Ethnic Media 101

Read on to learn how Cristina Azocar, a journalism professor at San Francisco State University is making ethnic media a priority in her classroom. This is the first installment of our ongoing series, Ethnic Journalism 101: How America's Journalism and Communications schools are addressing the rising popularity of ethnic media.

KD: Tell me about the courses you teach as well as the one you're developing with Sandy Close.
CA: I currently teach Cultural Diversity in U.S. Journalism. The course Sandy Close [of New California Media] and I are developing is one in which we turn the cultural diversity course into one with the theme of reporting and news analysis through an ethnic media lens. We plan to develop a curriculum that both uses the ethnic media as a teaching tool and has the students act as a news service for an ethnic media outlet. Mainstream media's lack of coverage of communities of color is why ethnic media popped up a long time ago, but now it's overtaking mainstream media as the main source of news for many of these communities. With this course, students will haven an opportunity to understand the evolution of this and be able to view the ethnic media not as an other media, but as its own viable news media. At the same time, having the students write and produce these stories will give ethnic news outlets a different way of getting new stories.

Before the reporting and writing begins, students would do a case study on the particular paper or station. They would learn what the outlet was about and what community it serves. For instance, if you were working with Asian Week, a popular paper in the Bay Area, after initial research you would pitch stories for publication in Asian Week. In addition to getting clips, the student would learn about the community and the ethnic media organization; in turn, the media outlet would be able to get stories that they wouldn't ordinarily be able to pay a reporter to cover. We also want work closely with people from ethnic media--have the publishers, editors, reporters and photographers come into the class to talk about their experiences.

KD: Tell me a little about the classes you're currently teaching.
CA: I teach Ethnic Diversity in U.S. Journalism, which focuses only on race and ethnicity. I also teach Cultural Diversity in U.S. Journalism, which touches on race, class, gender--just about everything.

KD: How is Ethnic Media incorporated into these classes?
CA: In one of the classes recently we had an ethnic media panel come in to discuss the role of ethnic media in a civic society, and in both classes I have the students do lots of reading about ethnic media.

KD: What indications inspired the need for the classes you teach and the one you're developing?
CA: I started working with Sandy about three years ago when NCM was just starting to become a national presence. There were also conversations that happened in our journalism department about how many of us use the ethnic media personally and in classes. As Sandy's organization got more attention, we felt like what we were teaching [students about ethnic media] was legitimate. We were working with a pretty mainstream journalism curriculum, so I think the crisis in mainstream media has made us rethink the way we teach journalism. Even before we talked about the class we're developing now, we were trying to get funding to have a class work as an ethnic media news service. We currently have something like that with the Oakland Tribune where students write stories that get in the Tribune. We would hope to do both classes in conjunction with one another.

KD: When you say 'crisis in mainstream media,' what are you referring to?
CA: Declining viewership and readership and rising notions that it's not accurate.


KD: Do you know of any impact your shifting focus toward ethnic media has had thus far on your students and/or the journalism department?
CA: One of the things that's interesting is that after the ethnic media panel I had five or six emails that night and the next day [from my students] saying how much they enjoyed that particular panel. I think the different opinions on panel alone probably made them think.

Has the department been supportive of your efforts?
So far the response has been positive because it seems that about half of the faculty is somehow incorporating ethnic media it into their courses--in history and ethics classes. It's becoming more a general part of the curriculum, like we used to have diversity day, and now diversity is incorporated throughout the curriculum not just one class--that's what's beginning to happen witih ethnic media.

Professor Azocar is the director of the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism.

Ethnic Media's Angle on Katrina Coverage

Each year, journalism students puzzle through this in their communications law or ethics classes: a terrible accident has occurred and you're the first one on the scene. Do you first help the ailing victim or begin shooting photographs that will award you Picture of the Year? An intellectual and moral debate ensues: are you first a Samaritan or a journalist? God, ethics, roles of a journalist all come into play. Some hope they'll be the model citizen, others the model reporter. In the wake of Hurriane Katrina, hundreds of journalists dealt with this dilemma for themselves, but for journalists representing the ethnic media it's rarely a question. In the face of the government's tortoise-like response to the hurricane victims, many ethnic media journalists decided they must cover the story and join the front lines of the relief effort.

