|
|
|
|||
|
||||
| Welcome |  |
|
|
||
|
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Here are past-weeks' Diversity Tips from 2006: Putting Stock into diversity By Joe Grimm
She has felt as non-Asian as a South Korean growing up with a white family in suburban Philadelphia can feel. "Nobody spoke Korean. It just wasn't a part of how we lived," she said. During her sophomore year at the University of Delaware, Stock switched from biology and education to journalism and English. She became editor of the campus paper. Her mother told her to check out the Asian American Journalists Association. Like a lot of busy students getting advice from their mothers, Stock was, "Whatever." Another year, more nagging and Stock drove to the AAJA convention in New York City. Delaware alum and New York Times graphic journalist Archie Tse helped put her at ease. She did the job fair. She joined. After graduation, she hit the San Francisco convention. Gannett interviewed her and she soon had offers from three of its newspapers. The Lansing State Journal, with help from the Freedom Forum, hired her. Stock landed in Michigan about the time journalists were launching Michigan's chapter. "I came along for the ride," she said. When she moved to the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., she was the resident expert on starting a chapter. Teaming with people who she claims work much harder than she, they got it started. AAJA's newest chapter was approved this month. "My dedication to AAJA is very much because it helped me," Stock said. "I'm helping an organization that has helped me a lot." Community member first, journalist second: By Joe Grimm Some stories are difficult to report. School shootings, for example.
To Koreans 4/29 was what 9/11 was to Americans By Joe Grimm
Everyday issues can turn into surprises when culture comes to play By Joe Grimm Here's a scene that might not leap to just anyone's mind: An aging parent needs care, but there is a language barrier. Most of the available caregivers speak a different language. Esther Wu did not have to use her imagination. It really happened in her family. Wu and her siblings speak English, but their mother spoke Chinese and very little English. The children worried about their mother living in a place where no one could communicate with her. Drawing on her family's experience, Wu wrote about the problem for her readers in Texas, where she is a columnist for the Dallas Morning News. She interviewed experts, she cited statistics, she gave readers some numbers to call. And readers thanked her for writing about their predicament. Many of them have parents who speak Spanish or Vietnamese, but the experiences of immigrants' children translate into many languages. Wu, president of the Asian American Journalists Association and a past vice-president of UNITY, hopes to keep writing about surprising, everyday issues. As one of the more than 100 people who took the buyout at the Dallas Morning News, her last official day at work is Nov. 30. Latino station becomes journalistic lifeline By Joe Grimm As post-Katrina waters filled New Orleans, Spanish filled the airwaves
above them. Ernesto Schweikert was at his post at radio station KLGA
in nearby Gretna, La. A good name: Diverse bylines break stereotypes By Joe Grimm In these days of buyouts, layoffs and freezes, I remember the young
reporter who had been been through the wringer at the Oakland Tribune. Minorities need a seat at the table, where decisions are made By Joe Grimm This must be Bob McGruder month. This week, Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts was honored with Kent
State University's Robert G. McGruder Award. Earlier in the month, the
American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Associated Press Managing Editors
and the Freedom Forum named Sharon Rosenhause, managing editor of the
Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and the Pacific Daily News on Guam as
winners of the fifth annual Robert G. McGruder Awards for Diversity
Leadership. Speaking someone's language gives diversity a voice By Joe Grimm Speaking their language says 'I care about you and your
culture.' And for me that is true. I wish I could speak so many languages. As journalists,
our hands are tied when we can't communicate. how can we fairly tell a story if we don't
