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October 5, 2007 Vol 18, Issue 1
UNITYNews®
A Service Provided by UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc.
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Dear UNITYNews® Reader,
Continue to check out UNITY's website as we are constantly adding new information and resources such as career opportunities, J-Schools links, and many more! |
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| DIVERSITY TIP SHEET |
By Joe Grimm
Recruiting and Development Director Detroit Free Press
The airwaves become a little less vibrant on Oct. 11.
That will be the last broadcast of "Pacific Time,"
a nationally syndicated radio
program produced by KQED.
It is a casualty in the competition for limited resources.
"Pacific Time" host K. Oanh Ha said, "The mission has
been really to do reporting that connects the U.S. and
Asia and to cover the Asian-American community. I
think the connection stories are very important
because it is a window into how our world is changing."
"Pacific Time" reported on social networking in Korea,
an American who took a circus to Samoa and how a
coup plot hurt Hmong people in America. Having been
born in Vietnam, Ha says that she is like 65 percent of
Asians living in America. She embodies the issues she
seeks to cover. Ha was not always a radio journalist.
She was a newspaper journalist at the
San Jose Mercury News just a year ago.
She likes radio and says she has always been
more enamored of the message than the medium.
Come Oct. 11, she expects to be in the KQED newsroom.
She will take with her the prism through which she sees the world.
She hopes she can continue to do stories about lives
that bridge the Pacific ocean.
UNITY: Journalists of Color) | |
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NEWSROOM DIVERSITY
AMPE/UNITY Editor's Toolkit: Improving Diversity Through Greater Retention |
 The Associated Press Managing Editors Association and UNITY: Journalists of Color joined forces last year to examine what appears to be a growing problem - retention of talented journalists of color in newspaper newsrooms.
The industry cannot afford to lose any more ground. Already this year, the American Society of Newspaper Editors' annual employment survey found that the percentage of minorities slipped by one-quarter of a percentage point from the previous year, from 13.87 in the 2006 survey to 13.62 percent in 2007.
APME/UNITY see it primarily as an issue of accuracy and credibility. Commitment to reflecting the total community has to be as much of our industry's standard for excellence as First Amendment principles and quality journalism.
With this in mind, APME/UNITY conducted four roundtables with journalists of color working in the newsrooms and others who recently left the business. The roundtables, modeled after APME's successful National Credibility Roundtables Program, shed light on a number of emerging issues.
The information from this booklet is based on those conversations and additional research on companies outside our industry with good track records. APME/UNITY hope readers will find it helpful in identifying areas in which the newsroom could improve.
The APME/UNITY Editor's Toolkit will be distributed during the APME's 2007 Conference: "Fast Forward to the Future: 500 Great Ideas for Staying Ahead and Producing Great Journalism," which will be at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, DC, October 3-6, 2007. |
| Race and the Media |
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University of Ulster
Journalists, politicians, policy makers, academics and community workers will rub shoulders with representatives from minority ethnic groups living and working in the north west at a media conference this week, hosted by the University of Ulster's INCORE conflict research initiative. The 'Race and the Media' conference will put the spotlight on the media's portrayal of the minority ethnic sector.
Organized by the Diversity in Action project in partnership with the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism (NCCRI), the conference has attracted an excellent line-up of internationally renowned speakers including Steve Wessler from the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence; Mike Jempson of the MediaWise Trust and John Horgan, Press Ombudsman for the Press Council for Ireland. Other contributors confirmed include Aidan White, International Federation of Journalists; Benedicta Attoh, NCCRI; Jilly Beattie, The Mirror; Elly Omondi Odhiambo, University of Ulster and Bob Collins, Chief Executive, Equality Commission and RTE's former Director General. Event co-ordinator Roisin O'Hagan explains why the conference - the latest in a series of events organised by INCORE's Diversity in Action project - is being held at an opportune time.
Read More |
Gannett Reaches Over 20,490 Managers of Color |
| Richard Prince -- Journal-isms
"The 2007 All-American Review, which measures the number of people of color and the outreach efforts made by Gannett Information Centers," formerly newspapers, "shows that the total percentage of minority journalists - 19.5 percent - was flat compared to 2006, which was a record," Ann Clark, Gannett Co. news executive, reported to Gannett properties.
