NEW YORK NBC News leader Cesar Conde, in one of his first public acts in the job, has committed to building a workforce at the news organizations he supervises where at least half of the employees are minorities. Conde set no deadline for achieving his 50 Percent Initiative.He also wants women to comprise half the employees at NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC, and he's already nearly there. The plan, first reported by the Los Angeles Times, makes Conde a leader in the current movement to diversify the news business. Given where NBC currently stands, particularly with Black employees, Truong said she understands why the initiative has no deadline and is glad that progress will be checked regularly. What I would like to hear is whether other people at NBC are committed to this moving forward, she said.

On Tuesday, NBC News laid off about a dozen staffers while sunsetting its digital video studio "NBC Left Field." The New York Times, which first reported the union plans, wrote that NBC News digital employees uncovered pay disparities between white men and women and minorities after creating an anonymous spreadsheet of salaries. The union includes about 150 editorial employees at NBCNews.com, Today.com, Stay Tuned, MSNBC.com and online streaming network NBC News Now. We welcome this dialogue from within our digital organization, and any constructive conversation aimed at building the future of NBC News Digital and ensuring that we're the best we can be. NBC News Digital unionized through the News Guild, which also represents employees at BuzzFeed News, Ziff Davis and Quartz, among other publications.