understand what someone is saying?" Walking in two worlds, Navajo journalist learns appreciation for law and words By Joe Grimm April Hale was torn between two worlds. Family and tribe. Law and journalism. Culture and career. As a teen, she watched her father, the elected president of the Navajo Nation, clash with the editor of the Navajo Times. For the Navajo, one of hundreds of sovereign nations that are situated inside the United States but whose tribal-owned newspaper staffs are not fully protected by the First Amendment, deep disagreements can mean the death of a newspaper. Newspaper editor Tom Arviso, Jr. knew the stakes as he criticized the rule of Albert Hale, April's father. As she watched her father, the lawyer, joust with Arviso, the newsman, her interest in both fields grew. Arviso's newspaper survived, Albert Hale left the presidency and became a state senator in Arizona. In the wake of that conflict, April Hale began her own career. She applied for an internship at the unlikeliest place -- the Navajo Times. And then another surprising thing happened -- Arviso hired her. Everyone learned. Now April, almost a graduate, has an internship in Washington, D.C., at the Student Press Law Center, which combines her interests in journalism and law. She has shown that can choose her own path – or walk two at once. The secret's out: Journalists' cultural sensitivity helps strengthen a community By Joe Grimm It was called The Secret War. In journalism, people -- regardless of color -- come first By Joe Grimm When some men die, they leave a legacy to their children. ~ ~ ~ ~ Seeking diversity is more than just good business; it's the right thing to do By Joseph N. Boyce Each had his own speaking style but the conclusion of both was the same: diversity in the news media was desirable primarily because it just made good business sense. During the Q and A that followed, I remarked that I was distressed that neither man had acknowledged that having a diverse workforce and being responsive and responsible to a diverse audience was simply "the right thing to do." Both men seemed annoyed at the comment and criticized it as naive. Like it or not, they said, business self-interest trumps morality, even when it comes to diversity. I disagreed with them then and still do. Morality has much to do with who we are and what we do as journalists. It shapes our commitment to fairness, truth, ethical behavior, and yes, to assuring that everyone has a voice regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation. Morality and good business practice can exist together, indeed, should be one and the same. I left that luncheon angry at the exchange and irritated that none of the other luncheon guests, most of them minorities, said a word to challenge the speakers' comments. I felt better about that encounter some months later, however, when I heard from an informed source that the two executives, still performing their diversity road show, had now amended their remarks to include that, "Yes, diversity is also is the right thing to do." Creating a 'digital tribe,' journalism geek hopes to unite culture via the Internet By Joe Grimm David Newberger, who sometimes wears a shirt that proclaims "geek," grew up in an upper middle-class Texas neighborhood with a bunch of other white kids. Having 'radar' for people in cultural transit By Joe Grimm Craig Young is a photojournalist with an eye for what some people call "third culture."
Young has radar for images of people in transit from one culture to another who are flash-frozen between them. His subjects are in suspended animation only in his images. They are making new spaces for themselves. His journalism documents those places. Diversity of views when covering diversity helps By Joe Grimm An intern candidate hounded and hounded and eventually convinced me that she had the persistence to be a good reporter. Diversity in news coverage can provide 'comic relief' By Joe Grimm As the reader representative at the Detroit Free Press in the mid 1980s, I fielded all kinds of complaints. One week, a caller said we had too many pictures of black people in the paper. Another said we did not have enough. That made me want to check the race of all the people whose images we published. I audited the newspaper for a month. As I turned to the last pages in the newspaper, I came to the comics. I decided to count them, too. The lack of diversity in the comics pages stunned me. White artists were uncomfortable or off the mark when they drew minority characters. Syndicated minority comic artists were pretty much non-existent. The audit was replicated or reported in the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Reporter and other newspapers. Editors began asking for more diversity on the comics pages and in the ranks of syndicated artists. Initially, at least one syndicate said it could not afford to carry strips with black characters because they would not sell in the South. But things began to change. On Oct. 3, 1988, King Features syndicated "Curtis" a strip about an 11-year-old African-Amercian boy drawn by Ray Billingsley, an African-American cartoonist. The Free Press picked it up. One Sunday, I was at home reading the paper and my son, about 8 years old, was reading the comics. He laughed at one of the strips and said it was the best comic in the newspaper. It was "Curtis." My family is white. I don't think our son was aware that Curtis is black or that he was being drawn by a black cartoonist. What mattered to my son was the gags. To him, Billingsley was just funnier than everyone else. Billingsley tickled my son's funny bone better than all the others. How sad it would have been if a racial barrier had deprived this 8-year-old of the best work in the paper.
