Better Asian American Coverage With More AAPIs in Newsrooms?

Contact:
Keith Kamisugi (for AAJA)
415-876-0589
keith@keithpr.com

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MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (August 18, 2005) - For the first time, a study has revealed strong evidence that newsrooms with larger numbers of Asian American staff members result in newspapers that cover more stories on, and broader coverage of, Asian American communities and issues.

The Asian American Journalists Association commissioned the study, "Representing the Total Community: Relationships Between Asian American Staff and Asian American Coverage in U.S. Newspapers", co-authored by Ohio University mass communications professor Ralph Izard and Louisiana State University communications professor Denis Wu. The World Journal funded the study, which was coordinated by Abe Kwok, online news editor, azcentral.com.

"AAJA has long advocated for more representation of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in newsrooms as the best way to ensure fair and accurate coverage of those communities," said Esther Wu, columnist with The Dallas Morning News and national president of AAJA. "This is the first research report of its kind that statistically validates a key part of our organization's mission. We will use its findings as we continue to work with newspapers across the country to encourage hiring and retaining more Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the newsroom."

"This study supports the long-suspected association between the presence of ethnic journalists and the quality and certain attributes of reporting about an ethnic group," wrote Izard and Wu in the conclusion of their report. “Moreover, it appears that the number of Asian American journalists is a stronger catalyst than the factor of Asian American population in bolstering coverage about Asian Americans."

Izard and Wu surveyed a sample of newspapers from different parts of the country, with varying numbers of Asian American staff and circulation: Baton Rouge Advocate, Boston Globe, Raleigh News & Observer, San Diego Union-Tribune, Seattle Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Only the Boston Globe did not provide the number of their Asian American staff members, so the authors used the number of Globe staff that were members of AAJA as a reference.

The authors used several sets of data to investigate the correlation between staff numbers and coverage. They assessed AAPI demographics of the populations served by the newspapers and also used Lexis/Nexis to identify relevant news stories using the keywords of phrases "Asian American", "Asian", or any of eleven Asian ethnicities that exceeded one percent of the total Asian population in the U.S. per the 2000 census. The sample did not include stories that were exclusively about the Asian regions of the world.

The study's research team identified 166 stories throughout all six newspapers and each story was given values reflecting: byline (whether the writer was Asian American or had an Asian American name), length, topics, sources (the kind of source and whether the source was Asian American or had an Asian American name) and depth (substantive or superficial).

Based on these sets of data, the researchers examined whether patterns or trends of coverage existed related to Asian Americans and found a "statistically significant relationship" between the numbers of Asian American journalists and the Asian American population in the community served by the newspaper.

The study also found a positive relationship between the number of Asian Americans in the newsroom and that newspapers coverage of Asian Americans. "It appears clear that the more Asian American staff members a paper has, the more stories about Asian Americans it is likely to produce," said the study report.

In examining the substance of the stories surveyed, the study found that the three most frequent topics were culture and entertainment, features on individuals and immigration/naturalization - representing approximately 71 percent of the sample. Stories on business, education and food were the fourth, fifth and sixth most common topics.

The study also found that the three papers with larger numbers of Asian American staff members and larger Asian American populations - Boston Globe, Seattle Times and San Diego Union-Tribune - appeared to provide better coverage of Asian Americans. The coverage from those newspapers was also qualitatively better than the other three newspapers, where more of the coverage was event-driven.

Founded in 1981, the Asian American Journalists Association is a national, non-profit educational association based in San Francisco that has more than 2,300 members. Today, AAJA encourages young Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to enter the ranks of journalism, to work for fair and accurate coverage of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and to increase the number of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and news managers in the industry. For more information, visit http://www.aaja.org.

Founded in 1976, World Journal is one of the largest daily newspapers in the United States. World Journal is published in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Toronto and Vancouver and widely distributed wherever there are Chinese Americans. World Journal's mission is to serve all overseas Chinese by helping immigrants bridge the gap to mainstream America, keep in touch with their homeland and local Chinese community news, and improve their quality of life.