In the early ’90s, Ryerson University professor emeritus John Miller conducted a study on the visual representation of minority groups in Canadian newspapers. He looked at which section photos appeared in, how many featured people of colour and compared the ratios with those of actual demographic groups living in the paper’s local population. “Of all the newspapers we looked at, only one newspaper was close to even,” he said. “That was the Montreal Gazette.” When he called up the Gazette’s then-editor, Joan Fraser, to tell her about it, “she laughed and said, ‘Wow, you can measure that? We’ve been trying to do this for years.’” “They had an editor in charge of having reporters assigned to keep an eye on certain communities,” said Miller, “and they were really happy with the results and getting interesting stories.” In between, studies at Laval University in 2000 and a 2004 Canadian Task Force for Cultural Diversity on Television found that 97 per cent of Canadian journalists working in various media, and 87.7 per cent of news anchors were white, respectively. Addressing diversity in Canadian journalism, both in coverage and in the newsrooms that produce it, is a complicated proposition — at least in part because statistics on the issue and the policies informed by them are often the exception and not the rule. After that visual representation study, Miller conducted a demographic review of Canadian newspaper mastheads with the Canadian Daily Newspaper Association in 1994 and again in 2004 at Ryerson University. At the time, what the studies categorized as visible minorities accounted for 2.6 per cent of staff at newspapers in 1994 and 3.4 per cent 10 years later. In between, studies at Laval University in 2000 and a 2004 Canadian Task Force for Cultural Diversity on Television found that 97 per cent of Canadian journalists working in various media, and 87.7 per cent of news anchors were white, respectively. But to date, a consistent survey similar to the scope of the American Society of News Editors’ annual newsroom census, running since 1978, does not exist in Canada. Or, in Miller’s words: “Nobody’s keeping count now.” “One of the first things I started talking about when I was shaking people’s hands was that we’re going to begin to better reflect this city and all its diversity. Our mission is to look and sound like this city in all its diversity.” – Susan Marjetti, CBC Sheila Giffen is executive director of Canadian Women in the Literary Arts, an organization that has been counting gender representation in literary arts journalism since 2013. CWILA’s annual count, which includes the gender of both reviewers and authors, not only highlights where representation gaps exist industry-wide but which newspapers and magazines are doing particularly well. “Our job is to look at the gaps and start a conversation that organizations and publications can and should continue,” said Giffen. “You should also be looking at what other factors are going into the lack of diversity.” “The numbers that speak to the diversity in an organization are important, but what’s happening below the surface is more important,” she added. In the absence of numbers, senior managing director of CBC Toronto Susan Marjetti has built a newsroom diversity policy that’s often cited internationally as a successful example of how such a policy can work — and as a business case for having one in the first place. After seeing a lack of coverage of urban Aboriginal communities in Winnipeg and Black Nova Scotians in Halifax, both places she’d worked at for the CBC, she noticed a similar pattern in Toronto after moving there in 2001 to work as a program manager for radio. “One of the first things I started talking about when I was shaking people’s hands was that we’re going to begin to better reflect this city and all its diversity. Our mission is to look and sound like this city in all its diversity,” Marjetti said. “That became our vision,” she said. “Simple, memorable, easy for everyone to remember — as opposed to a 14-page strategy document.” “At the time, we had the opportunity to hire two associate producers and two reporters,” Marjetti said. “I actively set out to recruit from diverse communities.” “When we sat down and looked at our coverage overall, what truly stood out was the need to be proactive. A lot of news is driven by policy makers and industry leaders who are not as diverse as the people the news affects. And much of news is hard and negative — there is usually a problem.” – Kathy English, Public Editor, Toronto Star Working with human resources to build a staff reflective of the audiences an outlet wants to reach, according to Marjetti, is critical to this approach.