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The New York Times has just issued itself a report card rating its progress in “building a diverse and inclusive workplace.” While women have made slow but steady strides toward increased representation at all levels of the company, people of color showed more sporadic gains.
For the NYT Co. as a whole, women constituted 50 percent of the workforce in 2017, up from 45 percent in 2015 and 47 percent in 2016. Female employees were slightly more prominent on the business side of the company in 2017 (52 percent) than on the news and opinion side (47 percent), but on both sides the overall trend was positive. When the analysis is limited to leadership positions, women are currently at 46 percent across all of the study’s categories.
The numbers for people of color were lower, and the positive trend was less consistent. Overall, they represented 28 percent of NYT employees last year, up from 26 percent in 2016, which was a drop from 27 percent in 2015. In leadership positions, people of color held 17 percent of all positions in 2015, and that number rose to 21 percent in 2016 before dropping to 20 percent last year.
When it comes to new hires, however, the paper is making strides. In 2017, 61 percent of new NYT employees were women, and 39 percent were people of color. The paper also says it is expanding its outreach to underrepresented groups through such organizations as the National Association of Black Journalists and The Emma Bowen Foundation.
Calling these efforts “part of what will be a sustained commitment,” the Times says that from now on it will release data about the composition of its workforce annually.
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