Diversity in Action: A Youth Editor Shares Her Plan
Eileen Brady, editor of The Voice at the State Journal-Register in Springfield, Ill., created this action plan for her teen staff and Explorers Post during the 2000 Diversity Awareness Workshop.
Currently, within the Voice staff and the Explorers Post, there is diversity in regard to age, geographic location, religious beliefs, family income level and gender (on the Voice staff-not in Explorers). Most recently, I've contacted a student who has been home-schooled since first grade. I regularly work with a total of 45 students from both groups.
Although there is some diversity in race and ethnicity, including two Indian American students and one Latin American student, the staff does not yet reflect the diversity of The State Journal-Register's readership, according to its market research.
The target goal of this action plan is to increase participation of African American, Hispanic and Asian American students in The Voice and in Explorers. This goal also will increase contacts in those communities for stories, including Voice stories and metro news, and will increase the number of story ideas reflecting those groups. The target is proportionate to Springfield's population.
Here are some ideas to diversify our staff:
Speak to and recruit older kids at the Boys & Girls Club, where last summer I went to gather middle-schoolers' responses to questions of the week.
Work with the director of Teen Reach, whose participants join from the Boys & Girls Club and the Urban League. She and I have already discussed crossover exposure: The minority kids who've produced a teen talk show on cable access need a balance of white faces and perspectives, and The Voice, in turn, could use their perspectives as well. Both groups are media-savvy, making it a natural trade.
Conduct some diversity training with the Voice staffers and the Explorers, using exercises from "The Full Palette" diversity guide for high school journalism. This, I hope, will allow them to see that it's important to interview different students, and perhaps they can encourage their diverse friends to attend. This will be done before the addition of other staffers so that there will be a higher comfort level for those who join later.
Before school starts, publish a photo from this year's Voice party, which will include mostly white faces, and I will write about the graduating seniors. Also, I will put out an annual invitation for new staffers and mention that if teen readers don't see themselves reflected in the photo or in the stories on the pages, they can change that by participating on the staff. I can solicit the same response from area high schools.
Use teacher contacts to point me in the direction of black, Hispanic or Asian students who might have an interest in writing, and I will use the direct approach with them, recruiting them personally, which has always worked well in the past.
Address the issue of having diversity reflected in the images used for Voice pages. This will be natural when a story is solely about a different group I'm trying to attract, but maybe not so natural when it's a group of students from which a few images are culled.
Market two tentatively approved scholarships for students who participate in The Voice and in Explorers.
Further explore diversity workshop speaker MiChelle Duke's attraction to the newspaper through minority workshops, especially because I believe that offers of scholarships, although a wonderful incentive, won't necessarily attract students who don't see college in their future (yet). Weekly pay is more likely to get those students' attention.
Give myself an end-of-year goal of attracting at least a few more students with different faces/perspectives, shooting for 10 total-based on market research and my current staff numbers. I will keep in mind, though, that I cannot neglect to engage the diverse students I've already attracted through various "drives."
The following is Brady's assessment of how her plan has worked to date:
At the end of the summer, about a month after the Diversity Awareness Workshop, I ran a photo of the current Voice staff and told readers that if they didn't see themselves or their interests represented, they should become part of the staff. From that push, I recruited some sorely needed boys and a few kids from outlying schools that hadn't ever been represented.
Later, I spoke to a woman who worked with black students from several city schools. She gladly gave out "15 minutes of fame" question-and-answer forms to dozens of students, and those kids have been represented regularly on my pages. I have personally recruited several others, many of whom have become contributors. Although I have been successful in many ways, there are still more of my action-plan goals that haven't yet been met.
I've spoken to teens with cerebral palsy and to teens who have been in legal trouble, and it seems with each outreach, I connect with at least one kid who finds the way to my staff, whether to write or just to offer ideas. I've had several parents notice that the stories in my section are about all different kinds of kids, and they suggest other story ideas.
This past March at the Central Illinois High School Journalism Workshop, I was asked to be the keynote speaker and to talk about diversity. After discussing different kinds of diversity (how there's usually a lack of freshmen involved in stories or on high school newspaper staffs), I gave the kids ideas they could use at their own papers. I got many of these from "The Full Palette," which I brought home from the workshop.