'Diamonds in the rough' may soon shine brilliantly in the newsroom By Reginald Stuart The move was more significant than it seemed, however, based on the roots of this reporter's path to being a prime writer on a large circulation daily. Best practices: How to succeed in journalism By Joseph N. Boyce
In the newsroom:
Defying the odds: Reporter returns to school and learns what it means to be a journalist By Joe Grimm Suzannah Gonzalez is a reporter. She became a reporter because she liked to write. "In college -- even in high school -- I knew that I wanted to be a journalist. But I really didn't know what that meant." She has learned. To Gonzales, to be a journalist means to help. Gonzales left a good newspaper to return to college. She has earned a masters degree at the University of Texas, where she studied immigration. She balanced classroom work with newsroom work at the Austin American-Statesman. She says she scared herself in grad school. She did it by studying statistics. To her surprise, she liked it. Statistics helped her write her thesis, for which she analyzed Census data to investigate the language preferences among Mexican immigrants and how their location in Texas and the presence of Spanish-language media play a part." Gonzales speaks Spanish herself and volunteer-teaches English as a second language. That helps people, too. She says that because her parents and siblings immigrated to the United States -- she was the first one in her family to be born here -- she appreciates what it means to be an immigrant. The United States is her birthplace and home, but "I love Mexico," says Gonzales. "I love its culture and how it is challenging our country to think about what it is to be American and what it means to be in this country." Like a journalist learning statistics, it can be hard to get your head around who Americans are these days. Suzannah Gonzales is American-born, but she is not of Mexican descent. She is Filipina.
New multi-media project helps journalists explore cultural issues By Joe Grimm The tautness in Japanese-Chinese relationships was imprinted early on Emerald Yeh. Born in America, she grew up in a Chinese family in Hawaii. Naturally, some of her friends belonged to the larger Japanese ethnic group. She could sense an unspoken divide between them. As an adult, Yeh became a journalist and got to explore and explain that divide for viewers of KRON-TV, San Francisco. Her project was called the Rape of Nanking. Far than being a historical piece on a 60-year-old atrocity, it was a present-day reality that cast cold shadows on Japanese-Chinese relationships. She writes: "Where was I emotionally with this story? Being a Chinese American, I had a similar experience to Lillian Sing's, Clifford Uyeda's, and Iris Chang's. I knew something awful had happened called the Rape of Nanking. I grew up knowing there was some historical animosity between Japanese and Chinese, and I was aware of the common sentiment among many Chinese parents that if their children didn't marry Chinese, they'd rather they marry almost any ethnicity but Japanese." The experiences of Yeh's childhood informed her journalism. Yeh's story -- and the story behind it -- are detailed in a new multi-media project called, "The Authentic Voice," out just this month. "The Authentic Voice" is the work of Columbia University's Arlene Morgan and Alice Irene Pifer and Poynter's Keith Woods. You can find more about on The Authentic Voice's website at http://www.theauthenticvoice.org/. It will also tell you how to order the book and its accompanying DVD. The lessons can help journalists in newsrooms and classrooms alike.
Cultural awareness' advantage: You'll get the story first By Joe Grimm When Kelley Carter was a high school student, she listened to Detroiter Aaliyah, a hip-hop artist and R&B singer who was even younger than she. Carter became a music writer at the Detroit Free Press and Aaliyah became a rising star. When Aaliyah dropped a new CD, was scheduled to be in two "Matrix" sequels, starred in "Queen of the Damned" and had been optioned for two more scripts, Carter took the story to her editor. The editor had learned to trust Carter's take on emerging talent and the Aaliyah profile dominated a feature front on July 17, 2001. Less than six weeks later, Aaliyah was killed in a plane crash. Carter interrupted her vacation to write the story. It ran big on Page 1A. "It reminded me a lot of Selena, when she was killed, and because newspapers weren't covering the TeJano scene, it wasn't until they had the candlelight ceremony and thousands and thousands of people came and they realized they had missed the boat." When her Aaliyah story ran, Carter said, Executive Editor Robert G. McGruder told her, "We wouldn't have had that story if you weren't here." Carter said she laughed when a reporter from a national newspaper later flew to Detroit, called her from the airport and said he had come to town to do "the definitive story." It had already been written, six weeks before Aaliyah died.
