Knight Newsroom Diversity Project

Knight Chair Stephen Doig teams up with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bill Dedman each year to produce a major study of racial diversity in the newsrooms of U.S. daily newspapers. The project, started in 2002 and funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, uses computer-assisted reporting techniques to compare newsroom demographics to Census Bureau data in each newspaper's circulation area. The study also charts the progress made by individual newspapers.

“The lack of racial diversity in our newsrooms is among the biggest problems facing the news industry today,” says Cronkite School Dean Christopher Callahan. “The sophisticated analysis conducted by Steve and Bill is crucial to finding out the real story of newsroom diversity.”

Doig and Dedman, who are among the world's leaders in computer-assisted reporting techniques, also produce a Web page for all 1,400 daily newspapers analyzed.