The report also showed that there was strong progress in two critical areas - the percentage of minority managers and the percentage of minority promotions. For the first time in the 29-year history of the review, the number of people of color in management positions surpassed 20 percent. It hit an all-time high of 20.4 percent, compared to 19.1 percent in 2006. The number of people of color who were promoted also showed progress, with 31.2 percent. That compared to 27.8 percent in 2006. The number of people of color hired to fill Information Center positions dropped slightly from 28.5 percent in 2006 to 28 percent in 2007. The total number of interns dropped, but a higher percentage of interns (49.3 percent) were people of color, compared to 46.7 percent in 2006.
Comments and thoughts on this issue? Please send them to info@unityjournalists.org and they may be posted on next week's newsletter! |
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Diversity in the Digital Age: Complicated Issues, Sophisticated Storytelling |
Technology provides new tools for telling important stories
Thomas T. Huang -- Poynter Online
As we produce more and more of our journalism online and on other platforms, how will our pursuit of diversity change? By "diversity," I mean the journalistic value of representing in our news coverage a wide variety of people -- faces, voices and perspectives. Maybe you, dear reader, can help me expand upon the ideas I share here. Maybe you can also send me examples of multimedia journalism that you think does a good job of reflecting diverse communities and cultures.
I've drawn these ideas from a conversation I had recently with Keith Woods, dean of the faculty at The Poynter Institute. The digital world can help the reader deepen his understanding of his own community -- and build connections within that community. We need to take advantage of that. At random, I did a Google search on "Vietnamese in Dallas" and "Ethiopians in Dallas." I found Web sites for a Vietnamese Professionals Society, a Mutual Assistance Association for Ethiopians and several ethnic churches and student associations in both communities. These are immediate examples of grassroots groups using the Web to help their communities. I suspect there will also be an explosion of local ethnic media Web sites. There's already a powerful Web site produced by New America Media, a collaboration of ethnic news organizations, founded by the nonprofit Pacific News Service.
Read More
Comments and thoughts on this issue? Please send them to info@unityjournalists.org and they may be posted on next week's newsletter! |
| OMBUDSMAN: Minority Coverage a Complex Problem |
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The Justice
Last year, I issued a challenge to the editors and writers at the Justice. The paper's coverage of issues affecting minority students at Brandeis University was sparse, as was its coverage of events and lectures sponsored by organizations belonging to the Intercultural Center. This latter reality was brought to my attention less than a month after I started teaching at Brandeis, when a student considering whether she should minor in journalism angrily pointed out to me that the Justice had failed to cover the opening event for Hispanic Heritage Month in September of 2006.
This year, not only did the Justice cover that opening event, it also featured a photo from author Charley Ferrer's lecture prominently on its front page. Reporter Shana Lebowitz was then given an entire page in Features to discuss the content of Ferrer's lecture, along with students' reactions to it... Expanding the paper's diversity coverage is not an easy task, though. The Justice's news room-much like news rooms all over this country (and like Brandeis' journalism program, I should probably add)-is overwhelmingly white. In a piece he wrote for the Web site www.campusprogress.org, Justin Elliott, former executive editor of Brown University's Daily Herald, points out that the lack of diversity in America's news rooms can be even more detrimental to the mission of college newspapers than it is to that of their mainstream counterparts. "In campus journalism, where there are few press releases, word of mouth is everything," Elliott astutely observes. "When the campus paper is run by students from a certain demographic, coverage tends to mirror the concerns and perspectives of that demographic."
Read More
Comments and thoughts about this issue? Please send them to info@unityjournalists.org and they may be posted on next week's newsletter! |
| Reporting While Black |
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Solomon Moore -- New York Times
The police officer had not asked my name or my business before grabbing my wrists, jerking my hands high behind my back and slamming my head into the hood of his cruiser. "You have no right to put your hands on me!" I shouted lamely. "This is a high-crime area," said the officer as he expertly handcuffed me. "You were loitering. We have ordinances against loitering."
