Unity: Journalists for Diversity, a professional coalition that helped increase diversity in the news industry beginning in the early 1990’s, has decided to shutter after nearly 30 years.
“This is a heart-breaking decision,” Unity president Neal Justice said this week, “but we’ve decided that the best way to move forward is to work with our respective groups and build on the incredibly strong bond we have together.”
Originally named Unity: Journalists of Color, the collaboration was organized to stage a joint gathering of journalism groups of color as their ranks in the profession began to increase after the civil disturbances of the 1960’s. With widespread industry support, the first joint convention, Unity 1994, was held in Atlanta and presented jointly by the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ), the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) and Native American Journalists Association (NAJA).
The conference brought together thousands of strangers for the first time and was more successful than many had expected. It served as a bridge to link working journalists of multiple ethnic groups from big cities and small towns across the nation and even from abroad. It gave academics connections for placing students, allowed employers to meet hordes of skilled professionals and helped dismantle walls between the four groups. At its peak, the convention drew more than 8,000 attendees.
“Unity was a unique, special and important organization,” said Virgil Smith, retired vice president for diversity and talent acquisition at Gannett, the giant newspaper holding company that worked closely with the Unity groups to recruit dozens of employees.
Convening every four years, Unity “was the only organization in the world that brought thousands of journalists of color together to discuss important issues, interview presidential candidates, learn from each other and build lifelong relationships,” added Smith, who spent 44 years with McClatchy Newspapers and Gannett before retiring from Gannett in 2015.
But within a few years of its auspicious debut, Unity was at odds with itself. It had few written rules to govern its leaders and leadership succession, or how to divide costs and revenue. The background differences persisted through several more Unity conferences, as each convention grew in attendance with little resolution of the core governance and finance issues.
