We've been told that it's morally right. And still newsrooms have been slow to change. So by reframing this as an issue of accuracy, we think we hit a nerve. David Yarnold is executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News , a newspaper that serves an ethnically diverse area of California. Hiring goes hand in glove with credibility and accuracy.
Every journalist needs to be able to see through various lenses.
Being able to bring people together with different cultural backgrounds is going to make our reports more authentic. Yarnold helped organize a week of workshops, a national time-out that was called at 140 newspapers around the country to focus attention on diversity. The Mercury News is covering a community that has been transformed in recent decades by waves of immigration. Editor David Yarnold recalled how diversity on the staff has paid editorial dividends. American reporters clearly won the trust of many of the sources of those stories and made the series a whole lot deeper and a lot more honest.