Last month, while talking to a group of young black men standing on a sidewalk in Salisbury, N.C., about harsh antigang law enforcement tactics some states are using, I had discovered the main challenge to such measures: the police have great difficulty determining who is, and who is not, a gangster. My reporting, however, was going well. I had gone to Salisbury to find someone who had firsthand experience with North Carolina's tough antigang stance, and I had found that someone: me. Except that I didn't quite fit the type of person I was seeking. I am African-American, like the subjects of my reporting, but I'm not really cut out for the thug life. At 37 years old, I'm beyond the street-tough years. I suppose I could be taken for an "O.G.," or "original gangster," except that I don't roll like that - I drive a Volvo station wagon and have two young homeys enrolled in youth soccer leagues.
As Patrick L. McCrory, the mayor of Charlotte and an advocate of tougher antigang measures in the state, told me a couple of days before my Salisbury encounter: "This ganglike culture is tough to separate out. Whether that's fair or not, that's the truth."
Comments and thoughts on this issue? Please send them to info@unityjournalists.org and they may be posted on next week's newsletter! |
| News University Reaches Milestone: More Than 51,000 Registered Users |
PR Newswire
Journalists Around the World Embrace Online Training
More than 51,000 journalists and journalism students and teachers are now registered users of News University (http://www.newsu.org), setting a new record for online
journalism training. The dramatic growth in the e-learning site demonstrates the hunger in the industry for journalism training and the power of the Internet to transform training in the newsroom and in the classroom.
With users in more than 175 countries, NewsU, a project of The Poynter Institute funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, is the leading online learning destination of journalists worldwide. "Fifty-one thousand ... that's like filling a baseball stadium with journalists who want to learn how to get better," said Eric Newton, vice president, journalism program, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. |
Body Identified as Nailah Franklin's |
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Chicago Tribune
 "Dental records today identified the badly decomposed body of a woman found early Thursday in south suburban Calumet City as Nailah Franklin, the 28-year-old pharmaceutical representative reported missing more than a week ago, Chicago police said," the Chicago Tribune reported on its Web site Friday. Franklin is a 2001 graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who helped start the student chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists at that school. She disappeared in Chicago last week. "An autopsy was performed today on the badly decomposed body. Police, who are now conducting a death investigation, said the cause of death is 'inconclusive,'" the Tribune said.
Comments and thoughts on this issue? Please send them to info@unityjournalists.org and they may be posted on next week's newsletter! |
| CAREER TOOLKIT -- Make Work Easy |
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Computer Tip: Alphabetizing lists in Word and Excel
 Peggy Duncan
Personal Productivity Expert
You can quickly alphabetize names whether they are in a list, Word table, or Excel spreadsheet. (I alphabetize by first names because it's the first thing that comes to mind when I think of someone.)
In Word
- Select all the names in the list (if the names are in a table, click inside any cell in the column you want to sort).
- Click the Table menu, Sort, and sort by Paragraphs (you'll click Table whether the names are in a table or not).
- Tick the box next to Header row if your list has a heading (such as First Name Last Name, etc.). Click OK.
In Excel When the First and Last Names Are in Separate Columns
- Click inside one of the cells in the column you want sorted.
- Click the Data menu, Sort.
- Choose the column you want to sort by, and whether or not your column has a heading.
- Click OK.
Important: If you ever see a message asking you about expanding the selection, click Yes. If you don't, Joe's name won't stay with his last name. Always click inside one cell instead of selecting a column when you sort...then you won't get this message.
Peggy Duncan is a personal productivity expert, trainer, consultant, coach, and author of Conquer Email Overload with Better Habits, Etiquette, and Outlook 2003. For a list of her 27 email pet peeves that tick people off, visit http://www.PeggyDuncan.com/articles/emailPetPeeves.htm | |
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| MEDIA AND POLICY |
Call to Action on Female/Minority Ownership Panel
StopBigMedia.com
Last week, the FCC hosted an historic public hearing on media ownership at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition National Headquarters in Chicago, IL. There is no better place to address the issue of media ownership, particularly for women and minorities, than Chicago. Roughly two-thirds of the people in the city are black and Hispanic, and over half are women. But collectively, they own just six percent of all TV and radio stations in the Chicago media market. It is outrageous that Chicago, with all its diversity, has the lowest proportion of minority radio ownership of the nation's 22 largest markets.
With this much diversity among the people of Chicago and so little diversity in the ownership of its media, it is no wonder that when 800 Chicagoans came out to the hearing to tell the entire FCC whether they feel that their communities are being adequately served by local media. The answer was a resounding "no!" We heard impassioned testimony from our panelists and from over 200 Chicago citizens who signed up to testify before the Commission.
