History of the Maynard Institute

Published and distributed at Unity 2008 conference in Chicago

The Beginning: Making Newsrooms Look Like America

Thirty years ago, the composition of newsrooms across the country didn’t look much like America: They were dominated from top to bottom by white men. But a group of nine journalists—black, Latino and white—took a significant step toward changing the culture in newsrooms nationwide. For far too long, they had heard newspaper executives proclaim they would like to hire minorities, but couldn’t find anyone qualified.

Their response? They worked to remove this excuse from the equation.

“We will not let you off the hook,” Robert C. Maynard, one of the nine, declared to a gathering of newspaper executives in April 1978. “We must desegregate this business.”