Roots run deep; finding them not easy for everyone By Joe Grimm Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts recalls talking with journalists who were well familiar with their heritages. They spoke of being Jewish or Irish and coming through Ellis Island or returning to Ireland. "I was fascinated," Pitts said. "It exacerbated something that I long felt that I don't have Ellis Island stories, that we don't have the ability to say that this spot on the map is where I'm from. This is sort of sad because you have this sense of irresolution and this lack of having anything tangible to hold onto." Pitts heard about Dr. Rick Kittles of Howard University, who had developed a DNA registry of 135 African population groups. Pitts ordered one of the $350 reports, becoming one of the first 35 people in the country to do so. His personal mystery solved, he told readers that his maternal line runs to the Songhay people of Niger and his paternal line runs to the Mende of Sierra Leone. Pitts' editors asked him to travel to his homeland and to tell readers about the journey. He did, joined by Philadelphia Inquirer photographer Sarah Glover. "You go expecting some sort of closure, and I guess there was some of that, but what I actually found was that, in a way, you're increasing the uncertainty because you're looking at these people and you know we could be cousins but there is no way of knowing that." Recently, Pitts was grading a student's paper. She wrote about attending a reunion and hearing all the family stories. "Now," she wrote, "I know what it is like to be a Murphy." Pitts said, "even after going to Africa, I still don't have that feeling, that thing I'm looking for ..."
Step into my world: Cultural collaborations increase newsroom reach By Joe Grimm Dzong Do and Macollvie Jean-Francois wrote a story about nail salons in south Florida. The salons are run by Vietnamese women, but neither reporter is a Vietnamese woman. Neither grew up in the United States. He lives in California; she lives in Florida. New America Media and a grant from the American Society of Newspaper Editors brought them together on the story. Jean-Francois worked for a Haitian newspaper for three years before she joined the Sun-Sentinel to experience a mainstream U.S. daily. On the nail story, she said, "I found a lot of similarities between us Haitians and the Vietnamese. Not just our climates, but the history of escaping oppressive governments. That helped us establish a connection, just being immigrants." Do, who lives in southern California, said it helped him, as a male, to interview female salon owners with a female partner. And he helped her. "I used to travel a lot in Vietnam and could ask people about where they were from - that was the connection." His Vietnamese skills helped draw out the stories. Do said, "I learned from Macollvie, my partner. She writes in her notebook, but doesn't look at it, but looks to see if they are telling the truth. She also asks about age, nationality, things like Do's boss, but not a relative, is Ahn Do, editor and CFO of Nguoi Viet, the oldest and largest Vietnamese language newspaper in the country. Her father founded it. She said she wanted to let Do go to south Florida because the Vietnamese population is spreading throughout the country. She said that 40 percent of the nail salons in the country are Vietnamese-owned and suggests that similar stories can be done anywhere. "Collaborations can give mainstream media better connections to minority communities," she said, "and give minority publications greater access to officials." Find their story here:
Schools find crafty ways to fail minorities By Joe Grimm John J. Valadez jokes that he is not a journalist and does not really have a job. The independent producer/director created a documentary for CNN on the unintended consequences of the "No Child Left Behind" initiative. "High Stakes: The Battle to Save Our Schools" showed how kids that need help the most are sometimes held back or hidden and how some schools helped children cheat to pass the test. Valadez identifies with some of the students that "No Child Left Behind" is failing. "I am a Chicano who grew up in Seattle and actually got into the University of Washington on an affirmative action program. I was very dyslexic. In spelling bees, I was always the first guy out. In order to get into college, they made me take English as a second language, even though that's the only one I speak. "In some crafty ways, I was able to run around a lot of barrels and jump sideways through some hoops." In his CNN report, Valadez documented some crafty strategies. Many were designed to raise test scores by cheating or bypassing poorer students -- not getting them into college.
'When people zig, you zag' By Joe Grimm We've all heard about people who come from "the wrong side of the tracks." It's the type of neighborhood you try to leave, not get to. When we hired Rashaun Rucker, his references praised him for regularly coming back with images that the rest of the photo staff missed. His work was always different and enriched the newspaper. To Rucker, it was simple. He would see other photographers get into
their cars, pull out of the newspaper's lot and turn right, toward the
western, middle-class end of town. Rucker would turn left, toward the "Somebody always told me, when people zig, you zag, and you'll usually come out on the winning side." It was natural for Rucker to do that. Growing up black in North Carolina, he said he didn't often see minority people in the newspaper. Plus, he was more comfortable being on the "wrong" side of the tracks. "That's what made me like journalism. It gave me a chance in some
small way to be a messenger for diversity."
