On Latina Equal Pay Day, the News Media Needs to Look Inward
On Latina Equal Pay Day, we need to look critically at the aspects of journalism that harm Latinas and others underrepresented in the industry.
Illustration by Carlos Orozco.
At the lowest points in her career, Megan Taros began to internalize the messages she was getting at work: she was uncooperative, pushy, mean. The bilingual, Mexican-American journalist would scrutinize her appearance and demeanor, asking herself, “Am I too angry? Am I an angry Latina?”
Every newsroom job she got was built on years of experience — from cutting her teeth as a reporter and news editor for her South Los Angeles community college paper, The Union, to covering California’s Bay Area while studying journalism at San Francisco State. After a few years away from journalism, she pursued her dream of a graduate degree from Columbia University, where she realized what she wanted to focus on: covering Latino issues and communities. So why, once she’d earned a prestigious journalism school education and was finally hired in the types of roles she’d envisioned, was she so self-critical?
Perhaps it was because she didn’t really belong, not fully.
She was told to focus on celebrity news, not politics, and her more ambitious coverage ideas were often overlooked, until her non-Latina colleagues pitched similar stories. When she landed her most recent full-time job in Santa Fé, New Mexico, an editor discouraged her from connecting with and covering the native pueblos — in spite of her eagerness to repair the relationship between the paper and the pueblos. She thought bringing new ideas to a job was good, but was called “whiny” when she brought them up.
“It really just becomes exhausting, and I think this is where imposter syndrome comes in,” she said, “because you try to bring these ideas to the table and people don’t want to listen.”
After two jobs in a row that left her feeling disheartened, she gave up the most recent one. And when she looks for work now, she worries that she’ll be confronted with the same challenges in the next newsroom.
“How much of this is me lying to myself that I’m going to change this industry?” she asks herself now. “Are these fantasies at this point?”
I am convinced that every day, there is a Latina who goes to work to report the news carrying the weight of self-doubt that our industry inflicts. I know because I’ve been the person struggling to piece together two or three jobs when one wasn’t enough. I’ve been pulled aside and pointedly asked, “You think we have a race problem?” when I showed frustration with exploitative practices. I’ve had a job offer revoked when I tried to negotiate. When I’ve privately shared the details with other journalists of color, they nod knowingly and share similar circumstances in their careers, sometimes within the same workplace. They often understand the pain of internalizing the industry’s structural shortcomings, despite knowing that our perspectives are valuable to the newsrooms we’re in.
Even as I write this, I occasionally stop to wring my hands nervously, my stomach tightening with feelings of inadequacy. But then I think of every journalist of color I’ve talked to whose experience overlaps with mine. The frustrations we’ve shared over texts, or beers. Their words ring in my ears: Keep going.
On Latina Equal Pay Day, we need to look critically at the aspects of journalism that harm Latinas and others underrepresented in the industry. As major news organizations like the New York Times and McClatchy are facing worker strikes and workers experience layoffs, the culture is ripe for a deep soul-searching. Because here’s the truth: News organizations can’t be committed to building trust with overlooked communities while exploiting the staff who are connected to those communities. Pay that is equal and adequate is a major factor — but not the only one. And by ignoring or excusing these inequities when journalists point them out, they do a disservice to their news organizations and audience.
“Journalism doesn’t like to scrutinize itself,” Taros said. “Ultimately the communities that we’re covering suffer.”
Latina Equal Pay Day marks how far into 2022 a Latina who’s employed full-time has to work to earn what her white, non-Hispanic male counterpart made in 2021. It falls later in the year than Native Women’s Equal Pay Day (Nov. 30), Black Women’s Equal Pay Day (Sept. 21), and all other groups measured.
National Equal Pay Day, which marks the wage gap for American women overall, was March 15 — the earliest since it’s been recognized. Latina Equal Pay Day falls further back than last year, due to the economic upheaval of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, explained that Latina Equal Pay Day last year was artificially improved because job loss during the pandemic particularly affected lower-wage workers in industries like hospitality. Latinas are a large portion of those workers. As their low wages were removed from the equation, the average salary for Latinas increased. Their return to those jobs in 2021 brought the average back down, thus the later date.
“That being said, even if that hadn’t happened we’re talking about going through more than half a year before Latinas earned what white men earned the year before that,” she said. “That’s still a significant gap in pay.”
