The Seattle Times’ diversity statement

The Seattle Times recognizes that our newsroom must reflect the diversity of our region and the communities we serve. Having a diverse staff is an important step toward richer, more inclusive and better journalism. People from all walks of life must see themselves in our content and be able to relate to it. It is essential to achieving our journalistic mission. We recognize that diversity is measured in many different ways — including race, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, disability, socio-economic and geographic background — and we are committed to reflecting those different perspectives on our staff. We also recognize that we can improve on our efforts in making our staff more diverse. We are particularly focused on increasing representation of persons of color and women on our staff and in key leadership positions. We will achieve this by continuing to review and fine-tune our hiring, development, retention and promotion practices while ensuring that our newsroom is a place where journalists from all backgrounds can grow.

To achieve this, we adhere to the following objectives:

• To communicate the company’s workplace diversity commitment to all newsroom employees, emphasizing why it’s important to The Seattle Times Co.
• To communicate that commitment to our audiences and communities, and to maintain an open and honest dialogue with them through our stories, visuals, comments, social media and live events.
• To establish action plans that help us progress toward a goal of a workforce that reflects the diversity of the communities we serve.
• To actively monitor retention rates of journalists of color and female journalists, and to develop and implement strategies to support their retention.
• To create and maintain an open and ongoing dialogue and assessment of how well our news content reflects our readership.
• To create and maintain resources and training that ensure our content serves and reflects the diversity of our audience.