New data show extreme racial exclusion in WAMC’s leadership and staff
Does the station have a strategy to expand racial inclusion? Why isn’t it working?
By James Earl Owens, PhD
WAMC’s board of trustees, station staff, and senior staff are overwhelming white and lack any representation from Arab, Palestinian, and Middle Eastern/North African people, according to new data released by the station to Guidestar on June 25, 2024 following inquiries to the station by JamesEarlOwensPhD. WAMC is the northeast regional affiliate of National Public Radio. This new data shows WAMC’s trustees are 85% white, senior staff are 100% white, and other staff are 92% white. These revelations reinforce concerns raised by my recent study of The Roundtable, WAMC’s signature daytime news program, which found a 93% white guestlist that completely excluded Arab and Palestinians in recent coverage of campus protests against Israel’s war on Palestine.
Lack of Transparency about Lack of Diversity
The new Guidestar data showing WAMC’s overwhelming whiteness followed public outreach, research, and inquiries to the station by this blog. The data was not previously reported on WAMC’s website, despite promises there stated as part of the station’s Community Representation Policy. That policy, among other commitments, promises to post “an annual report describing the station’s diversity efforts,” including “employment statistics for the station and surrounding area.” As of publication (7/5/2024), WAMC’s website still does not provide that demographic and employment report nor the also promised information on “hiring goals, guidelines . . . and any actions taken to support” the station’s claimed diversity and inclusion goals. The webpage timestamp (“Reviewed & Updated November 2023”) shows over 7-month delay (and counting) for these promised public disclosures. A different WAMC page does provide access to their FY23 Annual Financial Report to CPB and FY23 Local Content and Service Report but those documents do not discuss hiring goals or guidelines, or efforts to support the Community Representation Policy.
In reply to my emails pointing out these omissions and requesting the information promised in their Community Representation Policy, WAMC Interim CEO/COO Stacey Rosenberry on June 25, 2024 provided me limited—but damning—data verifying white dominance among station management and personnel. She also declined to clarify if the board or staff included Arab, Palestinian, or Middle Eastern/North African people. Was it a coincidence that, later that same day, WAMC also posted new demographic data on Guidestar that publicly confirmed the overwhelming whiteness of leadership and staff and that zero staff or trustees identified as Middle Eastern/North African, a category encompassing Palestinians and Arabs?1 This lack of diversity at WAMC, historical data shows, is not new, nor is the station improving racial inclusion on the among trustees, senior staff, or newsroom and other staff.
Lack of Progress on Lack of Diversity
Past Guidestar data shows that WAMC failed to improve diversity among staff and leadership since at least 1/19/22, the earliest data it was possible to recover using the Internet Archive (since WAMC, unlike NPR, does not publicly provide historical data). In January of 2022, nearly 2-years prior to the station’s 11/23 stated commitment to improve diversity, WAMC reported staff to be 90% white (compared with 92% white today). Senior staff were 100% white then, as now. Diversity among WAMC trustees actually declined (in number and proportion) since 2022: trustees were 71% white in early 2022 and are 85% white today. Trustees included 6 people of color in 2022 and only 2 today. In comparison, NPR’s staff was 56% white in 2023, down from 66% white in 2019. As WAMC’s own data shows white dominance among leadership and staff unchanged or worsening, WAMC’s diversity strategy seems either not working or not actually in practice.
Source: WAMC reporting to Guidestar, 1/19/2022, cached 1/22/2022 by Internet Archive; WAMC reporting to Guidestar, 6/25/2024, https://www.guidestar.org/profile/22-2400593
What is WAMC’s strategy to increase diversity? (Does WAMC actually have a diversification strategy?)
What strategy guides WAMC’s diversification efforts? If the station does have a diversification strategy, why didn’t it work? Why does WAMC continue to fall short of its own stated Community Representation Policy of “recruiting for its staff, volunteers and boards highly capable, diverse individuals who can participate in the organization effectively, ethically and creatively and who can serve as successful advocates for public media in the communities we serve”? Why is WAMC so white?
