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.