So here is a more comprehensive data bank of 982 individuals across 14 publications. This is not comprehensive. It's a subset consisting of newer online techno

So here is a more comprehensive data bank of 982 individuals across 14 publications. This is not comprehensive. It's a subset consisting of newer online technology publications, skewing toward consumer niches. Enterprise-focused publications are not included. Editors are not included unless they are on the masthead and/or have bylined articles. That excludes specialist roles such as copy editors and feature editors. The other problem is tech journalism doesn't start and end at the U.S. border. On HN, I frequently see articles from Europe or Asia, such as news from Nikkei or Digitimes or Wired UK. Shouldn't that data be included on the graph? That said, even if TFA is restricted to U.S.-based publications and enterprise tech is included along with all of the other behind-the-scenes tech journalists who are seldom acknowledged or credited, the race disparity that the authors identified would still be there. Why? It's because the talent pipeline has been broken for two decades. Before 2000, tech journalists used to come up through daily newspapers and then were hired by one of the consumer or trade tech magazines or sometimes a business newspaper or magazine. U.S. daily newspapers in the 20th century were pretty white places to work, and that was reflected in the makeup of the tech newsrooms (I worked in 3). After 2000, the pipeline suffered. Newspapers folded, and there were few entry level positions for college and grad school journalism majors (who were increasingly diverse) to apply to. Concurrently, traditional tech newsrooms started consolidating following the first dot com bubble, the 2008 recession, and the shift to online. Art departments and copy desks were let go en masse. Reporters and editors were let go as well, usually starting with the younger journalists but later expanding to very experienced senior writers and editors. At these publications, there was almost no new hiring for FT reporter or editor roles. Empty positions were not backfilled. Among the younger journalists who left or were laid off, most did not go to Mashable or TechCrunch, which paid little and often would only hire stringers with no benefits ... instead, they went to industry, where Microsoft or Intel or PWC or whoever would give them 2x the salary and real benefits to work in their expanding marketing and digital content departments.