I work in New Orleans, a city known for its jumble of cultures. The city has long had a thriving Hispanic culture. But the Hispanic presence in the area is increasing, as Spanish-speaking workers who came here to help rebuild the city decide to remain.

The workers are important sources — and their stories are important, too. We’re fortunate. We just hired someone who is bilingual who can help us tell those stories.

But all across the country, more bilingual reporters are needed.

When I speak to college journalism programs and students, my standard speech is: Make sure your journalism education is a balance between the scholarly (why do journalists do what they do, and why is it important to democracies); the skills-based (how to write a good lede); the futuristic (here is the equipment and the philosophy media industries will be employing a decade from now); the business-practical (here’s how the finances of newspapers work); and the content-oriented (learn a second language, take a course in biology).

The last area, the content-oriented, is very important. I’d advised journalism students to drop their journalism major, become a foreign-language major and travel to another part of the world for six months or so before seeking a full-time job in the field. That experience, to me, will be more valuable to the student in the short run and to the industry in the long run.

By the way, someone else on the SPJ diversity committee will be taking over blogging responsibilities after today. It’s been a pleasure being your blogger for two weeks.

Take care,

Mike McQueen

The Center for Media and Public Affairs recently announced the results of its annual survey of how often minorities and women correspondents get on the network news.

The good news is that the level of minorities and women reporting stories for the network reached its highest level since 1990.

For example, 15 percent of all network stories were reported by correspondents of color. Twenty-eight percent of all network stories were reported by female correspondents.

Again, there’s still much work to do. But the trend is good.

To read the entire report, go to www.cmpa.com

It’s often easy to think that we have a long way to go to diversify newsrooms and news coverage in this country. Well, that’s probably because we really do have a long way to go.

But we’re often headed in the right direction.

That’s the thought that occurred to me after I recently finishing judging the public service category for newspapers for the 2006 Sigma Delta Chi awards. I had the large-newspaper category.

The thing that impressed me about many of the entries is that the papers handled diversity the correct way — where relevant, they photographed a broad range of sources, quoted a broad range and, overall, the stories clearly reflected the diversity in their circulation area.

Granted, a number of topics naturally involved minority subjects: mental illness, poverty, debt collection, recovery from natural disaster, diabetes. But other topics did not: stock-options, court records.

This probably reflects several factors: Large newspapers, with larger staffs, have more people of different ethnic, economic and social backgrounds to help brainstorm, report, edit and present stories. That helps. There is probably a great liklihood that journalists on those staffs have been through diversity training or had a solid grounding in it while in journalism school. And readers of big-city metros have been more willing to complain, in some cases publicly, about news coverage that doesn’t reflect our diverse society.

Anyway, there’s some good news on the diversity front. I’d rather not name the newspapers and the stories until the SDX winners are announced. At that time, I’ll give a shout-out in this space to some of the entries that reflect this diversity.

Want to keep up with what’s going on in the world of diversity in general and diversity in news coverage in particular? Best way is to get plugged in to LaBarbara Bowman, the hardest working journalist in diversity. She emails countless journalists regularly about training opportunities; she informs editors about U.S. Census Bureau data that could turn into good stories; she writes a column about diversity.

And she’s a pleasant person, and a World War II buff.

To contact LaBarbara, known to most as simply “Bobbi”: 703-453-1126. That’s for her office at the American Society of Newspaper Editors, where she’s the director of diversity. Or try her in cyberspac: bowmanb@asne.org.

I’m not Bobbi’s agent, but I am a good friend. (And she has a bunch of them.) I just think that you’ll be better informed about diversity if you follow Bobbi’s work.

NBC’s Today show broadcast a fine little story today about Tom Joyner, a disc jockey whose morning show on urban-oriented radio stations draws an audience of 8 million each day.

Weatherman Al Roker, in a promo for the piece, said: “We’re going to be talking soon with Tom Joyner, who has been called the black Rush Limbaugh because he gives voice to people who normally don’t have a voice in radio or mainstream media.

