Every year The Bi-College News—the weekly newspaper for Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges—conducts an online survey asking readers what the newspaper staff can do to improve its coverage. And every year someone writes: “You need more people of color on staff.”

A recent article on Campusprogress.org, “The Racial Politics of Campus Newspapers,” explained that since stories for college newspapers are often generated through word-of-mouth, predominantly white editorial staffs can easily miss events, trends or basically anything going on in various communities of students of color.

The article recounts one particularly drastic instance in which an all-white editorial staff presented problems—editors at the Kansas State Collegian neglected to cover the Big 12 Conference on Black Student Government in 2004, which had attracted 1,000 participants to the campus.

While The Argus, which is composed of a mostly white editorial staff, has never experienced issues of this magnitude, some students wonder if the discrepancy between staff demographics and student body demographics can nevertheless affect coverage.

Justin Douglas ’08, leader of Invisible Men, which meets weekly to discuss men of color issues on campus, explained that The Argus often devotes a great deal of coverage to big cultural events within student of color communities, but nothing else.

“It sometimes misses out on smaller events within the student of color communities,” he said. “It’s obvious when I read The Argus that there isn’t much input from students of color in it.”

Scarlett Feliz ’10, house manager of La Casa, agreed with Douglas.

“Whenever something is going on in terms of diversity in general, it doesn’t really get addressed in The Argus,” she said. “The Argus does reach a lot of people, but a lot of students of color might feel that it doesn’t reach them.”

Feliz also noted that besides the newspaper’s lack of coverage of student of color events and stories, its mostly white staff can inadvertently miss out on student of color opinions on various issues.

“Even if it’s a normal article, a student of color’s perspective is probably going to be really different,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s just reporters not realizing they should talk with students or staff of color, but it would be more creative to include different perspectives on various issues.”

Malcom Glenn, a junior at Harvard University and the first black President (Editor-in-Chief) of The Harvard Crimson, explained that his newspaper, like The Bi-College News and The Argus, has faced similar problems in the past, though lately it has made progress in this respect.

“It wasn’t by accident that a lot of minority groups didn’t like The Crimson,” he said. “They weren’t being covered well.”

Glenn attributes this lack of coverage, at least to some extent, to the lack of diversity among staff.

“[The Crimson is] a more diverse institution than when I got here, but we are not as diverse as we could be,” he said. “We strive to look like the rest of Harvard.”

Wesleyan’s Dean of Diversity and Academic Advancement Daniel Teraguchi described the word-of-mouth process by which college newspapers generate article ideas as an exclusive process. It creates a circle of advantage that privileges stories that may not capture the full vibrancy of the campus community, he said.

Not only does this affect stories, but it also affects the language of the paper, Teraguchi pointed out, as privileged language, especially headlines, can reinforce a cycle of oppression.

To rectify this, Teraguchi suggests invoking his colleague Daryl G. Smith’s phrase “interrupting the usual,” which means constantly searching out new ways of doing things in order to be as inclusive as possible.

“To be more inclusive, there would be different ways of reporting, changing the formatting every once again, different ways for readers to participate in the newspaper, making the newspaper more appealing and credible to different groups,” he said.

Douglas, however, pointed out that even the most well-intentioned efforts to diversify a newspaper’s coverage can be problematic.

“I think it’s hard for anyone to learn about any community they don’t feel connected to or they don’t have an ’in’ with, or a friend to guide along,” he said. “It’s difficult to interact with communities you don’t know about without stepping on toes.”

Similarly, Glenn noted the ways in which The Crimson seeks to pay special attention to campus communities of color.

“The President develops relationships with minority leaders, so that things don’t fall through the cracks,” he said. “We treat our coverage of minority student groups in the same vein that we treat any of our other strong beats: that we treat any of our other strong beats: we assign the best writers.”

While The Crimson may struggle with racial diversity, its Crimson Financial Aid program has increased socioeconomic diversity among staff. The program offers 50 student editors work-study hours or Crimson scholarships, depending on their need, in order to enable students who would otherwise have to work on or off campus to become involved in the paper.

“It’s mostly about getting students who otherwise wouldn’t be able to contribute, to contribute,” Glenn said.

While The Bi-College News has no such program, junior and Editor-in-Chief Dave Merrell explained that the staff has recently diversified as well. Collectively, the Haverford and Bryn Mawr study body is roughly 31 percent students of color, and The Bi-College News’s 22-person editorial staff includes seven students of color—both Merrell and one of his two managing editors self-identify as students of color, as well.

“It’s not something we actively work towards, it’s just the way it is,” Merrell said of this diversity.

But the staff wasn’t always this diverse, Merrell noted. About a-year-and-a-half ago, three racially charged events happened in one semester that sparked campus-wide discussion: a student advertising a “ghetto-themed” party on Facebook, a controversial guest speaker accusing Israel of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, and finally, a group of African American students putting up provocative posters with quotes expressing their unhappiness at Haverford.

“[After these events] there was a feeling that it was time to stand up and get involved,” Merrell said, explaining that the student government, like the newspaper, got more diverse as well. “It was obviously bad that these things happened but the dialogue that came out of it was incredible. News and events did what we couldn’t do in recruiting.”

While recruiting may have been ineffective for The Bi-College News, Feliz suggested that The Argus make a more pointed recruiting effort.

“I feel like there are students of color who would be interested in joining The Argus, if there was a better recruitment effort amongst the student of color community,” she said. “If The Argus is only going to recruit on a wider scale, it’s hard for students of color to feel like they can join.”

Douglas, however, argued that the paper’s demographics may be somewhat inevitable.

“It would be great if there could be more students of color on The Argus, but you can’t make people join stuff they don’t want to, and you can’t make the white staff dive into those communities that they don’t want to,” he said. “It isn’t anyone’s particular fault—there aren’t many students of color who choose to participate.”

This year when readers criticized The Bi-College News about not having enough students of color on staff, Managing Editor Andrea Milne, also a student of color, decided to respond in her “Get to Know the Paper” blog by asking the student body how it felt the paper could diversify.

“We accept anybody who is interested in joining our staff, regardless of experience level, so what do you think The Bi-College News would need to do to attract more men and women who identify themselves as belonging to a racial, sexual, socioeconomic or religious minority to the paper?” she asked readers. “Should the paper be making additional overtures to specific ’groups,’ and if so, what methods would you consider appropriate for targeted recruiting?”