Der Standard. Looking back at previous roles she says, “I think I did a decent job. But I had to teach myself a lot of the skills you need as a leader.”
Those skills include an ability to navigate the intersections of business product, audience, editorial, technology and innovation. They are not necessarily acquired in the newsroom, she suggests, and the media context is often missing from traditional business programs.
“Our industry has a tradition of people rising to leadership roles,” she says. “They were great journalists. Then suddenly they become managers, and they do not get the support that they need.”
The need for this type of support is clear when looking at the graduates from CUNY’s executive programs. “Half of the people in that cohort that just graduated have taken on a larger role throughout the year or immediately after the program,” Zielina told us, “either in their own organization or in a different organization.” The training CUNY provided has been crucial to enabling them to effectively step into these leadership roles.
2. Strategic vision and execution
“There are some similarities in organizations whether they are large or small,” Zielina says when asked to share the biggest challenges for participants in the CUNY’s Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership. “Number one is strategy.”
Shortcomings in communication, as well as the need for strategy to continually evolve and be updated, are key factors. Even when strategy exists, she says “it’s not clearly communicated. In other cases, the strategy “is old, it’s faulty, it needs to be adapted to new challenges.”
To address this, Zielina encourages leaders to think about whether their organization is prepared for transformation. They must focus on which audiences they want or need to reach, and how to ensure that appropriate resources are prioritized. Integral to this is a “talent pipeline” as well as clarity about the type of work culture you want to instill.
“The difference between an organization that successfully manages transformation, and an organization that doesn’t, is not necessarily that one has a strategy paper or slide deck while the other does not.”
At the heart of this are leader who can turn strategy “into products, into audience work, into services, into organizational structures, and the daily execution routine.”
3. Detoxifying the workplace
Implementation is about more than just the products you build, and the platforms you use, Zielina reminds us. People, ethics, and culture must not be overlooked.
The workplace is an area in which she believes change is long overdue. If not, then talented people will leave. For good. In fact, Zielina says, many are already gone.
She notes a generational shift whereby Millennials and Gen Z “are not willing to put up with the not-so-great culture and ethics anymore.” “They are opting out,” she says. Unfortunately, “these people are never going to come back if we lose them now.”
According to Zielina, the size of this issue is one that too few industry leaders grasp, although she believes the trend is “becoming more obvious.”
“Younger colleagues in this industry, are waking up to the fact that they don’t have to stay in places that are toxic. They don’t have to stay in places that don’t let them have impact.”
“I think it’s the big the big issue that we’ll have to tackle the next few years,” she says.
4. Making DEI commitments a reality
“A lot of tensions obviously revolve around women, people of color, [and people] from different socio-economic backgrounds, finally saying, ‘I want a seat at the table. And if I don’t get a seat at the table, I’m going to leave.’ So really prioritizing DEI is so crucial.”
Zielina feels that “there was a certain reckoning after the murder of George Floyd and we see movement there.” However, many organizations are failing to deliver on their DEI promises.
Too often, she says, we hear companies say “yes, we are prioritizing, but it was so hard to find a woman and it was so hard to find that person of color. So we took another white man, but next time, we’re definitely gonna do it.”
“If we don’t tackle the big underlying cultural issues of this industry, if we don’t make this industry more attractive, if we don’t make this industry more equitable, if we don’t make this industry a healthier, better and more supportive space, we are going to lose all those people,” she adds.
5. Updating outdated modes of human capital
Making the industry more attractive, Zielina suggests, includes learning from the creator economy and the great resignation.
“More folks are realizing maybe I don’t want [to work for] an employer, maybe I want to do my own thing. But I don’t want it to be a kind of hockey stick startup with venture capital, I just wanted to work for me. I want to tell my stories. I want to serve my audience, who I care about.”
“We are going to see more of that,” she says, which means rethinking collaboration and working with creative/journalistic talent. She also believes we will see increased emphasis on impact, flexibility, and hybrid work – issues that matter to growing numbers of the workforce.
“There is a huge disconnect between the corporate world, and specifically corporate HR and applicants and employees,” she cautions. “And this disconnect is getting bigger.”
“You can start that tomorrow,” she says, urging organizations to ask “whether our incentive systems, our HR processes, our way of work is still adequate for this day and age.”
Future plans
After she leaves CUNY, Zielina plans to continue to focus on ensuring organizations have the structures, skills and talents they need, “in the space of digital leadership and product.”
Zielina sees signs that a famously myopic industry is starting to look beyond national markets for solutions. “It makes me optimistic that it seems that we are getting a bit more global and a bit more international as an industry,” she says.
“Those best practices are really starting to be shared across borders, and that that I think is an a fantastic development. We need more of that,” Zielina adds, “and I hope to play a part in that in at least bridging that gap between the U.S. and Western Europe.”
“I had seen diversity initiatives flounder because they were too complicated or too negative an experience for people to take on.” BBC News presenter and 50:50 The Equality Project founder Ros Atkins told researchers at Behavioural Scientist in November 2020.
Atkins had created a data-driven initiative in 2017 to increase women’s representation on media content. According to the academics, it was “easy, attractive, social, and timely.”
While we see the challenges news organizations face as they seek to better represent society as a whole, we also see progress. That is progress that we, at 50:50, are keen to build upon.
Equity: Moving beyond gender
No pressure then as we look to move 50:50 beyond gender. The Behavioural Scientist article came out a month after the BBC announced that we were doing just that. We sought to see if 50:50 could increase disability and ethnic minority representation on media.
In October 2020, as the leader of the BBC’s 50:50 product, I voiced my belief that we could learn from how we had increased women’s representation in order to extend the scope of our work. That belief has been validated by the latest 50:50 Impact Report, which reveals the BBC’s data beyond gender for the first time.
Five years on from when 50:50 started, I believe we have demonstrated the benefits of increasing the diversity of voice on media content. Now, we need to sustain that. This year’s results builds on the progress made so far. It sets the foundations for further innovation that will further support content-makers in their mission to reflect the world around them.
