Source Diversity at the Free Press

A GANNETT PAPER SEEKS A NEW KIND OF EXPERTISE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Katharine Seelye]
Gannett, the biggest newspaper company in the country, with 90 dailies, has one of the strongest records in the industry on hiring and promoting minority employees. And it has long encouraged -- and monitored -- the use of minority voices in the content of articles. Still, it came as something of a surprise last week to some at The Detroit Free Press, which was acquired last year by Gannett, when they were told to contribute the names of minority sources to a collective list. Many newspapers keep such lists to help reporters who are assigned to an unfamiliar story, but they identify sources by their expertise. The Free Press list is meant to flag their racial, ethnic or religious backgrounds as well. Some in the newsroom objected, saying sources should be quoted because they were the most credible on a topic or the most articulate, not because they fit an ethnic profile. They said they feared the day they might have to delete an insightful quote from a majority source in favor of a less useful quote from someone who would help the newspaper meet corporate goals. Paul Anger, editor and vice president of the Free Press said Gannett had not asked the paper to create such a list, but that the paper's managers understood that the representation of minority voices was a Gannett priority, that the company periodically measured such representation and that other papers in the chain used such lists as one way to get more voices into print.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/12/business/media/12gannett.html
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