As newsrooms grow more diverse, editors increasingly find themselves wrestling with the question of whether the personal characteristics of a reporter -- race, gender, and sexual orientation -- should enter into story assignments. To what degree should a reporter be seen as a demographic resource? Here are a few journalists' answers:

Newsweek contributing editor Ellis Cose, who is black, believes that it is naive to pretend that ethnic and gender differences don't affect reporting. "People from different backgrounds have had very different experiences and, as a consequence, will come at stories with different perspectives," he says. "Someone who is black might find it easier to establish a relationship with a black source. I think it's very unlikely Jesse Jackson would have made the Hymietown remark to a white reporter."

But Stephen Koepp, the Nation-section senior editor at Time, who is white, says that what he often gets in response to such "demographic" assignments is resentment from the person who is chosen for the story on the basis of color or gender. "I think it's good to offer the opportunity, so that you gain from that person's specialized knowledge, but by forcing somebody into it based on their gender or race, you're defeating the purpose."

Two years ago, Elijah Gosier, a black columnist at the St. Petersburg Times, quickly volunteered to report a breaking story -- a possible riot -- on the south side of St. Petersburg, a predominantly black, low-income area with high-crime neighborhoods. "I had access to places that white reporters wouldn't have and to people they wouldn't have access to."

On the other hand, Gosier says, "I would not feel comfortable if my bosses at the paper expected me only to be the paper's eyes and ears in the black community. I wouldn't want them to pigeonhole me in that way. News from that community is a concern of every reporter."

Gosier's sentiments are typical. David Gonzalez, Bronx bureau chief of The New York Times, says that "most of the stories I've done about Latinos are my own idea. I have been assigned a few, and I've never felt insulted by being asked to do them. But if that was all they asked me to do, yes, I'd be worried."

The desire to do stories that use his background -- he is of Puerto Rican decent and grew up in the South Bronx -- was one of the major reasons that Gonzalez left Newsweek to take his current job. "I wanted to write about things that mattered to me more," he says. "It was difficult to sell certain urban topics at Newsweek."

When Cheryl Gould of NBC Nightly News recently supervised production of a long piece about post-partum depression, she had to choose between two reporters: Mary Alice Williams, national correspondent, and Robert Bazell, the network's science correspondent. Williams was selected, says Gould, "because we felt Mary Alice would bring something special to the story. As the mother of three, she's sensitive to the mothering issue. It was a very personalized choice."

Still, Gould feels that because "so many social issues that were considered women's issues are now part of the general culture, we're now at the point where there's not much gender distinction in stories."

Not so for gays and lesbians, who are still struggling for acceptance. Deb Price, a lesbian who writes a syndicated column about gay issues for The Detroit News, says her expertise is like any other. "I offer a window into a world that many people have never seen, mainly because the mainstream media have never opened that window for readers," she says. "We need to look at our staffs as resources, just as other businesses do."

Jeffrey Schmalz, who covers gay issues for The New York Times, is a gay man with AIDS. He describes his stories as having a "between-the-lines" sensibility, an insider's knowledge. "I've been trying to give stories a gay feel to them, but not make them editorials," he says. "It's very tricky."

Schmalz is convinced that editors can make better use of staff diversity. "I think we seek to hire blacks and Hispanics and Asians, and we want them to write like white males. We don't want the flavor of their voices in the paper. I think if the diversity card is played well, a lot of the story ideas should be coming from the staff."

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