CLEVELAND, Ohio-Longtime WEWS Cleveland Channel 5 News anchor Danita Harris, who's latest job was anchoring the morning news and who is also a spiritual leader in Northeast Ohio, is exiting the news station, effective Dec 21, leaving the station with no Black female anchors and raising diversity concerns among area women's rights groups.
Harris began her career at the station in 1998 and leaves News 5 after 24 years on the job. She grew to become a beloved and respected media figure in the Black community especially, and a voice for the Black community in delivering news. And the question remains as to what she will do next.
News five trails behind WJW Fox 8 News in popularity relative to Cleveland mainstream television news.
According to a 2019 Cleveland Scene Magazine story, a Pew Research Center survey of news dynamics in the Cleveland-Elyria Metropolitan Statistical Area found that Northeast Ohioans get their news, overwhelmingly, from Fox 8 and News 5, WOIO 19 News and WKYC Chanel 3 are not far behind.
Harris and station executives said publicly that her leaving was her decision alone, though the station is reportedly going through a multi-million dollar restructuring process that saw evening anchor Courtney Gousman, who is Black like Harris, suddenly leave the station this past summer after purportedly getting laid-off, she said on Facebook. And Black anchor Dalaun Dillard, a man, announced late last month that he is leaving too. Gousman replaced Harris as the evening news anchor in the summer of 2020 and Harris moved to a morning anchor slot. Now they are both gone as anchors, leaving only one Black anchor, Damon Maloney, who joined the news station in late 2019.
Station officials gave no explanation for Gousman's sudden departure.
" We wish Danita and Courtney the best of luck and want to know how News 5 Cleveland expects to remain viable in serving the majority Black city of Cleveland with no Black women anchors," said Women's March Cleveland head organizer Kathy Wray Coleman, a longtime Cleveland activist, organizer and independent digital journalist who is Black.
Coleman said that community activists are monitoring the local mainstream television media of Cleveland relative to their diversity practices, or the lack thereof, particularly regarding Black women anchors and reporters.
"We fill more comfortable when Blacks who support the Black community are upfront and behind the scenes and demand that all of our local mainstream media news stations also employ Black women as anchors, and we do not want Black women or Blacks in general to always be the first to leave as to any so-called restructuring process," the activist said.
"Too often Blacks are the first to go from companies and entities when they restructure, particularly when there are no union protections" Coleman said.
About 1 in 6 U.S. journalists at news outlets are in a union, a 2022 Pew Research Center study found, and some 40 percent said they would join a union if given the opportunity.
Coleman added that "Black people want to see people who look like we do and who identify with the Black community when we watch Cleveland's news, and the absence of diversity, including Black women anchors, is nothing to take lightly."
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
