Chasing Newsroom Diversity

Gwyneth Mellinger is a professor and chair of the Department of Mass Media and Visual Arts at Baker University. A volume in the series The History of Communication, edited by Robert W. McChesney and John C. Nerone

Frank Luther Mott / Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award, 2013."Gwyneth Mellinger's Chasing Newsroom Diversity: From Jim Crow to Affirmative Action offers explanations for 'why an effort so promising failed so profoundly.' In explaining the failure, the book provides a meticulous documented view of the ASNE over a fifty-year span, beginning in the mid-1950s. The work provides an excellent foundation for further studies on newsroom diversity."--American Journalism"Using the insights of whiteness studies and a rich array of primary sources, Mellinger demonstrates how and why the American Society of Newspaper Editors failed to achieve its 1978 diversity initiative's hiring goals by the goal year of 2000. She persuasively argues that whiteness (and maleness) consistently operated as a professional norm within the ASNE across time, even as the organization's leaders attempted to diversify newsrooms across America. A compelling and provocative book."--Kathy Roberts Forde, author of Literary Journalism on Trial: Masson v. New Yorker and the First Amendment "Provides a compelling explanation for how forward-thinking goals can be felled by institutional prejudice. . . . Anyone interested in the social movements of the twentieth century will find the book a worthwhile read."—Journalism History"Chasing Newsroom Diversity provides a thoroughly reported account of the evolution of ASNE's approach to minority recruitment and the feeble implementation of that goal in the workplace."--Newspaper Research Journal "The work provides an excellent foundation for further studies on newsroom diversity. As a teaching tool, the book also would likely prompt lively classroom discussions."--American Journalism"Mellinger provides a very useful and most informative case study of how one professional organization addresses some deeply embedded, institutionalized norms with social, political and cultural implications over an extended period of time--50 years, with insight into the degree of difficulty it had in trying to dismantle them."--Gateway Journalism Review