American Society of Newspaper Editors, which routinely monitors diversity in newsrooms, revealed a study today that shows online news outlets have a better diversity rate.

“About one of every five full-time journalists employed by the 27 sites that responded voluntarily to the ASNE questionnaire was a journalist of color, compared to about one of every seven in the annual ASNE census of newsrooms that publish a daily newspaper,” the survey said, according to a release. “Two of every five staffers at the online-only sites were women, compared to about one of every three in the newspaper newsrooms.”

ASNE sent questionnaires to 58 sites, with 27 responding.

“We're grateful to those who pressed us on the importance of this new effort and helped us do it better. But this is still just a first step -- an important one, but a first step,” said ASNE president Milton Coleman, senior editor at The Washington Post. “As this type of newswork evolves, so will our efforts to monitor it and give information and direction to those who recognize that increasing diversity in America's newsrooms and news reports is essential to our profession, our business and our society.”

Among the findings:

* Most of the journalists of color among the 27 were at the eight sites that had 10 employees or more. The majority of the journalists of color in newspaper newsrooms work at newspapers that have a circulation of 100,000 or more.

* Some 465 newspapers that responded to the ASNE survey in April, nearly all of them small, reported having no minority employees, as did 11 of the sites with smaller staffs among the 59 online-only newsrooms.

“The two most diverse online-only sites were among the smaller ones -- 100 percent at The Root and 75 percent at Mission Loc@l. The Root is a site that reflects black perspectives on issues of the day. Mission Loca@l covers the Mission district of San Francisco.”

Some of the largest online-only websites contacted by ASNE did not return questionnaires, the survey revealed. Among them were AOL News, The Huffington Post, Salon, Talking Points Memo and Yahoo! News.

“We encourage all online news organizations to participate in future ASNE diversity surveys to provide a more comprehensive picture of diversity in our rapidly changing industry. It's an issue of accuracy and credibility. Commitment to reflecting the total community has to be as much of our industry's standard of excellence as First Amendment principles and quality journalism,” said Karen Magnuson, co-chair of the ASNE Diversity Committee and editor and vice president/News of the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle.

“The census packets were sent June 16 to 73 sites identified as online-only news sites. Editors who did not respond to this mailing were contacted three more times before the reporting period ended this week. During the survey ASNE discovered that 14 of the 73 originally contacted were sites run by volunteers or by schools of journalism and therefore had no full-time paid journalists. This is a defining criterion for journalists included in the ASNE surveys, which use confidential employer-provided figures to report minority percentages”