Changing for the better
By March 2022, 250 BBC content teams had voluntarily signed up to monitor the disability and/or ethnicity make-up of their output. The good news is that the project continues to move the needle – in a range of areas of equity and representation.
Of those who submitted March data, 21% reached their disability target compared to 15% when they first started monitoring. For ethnic minority representation half reached their target, up from 47%.
Long term change
Some may argue that these sound like small increases. But to be frank: Any improvement is a good sign. I say this, knowing what pilot phase looked like. Some teams were starting at zero representation for disabled people. However, they persevered to move the dial.
Also, this project is about playing the long game. Equity and representation is not one and done. Far from it. The data suggests major gains can be made over time.
Of those monitoring disability for more than 18 months, 53% reached their targets in March. That’s up from 18% when they first started and a 35-percentage point increase. For teams monitoring ethnicity, over the same period, there was a 7-percentage point increase – up from 58% to 65%.
Lara Joannides, the BBC’s Creative Diversity Lead for 50:50, acknowledged there a lot more to do to increase diversity of voice on media content across the board.
“These results are an important milestone as we apply 50:50’s core principles for disability and ethnicity representation. They provide a solid foundation for us to build upon,” said Joannides. “This data allows is us to understand where we can improve, so now we need to go out and find more voices to create content that really reflects society.”
How it works
So how is 50:50 increasing diversity of voice? 50:50 is all about understanding where we are now, so we can make change for the future. Whether its disability, ethnicity or gender representation, 50:50 teams use the core principles Ros Atkins devised in 2017.
Using data to effect change, sees content-makers monitor their content in almost real-time. It mean they can share how they are doing at the next team debrief. Together, the team then decides on any actions needed to reach their monthly target.
Measure what you control, gives the framework for how teams monitor. As I often say, “you can’t change what you can’t control.” That goes for who appears on your control too. So, 50:50 teams are only monitoring who they choose to put on their output.
Never compromise on quality, is the paramount principle. The best contributor must always take part. 50:50 is about enriching storytelling with diversity of voice. To do that that voice has to be the best. As Atkins said, in relation to women, in Behavioural Scientist: “50:50 is not about keeping excellent men out of our programs—it’s about finding many more excellent women contributors.”
Setting targets
While the principles are a terrific foundation, you need to set tangible and realistic goals in order to move forward. When it came to increasing women’s representation it felt like a no-brainer. Overall, teams aim for 50% female contributors over the course of any given month. It is the reason our grassroots initiative is called 50:50.
These targets become more complex when you look at monitoring disability and ethnicity. In general, BBC UK teams work towards the Corporation’s diversity targets: 50% women, 20% Black, Asian and minority ethnic, and 12% disabled representation.
However, teams will adjust those targets in line with their specific audience demographics. For example, when it comes to ethnic minority representation for BBC Scotland, they would be aiming for 8% in line with their population. Meanwhile, BBC London is working towards a 50% target to reflect their audience.
Collecting the data
Armed with targets, teams need to collect the data. 50:50 has created two tailored approaches to collect data for disabled contributors and those from ethnic minority backgrounds.
As Joannides explained: “One is by perception, which is how 50:50 has always been done for gender. This means counting based on any publicly available information we have about the contributor. Whether it’s from social media or something they’ve told us themselves. Then the other way, which a small group of teams do, is by collecting actual data.”
Collecting actual data tends to be forms based. This method is being rolled out by BBC Devon across their daytime programming after a successful pilot, and also by 50:50 partners The British Fashion Council.
50:50 gender challenge
It is the second year that 50:50 partner organizations have published their March data alongside the BBC. The 50:50 partner network now spans 30 countries and includes 145 organizations from a wide range of sectors.
Miranda Holt, the external partners lead for 50:50, said the network had grown by 45 new members in the last 12 months.
“We work closely with NHK in Japan, and now reach as far as Mongolia – working with the Media Council there,” said Holt. “50:50 continues to expand in communications companies, law firms, industry regulators and the financial services sector. These organizations show how the 50:50 principles can be applied to any created content – from websites to events to publications. “
Overall, 72 partners submitted their data, up from 41 partners in 2021. Almost half (47%) reached 50% women. For those below the target of 50% women when they first started monitoring, 73% saw an improvement in the gender balance of their content.
As for the BBC when it comes to increasing women’s representation, 61% reached 50:50 compared to 35% when they first joined the project. The proportion of teams reaching 50:50 went up to 69% for those monitoring gender for at least four years.
Audience appreciation
What I find most heartening is that BBC audiences continue to notice an increase in women’s representation. And many are enjoying content more as a result.
In March, a survey of 2,032 BBC online users found that of women aged 16 to 34, 62% enjoyed content more. That’s up from 57% on the previous year, and 68% were consuming more content, an increase of 10 percentage points.
A 50:50 future
This year the BBC is celebrating 100 years of broadcasting. The Corporation’s mission continues to be about delivering value to all audiences, whoever and wherever they are.
BBC Director-General Tim Davie said: “The 50:50 Project plays a crucial role in finding new voices and helping us better reflect the audiences we serve.” He added: “It’s already made a huge impact on the BBC and our global partners. There’s potential to do so much more.”
And there is more to come, as BBC Creative Diversity Director June Sarpong explained: “50:50’s next steps will be to gather data on the representation of class within BBC content to see how well we reflect socio-economic diversity and – crucially – where we need to improve.”
She continued: “Can it be done? Well, as James Baldwin says, ‘nothing can be changed until it is faced.’ So it is heartening that 50:50 is starting to face this.”
Diversity in news media matters because it offers a voice to underrepresented communities and helps provides education to break down the barriers of prejudice. When the news media provides structural diversity – hiring, retention, and promotion – it better reflects the audiences it serves, and more accurately portrays society.
