NBC News sets goal for 50% diversity among staff

NEW YORK — NBC News leader Cesar Conde, in one of his first public acts in the job, has committed to building a workforce at the news organizations he supervises where at least half of the employees are minorities.

The staff is currently nearly 27% minority, including 8% each of Black, Latino and Asian workers. Conde set no deadline for achieving his “50 Percent Initiative.”

He also wants women to comprise half the employees at NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC, and he’s already nearly there.

The plan, first reported by the Los Angeles Times, makes Conde a leader in the current movement to diversify the news business.

That conversation has spread throughout the industry since George Floyd’s killing at the hands of Minneapolis police in May.

For example, the top editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer resigned after Black reporters objected to a racially insensitive headline. Black reporters at The New York Times said an opinion piece on protests by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., made them feel unsafe; the Times later said the column should not have run without changes and the opinion editor stepped down.

“It’s not just the right thing to do,” Conde said in an interview this week. “It’s the right thing for any business that wants to grow in the United States.”

A more diverse workforce will be able to spot stories that might otherwise be missed, Conde said.

Minority hiring will be one factor in how managers at the news organization are judged, he said.

That’s important, since it will force managers to focus on the issue both in hiring and in retaining minority employees, said Doris Truong, director of training and diversity at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank.