Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the Daily Nexus
Three years after the creation of the Diversity and Inclusion task force, here is how we have honored DEI.
By: Siddharth Chattoraj and Pricila Flores
July 12, 2023 at 2:00 pm
Diversity and inclusion first became an initiative with the Daily Nexus in 2020, following the murder of George Floyd. Created by the editorial staff and calling themselves the Diversity Task Force, they promised three things:
- Ensure that our editorial and general staff reflect the diversity of our community
- Strengthen representation in our coverage by improving relationships with campus and community organizations through consistent outreach
- Provide training on diversity and inclusion for all Nexus staff
Additionally, in their plans for the school year, one of the initiatives was to conduct an anonymous staff survey to gain a better understanding of the Nexus’s demographics. They outlined that survey topics should include race, gender, job status, academic background, prior non-Nexus journalism experience, first-generation status and hometown location.
They hoped the survey would provide an opportunity for members to assess the Nexus’s workplace dynamics and provide feedback that will be used for the creation of future initiatives. Their and our current goal is to identify which communities are represented within the Nexus, and how we can better recruit writers and editors to mirror the diversity of experiences of our student body.
Three years later, our Diversity Task Force grew to become the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) team, and the DEI initiatives and progress have surpassed what our predecessors once planned.
Through years of DEI staff training, we have been able to highlight the point that the Diversity Task Force introduced. That is, having a diverse set of editors and writers, those who ultimately write our content, is the first step in fostering DEI. We have been resources for section editors when they aren’t sure how to diversify their writer group. Our first piece of advice is always to reach out to other major email listservs besides English, communication, sociology and other writing-based majors. Many people think that to join the Daily Nexus, they need to be a stellar writer or have been editor in chief in high school. When in reality, almost half of our staff had no previous journalism experience. An overlooked stepping stone of DEI within the Nexus is the “E,” for equity. We tasked sections to define what equity means to them and challenged them to look internally in order to better the external. Why were people intimidated to join our organization that so many of us call family? After discussions and setting action-based goals, each content-producing section has training workshops in place for those interested in joining.
But this work has not always come easily, and the DEI chairs have had the challenge of redefining DEI to how it will best fit within the editorial staff, relying on the conceptual job description created by the Diversity Task Force, all while being hired during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Having to create our own job descriptions, we moved away from generally thinking of the three prongs of the acronym, and we made the concept niche, allowing for introspective thinking. We defined DEI to fit within the questions: How does identity affect you as a journalist, and how does identity affect journalism?
This got our staff thinking about how their identities impacted the content they choose to produce and publish.
Below are graphs that contrast the DEI-related topics and issues covered from 2018 (a time before DEI was an editorial position) to 2023, a time in which DEI is a strong presence in the editorial staff.
With the exception of 2020, there has been an increase in the average number of DEI keywords in Nexus articles each year since 2018. As of March 9, there were four times as many DEI keywords on average in Nexus articles in 2023 than there were when tracking began.
Since 2020, there has been a general increase in the average number of DEI-related keywords present in Nexus articles per month within each year and, as the 2023 trendline shows, we plan to continue increasing the holistic production of DEI-related content throughout the year.
We also recognize that while we have made significant progress in increasing our holistic coverage of DEI-related content, we still have room to improve upon the slight drop over the last couple of years in DEI-related content between July and September.
The highlighted region in each chart represents the 95% confidence interval for each trendline, which means that we are 95% confident that the average number of DEI-related keywords per article falls within the shaded region when considering the corresponding values on the trendline.
Coming back to the Diversity Task Force’s goals, we have conducted an anonymous editorial staff survey for the academic school year of 2023. The survey, conducted in tandem with the Data and DEI teams, was created in hopes to see the areas in which our staff could grow to become more diverse in the identities on board. The last time the survey was conducted was in 2018, and 28 of the then 39-member editorial staff responded. Below are our findings from the 2023 editorial staff survey and how we can grow from here.
Editorial Staff Survey
54 out of the Nexus’s 58 editors — incoming, continuing and outgoing — responded to the anonymous survey. Editors were able to select multiple responses if more than one response fits their background or identity.
While the data below will display the makeup of the Nexus editorial staff, the Nexus does not make hiring decisions on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity or hometown location.
