Putting Diversity In the Line Of Firing - Minority Staffers at The Times Feel the Loss And Fear the Fallout
By Lynne Duke and Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, June 7, 2003; Page C01
NEW YORK -- It was much more than just a stunning turn of events at the New York Times.
When Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd resigned their positions as the paper's top editors, it was a hurtful, even frightening turn of events for many of the paper's African American staff members and for minority journalists throughout the industry.
For supporters of newsroom diversity, Boyd's tenure as the first black managing editor at the newspaper was a historic development and was viewed as a sign of the progress made in an industry that, like so many others, had once resisted racial change.
But after weeks of hearing diversity and affirmative action criticized by some white colleagues, who blamed the practices for producing the circumstances that allowed a young black reporter, Jayson Blair, to commit fraudulent journalism, some minority staff members reacted to Boyd's announcement with a sense of heartbreak and foreboding about race relations. It was especially troubling, they said, that a scandal spawned by a drug-abusing, emotionally troubled young man had spun out of control to such an extent that Boyd's career was tainted and the concept of diversity at the newspaper left under a cloud.
"I almost started to cry," says Steven Holmes, an African American and an editor in the paper's Washington bureau, who stood in shock in the New York newsroom Thursday as he heard Boyd announce his resignation.
"I just thought it was a tragedy."
It also meant losing a symbol.
"It took us 150 years to get somebody there, and now -- poof! . . . I don't know whether it's going to take 150 years to get another."
So roiled were some staff members of color -- African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans -- that yesterday more than a dozen of them lunched with Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. They requested the meeting to discuss the unsettling chain of events and, in some cases, to seek reassurance on the paper's commitment to diversity, according to two staff members who attended the session. They did not have demands, nor did they press for any specific candidates among the field of names being reported in the media to replace Boyd and Raines.
Instead, they simply wanted to talk about the past few weeks and to hear the publisher's views. His message to these staffers was that pursuing diversity was a responsibility and "we are not going to shrink from that responsibility," said Lena Williams, who attended the meeting. Williams, an African American who has worked at the paper for 29 years, said it has become common to hear white staff members openly question the value of diversity.
Catherine Mathis, a Times spokeswoman, declined to comment on yesterday's lunch meeting.
As the Times examines the management and other failures that led to the most serious scandal that paper has faced, several minority staffers said the impact of Boyd's departure will be seen in "what the paper does next," said Mireya Navarro, a Latina who has worked at the Times since 1989 and now is a metropolitan reporter. "It depends on its hiring practices, and its promotions and the effort to reach true diversity in the newsroom."
"Right now, there's a void, there's a silence," said Jerry Gray, an African American who recently was promoted to weekend national editor. "It's important what the next message of this institution is going to be. That's not necessarily going out and hiring another black editor, but there has got to be some message that is absolutely clear that diversity is here to stay, that we are a stronger newspaper for having had Gerald here."
Like most other newspapers in the United States, including The Washington Post, the New York Times is a largely white institution. Mathis would not provide an ethnic breakdown among the paper's roughly 1,000 newsroom employees. An annual census of diversity published by the American Society of Newspaper Editors puts the minority proportion of Times staff members at 17.1 percent. (The Washington Post is 20.8 percent.)
In his farewell comments, Boyd took a swipe at those who have criticized him. Some have suggested that Boyd was a mentor to Blair, a contention that some of Boyd's colleagues dispute. (One colleague described hearing firsthand as Blair periodically railed against Boyd for not giving him more help.)
"I stand for merit, not favoritism. I always have and always will," Boyd said, according to a copy of his written remarks provided yesterday by a former colleague. "I stand for quality. Putting out the best newspaper one possibly can. I stand for inclusion, because I believe it makes us better. And I stand for diversity. I have spent my entire life embracing and working to make diversity matter, because it has to, and as long as I breathe I will continue on that path."
Boyd helped lead the staff to Pulitzer Prizes for coverage of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the paper's 2000 series called "How Race Is Lived in America," and, with Raines, the seven Pulitzers the paper received last year, most of them for coverage of the 2001 terrorist attacks and their aftermath.
What the Times is going through is but the most extreme and inflamed example of the low-grade tensions and concerns that play out in newsrooms across the nation. Debates about affirmative action and diversity are not uncommon in newsrooms, though they're usually associated with news coverage of a lawsuit or other court case.
But diversity at the Times is an especially complex subject right now because of the confluence of events that cascaded into a crisis after the Blair affair broke. He resigned from the paper after it was discovered that he had fabricated quotes, plagiarized and faked his story datelines -- not traveling to cities he should have. Because Blair is black, many commentators and writers outside the Times assumed that Boyd was his mentor.
"None of that was true, but none of the reporters were listening," said Dana Canedy, an African American who is the Times's Miami bureau chief. "I think that association was made because they are both African Americans. I thought it was hugely unfair."
Beyond the Times, the scandal has shaken the minority journalist associations that advocate for diversity. When a rumor circulated recently that Blair planned to attend the August convention of the National Association of Black Journalists in Dallas, the reaction was swift.
"He might show up, but he won't leave alive," said George Curry, editor in chief of NNPA News Service in Washington. "He probably started that rumor, but you can't believe what he says."
Curry said he wouldn't lay a hand on Blair because Blair wasn't the reason that Boyd, Curry's close friend, was forced to resign.
"People are mistaken when they say an African American brought down another African American," Curry said. "Howell Raines brought down Gerald Boyd more than Jayson Blair. All Jayson Blair did -- and he did a lot -- was to allow that opening."
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