A recent study, Race and Leadership in the News Media 2022, from Reuters Institute, evaluates leadership diversity in the newsroom. The research includes a sample of 100 major online and offline news outlets in Brazil, Germany, South Africa, the U.K., and the U.S.
Key findings for the ten top online news outlets and ten top offline news outlets in each of these markets:
In total, 21% of the 82 top editors identify as nonwhite, compared to 43% of the general population across the five countries. However, excluding Africa from the analysis means only 8% of the top editors are nonwhite compared to 31% of the general population.
At the time of the analysis, Brazil, Germany, and the U.K. did not have a nonwhite top editor. In contrast, 33% of top editors are nonwhite in the U.S., increasing from 18% in 2021. Further, in South Africa, 73% of top editors are nonwhite, increasing from 60% in 2021.
Many journalists highlight the importance of diversity in the newsroom and its important impact on editorial decision-making. The Reuters research measures diversity in the newsroom and tracks its progress compared to industry studies across the globe.
Tracking change in the marketplace
American Society of News Editors (ASNE) research surveyed 293 news organizations in the U.S. in 2018. The study found that 23% of the newsroom employees included people of color represent and 26% for online-only news organizations. The research also shows that 79% had at least one woman among their top three editors, and 33% had at least one minority journalist in a top-three position.
The National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) in the U.K. used the 2020 Labour Force Survey (LFS) data to identify diversity in journalism. Their report shows women employed in journalism as a majority (53% compared to 47% of men). There was also a slight decrease in the proportion of white ethnic groups (94% to 92%) in journalism compared to 2018. Journalists working in the U.K. increased from 78,000 in 2018 to 96,000 in 2020. However, nonwhite journalists did not grow proportionately.
In Germany, the New German Media Makers (NdM), a nonprofit association representing media professionals with immigrant backgrounds, conducted research in 2020 among 126 editors-in-chief and 122 editorial offices. The study found only 6% of the editors-in-chief have an immigrant background. While most editors-in-chief generally rated diversity in editorial offices as necessary, they did little about it. The NdM made three important recommendations to editors-in-chief and closely monitor the news media.
Report for the whole society: diversity in a program or publication can increase reach, circulation, and opportunities to employ people from immigrant families.
Decision-makers must develop a strategy to attract journalists and staff with immigration histories.
Disclose diversity data transparently, create clear targets, and document.
News media owners and their editors need to accelerate diversity initiatives in their organizations. Reuters research and the previous studies show a slow transformation of the newsroom with nonwhite journalists and editors under-represented. Importantly, transparency and documentation are essential to share best practices for building a diverse newsroom across the globe.
No other business sector has more cultural relevance than media. Media shapes perception, but public perception deeply affects the media industry. Because of this, media companies need to identify the social discussions and issues in society and find a balance in addressing them without alienating their audience.
Reviews of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting frameworks, investor indices, and recent (2019 or later) materiality assessments published by companies participating (Axel Springer, BBC, Dentsu, ITV, and others) in the Responsible Media Forum.
Interviews with senior sustainability practitioners from media companies, including advertising, broadcast, entertainment providers, news publishing, and telecommunications.
Interviews with external experts, including ESG thought-leaders, investors, policymakers, non-governmental, organizations, and third sector (non-profits, social enterprises, cooperatives, etc.).
Identifying material issues
To build trust between a media company and its target audience, a company needs to take responsibility for its role in, and take a stand on, meaningful issues. There are consequences when a company fails to act. For example, Disney and its CEO, Bob Chapek face backlash due to company’s donations to Florida politicians who support the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Critics of Disney felt that that the company did not stand up for its LGBTQ employees, cast members, and guests. And fallout thus far has included widespread media coverage, employee walkouts and a public apology.
These sorts of situations are becoming increasingly prevalent. Thus, it is critical for organizations to understand the issues that are significant to staff, stakeholders, and their customers.
Responsible Media Forum defines material issues as “financially significant over the short to medium term.” These have the potential “to affect a key financial indicator, e.g., profits or revenue, by around five percent or more within two years.” These issues were found to be material: climate change, cyber security data privacy, diversity, equity & inclusion, people management, responsible content, skills development, sustainable value chain, and well-being.
Interestingly, both fake news and net neutrality are no longer identified as material issues as they were in the 2018 report. Important material issues for publishers to incorporate into their best practices.
Responding to material issues
While the media’s carbon footprint is relatively small, integrating climate change content can encourage behavioral shifts in society.
Data privacy is an essential practice of media companies. With privacy regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), becoming standard practices, publishers should communicate how they collect and use consumer data.
In 2018, the Responsible Media Forum now includes “equity” as part of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Equity refers to the creation of a level playing field and increased commitment to diversity in both developing and retaining talent and entry-level recruitment. This is an important issue among those under 40 years old. DCN’s research on Gen Z Digital Media Attitudes, Values & Behavior shows that both Gen Z and Gen Y see this as the foremost issue companies should care about today.
Responsible content is crucial for publishers. Media companies are responsible for their content across their portfolios and usage of intermediaries. Related concerns include diversity of output, editorial compliance, creative independence, transparent and responsible editorial policies, freedom of expression, impartial and & balanced output, and promotion of causes.
Media companies must invest in their employees. Skill development, including training and mentoring, are strong retention tactics, especially against tech platforms.
A sustainable value chain is important to manage. Media companies need to manage the upstream and downstream of their supply chain beyond their own needs to support.
The 2018 report expanded the definition of well-being to include a focus on mental health. With the Pandemic and employees working from home, it’s no surprise that mental stress is an integral part of the wellness category.
Other areas to watch
In addition, the Forum identified three additional categories to determine whether an issue did not meet its materiality threshold but still represented an important matter.
Strategic: an issue that can significantly affect the ability of the company to deliver its strategy in the medium to long term.
Operational: an issue that matters for internal, reputational, and efficiency but is neither material nor strategic.
Emerging: an issue that is not yet widely on the radar of a company but is increasing in importance and expected to become a material or strategic issue within the next two years.
