Back in 1991, Serge McCabe, photo director for the Portland Oregonian, looked around at his staff and decided his team of photographers was too white. He wanted a person of color who could aim a camera at new subjects while interpreting old ones in fresh ways. Kelly Johnson, a young black woman working for him as a photo clerk, showed promise, but, McCabe thought, she would need training if she were to become a working press photographer. he offered to meet with Johnson once a week for two hours of teaching sessions.

That interaction between a senior staffer and a young woman with potential -- but little chance for a staff position -- became the model for The Oregonian's Minority Residency Program, which began last April.

With 18 percent of all journalists of color opting to leave the profession, according to a 1990 paper published by the Bush Research Center of Ohio University's E. W. Scripps School of Journalism, newspapers are being forced to rethink minority training programs established in the 1980s. Those programs focus primarily on job placement. Meanwhile, it is lack of advancement that is cited by African Americans and Latinos more often than by whites as a reason for leaving the profession. The Oregonian's program attempts to address this problem by offering a support network in the form of staff mentors, a writing coach, weekly textbook sessions, and supervisory editors who give regular feedback.

The program has had three residents: Kelly Johnson, thirty, the photo clerk in whom McCabe saw promise; Geoffrey Arnold, thirty-four, a sports reporter; and Maureen Jenkins, twenty-four, a fashion writer. In mid-February, when The Oregonian had two openings, Arnold and Jenkins were hired; Johnson is still in the program.

The Oregonian expects to start a new two-year program in the fall, and is seeking three journalists to fill it; qualifications include not just minority-group status, but a commitment to the profession as well as potential. Jack Hart, director of the program, says that if the residents complete the academic and newsroom work, the paper will make "all efforts" to find them full-time jobs at The Oregonian or at another paper.

The program, says sportswriter Arnold, "is ideal. Not only do you get to work for a top metropolitan newspaper, you're going to get training, classes, clips. And," he adds, "you're going to be able to establish inside relationships with certain individuals. That's invaluable."

So far, The Oregonian's program has had the built-in advantage of promoting candidates with whose work key editors are already acquainted. Both Johnson and Arnold had worked as stringers for the newspaper. Editors had been aware of Jenkins's writing before inviting her to participate in the program.

The need for experienced reporters to fill a paucity of openings can frustrate the best of intentions by management to increase the number of minority-group members working in the newsroom. The Oregonian's Minority Residency Program is at least one way in which promising young journalists can get a foot in the door, then prove themselves once they're in.

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