The Nation - News from April 26, 1989

Fifty-four percent of U.S. newspapers do not have a single minority employee on their editorial staffs, a researcher said. Newspapers will have to recruit black, Latino, Asian and other minority group members as employees, advertisers and readers if they are to start growing again, said Peter Francese, president of American Demographics Inc. Francese provided research for a report released by the American Newspaper Publishers Assn. that said newspapers need to tap minority populations, which are growing 11 times faster than non-minorities. “What we have done (with the report), . . . is to make the case that what is right and fair is also smart business,” David Lawrence, publisher of the Detroit Free Press and chairman of the ANPA’s Task Force on Minorities in the Newspaper Business, said.