Media plays a critical role in reflecting and responding to the needs of society. This report provides a starting point for media companies to access material issues and other key areas of potential concern in order to better meet audience expectations.
Publishers continue to remain highly focused on revenue diversification and the value of first party data according to new research from the Association of Online Publishers (AOP), a UK industry body that represents digital publishing companies. The AOP undertook its Digital Publishing: Meeting the Future survey to provide “a snapshot of how digital publishing companies across the UK are continuing to respond to the challenge to change.” The research offers a look at publishers’ business priorities and the future-readiness of the media industry.
The AOP carried out its survey between January 5 and February 9 of 2022. Of the 111 responses, 83% were from publishers and 17% from organizations providing solutions to the publishing sector.
Diversifying revenue streams
Across all types of publishers (B2B, B2C, or a combination), respondents said that their highest priority is developing new revenue streams through product innovation. Ensuring data privacy compliance and transparency ranked second.
The AOP’s publisher respondents ranked opportunities for revenue growth over the next three years. More than half (55%) feel that subscriptions are the big revenue opportunity right now, with lead generation-based revenues ranking second (33%). The report concludes that these findings mean that publishers are highly focused on building direct relationships with audiences and leveraging their first party data.
Audio and ecommerce tied for third (31%) in terms of revenue priorities, which points to continued revenue-model innovation. The research finds that both B2B and B2C publishers agreed that subscriptions have the most potential for growth. However, publishers that target both B2B and consumer audiences saw ecommerce as the most promising revenue generator.
Data dominates
While publisher concerns about ensuring privacy and providing transparency rank high, they clearly know the value of their first party data and seek to maximize its use. According to the report, publishers are focused on building the right ecosystem of commercial, data, and tech partnerships.
In the shadow of cookie deprecation, some publishers are considering collaborating on data initiatives. AOP found that, while 12% of publisher respondents are unsure of their next moves and 12% do not expect to collaborate, many publishers are either already collaborating (20%), are discussing collaborating (16%), or are open to the possibility of collaboration (40%).
The majority (75%) of publishers said that they are working to ensure that audience data informs everything they do and that they are investing in tools to help achieve this. Despite the emphasis on data, however, only 17% of publishers said that all their teams are aligned internally around their audience data. Half of the solutions provider respondents suggest that, while publishers understand being joined up internally around audience data is important, many don’t yet have a strategy in place to achieve their goals.
Workforce and workplace concerns
Interestingly, recruiting and retaining talent, and ensuring a diverse and inclusive workplace, are rated higher (tying for third place with “developing new first party data strategies”) than the tech-based challenges you might expect the digital publishing sector to be focused on.
Most respondents (75%) report that “supporting and retaining current employees” is their top priority when it comes to recruitment and workforce development. This was followed by adapting the publisher’s offering to appeal to new talent entering the industry.
Putting in place recruitment processes that eliminate bias and support the development of a more diverse workforce is ranked third here. However, when asked how they would describe their organization’s diversity, equity & inclusion (DE&I) strategy, respondents suggest confidence in their progress on this challenge. Just over half (51%) believe they have made good progress with areas for continued improvement, and 24% believe they have an effective DE&I strategy. Only 5% of respondents don’t believe they have a clear strategy on DE&I.
As Covid-19 restrictions are being eased in the UK and elsewhere, publishers are evaluating their working environments and plans to return to offices. This survey found that 37% of respondents say their ideal working pattern would be to work from the office two days a week and 24% would be happy to come in for the occasional key meeting, but primarily work from home.
Nearly a third (30%) of respondents expect their employers to be fully flexible and happy for them to choose to work as they wish. However, 66% believe they will be asked to work at least a few days in the office each week.
Clearly, the past couple of years have seen trends like ecommerce intensify and placed increased pressure on publishers to innovate. That innovation has, unsurprisingly, focused on product and revenue. However, it has also required publishers to reexamine workplace culture, recruiting, and retention strategies. The AOP’s survey finds that digital publishing companies that understand the bigger picture challenges and have identified many opportunities. However, it appears that they may still be working through the best tactics and strategies to provide the requisite competitive advantage moving forward.
When we talk about minority groups should we use BIPOC, POC, something different or nothing at all? It’s a question posed in America many times since the death of George Floyd in May 2020 – from Newsweek to The New York Times.
His murder sparked a similar debate across the pond over the United Kingdom’s equivalent acronym: Should BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) be used by British broadcasters?
Taking collective action
At the end of 2021, four of the UK’s major broadcasters formulated an answer. They committed to avoid using the collective term in their corporate communications, content and editorial news content. Instead, they would use more specific terms where available.
For Miranda Wayland, the BBC’s Head of Creative and Workforce Diversity and Inclusion, the departure from the catch-all term allows for a greater acknowledgement of the experience of people from different ethnic backgrounds.
“As a creative industry we are focused on increasing representation, so our content reflects society,” she said. “At the heart of representation is how we recognize people’s varied lived experiences and their identity. The more specific we are when describing someone’s heritage, the better we represent them. In turn, we create more inclusive and relevant content for our audiences.”
UK broadcasters – the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5/Viacom CBS UK – agreed to avoid “wherever possible” the BAME acronym following a report the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity. Commissioned by the BBC, the study stated that “A major concern, apparent in recent public responses to BAME, is that it homogenises culturally distinct social groups.”
A question of trust
Through interviews and audience research, the report’s authors found there was a lack of trust around the term BAME because of a belief that it has been used to hide failings in the representation of specific ethnic groups. They wrote: “Several interviewees illustrated this point by saying organisations are quick to announce hitting ‘BAME targets’ but what does that mean if there is still massive black under representation or east Asian representation.”
The researchers did acknowledge, however, that it would not be realistic to remove BAME terminology altogether because it is widely used in society. However, where BAME must be used, content-makers will strive to ensure that any use of the term is accompanied by an explanation. This will be achieved, for example, by stating that ”data for ethnic groups is unavailable.” Another solution is writing out the acronym in full – “black, Asian and minority ethnic” – to recognize the constituent groups that make up the collective term.