Click here to read the report. |
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FREE ONLINE RESOURCES FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION |
Want to get better at your job? Whether you are covering breaking news, managing a team on a deadline or working on a long-term project, UNITY has some useful links that can help you on your writing and reporting techniques.
Attention High School Students Looking to Major in Journalism:
Click here to view universities/colleges that offer journalism! |
JOURNALISM FELLOWSHIPS/ SCHOLARSHIPS
APME Offers Conference Scholarships to Editors of Color
Click here to apply
"Journalism in a 24/7 World"
"Decision-making for the Online Editor"
NAMME's Leadership Development Institute Fellowships
October 29 - November 1, 2007
New York City
The Robert Bosch Foundation Fellowship
Application Deadline: October 15, 2007
Program Dates: September through May
(9 months)
Number of Participants: 20
For more fellowships, click here to view.
If you or your company has a fellowship or an internship that you like UNITY to post, please send the information to info@unityjournalists.org.
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| Past Board Members, Get Back in Touch with UNITY! |
Have you served on a UNITY Board of Directors? If so, update your contact information with the national office so that we can update you with exciting news and events as we lead up to UNITY '08. Please click here to take the survey and update your information! Any questions, please contact the national office at info@unityjournalists.org.
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| NEWSROOM INSIGHTS --
Obama and Clinton Lack Leadership on Cuba |
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By Ana Perez
Sen. Barack Obama's position on Cuba is not what is expected of a visionary new leader. Instead, he is catering to the anti-Castro Cuban-American crowd in
Miami in an attempt to gain the Cuban-American vote.
Obama has outlined his policy agenda toward Cuba in a document entitled "Our Main Goal: Freedom in Cuba." One does not even have to read past the title to know that Obama's approach continues to follow the failed rhetoric of the past 50 years. On substance, he won't even embrace the lifting of restrictions on travel to Cuba.
For decades now, the U.S. government has infringed upon the civil rights of all Americans by prohibiting travel to a neighboring country only 90 miles away. Most Democratic candidates have come out in favor of lifting the restrictions.
But not Senator Hillary Clinton, Democrat-New York, who clings to the centre. And not Obama.
They are even to the right of some Republicans on this issue. "If my travel, which I think is my human right, is going to be restricted, then it seems to me that a communist government ought to be the one doing the restricting - not my own government of the U.S. of America," says Representative Jeff Flake, Republican-Arizona. Flake has worked hard over the last four years to build bipartisan support to lift the travel ban.
Many American citizens want to enjoy freedom to travel to Cuba and see the country for themselves. Cuban-Americans yearn for family reunification. And many companies want the opportunity to trade with the island nation. But neither Obama nor Hillary has budged on this. To his credit, Obama has given early support to the rights of Cuban-American families to send remittances without restrictions to their loved ones back home. That is a step in the right direction.
Yet his failure to call for ending travel restrictions for all U.S. citizens sends a clear message: that our right to travel does not matter as much as seeking the political favour of well-connected Cuban-American political groups.
That's what Obama did when he met with Miami-Dade Democratic Party Chairman Joe Garcia, who is also the former executive director of the Cuban-American National Foundation. That organization is notorious for opposing engagement with Cuba and for militantly denouncing the Castro government.
By siding with this crowd, Obama failed to recognize that he was turning off many Latinos. For millions, Cuba still symbolizes hope. The Castro government beat back repeated U.S. plots. And it represents an alternative to privatization and corporate greed. Most people in Latin America understand that free-trade policies have resulted in increased poverty.
Obama prides himself on offering new approaches to old problems. Unfortunately, on Cuba, he is still stuck in the past.
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Ana C. Perez is the executive director of the Central American Resources Center, based in San Francisco. She can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.
Copyright Ana C. Perez
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We hope you enjoyed this issue, please share with your friends and colleagues through the "forward" feature below. We hope to provide greater personalization in future issues, so please do take time to update your profile through the link at the bottom of the page.
Sincerely,
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Onica N. Makwakwa
Executive Director
UNITY Journalists of Color, Inc. |
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See You at UNITY '08
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Achieving Diverse Workforces Should be Key Consideration in Industry Cutbacks
