Ethnic Media 101

Dr. Sandra Ball-Rokeach, a professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California and two of her graduate students, Matthew Matsaganis and Vikki Katz, have designed an interactive course for USC students who want to learn more about the history and current boom of ethnic media in the U.S. Read on to find out about the fuel that’s driving the course, what Viki Katz has to say about the LA Times and why including ethnic media and understanding its purpose is crucial to everyone—not just journalists.

KD: What exactly is the course about?
SBR: Ethnic and immigrant media in America is the title of the course. The basic overall gist is an attempt to take students, theoretically and historically and in a hands-on way what Ethnic Media is and how it works. The students get an opportunity to interview and spend time in different ethnic media offices. We would also have people from various ethnic media outlets to come in and speak to the class

VK: We define and talk about various concepts used broadly in media and literature. What is ethnic media; what is alternative media? What is race and ethnicity and how do these concepts relate to the media today? The second deals with how to get to the ethnic media audience and breaking the study down into immigrant communities such as Italian, Greek, Jewish, Korean and Chinese media and ethnic media such as African American and Native American media.

The reason we differentiate ethnic media and immigrant media is because one of the interesting shifts is how these media go from being something that serves a new immigrant population to serving what has become an ethnic minority, and how the coverage varies in relation to the changing needs of that particular community.

MM: We also look at some much smaller groups like Israeli, Middle Eastern and Armenian groups on a general level and specifically by ethnic groups. When we go into more specific groups we’ll have people come in and talk to students about their own experiences of reporting on these communities

KD: Do you mean ethnic groups within these larger ethnic groups?
VK: Yes

VK: We want to show journalism students other opportunities for jobs in the future. For example, there’s a pretty good chance that new grads could get positions in the Latino media, which is rapidly expanding right now. We’re trying to encourage them to look at all aspects of journalism including the hard facts about producing in the current economy. Essentially, we want them to know there’s more to life than an internship at the LA Times.

SBR: There’s also an institutional mission to the course; we’re trying to give greater attention to the ethnic media among those students who are studying to be journalists, but we also want the ethnic media to figure into how the larger social sciences go about studying race and ethnicity issues because the ethnic media is not evident in the vast majority of discussions.

KD: What indications inspired the need for this course?
SBR: We’ve had this large project—the Metamorphosis Project (link) going on for a long time. It’s very hard to understand the transformations that are going on with increased population diversity and attempt to build a new civil society based on diversity without bringing into discussion the ethnic media that are primary sources of information and communication for so many of the ethnic and immigrant populations. The course is a way to infuse this into the curriculum. We can write research and policy papers, but let’s start getting it in the curriculum—and not just in journalism, but in the larger discourse of social issues.

KD: Are you working on any special projects or collaborations?
SBR: We’ve had ongoing discussions with NCM (now New American Media). With their presence now in the Annenberg School, it seems like an opportune time for building collaboration, so we’re working on ways to do that.

KD: The course has been offered for two semesters, but each time, you fall shy of the required amount to actually teach the course. What’s the plan to get students interested enough to enroll in the spring?
SBR: It’s hard. We’re going to have to do it more interpersonally; I think we overestimated the power of flyers. We need to talk to some of the advisors in journalism, sociology and American Studies because it’s a natural place where students might select this as an elective course. We’re trying to offer this to a broader audience so we’re still trying to get over some requirements hurdles. Also, Vikki and Matthew, who did the bulk of the work on the syllabus, being graduate students, put too much work into the class, so we might want to back off in terms of some of the course description; it might seem a little intense.

Sandra Ball-Rokeach is also the director of the Metamorphosis Project.

Ethnic Media 101

Zita Arocha is a co-creator of the Ruben Salizar Spanish Language Media program at the University of Texas-El Paso. Spanish language media is offered as a major in the communications department and prepares young people to work in bilingual Spanish media . Read on to learn about this exciting, cutting edge program in journalism education.

KD: What are the issues you cover in the coures? I imagine it's not just about reporting in Spanish, but also covering different cultures within the Latino communities.
ZA: Because we're on the [U.S./Mexico] border and our student body is over 7o percent Latino, we also get students from our sister school in Juarez, Mexico who come as in-state students, so many of our students are bilingual to some extent. Cultural dynamics have not been an issue yet. If we started getting more students who were not from a Latino background, we would add something to that effect, but the focus right now is on the practical aspect of writing in English and Spanish as a journalist, media ethics, communications law and specialized courses like translation for media Spanish media, which will be taught by someone from the linguistics department.

KD: What conditions or changes indicated it was time to create not just a course, but an entire major that focused on Spanish language media?
ZA: It was a combination of two things: With the explosive growth of Spanish media throughout the country in print, broadcast, radio, television, we saw that our students were going to have many more job opportunities if we trained them in Spanish/English media. The second aspect was our unique location right on the border and the composition of our own student body being more over 70 percent Latino.

KD: Does the coursework include a practical aspect?
ZA: We require that the students do a one-semester internship at a Spanish language media in the U.S. Our first group of interns will be ready this summer, so many people are waiting; they're excited to have the interns come in and work. Also, UTEP has a bilingual magazine. It's not required, but students will be writing for it, and it's a place where they will be able to get published. All of our classes are focused on publishing.

KD: Traditionally speaking, it's virtually unheard of for journalism professors to encourage students to work for ethnic media--they're usually encouraged to go after the big internships so they get noticed--and a job. Have you found that this program has changed that notion for your students?
ZA: Yes. Especially the ones whose first language is Spanish--and the majority of our student population is Spanish dominant--because major media companies like Knight-Ridder and the Tribune Company have begun Spanish-languge publications. So students are thinking about it in terms of major media companies they would be working for; it's not like they would be going to work for the local 5,000 circulation weekly Spanish newspaper in their neighborhood. We're talking about getting into these large U.S. media companies that have moved into this area of Spanish media.

KD: How many students are enrolled in the program?
ZA: The first class was 10 and now we've got 20 going through the program. It's beginning to build credibility.

KD: This program sounds very innovative. In the same way that students go out of their way to attend Columbia or Missouri journalism schools, it seems that this is a program that could generate a nice out-of-state enrollment for UTEP.
ZA: Because we've just been getting it off the ground, we haven't done any recruiting for the program, but this is definitely a program that would not just attract students from the U.S., but from across the rest of the Spanish-speaking world.