By Joshua Garner

Adjoa Adofo has always aspired to be a political journalist.

As a child she would listen to intense dinner table political debates between her father, a patriotic Republican, and her mother, a loyal Democrat. In high school, she was an active member of her student newspaper near Philadelphia. And by the time she competed college in 2006, she had already landed high profile internships at The Miami Herald and The Philadelphia Inquirer. After graduating she was ready to become professional a journalist.

“I was looking for a job - any job where I could cut my teeth,” said Adofo, 23, who is African American.
She eventually decided to pursue an opportunity with The Kansas City Star newspaper after a recruiter from the company gave her an offer that she said she could not refuse: a slot on the city government beat.

It would seem that her career was on the fast track.

“I was very excited about the position,” she said. “I thought they would take care of me.”
But after two years, Adofo found herself nervously staring at an internal memo from management at her paper announcing that revenues had fallen by millions of dollars and staff cuts throughout the paper were imminent.

As the youngest person in the newsroom and the last hired, she knew her time had come.

“It was tough,” she said about being let go from her job. “It definitely hurt.”

Adofo’s story is becoming a familiar scene for thousands of minority journalists. As the nation’s economy continues to weaken, and advertisement dollars decline at newspapers and magazines, minority journalists are feeling the hurt (or: are being hit hard) as jobs are being slashed from company payrolls. Even more troubling is the effect that staff cuts and layoffs are having on newsroom diversity, which critics say is threatening diversity in most newsrooms.

“One of the first things to fall by the wayside is diversity,” said Alice Bonner, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland College Park who worked for years as a recruiter at Gannett newspapers. “It’s under siege in a way that it has not been since the Watergate era,” she said referring to a time in the industry when journalists were the subject of speculation from legislators.

The McClatchy Co., which owns high profile papers like The Kansas City Star and The Miami Herald, is slashing 1,400 jobs from its payroll. Even papers owned by media giants like The New York Times Co. and The Washington Post Co. are offering buyouts to veteran journalists. Often, veteran journalists of color are the first to give in to the buyouts.

“It’s a question of backsliding if we don’t keep diversity in mind,” said Peter Perl, an assistant managing editor at The Washington Post.
Perl said that he’s increasingly seeing a trend of veteran journalists of color accepting buyouts or leaving jobs in the media because they hit a glass ceiling.

“Their careers were not advancing the way they wanted them to,” he said. “We [the industry] have not done a good job of promoting and retaining minority journalists.”

In 2007, the percentage of journalists of color declined slightly from 13.87 percent to 13.62 according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, which resulted in 300 fewer journalists of color working in newsrooms. Minority journalism organizations like National Association of Black Journalists are taking a proactive stance to the layoff trend that it says is chipping away at newsroom diversity.

Citing that 1,000 journalists at daily papers had lost their jobs in early July, the NABJ issued an open letter titled “Newspaper Industry Should Not Treat Diversity Like A Passing Fad,” which holds the industry accountable to diversity being lost in the newsroom.

“Diversity is not a luxury or a fad. It is a necessity for telling balanced news stories about America and for putting a fresh story perspective before the readers through the lens of minority journalists,” the letter reads.

“Diversity use to be an industry discussion,” said Denise Bridges, director of recruitment and staff development at The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk, Va. “Now the discussion is about saving our hides.”

Bridges, who is African American, said having a diverse hiring staff of recruiters and editors makes the difference in hiring and retaining journalists of color. Often, it is the minority recruiters and editors who make diversity an issue in the newsroom.
Bridges recalls a white editor she works with to hire reporters.

“She almost never has minorities on her hiring list,” she said. “Nobody is going to come out and say I’m not going to put a minority on my short list,” to be hired.

And often diversity in the newsroom becomes a numbers game. On another occasion Bridges recalled that a young Filipino journalist was up for a position at The Virginian-Pilot; editors were enthusiastic that the reporter was a minority and a local to the area. But Bridges said that while the reporter didn’t meet the paper’s skill standard, editors were willing to overlook it because of her race.

“I saw them in their mind filling in a checkbox,” she said.

Likewise, Bonner said that treating diversity as a game of numbers is often more of a benefit to the hiring staff than to journalists of color.

“If you can say that you hired three non-whites than you get points for that,” she said. Adding that it does not mean that minority communities are covered any better in the press.

“There’s a lot more lip service than actual progress.”

Most acknowledge that there is still a bright side for journalists of color entering the industry. The Internet and new media have opened up new opportunities outside the traditional print journalism standard such as multimedia reporting and blogs, which to draw large audiences on the Internet.

“Young people have fresh ideas, they see things differently,” Bridges said.

Meanwhile, Adofo said the shock of losing her job has subsided in the recent weeks. She said she has already received calls from newspapers wanting to interview her to fill some positions and is hopeful that she will find work soon.

“I still want to give journalism a shot,” she said. “It’s what I love it to do.”