Sarita Malik, Professor of Media and Culture at Brunel University London and Academic Lead on the Report, said broadcasters need to acknowledge the importance of language as part of wider work to tackle racial disparities.
“Language is a really important issue for media and cultural organizations to look at when trying to tackle inequalities,” she said. “At the heart of the issue is a power dynamic; a power dynamic between those who have the power to label and those who are labelled. Our research identified a mostly negative sentiment towards the grouping of people under collective terms.”
She added that “Committing to use language in more culturally nuanced ways can help to deepen understandings of different ethnic groups. This is one of the ways in which trust can be built with audiences.”
Supporting cultural nuance
As Professor Malik observes, broadcasters need to give their content-makers the right support and resources so they can get their language right and add nuance to their work. At the BBC, the content-makers’ inclusion toolkit seeks to provide such support. Tools include Ipsos MORI’s Language Matters audience research, which echoes the findings of the BAME report by concluding that “specificity around identity is key”.
“In communicating, we often seek to oversimplify. But, when it comes to identity, ensuring the full nuances of someone’s identity are acknowledged as important,” said the Ipsos MORI researchers. “We see this when it comes to how ethnic and national identity interact with one another and how individuals navigate between these two aspects of their identity.”
Participants in the research succinctly illustrated the point. “I always say I’m Indian even though I am a British citizen. I am proud of my Heritage,” he said. Another explained: “My identity shouldn’t be defined by what ‘colour’ I am. I’m an individual and part of a diverse community with a diverse heritage.”
We are not the same
Understanding this type of nuance is at the heart of the BBC Audience’s BAME: We’re Not the Same report. It explores the culture, identity and heritage of the six largest ethnic minority groups in England and Wales – Indian, Pakistani, Black African, Black Caribbean, Bangladeshi and Chinese.
BBC Senior Audience Planner Helen Xa-Thomas began work on the report after noticing that content-makers had no tools to help them move away from “bucket terminology” and address the “nuance” within groups.
“All our identities are so multifaceted and complex. We are never just one entity of our identity,” she explained. “Labeling is a symptom of the shortcuts that we use as an industry. We all think very much demographic first and that can be problematic. For example, when we say ‘youth’ as if all young people are exactly the same.”
She continued: “It’s about understanding, culture and identity for different groups and making us more consciously aware of those differences. Because we are not the same.”
The BBC Audience’s report is backed by the Corporation’s Director of Creative Diversity, June Sarpong, who encouraged people “to grab a coffee and take a moment out to read this insightful BBC Audiences research”.
“This report starts to unpack ‘BAME’ because a ‘one size fits all’ approach doesn’t help us appreciate the complexity and richness of identities that fall within it,” she wrote in her foreword to the report. “One of the barriers we face when seeking to address the diversity deficit is the limits of our own perspective.”
She also pointed out that “The catch-all term of BAME may feel a like a convenient box for those interested in counting people. But when you fail to acknowledge the difference in people’s lived experience and history then people won’t feel like they count.”
Universal takeaways
As stated previously, four of the UK’s major broadcasters have committed to ensuring that people feel better represented by avoiding the use of BAME.
Marcus Ryder, Head of External Consultancies at Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity, applauded the decision to adopt the report’s recommendation. He believes there are wider themes that can be taken from the research and applied by content-makers – trust, transparency and the need for bravery.
“As a Black person, when I see the Covid reports I am thinking ‘how does it affect Black people?’ When a journalist just stops short and says People of Colour, it feels as if they’re not representing me properly,’ he said. “So even if you don’t have the information you should acknowledge it as you’re acknowledging that question of how it affects me.
“Admit what you don’t know. If the story was ‘Covid affects People of Color or BAME more according to the latest statistics’ but there’s no breakdown, then say that they have not provided us with more detailed information as to how it affects individual specific races.”
Ryder also said content-makers need to ensure that they are not using BAME, or BIPOC or People of Color because they are “scared to use the term white”.
“Sometimes collective terms are used as a way to avoid using the word white and so we should also ensure that we aren’t just using a term as a way to avoid white,” he explained.
“Lots of studies have shown that white people often think of themselves as being raceless. If we want to have a serious conversation about race, then we need to ensure that we don’t just talk about race of non-white people.”
What each of the reports and research illustrate is that catch-all terminology erodes the trust of the audience, which could cause them to tune out (or worse, log off). As we address increasingly diverse audiences, there is an altogether reasonable expectation that our language, and its use, adapts.
From the narrative-changing storytelling initiative, “Driving Change From the Inside“, a look at the DE+I movement in organizations across the country.
CHECK OUT THE FULL SERIES: Featuring Summaries, Key takeaways, and Video Highlights
The saying goes: What doesn’t break you makes you stronger. That seems to be the case during the pandemic for Robin Hood Foundation, the largest poverty nonprofit in New York City. Because of catastrophes like 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy, Robin Hood already had procedures in place that enabled it to act decisively and respond quickly supporting at-risk communities during the pandemic.
At the start of Covid-19, Robin Hood raised $90mm for grants across the city to improve the lives of people who were experiencing poverty as a result of the pandemic. But they’ve got their work cut out for them – now, and always.
To gain greater insight into how the organization appears to be thriving through the pandemic and the overlapping racial justice movement, we sat down with the organization’s Chief People Officer, Stephanie Royal.
As Stephanie recounts, “the murder of George Floyd really helped to inspire, mobilize, and accelerate action that had already started. There was such a tremendous outpouring of support within our organization to take the work that had already started even before I got here, and to really accelerate it to help us move toward becoming an anti-racist organization.”
