Gregory Favre: Given your background as a long-time champion for diversity in the news business, do you think it will be possible to maintain diverse newsrooms in these days of cost-cutting and enormous changes, especially at newspapers? If so, what needs to be done?

Milton Coleman: It is possible and it is imperative that newsrooms retain as much as they can of the diversity we have built over the years. We are losing many journalists of color because of downsizing brought on by the new financial realities in our industry and the economic realities in our country.

We also continue to lose journalists of color for the same reasons that fueled a thinning of their ranks earlier, namely the feeling that there are glass ceilings in our newsrooms and that our organizations are less committed to the kind of journalism that brought many minority journalists into this business.
Some newsrooms have seen the current situation as an opportunity to expand diversity rather than merely a chore to preserve it.

Read full interview.

Press release
Beliefnet Names Ju-Don Roberts of
WashingtonPost.com as New Executive Editor

Respected Veteran Web Editor to Oversee Content Divisions at Leading Spirituality and Inspiration Website

New York, NY – June 5, 2009 – Beliefnet, the leading multi-faith and inspiration website, has hired Ju-Don Roberts, the Managing Editor of WashingtonPost.com, as its new Executive Editor and Senior Vice President. Roberts will oversee all the company’s content divisions—editorial, community, video and product, reporting to Editor-in-Chief, President and Co-Founder, Steven Waldman.

“We’re thrilled to have someone as respected and accomplished as Ju-Don Roberts to help lead Beliefnet into a new, exciting phase,” Waldman said. “Her strong command of web content, her extraordinary management skills, and her commitment to high quality editorial will help Beliefnet better serve our readers.”

“I’ve been a Beliefnet fan for years and have been very excited to see the recent growth and development of the site and community,” Roberts said. “Providing inspiration and resources to help people navigate their life journey is an important mission — I’m looking forward to joining Beliefnet’s great editorial and executive team.”

Currently, Roberts has broad responsibility managing the staff of washingtonpost.com and was recently named Deputy Editor of the Universal News Desk, the hub of the soon-to-be integrated newsroom. During her time at washingtonpost.com, Roberts has worked in nearly every section of the site, spanning news and features. She and her team have won numerous web awards for journalism, design, interactivity and video. She also spearheaded the web coverage that helped the Post win the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news on the Virginia Tech shootings.

Before joining the Post in 1992, Roberts worked at the Washington Times. She returned to the Post in 1995 after a brief stint at the Charlotte Observer. Roberts is on the board of the Online News Association and the digital task force of the National Association of Black Journalists. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and earned her BA from Howard University.

Roberts replaces Elizabeth Sams, the long-time Executive Editor of Beliefnet, who announced recently she would be resigning to help care for her ailing mother in Atlanta. A founding member of the Beliefnet team, Elizabeth has been integral to Beliefnet’s tremendous success and growth.

Washington Post Announcement:

I am sorry to announce that Ju-Don Roberts is stepping down as managing editor of washingtonpost.com to take on an exciting new challenge outside the Post as senior vice president and executive editor of News Corp’s Beliefnet.com in New York.

It is a terrific, entrepreneurial opportunity for Ju-Don after 17 years at the Post in multiple roles, all of which she has admirably handled.

Ju-Don has lead the online coverage on some of the biggest breaking news stories of the last decade: the Sept. 11 attacks, the D.C. sniper and the Virginia Tech shootings. She’s also lead numerous award-winning projects, including Being a Black Man, which won more than a half-dozen awards, and Blue Wall of Silence, which former executive editor Doug Feaver described as the project that represented a watershed moment in the collaboration between the Web and print newsrooms. She also spearheaded the web coverage that helped the Post win the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news on the Virginia Tech shootings. Ju-Don’s terrific journalism skills, great instincts, upbeat personality and get-it-done mindset have been vital to WP.com’s operations and will be missed as we integrate our newsrooms.

Before joining the Post in 1992, first as an intern, Roberts worked at the Washington Times. She returned to the Post’s Metro copy desk in 1995 after a brief stint at the Charlotte Observer. She then moved to WP.com in 1999, serving in a variety of roles including editor of the Metro, Health, Education, Religion, KidsPost, Nation, Science sections; managing editor for features and projects and classified products; managing editor overseeing live online, newsroom operations, 24/7 newsdesk, copy desk, local, hyperlocal, multimedia, news video, business, sports, politics.

Ju-Don is on the board of the Online News Association and the digital task force of the National Association of Black Journalists. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and earned her BA from Howard University.

While I have only worked closely with Ju-Don for the past six months, I have known her for almost 15 years and will deeply miss her always wise and calm advice and leadership. I know this sentiment is shared by all of you who have worked with her at WP.com this past decade. More details on the exact timing of her departure and the many goodbye parties will come later.

Please join me in congratulating Ju-Don and wishing her resounding success in her new career.

Raju

These days, his story is not uncommon. We’ve read the stories, monitored the blogs and been inundated by newsletters announcing layoffs, sales and bankruptcies. I hear from journalists all the time who are looking for work as the industry has atrophied — too many to sit comfortably on my own perch. And although I’m hopeful that news organizations will quickly reinvent themselves, I worry about what shoring up the bottom line will do to one of the most useful techniques of innovation: failure.

Indeed, news organizations must be sound businesses to survive, but in order to find a business model that works, in order to drive the innovation and create the tools that keep us relevant, in order to get ahead of the curve, we must create an atmosphere where failure is embraced. I’m talking about failing fast and moving on. Not the slow death march and embrace of things we know aren’t working. These days we have endless research and metrics at our disposal to allow us to laser in on the right targets. That said, it is only through our willingness to fail that ultimately we’ll be able to find lasting success.

Here’s to failure…