A Department of Labor tool shows the wage gap by race, ethnicity and occupation group. Journalism or media aren’t represented in any occupational category, likely due to a small sample size, Wilson said.
But smaller-scale examinations of the industry point to wage gaps and advancement ceilings for female journalists of color.
A recent pay equity study of unionized Gannett newsrooms on the East Coast within six bargaining units described the “ongoing disaster” of “a de facto pay ceiling and stagnant wages” only experienced by non-white and female journalists. Company-provided data showed the median salary for female journalists of color was $12,200 less than that of white, male journalists in those newsrooms.
A similar salary analysis of 14 Gannett newsrooms unionized within The New Guild Communications Workers of America, showed the gender wage gap grew worse over time for those with the most experience. Women whose Gannett career spanned more than 30 years earned roughly $27,000 less than the annual median salary of their male colleagues.
Visual journalist Gabriella Lewis has had newsroom experiences where sharing her perspective was welcomed, and others where it’s made her “difficult.” But Lewis, an AfroLatina who grew up between Brazil and the San Francisco Bay Area, said one thing about her career has been constant: unequal pay.
“I think at every job I’ve ever had, I have found out that someone who is on the same level as me was making more than me,” she said. “Actually, I can’t really think of an instance where that wasn’t the case.”
Lewis, who works for New York Times making NYT Cooking videos, she knows a lot of women of color who have taken a break from journalism or left altogether.
Both Gannett reports also highlight a drop-off in the number of veteran non-white and/or non-male journalists, citing stratified and stagnant wages. This pattern was also documented in the 2020 “Leavers” survey, conducted in February and March of that year.
Carla Murphy’s survey of 101 former journalists of color, or “leavers,” showed the typical respondent was an African-American or Black woman between 27 and 44, who spent 4 to 8 years in the industry. More than half of those surveyed was Black or African-American, and the next most common “leaver” identified as Hispanic or Latino/x. But most of them still called themselves journalists — 69%.
In introducing the survey, Murphy advises against drawing overly broad conclusions about American journalism. By shining a light on a small sample of those who have left journalism, she aimed to help find a solution to the question, “How do we move away from 50 years of lip service to sustained newsroom diversity?”
The 1968 Kerner Report stated: “The media report and write from the standpoint of a white man’s world,” failing communities outside of that perspective. A decade later, the American Society of News Editors set a goal for newsroom staff to accurately reflect the population they served by 2000. But the organization known today as the News Leaders Association had to push that deadline back to 2025.
Murphy had been a journalist for a decade and was scraping by as a freelancer when a statistic shifted her perspective. A Freelance Investigative Reporters and Editors (FIRE) survey showed 30% of the freelance investigative reporters who responded put more than $5,000 of their own money toward project expenses per year.
“That survey was really instructive for me,” Murphys said. She remembered thinking, “There’s something structural going on, and I — an individual — can’t fight something structural.”
Carla Murphy
She left journalism in 2016, and is now an assistant professor of journalism at Rutgers University-Newark who continues to study, write about and critique journalism with a class focus. She said the cultural message that new journalists have to prove themselves worthy through personal financial sacrifice is harmful.
“It’s like confusing desire with your economic standing, actually,” she said. “If you’re trying to get a clip as a cub journalist and the outfit is only paying you $50, or it’s only paying $250, but you’ve signed on to do a heavily reported piece, you’re losing money.”
This standard is prohibitive for those like herself, who didn’t grow up with a financial cushion. She emigrated with her single mother to the United States from Barbados in the 1980s when she was a girl. She said those expectations placed on aspiring journalists are exclusionary, no matter their racial or ethnic background.
“If our industry is structured that way such that only those who can afford to do this can be a journalist, we’ve lost so much extraordinary diversity,” she said.
When I started working as an editorial assistant for a small newspaper up the street from my high school, I recall making around $9. It was 2006, and at 17, I was delighted to make a few dollars more than the minimum wage doing something other than bagging groceries. So as I attended a local community college in rural California, my career kicked off typing obituaries, taking photos and writing culture pieces for the small, semiweekly paper.
But by the time I reached my 30s, the rate for my work had not kept pace with my experience. In early 2020, I was invited to apply for a job editing the arts and culture section of a newspaper — at $14 an hour. I wanted the job, but needed a higher rate. So I didn’t apply. A few months later, I took home more collecting unemployment for the first time with the expanded pandemic benefits than I had ever earned in journalism.
