SWECJMC #8

Well, I found out what happens when blogspot goes off for a few hours while you're trying to blog--you wait. So, with any luck, here's all the last post I did and saved to computer.

The Southwest Education Council for Journalism and Mass Communication symposium program ended Saturday 11/5/05 with a 12:30 p.m. panel presentation called "Selena's Death Revisited: How Are We Doing on Covering Hispanic Subculture a Decade Later?" Panelists included Randy Bangart of the Greeley Tribune, Michael Madigan of the Rocky Mountain News, Greg Nieto of WB2 in Denver, Edwin Ruis, editor or La Tribuna, Manny Trevino of U. of Northern Colorado and John C. Merrill or Northwestern State. How much better does the mainstream media pay attention to subcultures in our society now than they were doing 10 years ago?
Bangart mentioned some backlash with La Tribuna when people thought it was a mistake to publish a paper in Spanish--with the feeling that people in the U.S. should learn English. In La Tribuna they do not simply translate English language stories from the Greeley Tribune into Spanish--La Tribuna does its own stories.
Nieto mentioned in Yakima Washington covering Selena's death what he did in doing stories--10 years later he doesn't sense a lot of progress in covering Latino issues and stories. In TV news 'if it bleeds it leads' keeps station from carrying stories about issues of a community. News judgment made by news director, based on their target audience. He mentioned studies show what people want to know about. Crime stories often give descriptions that are useless -- 'suspect in Hispanic male with black hair, brown eyes.' They have about 12 reporters--about 8 are white, a few Hispanic and a few black--trying to reflect community diversity in reporters not the same as getting into their communities.
Trevino mentioned several Latino performers who don't get covered as one example of how things are. There are plenty of Hispanics who don't read Spanish so La Tribuna does them no good, while the Tribune in English may miss stories important to Tejano culture. Our society tends to cover a variety of cultures but when it comes to Hispanics it's often about illegals or crime. Trevino mentioned the acculturation shuffle--issues include language, religion, family. There are more Hispanics in America than Canadians in Canada, so the Hispanics are not going to go away. For many years, Hispanic cultural activities like qincineras were not done, but these days Latinos are more often doing things like this that are part of their culture and people involved in the activities include other cultures.
Madigan started by reflecting back on when Selena died and their news meeting about what would go into the newspaper, the editors decisions about what would go in, the discussion about Selena--they was not a Latino at the table--they ended up having a reference headline on page one, but it ended up not being a big story for them at that time. NAHJ parity project launched about three yers ago noted. Rocky Mountain News one of the first to embrace the project. The real issue is to better cover the community and culture need more staff from that culture--the project has helped them do a better job with that.

Ruis talked about their small staff but increasing success of La Tribuna. Won first national award and are proud of the work they are doing. He just came to U. S. one year ago. They are a tie between their community, showing people how to do things like how to gt a driver license, how to use the library—and offering them entertainment. They do the basics of a newspaper to be connected with their readers. That means change the language and the interests but still maintain the quality in trying to cover the community of Spanish-speaking Hispanics in Northern Colorado. They are influencing the Greeley Tribune—sharing information they also may use in English. Their paper covers the regular life of their readers that the mainstream media often misses.

Merrill said we don’t do a good job in the U.S. of covering other countries’ news—Latin America, but Canada too. Having people on the staff is only part of the issues. Only 10% of newspaper is news—so imagine how little foreign news there would be because of this. He then opened the sessions up to discussion and questions. People reading this blog—here’s a great session to offer comments on!

By the way, if you teach journalism and have any interest in teaching these kinds of issues to students, watch for The Best Storytelling on Race and Ethnicity from Arlene Morgan and Keith Woods from Columbia University Press.