Wall Street Journal staff criticize lack of diversity in newsroom

A group of Wall Street Journal editors and reporters signed a letter to the newspaper’s management criticizing its lack of staff diversity, especially at higher levels. 

“Diversity in the newsroom is good for business and good for our coverage,” reads the letter, which Business Insider first reported on Tuesday. “We would like to see the Journal undertake a more comprehensive, intentional and transparent approach to improving it.”

“There are currently four women and eight men listed as deputy managing editors, and both editorial page editors are men. Nearly all the people at high levels at the paper deciding what we cover and how are white men.”

{mosads}The letter was addressed to the Journal’s editor-in-chief, Gerard Baker, and Matt Murray, his deputy.

It was signed by 160 staffers, a source told Business Insider, but that total could not be independently verified.

Business Insider added its source did not know when Baker and Murray received the message but expected it was earlier Tuesday.

The letter also referenced a report published by an employee union last year that discovered a pay gap between the Journal’s male and female employees.

“We feel that the underlying issues regarding pay equity have not been addressed,” the message says of the Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees (IAPE) analysis.

“There are troubling signs in other parts of the paper as well,” it adds. “For example, over the past six months, the high-profile Saturday Review cover piece was written by a woman just once.”

“And following the most recent round of layoffs and buyouts, just 18% of our union-represented writers, editors, visual journalists, and reporters are people of color.”

IAPE’s 2016 report on gender pay discrepancies at the Journal discovered that women there earned 86.8 percent of what their male counterparts made.

Dow Jones, the Journal’s parent company, pledged last year it would work with the Journal on closing pay gaps between its employees.

“Any pay disparity relating to an employee’s race or gender is troubling and inconsistent with the standards I strive to maintain at Dow Jones,” Dow Jones CEO William Lewis wrote in a March 24, 2016 email to employees. “We must, as a matter of urgency, address these issues head on.”