Thuy Vu of Radio Saigon: a source of news and relief for Vietnamese hurricane victims

Instead of tuning in to CNN when they arrived in Houston, many of the 15,000 or so Vietnamese who fled Katrina used Radio Saigon, a Houston-based A.M. radio station as its primary source of information. Thuy Vu, the station's chief executive along with her husband, former refugees themselves, left their positions at the radio station and spent three days coordinating efforts at the Hong Kong mall, the heartbeat of the Vietnamese community there. As needs arose, she phoned them into the radio station employees, who then put them on the air, and within minutes scores of people showed up to donate supplies and volunteer--this was the case when they needed formula, doctors, shelter and a replacement relief coordinator when Vu had to return to work. "That's the good thing about ethnic media," she said, "you can kind of tailor it to the needs of the people." Now that most people have shelter, permament housing will be the next challenge. "Having been a refugee myself years ago, I know exactly what it's like to be a refugee and I know what needs to be done to help them," Vu told the Associated Press. "Some of us really have to relive the nightmare of being refugees all over again. It's very hard to be professionally journalistic about it. I believe sometimes a journalist has to put down their camera and their pens to help people." You can read and hear more of Radio Saigon's efforts here.


IMDiversity.com Reports on Affected Native American Population

News of what's happened to the Native American population in Katrina-affected areas appeared on IMDiversity.com last Sunday, 9/11. Apparently there are six native tribes residing throughout Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi that were devastated by the hurricane. Robert Holden, of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) has reported that little to no contact has been made with any of the tribal groups. One tribal representative who lived in Chalmette, a part of St. Bernard Parish, reported using the local high school as a morgue. The National Indian Gaming Association (NIGA) has teamed with NCAI to initiate relief efforts for Native Americans in the three Gulf states. Holden told IMDiversity.com that many tribes from across the country have already sent trained responders and law enforcement to the affected areas.

Ethnic Media Outlet Push to Give their Stories a Wider Audience

Success was theirs when New California Media's (NCM) Sandy Close managed to get two stories of survival and relief from the Vietnamese community onto NPR. Old news for the Vietnamese press, these and other stories from underrepresented communities are beginning to create a gateway for stories of other distressed immigrant communities.

New California Media Commissioning a Poll

Recent polls have confirmed what just about anyone paying attention could have predicted: most African Americans think that the government would have responded to Katrina victims sooner had those suffering been white, while most whites think it wouldn't have made a bit of difference. This is just the sort of shortsighted poll Sandy Close of NCM is looking not to do. NCM plans to commission a national poll that will "draw the perspectives of ethnic and immigrant communities into the national discourse on the lessons learned from Katrina," said Close. "We need an inclusive discourse about Katrina--we need to make sure we hear from, learn from, inquire from all communities."

Ethnic Media and the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

In the days since the relief effort of Hurricane Katrina became one of America's worst nightmares--on humanitarian, environmental and political levels--Black, Asian and Latino media have been keeping a scrutinous eye on how the fallout is affecting their communities. Several stories have reported who is providing shelter and other basics, and many offer editorials that shake a finger at the delayed response and lack of preparedness of government officials for a disaster that, as George Curry pointed out, could have been markedly less severe.

Prevention and preparation was possible Curry has written one of the more telling stories to be published since aftermath of Katrina ripped through the country--period. In it, Curry, the editor-in-chief of National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service and BlackPressUsa.com, summarizes and quotes extensively from an article that appeared in National Hazards Observer, an academic journal, in November 2004. The author presented in immaculate detail would have happened to New Orleans if Hurricane Ivan had the city directly, and each travesty, down to the numbers is exactly what transpired last week in New Orleans. Yet it appears that no one took heed. If you don't think the devastating affects from Katrina could have been at minimum, scaled down, and that hundreds if not thousands of lives could have been saved, click here. You'll change your mind.

What the Mainstream Missed

Fortunately, the relief efforts are underway, and the offers from state governments, colleges and universities, corporations and citizens with no affiliation have been a salve to what seems to be a growing wound. IMDiversity.com published several stories from the Black College Newswire, which detailed the evacuation of Dillard and Xavier Universities, two Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Louisiana. With help from Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, dedicated faculty and staff from Southern and Grambling State Universities, each student was safely evacuated and most have returned to their native cities. In Houston and Baton Rouge, the Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese communities are opening their homes, restaurants and churches to their displaced brethren. Likewise, Latino organizations such as La Raza and the Central American Resource Center are preparing to assist the more than 300,000 Hispanics that took root in New Orleans and Mississippi, many of whom are concerned that destroyed work visas will lead to their deportment.

What LA Ethnic Press is reporting

The ethnic print media in Louisiana appears to be, for the most part, on hold. The Black Collegian and IMDiversity.com have partnered, and features from both staffs can be seen on IMDiversity's Website. The Louisiana Weekly is running a Web edition only until further notice. The site has been updated with several stories from the Associated Press and the National Newspaper Association. The Data News and Italian American Weekly don't appear to have Web editions, and the Monroe Free Press has no hurricane related news.

More to come later today.

Jon and Kamilah