But Oklahoma City isn't. Its metro area of one million has a minority population of roughly 25 percent, yet Kelley's newsroom has only seven full-time editors and reporters who are members of minority groups and, according to an informal survey done for this story, that's fewer than any paper in the country with a circulation of 200,000 or more, as well as many papers much smaller. Says Kelley: "We've not done as good of a job as we need to do."

There is a widely held perception among Oklahoma City's blacks, says Lecia Swain, publisher of the city's weekly Ebony Tribune, that Ed Gaylord doesn't encourage the hiring of black reporters. Says Clytie Bunyan, a black business writer at the Oklahoman: "I think that's why young black journalists in Oklahoma look elsewhere."

Former staffers say it wasn't long ago that the complexion of the front page, not just the newsroom, was influenced by race. "When I was on the city desk in the late seventies," says former city editor Splaingard, "the rule was you didn't run pictures of blacks on the front page." And while everyone says the "rule" is long dead, it's not always easy to tell.

In two months selected at random, January and August 1998, the paper ran 187 front-page photos, featuring nearly 200 individuals. Only ten photos had blacks identified in the cutline, and only four of those actually accompanied stories featuring blacks. Even more recently, says former Oklahoman reporter Charolette Aiken, "the Oklahoman put black faces on the front only if they were athletes, a black Republican, or a bad guy." Observer editor Troy once wrote of the paper's plantation mentality: "The paper has been quietly and effectively racist in all its long history." Gaylord refused requests from cjr for an interview, but in a brief phone conversation from his home the publisher reacted testily when asked if putting blacks on the front page ever displeased him: "Oh, come on, you're crazy," he drawled. "Quit bothering me. Go on home." Then he hung up.

What many find so remarkable about The Daily Oklahoman is that despite its cutting-edge printing technology and lavish headquarters, the newspaper itself seems trapped in a pre-seventies time warp. "Don't make me say how bad the design of that paper is," pleaded a newspaper design expert from the University of Missouri School of Journalism who claims the Oklahoman is, shall we say, widely known throughout the trade.

"They just haven't changed graphically," says David Housh, graphics editor for the Tulsa World, a handsome family-owned paper ninety miles away that has twelve graphic artists and designers on staff, compared with the Oklahoman's four. "They have this strange nine-column layout and this small-town snapshot look where they tend to use photos the same size." He could have also mentioned the sleepy headline type style, the stingy use of white space, the lack of a state or local news section front, and a headline policy that litters inside pages with one-word "jump" heads yelling Flood, Funeral, Poverty, Questions.

"It's not a cookie-cutter paper," says Ed Kelley. "Is it handsome? Uhm, I think it has a unique look."

Unique might also describe a major newspaper that has a hefty sports section (now there you can find some black faces) that often goes months without a staff-written story about a female athlete. "Their paper is driven by the football program at OU and Oklahoma State, and the Dallas Cowboys," says Mike Prusinski, media relations director for sports at the University of Oklahoma. "It's sad because we've got some terrific women athletes who don't ever see their names in print."

More troublesome is the obvious bias that infects the Oklahoman's news pages.

part 1: The Worst Newspaper in America
part 2: By design or neglect
part 3: But Oklahoma City isn't
part 4: Democrats claim
part 5: ...sucking intelligence from its readers

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