The disparity between practitioners of the trade and its public is most starkly shown by the raw figures for employment on ten newspapers with circulations in areas with significant minority populations. Among the large evening papers, the Birmingham Evening Mail employed the highest population of journalists from ethnic minorities, seven out of a total editorial staff of 93; the Yorkshire Evening Post had no members of ethnic minorities among a staff of 68. Thirty per cent of Birmingham's population is classified as non-white by the 2001 census; the minority-ethnic population of Leeds is 8.7 per cent. Of two sister weeklies in west London, published in neighbourhoods with important minority communities, the Uxbridge Gazette had one minority-ethnic journalist on a reporting staff of 10 serving a population that is 14 per cent minority. The Harrow Observer had one minority reporter on a staff of 12 serving a population of which ethnic minorities make up 43 per cent.

Probably the most optimistic aspect of the report (Diversity in the Newsroom: Employment of Minority Ethnic Journalists in Newspapers) is that it exists at all. The result of an initiative by the SoE's training committee chairman Professor Peter Cole, the inquiry upon which the report is based was, thankfully, taken most seriously by the editors and managers of the newspapers which provided information for it. Clearly they see the imbalance between staffs and their potential audiences as a problem in terms of equality of opportunity, in the same way that earlier generations faced a shortage of female staff and the relegation to lifestyle features and “soft” news of many women who did succeed in hurdling the gender barrier. Those editors also see what Cole describes as a “commercial problem — why should people buy a newspaper that had nothing to say to them? — and a moral problem — why should readers from communities perhaps as much as 30 per cent minority-ethnic have any commitment to a paper that didn't bother to employ any such people?”.

Another aspect of enlightened self-interest among editors and proprietors is that they have learned that a journalist from a minority background can provide specialised knowledge outside the range of people from white middle-class homes. Such knowledge can be invaluable in coming to grips with some of the most inflammatory stories affecting the local or national community at a time when racial and religious conflict is simmering globally, and has already risen to the surface in some of the towns served by the newspapers surveyed, such as Burnley and Oldham. Newsroom executives are often reluctant to recognise the knowledge that individual reporters and sub-editors bring to the job from their education and outside interests, often fearing a challenge to their own prejudices by junior staff better informed than themselves. They will ignore the facts and opinions brought in by the men and women from their minorities at their peril.

Falling into the trap

So lessons are being learned and editors appear unanimous in wanting to hire bright entrants from the ethnic minorities. They have reason to envy the broadcast media, which have shown a determination to raise the status and prominence of ethnic-minority staff after having realised they were losing significant parts of their audience. The BBC, famously denounced by then director-general Greg Dyke in 2000 for being “hideously white”, achieved this January its initial target of 10 per cent of staff and 4 per cent of senior management from minority-ethnic communities. For 2007 the target is 12.5 per cent of all staff and 7 per cent of senior management.

But the largest problem facing recruiters to newspapers, far greater than experienced by broadcasters, is a desperate shortage of aspirant journalists. Nick Carter, editor of the Leicester Mercury, commented: “The Asian community doesn't see journalism jobs as sexy compared with traditional favourites such as accountants, doctors and dentists, and other potentially high-earning jobs. We need to show that we offer attractive and stimulating career opportunities.” Chris Daggett, editor of the Burnley Express, reported that school children, when asked why they did not apply for jobs, showed themselves hostile to the national press, describing it as Islamophobic: “They are anti-media, particularly the Daily Express, which they see as hostile with all its asylum coverage.”

As Nick Carter observed, there are reasons for the dearth of young minority-ethnic trainees other than newspapers that blatantly pander to racial prejudice. When Anila Baig, now a Sun feature writer, told her Muslim family that she wanted to be a journalist, her father replied: “Fine. That will be a great hobby.” No, she persisted, she wanted to follow journalism as a profession. “Surely,” her father protested, “you can first qualify as a doctor and then be a health reporter?” Old traditions die hard, but it is the responsibility of the press to enhance its tawdry image so that minority-ethnic groups will no longer feel that journalism is a second-class trade.

Currently the SoE training committee is collecting information on ethnic-minority recruitment to journalism courses, which now provide a large proportion of those entering print journalism. Meanwhile, the report — and the pleas of the editors who contributed to it — shows the daunting scale of a problem that will have to be solved if newspapers are to reflect the reality of the communities they seek to serve and represent.