Medill associate professor emeritus Robert McClory was talking to the journalism cherubs at the National High School Institute about feature writing. But they also got an unexpected lesson about diversity in journalism when McClory shared stories from his own career.

“Journalism was a white male business,” McClory said. “Christians and Jews were the journalists. Now we’ve come a considerable way.”

Today, major media outlets have reporters, editors and publishers diverse in race, gender and religion, McClory said. America has come a long way in the last 30 years in integrating diverse journalists into the newsrooms.

The Chicago Defender is a historic African-American newspaper on the south side of Chicago. It launched as a weekly in 1905.

“It was developed precisely because blacks were ignored in the news,” McClory said. “Chicago had at one time something like five or six daily newspapers. Can you believe that? All of them were edited and published and reported by white people. There wasn’t a black on the staff anywhere.”

In 1971, McClory began working at the Chicago Defender a few years after the death of Martin Luther King Jr. and toward the end of the civil rights movement,

“The spirit of King was still very much present in the black community,” McClory said. “I got a sense of that from the black people I was reporting on and dealing with. It was a wonderful education for me.”

In cities like Chicago and elsewhere, the only way for blacks to get the news about their own community was to form their own newspapers, which they did, McClory said. Once predominantly black newspapers were established, many blacks began moving north to seek newly available jobs.

“It had a great effect in moving the black population out of the rural south where they were stuck in the rut,” McClory said.

He had some previous experience with black culture when he lived in a black neighborhood, but still had to work to understand their perspective.

“I got in there so it was reverse integration,” McClory said, chuckling. “I knew an awful lot of black people so I had some preparation. But I had a lot to learn about black issues and the black perspective on things.”

His editor would find a news story and tell his reporters to go get a black perspective on the issue, McClory said. When other papers neglected to ask the opinions of the black congressman or legislature, the Defender would make sure to ask their views.

“In an all-white situation, the reporters wouldn’t instinctively think to contact other racial groups,” McClory said. “That isn’t true anymore.”

Now papers such as the Chicago Defender are struggling, McClory said. Bigger papers such as the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times have diverse newsrooms and reporters who are able to report in-depth stories on certain issues.

“It is important that reporters have some sensitivity to the issues and the culture and the way people express themselves,” McClory said. “It was a wonderful education for me.”