The foundation seeks to increase news and newsroom diversity in the United States. It aims to have Knight journalism training programs reflect the populations they serve, and national programs reflect the nation's demographics. Better tools are needed to map diversity, which includes race, gender, generation, class, geography and ideology. Beginning with its
high school initiative, the foundation aims to expand the number of students of diverse backgrounds in the employment pipeline. To help journalists and readers discuss how well their newspaper's staff reflects the racial diversity of their community, Knight Foundation funds an annual report by journalists Bill Dedman and Stephen K. Doig, which is based on the annual survey of newspapers by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE).
Organizations that have received diversity grants include:
- Maynard Institute for Journalism Education: For operating expenses and partial challenge grant to launch endowment fund for the nation's leading trainer of journalists of color; to help BlackCollegeWire.org find a new, permanent home..
- TCC Group: For the Challenge Fund for Journalism, a partnership with Ford Foundation and Ethics and Excellence Foundation that teaches journalism groups how to build their own organizations.
- University of Montana: To expand ReznetNews.org, an online student newspaper for Native Americans attending Tribal Colleges lacking student media.
Research on News and Newsroom Diversity
- News in a New America:
A report on the diversity of our news and our newsrooms,
by Sally Lehrman
- Newsroom diversity is below its peak levels at most daily newspapers, according to research for Knight Foundation by Steven K. Doig, Knight Chair at Arizona State University, and Bill Dedman, of The Boston Globe.
- Diversity: Best Practices: A handbook for Journalism and Mass Communications Educators (2003).
Published with support from Knight by Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications.
- Minority Students in Journalism (2002): A Knight Foundation special publication, this 32-page handbook looks at the experiences and lessons learned from six diversity programs at university journalism schools at Florida A&M, Florida, Missouri, San Francisco State, North Dakota and Wayne State. Since this report was issued, additional grants have been made to the University of Alabama, Penn State and the University of Nevada-Reno.