The phrase “becoming an anti-racist organization” stands out. Few I’ve spoken to call out the issue so overtly. This sentiment is indicative of Stephanie’s self-awareness and of the culture being nurtured at Robin Hood. When asked to comment on her upbringing in an upper middle-class Black family, Stephanie shared a sobering dose of realism:
“We’re not far from people who experience poverty on a daily basis within our own family. While my dad was able to go to college — he’s a graduate of Fisk University, a historically Black college — his education changed the game for our family. Part of why I’m so committed to the work that we do at Robin Hood is because we know that access to good quality education is a lever for economic mobility.”
Stephanie helps to illuminate that, for many of our DEIJ leaders, it’s not enough to strive for and achieve excellence. There are headwinds that make achieving and maintaining excellence more difficult. It’s imperative that we have people in leadership roles who have purview into what’s required to overcome poverty, and what’s needed to create a sustained cycle of mobility.
She notes that, “We all know how disproportionately affected communities of color were with health disparities and Covid just made it even worse. We knew that we had to mobilize quickly, and do so in a way that was intensive and meaningful and really holistic.”
Through this learning and growing process Royal has seen that creating a culture of inclusivity and vulnerability requires an evolution of emotional intelligence across the organization. It means ensuring that everyone has the safety to respectfully express their views and ideas. Equally important to working to foster safety for underrepresented and under resourced groups, is having empathy for every voice in the room. Stephanie describes this need well:
“I can only imagine what it must feel like to be someone entering a conversation about race, never having done it before. Feeling like they should not be in the conversation because of a certain aspect of their identity, or having anxiety around it. It requires vulnerability, and it requires an incredible amount of self-reflection. Based on that, we do have responsibility, those that are further along this pathway, to bring along those that are not there yet.”
In our conversation, Royal offered insights from her journey as a professional, from Wall Street, to the classroom, to her current leadership role as Chief People Officer at Robin Hood. Her story is inspiring for those among us, who could direct our intellect and energy almost anywhere, but choose a path of curiosity, compassion, and purpose.
Here are a few highlights from our conversation (full transcript), curated to help any individual or organization seeking to adapt to societal change and create a safe space for employees of all backgrounds, orientations, races, and beliefs.
“We could not have meaningful conversations about DEI without reflecting on who we were as an organization. Were we reflective on racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and cultural identifiers. Were they reflected in the staff at the time? No.”
“We took a comprehensive approach to how we’ve recruited, how we made decisions about hiring, how we onboarded our staff, how we made decisions about advancement and promotion, so we could embody the values that we set forth.”
“During Covid, we engaged an outside consultant to continue the work of a wholesale cultural assessment. That was a very intensive process. A deeply meaningful and personal process. I know that the results will help to inspire that next level of work.”
“I think our staff would say they are happy to be here, very much committed to the mission. They’re participating and helping to develop a culture where everyone can be their authentic selves, continue to learn, grow, thrive and contribute to advancing our mission.”
Act:
Today, a commitment to DEIJ is crucial to the overall health of organizational culture. True commitment requires the willingness to continue finding and repairing gaps in equity and justice proactively. The investment of time and effort might be challenging. However, the rewards from meaningful education, engagement, and growth can be seen in employee values alignment, retention, and output in times of crisis and for years to come.
2. Understand the influence of policy
Listen and learn:
“After we worked on the talent side, we wanted to dig into policy, practices, protocols, procedures. Were they equitable? We continued to dig into the policies related to HR, vendor selection, legal, through a lens of diversity, equity and inclusion. I’ll say it’s a different organization now.”
“There are policies within our cities and at the state and federal levels, that don’t make it easy to access fundamental needs such as quality affordable housing, high quality food, basic clean water. These are not distributed equitably across all communities in this country. Where you see inequity and lack of access somehow seems to align with under-resourced communities populated by people of color.”
“We are trying to address issues of people experiencing poverty through grant-making to the amazing non-profits here in New York City, and across the country, so that direct service can be administered, so that people can access good quality food, quality education, and enter the sectors where jobs are abundant.”
Act:
We are all pieces of a larger puzzle. Being a proactive ally for DEIJ requires understanding the rules, procedures, and policies that affect inequity on a micro (in your lives and offices) and macro perspective (in our communities). Start by looking at areas of improvement within your own organization. Examine the procedures that might contribute to inequity and lack of representation. Compassion for our own areas of growth yields ideas and solutions that positively affect the collective.
3. Recognize the link between inclusivity and innovation
Listen and learn:
“We are a place that is welcoming to all people however they show up. I reinforce that in every conversation. I want people to be free, because if you’re not, you can’t do your best work.”
“One of the things that we are most proud of is our Design Insight Group. DIG emerged from the work of our tech incubator Blue Ridge Labs, which works to help founders create tech solutions to some of the drivers of poverty. We invite people from under-resourced communities to work alongside our program officers to develop programs to help in relief efforts.”
“We can, in a very respectful way, engage the experiences of people who have lived experience with poverty and get their input, get their expertise, intelligence, and deep understanding around problem solving to help us find solutions. It’s also important that we compensate them at a level to help them gain sustained economic mobility, for themselves and their families.”
Act:
Great ideas can come from anyone, anywhere. In the case of fighting the causes of poverty, it takes first hand experience to illuminate the real problems and the blind spots in existing solutions. When wealth, education, security and power gaps exist, it can be difficult to build trust. Attention to thoughtful engagement and trust building, as well as ensuring fair compensation, can yield needle-moving collaboration and innovation alongside the communities that you serve.
4. Invest in building trust and progress toward anti-racism
Listen and learn:
“In this type of work, which is so human, you won’t be successful unless you have a culture of trust and mutual understanding rooted in safety.”
“What results from those moments are meaningful relationships, deeper friendships, the willingness to step out of your own space and join someone. These are the experiences that make for a stronger team in this culture.”
“There are people who are at different places on their journey of being able to address race, class, privilege, but we’re all on board. It is okay to be at the beginning of that DEI journey.”
“You have to be ready and open and provide the psychological safety for people to show up as they are, no matter where they are on their DEI journey.”
