More than 150 reporters at the Wall Street Journal signed a letter sent to upper management at the outlet addressing their concerns regarding race and diversity within the newsroom.
The memo was sent to Almar Latour, the recently appointed chief executive of News Corp’s Dow Jones unit and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and Matt Murray, editor in chief of the outlet, on Friday, according to a Tuesday article by the publication about the internal spat.
“Many WSJ journalists, including many who are white, find the way we cover race to be problematic,” the letter stated.
The journalists also argued that there are not enough people of color at the paper, including among its upper management, and argued that the current makeup of the newsroom stunts the outlet’s capabilities.
Latour addressed the feedback from hundreds of employees in a memo sent to the newsroom on Monday. He said the responses “included highly personal accounts, painful experiences, and concerns about racial diversity in our workforce.”
“I share the sentiment, as one colleague put it, that ‘this normal is not OK’ at Dow Jones,” he added.
The Wall Street Journal is the latest publication to face internal struggles about its coverage of nationwide protests that stem from the death of George Floyd, a black man who was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer, and seek to raise awareness about police brutality and systemic racial injustice.
The New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer notably had staff members in leadership positions resign from their posts amid backlash.
James Bennet, the former editor of the New York Time’s opinion section, stepped down last week after the paper published an op-ed from Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas that encouraged President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to stop violent protesters. Journalists in the newsroom argued that the piece put black reporter’s lives in danger.
At the Philadelphia Inquirer, Stan Wischnowski, the paper’s executive editor, also announced his resignation last week after the paper ran the headline “Buildings Matter, Too,” a spin on the name of the Black Lives Matter movement, to call attention to the buildings and businesses that have been damaged and vandalized during demonstrations that turned violent.
