Our pledge for a newsroom that reflects a diverse community

American newsrooms don’t resemble America.

The Arizona Republic is no exception.

We’ve known this for a long time. Half a century ago, former Arizona Republic editor J. Edward Murray asked the American Society of News Editors “to find out why there aren’t more women in ASNE and to recommend what, if anything, we should do about it.”

Only eight of the organization’s 800 members were women. At the time, 4% of U.S. newsroom staff were journalists of color, according to ASNE’s inaugural report on the matter.

Then, as now, the nation’s civil rights reckoning did not skip over the men and women of the press. Republic journalists have dodged flashbangs and been hit by tear gas blasts in the current wave of civil unrest and recrimination. They’ve walked with police, protesters and counter-protesters and told their

stories while investigating these groups’ underlying and often competing motivations.

It’s our job to be there as the public’s watchdog. The Republic exposes inequity: unequal use of force by police; opportunity gaps in education for students of color; housing that marginalizes wage earners and the young.

Now, as then, we’re reckoning with an inequity of our own making.

In America’s newsrooms, African American, Latino, Native American and Asian journalists are underrepresented in the ranks of reporters, photographers, producers and editors; in sports, news and opinion; along the coasts and on the prairie.

We take surveys, every year, but still don’t fully capture the contributions of our LGBTQ colleagues. Too little has changed. In 1978, Oakland Tribune owner Nancy Hicks Maynard urged American newsrooms to match America by 2020.

We failed.

So today, The Republic and Gannett newsrooms across the country are recommitting to hiring, promoting and retaining journalists who reflect the diversity of the communities we cover.

Here’s my promise: By 2025, The Republic newsroom will look like Maricopa County, one of the fastest growing counties in the West, where people of color are 45% of the population.

In the spirit of Hicks Maynard, The Republic will reflect our readership while investing more in coverage that confronts systemic racism and structural inequality.

On this point, The Republic is making significant progress.

In 2016, journalists of color were 20% of The Republic’s staff. Today, they are 34%. Of our managers, 28% are journalists of color.

There are as many women at The Republic

as there are men, at all levels.

We have never been closer to achieving parity with our community. But, I won’t stop at ratios.

A statistic without vision is not enough. We must act with a sense of purpose and a deep understanding of the complexities of our state and its people. So, we will seriously review The Republic’s role in serving justice or perpetuating injustice.

We’ve asked the Solutions Journalism Network to lead discussions in the newsroom about our coverage and our interactions with communities of color. This training adds to regular discussions we have with all constituent groups. Our goal is to embrace complexity as we pursue greater understanding and empathy.

We’ve learned from George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Muhammad Abdul Muhaymin Jr. that we can’t repeat names we haven’t heard. We can’t tell stories we haven’t sought to know.

Great journalism is how The Republic serves Arizona.

So, as we seek parity with our community, we will expand coverage of Arizona’s distinct people and unique challenges.

This month, we added a reporter to focus on economic and educational gaps in south Phoenix, a region with more than 200,000 people, many of them African American or Latino. This new beat puts us squarely on point with our nation’s reckoning on race, justice and equity.

Last week, I announced a new reporting initiative on housing and homelessness. For the next three years, this team will explore our state’s opportunity divide, especially as low income and rural Arizonans struggle to survive.

For more than a year, we have reemphasized coverage of Arizona’s Indigenous communities. We now have two reporters dedicated to covering the state’s 22 tribes and environmental concerns on tribal lands. These journalists ensure we not only reflect Arizona but also tell its peoples’ story.

We’re hiring a data reporter who will focus on the state’s diverse communities and systemic inequities. We’re hiring a culture reporter whose mission is to explore the outdoors and write about recreation with special attention to the experiences of Latino and Indigenous communities.

Today, I’m announcing a new beat, covering race and opportunity. This reporter will track recent Mexican and Central American diasporas in the United States as well as migration of African American, Asian and Indigenous people. The reporter will tell deeply personal stories about people climbing the income divide to achieve equity as they reshape modern Western life.

This month, in a fellowship that I plan to model for the future, we asked Arizona Association of Black Journalists President Jamar Younger to join The Republic’s editorial board.

This move marks another advancement in our board’s efforts to lift more voices. Last year, sports columnist Greg Moore added race and culture commentary to his sports analysis. Moving forward, he will devote most of his time to state and national issues and less to the sporting life, a reversal of his duties.

This move echoes one we made last year when Elvia Diaz added more days of column writing to balance with her role as a member of the editorial board. From this vantage, Elvia challenges the state’s traditional conventions. With Jamar and Elvia joining Editorial Page Editor Phil Boas and a board of myself, Robert Robb, Abe Kwok and Joanna Allhands, The Republic’s board is a good reflection of Arizona.

Finally, and again, it starts with journalism.

The Republic’s first-of-its-kind investigation of police shootings in Arizona lent credibility to our reporting in recent months on the deaths of Dion Johnson, Floyd, Taylor and so many more. This project put pressure on city leaders in Phoenix as they debated and then fully funded a civilian review board. We followed up this important work with the first-ever analysis of police use-of-force in Phoenix, finding that “officers have resorted to force more often in majority Black or Hispanic neighborhoods.” In 2019, Phoenix police “used force five times as often against Black and Native residents of the city.”

For the past six months, we’ve reexamined the damage inflicted by SB 1070 on immigrants and Arizona’s political establishment. That project reached a peak last month with the second season of the podcast series, Rediscovering.

These deeply reported and richly produced projects underscore our commitment to all readers.

We serve Arizona by reporting failure, marking success and chronicling the state’s beauty and evolution. Journalists at The Republic demand justice and equity from elected leaders and their agents.

We must demand the same of ourselves.