Act:
Language is important. So, leaders need to speak about the importance for all to be bought in and supported, no matter where they are on their DEI journey. At Robin Hood, becoming an antiracist organization is essential to their health and culture. They see the results in retention, innovation, and passion. Combining the business imperative with examples of tangible and measurable benefits of anti-racism help organizations and the people they employ stay committed to long term DEIJ goals.
5. Gather a community of support and collaboration
Listen and learn:
“I found my tribe when I first came to New York City. A small group of Black women all working at banks. We relied on each other to make it, to draw upon each other’s good energy, and to share experiences so we could grow and thrive in a foreign world.”
“In my professional life, my responsibility is to care for others.There’s a team of people that look to me for support, for answers, for guidance, and that can be very lonely if you don’t have your own place of respite.”
“I know that I’m a role model to our junior staff. I have to show up for them and be my best self and make myself available to help them understand that this can be their seat as well.”
“We want to be partners with other nonprofits, other philanthropies, government, corporate communities, because we know that philanthropy cannot solve poverty alone.”
Act:
You can’t go it alone. Whether you are early in your career or sitting at the top, resilience requires teamwork and support. This is crucial for individuals from under represented groups because of the combined psychological and systemic hurdles that lay as obstacles. Peers and mentors illuminate roadblocks and strategies for presenting your best self. For marginalized individuals and groups, allies, and institutions, we get further by identifying values and goals alignment, and pursuing necessary work, in partnership.
Watch or listen to highlights of Michael and Stephanie’s conversation:
About the author
Michael Tennant is a founder, writer, and movement-builder dedicated to spreading tools of empathy and helping people find their purpose. Before founding Curiosity Lab, Tennant spent 15-years becoming a media, advertising, and nonprofit executive, and delivering award-winning marketing strategies for companies like MTV, VICE, P&G, Coca-Cola, sweetgreen, and Oatly.
Tennant founded Curiosity Lab in 2017 and created the conversation card game Actually Curious. Actually Curious became a viral sensation in 2020 during Covid-19 and the rise of the racial justice movement for helping people build meaningful connections and to tackle the important topics facing our world.
He has channeled his business success and momentum into a sustained movement supporting BIPOC and other underrepresented communities through speaking, writing, leadership, mentorship, consulting, partnerships, and talent-pipeline programs.
From the narrative-changing storytelling initiative, “Driving Change From the Inside“, a look at the DE+I movement in organizations across the country.
CHECK OUT THE FULL SERIES: Summaries, Key takeaways, and Video Highlights
One wish that I have for America is for more organizations to have the clarity of logic, depth of commitment, and force of execution happening at NPR as they address their businesses challenges and needs concerning Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
In January of 2020, NPR President and CEO John Lansing made audience diversity NPR’s number one priority. Since that time, the organization has shared its progress across workplace, content, and audiences. This includes a three-year strategic plan that opens with the words “NPR must change to survive.” To get a first hand view into this progressive change agenda, I had the privilege of sitting down with the Chief Marketing Officer of NPR, Michael. The conversation that unfolded might be considered a masterclass on establishing a long term DEI strategy.
According to Michael, the business imperative for DEI is simply “believing in the strategy that to serve a more diverse America, you need to have a team of people whose life experience is more in line with the customers that you’re serving.” That sentiment is shared from NPR CEO, John Lansing down through the organization.
“NPR came out of the Great Society program of the 1960s, where the government set up the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helped launch NPR and PBS. Their mission was to create media resources that weren’t being fed by the commercial media.”
Back in 1971 when NPR launched, their audience was in line with the United States. About 80% white and 20% diverse audience, similar to the country at the time. Today, their radio audience is still about 80-20, while the composition of the American population has shifted to 60-40. And, of course, the country has made a massive switch to digital in the intervening years as well. In order to get back in sync with America, NPR has been prioritizing efforts to make the network younger and more diverse.
Michael says that NPR has a fiercely loyal audience, because their values align with those of the audience. However, he says most Americans are not even aware of NPR. “We know from research data that only 30% of all Americans have actually even heard of NPR, which is maybe surprising to people who are big fans of the brand. There’s a huge swath of America that we need to make aware of the great work that we do, and a lot of that audience are younger and more diverse people.”
As impressive as NPR’s DEI strategy and tactics are, so too is Michael Smith. The second son of “immigrant strivers” from Jamaica as he describes, Michael was raised by a single mother, gained admission and scholarships to Stanford University. Now, he is living his childhood dream of being a leader in media and entertainment.
“I’ve always had this feeling of being the new kid and being outside, and I think there’s something actualizing about the power of being able to have your voice heard, even if it’s not being heard in your day-to-day life. You feel like if you’re making media content, you can be heard by the world. So I think that’s what drew me to it.”
The beneficiary of an 1980s minority-focused internship program at the San Francisco Chronicle Foundation, Michael, like myself, took advantage of internship opportunities designed to address diverse pipeline issues. I benefited from a program at Viacom that still exists, which recruits and trains underrepresented media talent. Throughout our conversation, Michael offers insights from his four decades of navigating the media industry, from an intern to founding the Cooking Channel to the CMO of NPR — as a Black man.
His story is inspiring to anyone who is interested in a career path, but lacks the immediate familial access to knowledge and mentorship in that industry. His combination of hard work, curiosity, creativity and agency provides a blueprint any individual can follow to manifest their professional dreams.
Here are a few highlights from our conversation, curated to help any individual or organization seeking to adapt to societal change and create a safe space for employees of all backgrounds, orientations, races, and beliefs.
This is NPR’s “number one priority. To really diversify our audience to better reflect and serve America. We’ve always been about making a more informed, and more culturally enriched population through our content, but we haven’t always done it. Our commitment right now is to very much reflect all of America, and put the public back into National Public Radio.”
“It’s really one big thing, which is just believing in the strategy to serve a more diverse America. You need to have a team of people whose life experience is more in line with the customers and service users that you’re serving.”