Sharing cultural knowledge can make a difference By Joe Grimm The Kaiser Family Foundation funds health reporting internships at newspapers and television stations to increase coverage of minority health issues. One year, the Detroit Free Press hired a Kaiser intern who studied
medicine at the University of Michigan. That summer, researchers were saying that soybeans could help relieve the hot flashes and other The Kaiser intern was Asian American and came from a family where
soybeans and soy products were regularly on the dinner table. Women in her family did not seem to experience the same degree of symptoms as Coming from the family she came from, it was easy for her to tell the story, explain how soybeans could be served and find women who could talk for the article. Some even viewed menopause differently. The story might not have helped Asian-American women who already knew about soybeans, but it helped other women learn from them. The 2006 Kaiser interns arrived at their newspapers and TV stations this week. For information on the program, go to http://www.kff.org/mediafellows/mediainternships.cfm
Big truths come from small stories about diversity By Joe Grimm This week, journalists from across the country meet at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for the eighth annual "Let's Do it Better" workshops on journalism, race and ethnicity. Associate Dean Arlene Morgan has organized these to showcase diversity in print and broadcast journalism. One honoree is reporter Phuong Ly for a portfolio of work she did at the Washington Post. Ly's work is also being recognized this year by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Ly spins big truths out of small stories: People from North Carolina, which gave her her accent, who do Civil War reenactments. Families called 'kirogi,' Korean for wild geese, in which the father stays in South Korea for work while the mother brings the children to the United States for school. How automatic dishwashers play such different roles in the homes of immigrants and non-immigrants. A childhood immigrant from Vietnam, Ly never wanted to be pigeonholed as a teller of immigrant tales. But inaccurate and stereotypical portraits in the press drew her in. In an interview with Thomas Huang of the Dallas Morning News, Ly said, "I don't want people to see my stories and think they're about 'the other.' ... I'm not interested in writing Ripley's 'Believe it or Not,' pieces." This week, people are studying Ly's work at Columbia. Later this year, Huang's interview and some of Ly's stories will be published in a Best Newspaper Writing book now being edited at the Poynter Institute. Hard work and Ly's unique vision made it so.
'Language' of Diversity Benefits Everyone By Joe Grimm One summer, we hired two Muslim women as interns and a third as a high school apprentice.
By Joe Grimm News Industry Success Depends on How Well It Covers Diversity By Joe Grimm The Census Bureau has just told us that it appears that the United States is now a country in which one third of the people belong to traditional minority groups. That happened sooner than we thought, didn't it? And there is no sign that the change will slow down, as most of the growth is fueled by births of new Americans and not by immigration. The latest newsroom census from the American Society of Newspaper Editors, released in April, says that the growth of traditional minorities in newspaper editorial staffs was tiny: from 13.42 to 13.87 percent. Looked at realistically, the diversity gap in newsrooms –- the difference between newsroom staffing and the nation's population is now about 19 percentage points and growing. Newspapers are not catching up with annual gains of .45 percentage points. We are falling further behind. The picture is pretty much the same in all media. Incremental gains are not keeping pace with exponential change. With strategies and success stories, we're going to use this space to explore how improved work forces and content can better serve a nation that will increasingly crave a different kind of news –- and that has an expanding range of options. The issue is critical to us at UNITY. Our industry will succeed or fail on the fortunes of how well we serve an increasingly diverse nation. We have the brands, the news-gathering teams, the credibility and the knowledge of audiences to save ourselves. But we have to change as never before to address and reflect the interests and the needs of the people we serve. We look forward to the dialogue.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Copyright © 2007 • UNITY:Journalists
of Color, Inc. • All Rights Reserved 7950 Jones Branch Drive • McLean, Va. 22107 | (703) 854-3585 | (703) 854-3586 fax | info@unityjournalists.org |
