Black journalists gather in Tampa as job prospects dim

As the media industry continues to struggle and shed jobs, journalists who are also people of color ponder their future and whether gains made in recent years will be lost.

"As the nation moves toward a majority-minority status, it would behoove media organizations to reflect the population," said Richard Prince, a columnist with the Maynard Institute and a part-time copy editor at The Washington Post.

Employment trends will be a topic of discussion as the annual convention and career fair of the National Association of Black Journalists opens Wednesday in Tampa. The focus is "reinvention." Seminars focus on obtaining skills to survive and thrive in journalism and how to use media skills to obtain jobs in other industries.

The American Society of News Editors' annual newsroom census, released in April, showed 854 minority journalists left newspaper newsrooms in 2008. That left 46,700 journalists, of whom 6,300 are minorities - the lowest number since the group's 1998 census.

Black and Asian journalists saw a 13.6 percent and a 13.4 percent decline, respectively, in newsroom employment. That compares with an overall decline of 11.4 percent.

The percentage of all journalists of color dropped from 13.5 percent in 2007 to 13.4 percent in 2008.

"The public should take a signal from that schedule," said Keith Woods, Dean of Faculty at The Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in St. Petersburg. "It should remind the public how important mainstream journalism continues to be and how in peril it is."

All journalists are concerned about their careers and about the future of the industry itself, Woods said.

"When you add to that the monumental losses among journalists of color and the dim prospect that it will turn around, it's a formula for a longer despair than journalism as a whole," Woods said.

Newspapers, he said, had aspired to parity by 2000, which would mean making newsrooms as diverse as the communities they cover. That date changed to 2025, and now that goal looks unlikely, too.

Part of the problem is attributed to layoffs and buyouts throughout the media industry in recent years.

"Industry layoffs affect people of color disproportionately and destroy the gains we have made during past years," said Rafael Olmeda, president of UNITY, an alliance of four national associations representing more than 10,000 minority journalists.

Clay Anderson, senior media representative for PEPCO, Washington, D.C.'s electric company, will moderate a convention session called Thriving and Surviving: Finding Life After a Traditional Media Career.

Anderson spent 14 years in broadcast media and said it saddens him to see so many minority journalists losing their jobs.

There is life after journalism, though, he said. Journalists should look for jobs that use their communication and writing skills, such as public relations and corporate communications.

For instance, his job at the electric company allows him to interact with media professionals and appear in front of the camera as a spokesman.

This year's convention of the National Association of Black Journalists will be held at the Tampa Convention Center and runs from Wednesday through Aug. 9.

Highlights include appearances by some of the biggest names in news and sports, including EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson; Commerce Secretary Gary Locke; Anika Noni Rose, Tony award-winning actress and voice of Disney's newest princess in the animated film, "The Princess and the Frog";

NBA MVP LeBron James will discuss his upcoming documentary, "More Than A Game"; and comedian Chris Rock will answer questions following screenings of his new documentary, "Good Hair."

Reporter Shannon Behnken can be reached at (813) 259-7804.