Roker seemed to immediately acknowledge the awkward comparison he had just made, so he added: “Rush Limbaugh in terms of audience, which is normally not heard from.”

Roker was acknowledging that Joyner, unlike Limbaugh, is not known for his conservative political views.

The comment about Tom Joyner, I think, holds an opportunity for us to discuss diversity in journalism.

First, it is clear what Roker was trying to do – to use the familiar (Rush Limbaugh) so that we can better understand the unfamiliar (Tom Joyner). Similar techniques were used about a year ago in the coverage of Bishop T.D. Jakes, who was described as a “black Billy Graham.”

Jakes has a superchurch in Texas, has been around for at least a decade and has millions in assets – a mansion, private aircraft. Will the next aspiring televangelist be described “as a white T.D. Jakes?” Or will the next disc jockey on the verge of making it big be described as a “white Tom Joyner?”

Neither is likely, of course. Nor would it be smart journalism. The truth is: Our audience simply wouldn’t recognize the name Tom Joyner and it would leave readers and listeners confused.

Which tells me the solution is to more stories about people like Tom Joyner, T.D. Jakes and a host of other business people/celebrities of color who have a huge following among their ethnic group. What do you think?

“The State of the News Media 2007″ report was released earlier today. The results were not surprising: The state of the industry, in all sectors, is pretty bad. We’ve lost audiences, journalists, public trust — you name it.

But the report contained two bits of good news that relate to the business of diversity in news media.

1. The ethnic media sector of our business continued to grow, helped along primarily by the continuing increase in Spanish-language media. As more and more Spanish speakers settle across the USA, smart businesspeople are proving print, online, and video for these media consumers.

2. The black press, which has been in decline since the 1970s, is still struggling but there is hope that new online news products will revive it. The report specifically cites the strength of BlackPlanet.Com, which has 15 million members, and blackamericaweb.com. This site is financed by popular DJ Tom Joyner and has 30,000 unique visitors each day.

I just want to say thanks for listening as I end my brief tenure writing for the SPJ Diversity Blog. The SPJ is a tremendous organization. This is a great idea. ALlowing members to help mold the public discussion on an important topic like diversity. I enjoyed it and tried to offer something outside of the norm, a perspective that might help other journalists realize that diversity is more than the Big Four — Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American.

Maybe some might recognize that when you exclude voices from the mainstream discourse, you are feeding extremism, nurturing it. Pushing people who otherwise would be moderates and peaceful into intellectual desperation that feeds the community futility that leads to acts of violence and terrorism and extremism. Extremism is a relative statement. It means doing something out of the ordinary. Sometimes extremism is good, when the norm is bad.

Still, a friend of mine in journalism told me matter of factly that the mainstream newsmedia will never change until it wants to change. I don’t think that the media, as a journalism profession, really wants to change. The mainstream media is comfortable with the status quo. They address diversity in a comfortable way, speaking to the four groups the squeak the wheel the loudest. Hey, it helps you feel good.

It’s like the guy who gives a homeless person some money. It doesn’t really help the problem of homelessness, but it makes you feel as if you are doing something. Meanwhile, the real problems of homelessness never get addressed.

And neither do the real challenges of diversity. We try. Mnay are sincere. But the system isn’t ready for real diversity. It means real change. But the benefits would be enormous. Imagine.

Visit my MySPace page at www.MySpace.com/rayhanania to read my ongoing blog there ont he challenges of getting people to overcome their fears of an “Arab comedian.” You think being an Arab journalist is tought.

Thanks to the SPJ and the Diversity Committee for allowing this and I wish the best to the next person slated to write here.

Ray Hanania

I’m finishing a great book that I received — either by coincidence or because the author’s publicist is on her toes — that addresses the issue of diversity. It’s called “New Directions in Diversity” and it is authored by Elon University Journalism Professor George Padgett. (Marion Street Press, www.MarionStreetPress.com.) Check it out. You might all learn something.

It’s an excellent book that seems to challenge the notions that we, as journalists, have about diversity. In particular, Padgett seems to take on the narrowness of how the term “diversity” is applied to the challenges we face in our society.

