Few mm or ities write te news, WASHINGTON (AP) - At a time when blacks and other minorities play a bigger part in American society, almost all the news in almost all the nation's newspapers is written by staffs that are white. Of the 50,000 journalists on America's 1,700 daily newspapers, about 1,500 are black, 650 Hispanic, 430 are of Asian ancestry and 10 are American Indians. Ninety-seven percent -of newspapers executives are white. "ALMOST TWO-thirds of newspapers don't even have a token," says John Seigenthaler, who heads the committee on minorities of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and, as editor and publisher of the Nashville Tennessean, presides over an integrated newsroom. Adds David Lawrence, executive editor of the Detroit Free Press: "We are perceived as a business that is a white establishment business, and the reality is that we are a white establish- ment business. There is very little to suggest in our profession that blacks are going to get to run anything." Minority journalists argue that it is necessary to integrate America's news rooms, not just to benefit minorities but to make the papers better. ALMOST EVERY black journalist Man fires toy gun at Pope (Continued from Page 1) Police immediately seized the assailant, identified as Lee Chun Kyu, 22, a student at Myongji College. They said he had a history of mental problems. There were reports before the pope began his 10-day tour of Asia that terrorists'might try to attack him in Korea. At the time, U.S. intelligence of- ficials confirmed they had heard repor- ts of a planned attack against the pope. It was the third major incident in- volving the pope. "The man, who looked like a college student, came from near me and stood right in front of the Pope," said one witness, Lee Soo Jin, 16, a high school student. Lee said she heard one shot. It was unclear what sort of weapon had been used. One report said the pistol was an airgun, another it was a toy or a homemade gun. Witnesses said the weapon broke into at least three pieces when the assaillant threw it to the ground. 'We are perceived as a business that is a white establishment business, and the reality is that we are a white establishment business. There is very little to suggest in our profession that blacks are going to get to run anything.' -David Lawrence Detroit Free Press Executive Editor can tell about news his paper would have missed if it had no black repor- ters. Acel Moore of the Philadelphia Inquirer won a Pulitzer prize in 1977 for revealing the mistreatment of patients at a hospital for the criminally insane. Moore said the story came from a for- mer patient who is black, "a man who mistrusts whites" and who wouldn't have talked to a white reporter. In 1977, a society of the nation's editors resolved to try by the year 2000 to make their staffs representative of the U.S. population, which is 20 percent non-white. BUT THOSE who watch the situation closest - members of the American Society of Newspaper Editors minorities committee - say the odds of achieving that goal range "somewhere between slim and none." A new ASNE minorities report comes out at the society's convention this week, and those who have seen it say it reflects scant change. "There's no sense of urgency about hiring minorities any longer," says Al Fitzpatrick, minority affairs coor- dinator of the Knight-Ridder group of newspapers, a pacesetter organization where minorites make up 9.3 percent of the news staffs. "EDITORS WON'T admit it," Fit- zpatrick says, "but they don't feel as compelled as they once did." The smallest newspapers are those least likely to hire journalists with skins other than white. Small papers are the traditional training groups for repor- ters, and their slowness to hire minorities makes it harder for non- whites to land a starting job. Fitzpatrick says the newspaper business felt an urgency about in- tegrating following' the civil rights demonstrations and the urban riots of the 1960s. BUT NOWADAYS at editors' conven- tions, "when it comes time for the minoritiescommittee to give its report, most of them takea break," he says. Some editors say their business is to publish the news, not - as one New Englander put it - "to embark in social engineering." But others are making strenuous' ef- forts to find minority journalists. They are sending minority reporters onto campuses to talk up the newspaper business as a place to work, hiring minority interns for summer training, employing minority journalism teachers in the summers and sending recruiters onto predominantly black campuses. Editors, journalism educators and minority journalists don't always agree on why their business remains so predominantly white. " Some think there just aren't enough See MINORITIES, Page5 Daily Photo by REBECCA KNIGHT Whoa Nellie! A girl longes her horse yesterday morning for the Tri-state Pinto Association Horse Show. HAPPENINGS Muslim Student Association-Sessions on science Tae Kwon Do Club - Practice, 6 p.m., CCRB. Sunday and Quran & Hadith, 10 a.m., 407 N. Ingalls. Botanical Gardens - lecture, William Ben- School of Music-Michigan Youth Symphony, 8 Burns Park Run - One mile, 5K, and 10K courses, ninghoff, noon, 1800 N. Dixboro Rd. p.m., Hill Auditorium. 9:30 a.m., Burns Park. Continuing Medical Ed.-Clinical Microbiology Ark-Children's & Wild Swan Theaters, The Owl's course, call763 1400.d Theatre-Creative Writing Winter, 2pm., p.m.; The Moon is o day workshop, 7 p.m., Fire Station. Blue,9p mLorch. 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