The St. Louis American salutes the entrepreneurial spirit that helped the St. Louis minority business community place three firms in the illustrious Black Enterprise annual ranking of the nation’s top 100 African-American owned businesses.
For the second consecutive year, David Steward, founder of World Wide Technology, sits atop the summit of black business owners. Kelvin Westbrook is again ranked at No. 34, and Mike and Steve Roberts’ Roberts Broadcasting climbed seven slots up to 76th from 83rd in the past year.
Another recent tabulation is worth noting, for it involves the new owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Lee Enterprises, which will officially assume operation of the paper tomorrow after Pulitzer Inc. shareholders approve the purchase.
The 2005 Knight Foundation report on newsroom minority employment showed that Lee Enterprises lags behind other large newspaper groups in employment of minority journalists.
The study took an average index of all of each publishing group’s newspapers, weighted by circulation, and created an Average Newspaper Diversity Index which scores a 100 as equal parity between the minority population of the circulation and the percentage of minority newsroom employees. Only groups with at least 500,000 total circulation or at least 20 newspapers were included in the study.
Gannett ranked first with an 89, followed by Knight Ridder (76), McClatchy (71), New York Times Co. (69), Cox Enterprises (66), Newhouse (63) and Freedom Enterprises and Pulitzer (59, 59). Lee Enterprises scored a distressing 47, tying it for 13th with MediaNews Group out of 26 newspaper groups. The score is up from a paltry 38 in 2004, which left Lee 20th of 25 companies.
While Lee, based in Davenport, Iowa, has newspapers that serve rural areas with few minorities, the Knight study does take that factor into account. Also, Knight states that “the list is led by companies with well-known programs of rewarding managers with bonuses for recruitment of journalists of color.”
Hopefully, Lee Enterprises CEO Mary E. Junck, Editor and Publisher Publisher of the Year, will take note of that successful recruitment tool and that Lee will immediately begin working to improve its low score and ranking.
The Post should become Lee’s diversity anchor. The publishing group’s most famous property must reflect the community it serves.
Lee has a responsibility to its readers and the St. Louis region to demonstrate its commitment to diversity within its newsrooms here and across America.