“I think this issue about who gets to do journalism, who can afford to do journalism, the ramifications of that should be everyone’s problem, not just an industry problem,” Murphy said.
The issue of who can afford to criticize journalism is also worth examining.
Megan Taros said that while it’s become trendy to have a race reporter, or a reporter committed to covering communities where many people of color live. But they want to make these changes without ceding any amount of power.
“When you challenge them and you tell them, listen, this is the work that needs to be done. They don’t want to hear it,” she said. “They want it to come easy.”
Megan Taros. Photo by Xavier Wang.
If a white staffer in a newsroom points to a lack of diversity, they’re well-meaning allies. But too often when a journalist of color points out the same thing, they’re labeled angry or difficult. Sometimes, they lose work.
A few years back, I was offered a full-time producer job for a public radio station where I’d been working part time. There were three openings, each a different tier of producer, to fill three roles that had recently been vacated. I had applied for the mid-tier position, but was offered the lowest tier.
On a Friday, my boss had told me, “I want you to be my first hire,” but I took the weekend to think about it.
I returned the next week wanting to negotiate, and wondered out loud to the wrong person why I’m consistently offered the lowest positions I apply for, and whether it had to do with being a young woman of color. I’d said that to the manager who’d offered me the job, and it was a mistake.
Days later, I learned that my offer had been revoked. An email went out to the entire staff introducing the three new producers. My name was not included. They’d hired another Latina journalist for the lowest-tier producer role, and a white man from out-of-state for the mid-level producer.
I learned that it’s actually not safe to voice these concerns and insecurities out loud, and that people may support you to your face, but often won’t lift a finger beyond that.
As I went over paperwork with the HR manager on my last day, I had no idea if she knew that I’d initially been offered the job. But she was familiar with past instances of me bringing up diversity issues and unfair practices. She’d been the one who’d once asked me “You think we have a race problem?” after I’d expressed concern about the number of hours I was being asked to work as a part-timer with no benefits. As I flipped through the paperwork, that HR manager called me “passionate” for speaking up for myself.
But being outspoken about what I saw as exploitation was not “passion.” Wanting to build a career that includes a living wage, respect and a safe environment and hitting my head against the wall trying to find or create it — that doesn’t spark passion. It draws out my frustration, depression and self-doubt, but not my passion. That comes from the work itself.
Although there are far too many stories of Latinas and other marginalized journalists internalizing the weaknesses of our industry, there are also those trying to improve it for today’s journalists and future generations.
Gabriella Lewis, the NYT Cooking visual journalist, is joining a 24-hour walkout with more than 1,000 other New York Times employees today. Workers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette have been on strike against media company Block Communications since Oct. 20, and Fort-Worth Star Telegram employees have been on strike against publisher McClatchy since Nov. 28.
“I think that the organizing that has been happening in the industry in certain parts of the industry since 2015 has done a lot to keep these issues of living wages, fair wages, and also equity on the table,” said Murphy.
And there are other examples of grassroots solutions developing.
Arizona Luminaria is a nonprofit newsroom that veteran journalists Dianna Náñez, Irene McKisson and Becky Pallack launched last year. The “community funded, community driven” news site publishes stories in Spanish and English, as well as pieces that explain their reporting. Futuro Media, which produces shows including “Latino USA” among others, recently launched an investigative unit, Futuro Investigates.
Lewis also helps other Latina journalists setting the groundwork for their careers through the Latinas in Journalism Mentorship Program. The program was designed to give Latina journalists access to Latina mentors, which past generations of journalists have missed out on.
She helps people with their resumes, conducts mock interviews and lets the Latinas she works with know that they deserve the job they’re after, or the raise they’re wanting.
“It’s a lot of reassurance,” Lewis said. “I felt like that would have made a really big difference in my career, and I could easily do it for someone else.”
As newsrooms make varying degrees of progress toward better representation, we must resist seeing the presence of Latinas and journalists from other marginalized backgrounds as the finish line. We deserve to be heard, respected and paid well, too. In a culture that will inherently determine our value to be worth less, we must raise our standards for what to expect from the industry.
It’s vital to share our experiences as marginalized journalists trying to carve out space for ourselves in the industry. We must share the wins and the losses, even when it’s difficult.
“A lot of the time when you speak up and you say things that are against the status quo, it’s going to feel bad,” said Taros. “That’s why you just never give up on the future.”