Ethnic diversity is the highest priority diversity in newsrooms, per Reuters report

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism published a report with insights on the challenges and changes newsrooms across the world are facing at a point in time in which we are managing the global COVID-19 pandemic, social unrest and political and economical ramifications from all of these. The challenges are reflected both in news coverage, but also in the operations of news organizations.

The report, titled “Changing newsrooms 2020: addressing diversity and nurturing talent at a time of unprecedented change“, addresses ethic diversity as the biggest diversity priority for newsrooms in the year to come, while gender diversity is perceived to have been improved by previous efforts.

Even as our respondents feel significant progress has been made in closing the gender diversity gap, ethnic, political, and other forms of diversity are lagging far behind. In the wake of the Black Lives Matters protests and increased public scrutiny of often relatively monochrome newsrooms, improving ethnic diversity (42%) is highlighted as the most pressing diversity priority in the year ahead – named by more than twice as many as cite gender diversity (18%).

The data on the report also covers changes brought about by remote work and its impact in newsroom culture. The findings are based on a survey completed by 136 news industry leaders from 38 countries, between September and October 2020.