“If you think about when a brand like NPR started in the 1970s, the country was about 80-85% white. If you think about who the listeners were, most of whom were in colleges, who were in corporations, and all kinds of institutions, it was 80-90% white. We’re at a time now where it’s really changed. For the first time in some states like California, the majority of kids who are in elementary school are of color.”
Act:
Change or risk extinction. It appears NPR sees something that many organizations are failing to prioritize. If you cannot relate to your audience, then you will eventually lose them. Our nation has become more diverse and our nation’s media (and other organizations) need to adapt to meet their audiences’ expectations and sensibilities. Once you identify the core business case for diversity, it unlocks the license to infuse DE+I goals intrinsically into your business strategy, goals, and roadmap.
2. Get educated on the headwinds BIPOC employees face
Listen and learn:
“I know from my own career, when I got out of college and business school and was working on Madison Avenue back in the ’80s at Young & Rubicam, a popular and famous agency. There were only two African-Americans, me and one other gentleman, in the entire company – account management – and they had, I think, about 800 different people in account management.”
“One of the things that I had noticed when I was younger is that a lot of senior executives in media: If you looked at their family backgrounds, their fathers were also in media. Or they had brothers or cousins, or there were the people around the dinner table when they were 12 or 14. Their dad was reading The Wall Street Journal and talking about what was going on at work. They just had certain insights that people, especially BIPOC people, we just didn’t have.”
“In terms of discrimination, I think that the biggest thing that I’ve faced, and I think a lot of people of color have faced, is being underestimated, undervalued and marginalized in terms of what people think your potential could be.”
Act:
In today’s job market, if you wish to foster safety and retain high potential BIPOC employees, it is unwise to ignore the effects of race and privilege. Creating lasting inclusivity requires the hard work of building trust and connection for team members to explore privilege and bias. Peer to peer storytelling can be effective when appropriately moderated and as bonds of trust in organizations are strengthened. Ongoing people-manager training, community gathering, and proactive mentorship programs can help to close the trust gap, and reduce missed opportunities between employers and underrepresented talent.
3. Make long term investments in BIPOC pipeline
Listen and learn:
“When you think about diversity and inclusion across U.S. companies, there are two things going on, and they’re both related to this question of the pipeline. One is getting more people into the pipeline. Two is once they’re in the pipeline, making sure that they actually make it through and thrive.”
“You see, what C-Suite leaders need to do to really make diversity a reality is, first get true buy-in to why this matters. Not just the moral reason behind it, but the business imperative. Because your audience is changing and you’re gonna become a dinosaur if you don’t reflect the people you’re serving outside of your company. You gotta get buy-in at first, and then understand the nuances of the situation. It’s a combination of bringing people into your organization, but more importantly, what do you do once they’re in the organization.”
“I give a lot of credit to, as we talk about diversity, to the San Francisco Chronicle Foundation, which is a newspaper foundation that had created a minority internship program back in the 80s. The idea was to help kids of color get exposure to the business. If it wasn’t for that, I don’t think I would have gotten my foot in the door at the TV station that they owned. And then that led to other internships that I got in the industry and started my career.”
Act:
Content is king and content companies are the king makers. In the cases of media and advertising, as the cost of creating content falls and new platforms for brands and storytellers emerge, the competition for all talent is increasing. In order to create long term demographic shifts, investments need to be made that recruit and support the retention of candidates over an extended period. If you aren’t investing in BIPOC talent, stand back as players from all sectors win the love of the talent and audiences that you covet.
4. Measure the impact of investment in DE+I
Listen and learn:
“We measure our social impact on how many people we reach with our content, and how much of a change we make in our society through that content. When we look at NPR historically: We had about 80% white audience, 20% diverse audience, and that was similar to the country. But if you look at us today, our radio audience is still about 80-20, and the country has changed to digital. So we realize that we’ve gotten out of sync with America, and so we’ve been re-doubling our efforts to make the network younger and more diverse.”
“We’ve had great success in podcasting, because that’s the platform that younger people really resonate with. It’s on demand. They listen on their smartphones. We found that our podcast content, whether it’s shows like How I Built This or Planet Money or Code Switch, or It’s Been a Minute, those shows actually have about a 40% to 45% people of color audience.”
“So we see the path forward. Which is to make content and put it on the platforms where younger people are. We have another series on YouTube, which is another place where young people love to go. It’s called Tiny Desk Concerts, and it’s basically live concerts featuring a wide variety of diverse artists. And that series is bringing in young and very diverse people into the NPR fold. So we just feel like it’s about those series.”
Act:
Numbers don’t lie, unless you want them to. For NPR, by focusing on goals of attracting a younger and more diverse audience, they were able to implement strategies that are yielding the processes and connections necessary to produce the content that appeals to their desired audience. Whether your business goal is to appeal to more consumers, employees, clients or potential partnerships, identifying the business imperative for diversity, equity and inclusion and measuring it clearly, is the most effective tactic of assuring your moral goals remain linked to your business health regardless of leadership or cultural changes.
Watch or listen to highlights of Michael Tennant’s conversation with Michael Smith
About the author
Michael Tennant is a founder, writer, and movement-builder dedicated to spreading tools of empathy and helping people find their purpose. Before founding Curiosity Lab, Tennant spent 15-years becoming a media, advertising, and nonprofit executive, and delivering award-winning marketing strategies for companies like MTV, VICE, P&G, Coca-Cola, sweetgreen, and Oatly.
Tennant founded Curiosity Lab in 2017 and created the conversation card game Actually Curious. Actually Curious became a viral sensation in 2020 during Covid-19 and the rise of the racial justice movement for helping people build meaningful connections and to tackle the important topics facing our world.
He has channeled his business success and momentum into a sustained movement supporting BIPOC and other underrepresented communities through speaking, writing, leadership, mentorship, consulting, partnerships, and talent-pipeline programs.