The Seattle Times will not be laying off any more journalists of color. Enough journalists took buyouts so that the company did not make a second round of involuntary cuts in the newsroom. Executive Editor David Boardman told me that diversity was a top priority when the managers decided which buyouts to accept and which to reject.
Karen Johnson, an AAJA member and three-year news resident, was laid off two weeks ago with 15 other journalists. AAJA has given her a complimentary UNITY convention registration and the Seattle chapter will support her with a $500 travel stipend. She is willing to move to stay in journalism so please send job tips to kjohnson13@gmail.com. Karen has won a chapter scholarship, a Poynter fellowship and the Stan Chen internship grant, which shows you how bright we think her future is. She has spent the past year building up our suburban readership as a news reporter, and previously interned at The Oregonian.
AAJA and our UNITY alliance partners must continue to remind managers of their values when they are forced to make tough choices. We will do more. We will reach out to our unions, who also want to preserve diversity for the future. We will help laid-off, bought-out members find new jobs in journalism. We will train our members in technology, newsroom leadership and career navigation. I remain optimistic about the future of journalism. The demand for news and information has never been greater and we will find a business model that rewards us for the content we produce.