My review of WAMC’s Equal Employment Opportunity filings (2023-24, link below) indicates that, sensibly, the station’s approach to attracting diverse applicants includes advertising jobs in a variety of print and online channels. However, the filings show that the station advertised jobs in a narrow range of channels that were not likely to diversify applicant pools: local newspapers, Indeed.com, and JournalismJobs.com. The station did not report recruiting through the nation’s many minority press associations nor colleges with high minority enrollment, per that filing. The station’s one reported “long term recruitment initiative,” a mentoring program connecting junior with senior staff, seems to have only served white reporters/producers.2
More transparency from WAMC would be required to more accurately track changes in diversity at the station over time and better understand which strategies have been pursued and why they have failed. In our emails, CEO/COO Rosenberry declined to answer when asked if the station had a strategy “to expand content, staff, and/or audience diversity”. She also declined to answer questions about how diverse local communities could get involved with the station board or community advisory board. This kind of refusal to engage violates the spirit of the “Three D” framework—“Diversity, Digital, and Dialogue”— that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting uses3 for the last decade “to guide its grant-making decisions and help public media remain true to its mission.” Rosenberry’s (non)response arguably adds “Disengagement” to that list.
Email to Stacey Rosenberry, unanswered as of publication date
Why Diverse Leadership and Staffing Matters
The above discussion highlights the near absence of non-white people at WAMC, the shortcomings of the station’s strategy to address that exclusion, and anecdotal evidence of one senior manager’s reluctance to engage listeners on the topic – more evidence of this reluctance to come in a future post! WAMC's lack of management and newsroom diversity matters. For one, hiring choices shape content and the potential for news to create common understandings (or increase misunderstandings) and to expand (or narrow) awareness of people’s suffering. It is outrageous that as the nation engages in broad public debate over US policies supporting Israel’s massive violence against Palestine, and Israeli threats to expand that war to Lebanon, WAMC management and news staff lack even a single professional with a Middle East/North African perspective.
These problems of exclusion and disconnection are themselves barriers to attracting news and management talent whose life experiences as people of color could enable them to build new connections with similar local communities (a stated reason for NPR’s creation4). But with sincere and strategic efforts, it is possible for NPR affiliates to diversify their personnel without alienating established, predominantly white and affluent audiences. In his recent book, The Sound of Exclusion, Christopher Chávez points to the 2015 success of Los Angeles public radio KPCC as a blueprint for expanding diversity and growing audiences. KPCC grew audiences by 27% and Latino/a audiences by 96% by strategically hiring a Latino senior producer; investing in community engagement with local leaders and organizations; and hosting focus groups “to assess which issues and stories were important to members of the local community and which stories were not being told or were being told incorrectly” (p. 204).
Of course, the Northeast region is not a densely populated metropolis like LA. Yet strategically hiring newsroom and management personnel from non-white communities and empowering them to listen to our diverse local communities are promising strategies for WAMC to strengthen news coverage and diversify and increase audiences. Community members should demand that WAMC implement these and other reforms immediately to diversify the station and publish regular, transparent annual reporting about progress on their website and on Guidestar.
Contact WAMC and let them know your thoughts. Stacey Rosenberry, Interim CEO: srosenberry@wamc.org, WAMC Main Office: (518) 465-5233
If you have experiences about raising diversity concerns to WAMC, please contact me by email. I will keep all communications confidential. Sharing your story can inform future posts on this blog and help other listeners know what’s going on!
The data WAMC provided to Guidestar appears slightly more complete than what Rosenberry provideded to me. The Guidestar data identifies 11 trustees as White/Caucasian/Europeans and 2 as Black/African American/Africans, whereas the data provided to me by Rosenberry lists 10 trustees as white and 1 as “unreported”. The Guidestar data also reports on WAMC’s senior staff, which Rosenberry did not provide me.
“News Director, Ian Pickus mentored Reporter Alexander Babbie from 02/13/23 to 8/20/23. James Farrison, Underwriting Manager mentored Duncan Lindsay from 1/23/23 to 07 /23/23. Lucas Willard, Southern Adirondack Bureau Chief/Weekend Host is mentoring Aaron Shellow-Lavine which began 10/9/23,” p. 5 (marked “WAMC1”).
Corporation for Public Broadcasting Appropriation Request and Justification, FY 2025/FY 2027, pp. 10, 51. https://www.cpb.org/sites/default/files/FY25-27%20Congressional%20Justification.pdf
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 created PBS and NPR to, in part, “encourage the development of programming that involves creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities”, para 6, https://www.cpb.org/aboutpb/act