David Yarnold

Senior Vice President/Editor
San Jose Mercury News
2003 Catalyst Award, Print

David Yarnold’s leadership at the helm of the San Jose Mercury News has helped the paper to be at the forefront of diversity and set a standard for other newspapers to follow. His role in furthering a dialogue about diversity issues has extended beyond Silicon Valley, where technology and diversity intersect, into hundreds of newsrooms across America.

Recently named editor, Yarnold is now in charge of the paper’s editorial, opinion and commentary pages. He has worked at the San Jose Mercury News for 25 years. From 1999 to 2003, he was executive editor and senior vice president of the paper, responsible for all news coverage and operation of the third largest newsroom on the West Coast. Before that, Yarnold served as the paper’s managing editor for four years. Yarnold also was in charge of the paper’s afternoon edition when it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake.

The Mercury News is the only major newspaper to publish two foreign language weeklies. It publishes El Nuevo Mundo in Spanish and Viet Mercury in Vietnamese. The publishers of both report to Yarnold.

As executive editor, Yarnold challenged and inspired his newsroom to go beyond surface stories about communities of color

Metro columnist Lisa Chung says that while a commitment to diversity already was a part of the culture of Knight Ridder, Yarnold layered on an even stronger sense of the need to reflect Silicon Valley’s changing cultural, ethnic, economic and social diversity. “It’s been a realistic response to the readership and potential readership,” Chung says. “It makes sense to know who our readers are and to familiarize all parts of our community with other communities.”

The paper’s Race and Demographics department, headed by senior editor Jeanne Belding, is a key part of its efforts. The department also pulls in other reporters and editors from the business, features, sports departments and the copy desk as needed.

Its ground-breaking projects have examined the Bay Area’s complex layers of diversity. For instance, the five-part “Majority of None” series looked at the impact of Bay Area social changes and demographic shifts as told from the perspectives of five young high-school students with diverse backgrounds. Two other examples were “Latino Diaspora” the first national look at Latino migration into America’s heartland, and “Majority Minority,” about how whites are coping with their minority status and their thoughts on the changes surrounding them throughout the Bay Area.

“David is a strong leader who articulated clearly to his newsroom the journalistic need for diversity,” said Jerry Ceppos, Knight Ridder’s vice president/news. “He improved the paper’s coverage of diversity issues and elevated the stature of diversity as central to the newspaper’s master narrative.”

Yarnold’s leadership can be also seen in the atmosphere of openness and inclusiveness at the Mercury News. Ron Kitagawa, the editor of The Guides, the newspaper’s zoned weeklies, points to ongoing brown bag luncheons at which the staff gathers informally to discuss diversity issues. One lunch led to the suggestion that every reporter have “a week off from the daily grind in search of more diverse sources,” says Kitagawa. That happened during the last six months of 2002.

Chung describes Yarnold as a newsroom leader who “truly gets it” when it come to diversity. She adds that he understands how diversity enriches journalism and nurtures a newsroom environment where complex issues can be brought out into the open.

Belding, currently a Knight Fellow at Stanford University, recalls a time when journalists of color were concerned about the paper’s commitment to diversity during budget cuts. “I felt comfortable going to David and saying, ‘Hey, can we talk about this?’ He set up a meeting … and reiterated his commitment. That we could sit down with our executive editor and talk about an issue as sensitive as race speaks volumes about the kind of leader David is.”

Yarnold’s diversity efforts are not contained to the Mercury News. He is the incoming chair of the American Society for Newspaper Editors’ diversity committee.

In 1999, as chair of Associated Press Managing Editors’ diversity committee, Yarnold created the National Time-Out for Diversity and Accuracy. Now in its fifth year and a joint project of APME and ASNE, each May thousands of journalists are encouraged to explore the complex issues underlying journalistic credibility and diversity for a week. More than 150 newsrooms and 43 Associated Press bureaus participated in 1999.

Last year’s Time-Out for Diversity and Accuracy encouraged newsrooms to focus on staff diversity and retention. APME and ASNE put together a program to guide them through exercises on hiring, recruiting and retaining a diverse staff.

Yarnold has lived up to one of journalism’s highest creeds, giving voice to the voiceless. By doing so, he has ensured that Mercury News’ readers can say, “I can see myself in your paper.”