Revisiting IndyStar's commitment to newsroom diversity and the work left to do

It’s been two years since IndyStar committed to its newsroom staff better reflecting our community’s diversity by 2025.

We — along with USA TODAY Network newsrooms across the country — pledged to update the progress toward that goal each summer. This year, IndyStar’s report can be characterized by the word stability.

The diversity of IndyStar’s newsroom in 2022 remains relatively steady year over year and similar to our inaugural census. Our staff is 74.2% white, 12.4% Black, 6.7% Asian and 3.4% Hispanic with 2.2% identifying as two or more races. Much the same can be said of our newsroom leadership’s makeup since 2020. Our employee breakdown by gender continually remains about a 50-50 split between men and women.

More:Gannett newsrooms making steady progress in overall diversity

Stability isn't good enough, given our need to see and think differently and more broadly based on different backgrounds and experiences.

These figures generally reflect the overall identity of our coverage area, which goes beyond Indianapolis’ boundaries, but they do not reflect the census figures for the city. Nearly 30% of Indianapolis identifies as Black and 10% identify as Hispanic or Latino, according to 2021 census data.

As we continue to diversify our coverage of communities across the city, better representation of those communities is necessary not just in stories but in the people reporting and covering the news.

How does this help? It leads to stories, photos and videos with more respect for differing ways of seeing the world. It means more stories that better reflect the diversity of our communities.

IndyStar:2022 newsroom diversity figures

Since last year’s census, our coverage has embraced more neighborhoods across the city through the 317 Project, which plans to tell the story of Indianapolis’ more than 200 neighborhoods through profiles of the people and places that represent individual communities. We have also told stories like Sulaman and Arzo Akbarzada’s, showing off their love for each other as they escaped war and found a home in Indianapolis.

We plan to do more. Later this summer, we will start an advisory group composed of Black community members who will meet with us monthly to discuss how we cover the city’s Black community and hold us accountable to better standards while also showing us better stories to tell. Also, we are in the early development stages of creating a mobile newsroom project, organizing several staff members who will station a newsroom inside a neighborhood periodically to report on the area for its residents.

We will continue to recruit diversified candidates locally and nationwide for all positions. We have several openings within the newsroom this summer and with each position, we push for the deepest pool of talent to interview and choose from. Recruiting since 2020 has been challenging as the news industry faces many similar struggles seen by businesses since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

While the content evolves, our staff will, too. We’ve committed to it, so hold us accountable to it.

Bro Krift is IndyStar's executive editor. Follow him on Twitter @BroKrift.