It has never exceeded 400, and there was no gain at all in 1997. In the latest survey, the net gain in minority employees was 100. Before newsrooms could make any net gains in newsroom diversity, editors had to hire about 750 minority workers to replace for those who left the business. The current annual turnover rate is 12 percent. Thus newspapers hired 850 minority journalists last year in order to get that 100-person gain.
Newspapers naturally look to the crop of journalism school graduates to fill entry-level positions.
Those schools graduated about 5,200 print journalism majors in 1997. For each minority print journalism graduate, schools of journalism produced about three minority broadcast graduatess 2,200 aspiring broadcasters in 1997. Perhaps after the broadcast graduates find that jobs in their field are scarce there are two professional journalists jobs in a daily newspapers for each one at broadcast stations many apply for newspaper jobs. Daily newspapers, however, offered jobs to 44 percent of the minority applicants and 44 percent of the whites. Newsroom salaries are often cited as an impediment to hiring.