Dori Maynard, Who Sought Diversity in Journalism, Dies at 56

Dori J. Maynard, a journalist who was at the forefront of the campaign to make the American news media a more accurate mirror of American diversity, died at her home in Oakland (CA). She was 56.

Maynard was the president and chief executive of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, a nonprofit organization based in Oakland and named for her father, a former editor and publisher of The Oakland Tribune. Mr. Maynard, who died in 1993, was the first black person in the United States to own a general-circulation daily newspaper. A former newspaper reporter, Ms. Maynard joined the Maynard Institute not long after her father’s death and became its president in 2001. There, she continued her lifelong interest in exploring the often rocky landscape where race, class, ethnicity and the news media converge.