On Jan. 20, Mr. Pearlstine assembled his New York-based newsroom managers and announced changes intended to streamline a team in which, he said, editors "were tripping over each other."

Some barred employees from attending the rally outright, while others such as The Washington Post offered more latitude, telling newsroom managers to differentiate between "participating" and "observing."

That talent drain has annoyed newsroom managers, who say they cannot compete financially to keep their best writers.

In particular, newsroom managers have made a concerted effort to increase the number of black, Hispanic and Asian journalists.

The strategy will also focus on education and changing the attitudes of middle-level newsroom managers toward minority employees.

Since its founding, the institute has been credited with training and preparing hundreds of minority students for careers in news editing, newsroom managers, and other careers in journalism.

The goal is to train students to think like newsroom managers and news industry leaders.

But it found that 91.8 percent of newsroom managers in 1994 were white.

In December 2001, company officials visited The Times to make their case to newsroom managers, who, a Purdue Pharma lawyer told me, "blew us off."

In 2007 he completed a handbook for newsroom managers: "Running the Newsroom."