It’s only 214 pages long but clearly Padgett knows something that most other journalists do not. Diversity as we know it is not diversity at all. In fact, he carefully outlines the problems with how we, as a profession, fail to properly define and understand the very concept we are trying to achieve.

He courageoulsy includes in his book the notion that diversity also includes Arab Americans. And he writes, “The Arab American is probably the least understood.” In fact he dedicates an entire chapter, Chapter 10, to understanding Arab Americans. He refers to the broader concept as “diversity within diversity.”

If there is a criticism, it is very mild. Although he painstakingly explains, as have others, that not all Arabs and Muslims and not all Muslims are Arabs, the list of common words he lists in the chapter are mainly Muslim terms. Still, it’s more than anyone else has tried to do.

He also notes, and I give him much credit, for pointing out that after Sept. 11, 2001, many individiauls were persecuted, assualted and even killed by rampaging American patriots. I’ll point out that these post-Sept. 11 victims are not even classified as victims of Sept. 11. (You can read my column on the post-Sept. 11 hate victims that the media and American society ignores — BECAUSE the mainstream American media has a “tahini” vision of diversity (explained in a prior post) that only sees one level of a multi-leveled topic.

The column is at: http://www.hanania.com/hatevictims.html

“Diversity within diversity.” The media doesn’t report on the post-Sept. 11 killing spree (if 14 people were murdered as a result of one conscious movement of anger, we might attribute that to a serial killer and consider it a major story … but not if they are Arab American, or, more aptly, are murdered because the ignorant assailants can’t tell the difference between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, an Iranian or an Indian, and Afgahn or an Arab. This is the most Educated country in the world and yet it seems as if we continue to try to prove that we have the most uneducated people living in it when it comes to some important topics like the MIDDLE EAST.

So read the book. I urge you to.

Finally, just prior to traveling in January to Israel to perform Palestinian-Israeli comedy, to break a hateful Arab taboo that prevents Arabs and Palestinians from appearing with “Israelis,” I was interviewed along with my comedy partner Aaron Freeman (a living icon of diversity being an African American Jew) by John Callaway on his WTTW Channel 11 Friday Nights program. Callaway made a keen observations. (A Kean observation might involve an act of governmental corruption — can’t help it that I am a veteran former Chicago City Hall reporter) Callaway said that while much bonds Aaron and I in terms of using the power of humor to achieve peace, one thing separated us. Freeman has been more subtle in addressing racism and bigotry while I have placed the crusade on my chest in life.

It’s true. African Americans, I noted, have a support system built up through generations of suffering. They also have the acknowledgment of the mainstream media. They don’t have to fight racism as a crusade screaming into the face of the attacking eagle, claws outstretched. As an Arab American, on the otherhand, my community has nothing outside of our own victimized, ostracized, stereotyped and misunderstood community. Literally in Chicago where Arab Americans have settled since 1869 — read my book on “Arabs of Chicagoland” (www.hanania.com/book.htm), we have nothing that we can point to as evidence that we even existed or exist. Not a building. Not a major elected official. Not a real holiday. Not a parade. Not a festival. Not an acknowledgment from the public or the media. Not a major reporter — since my ousting from the Sun-Times in late 1990.

Well, enough about me. Don’t worry. I’m only here until March 11 and then you can go back to UNITY, or, as I like to refer to the organization, the collection of the BIG FOUR (Blacks, Asians, Hispanics and Native Americans), from which Arab American journalists continue to be marginalized. Imagine, if journalists of color don’t recognize you how invisible you must be to the world.

Which (sorry, I can’t help myself) brings me to this last thought. Excluding groups contributes directly to their extremism. When you deny anyone the ability to vent and participate as an equal in the free expression of the mainstream edia (and Arabs ARE denied), then you are forcing them to turn to hostile and violent means to express themselves. The silent majority of Arabs remain silent knowing that no matter what they do, no one is out there to help. And the small handful of extremists (dangerous morons) appear to be larger than life, and claim the silent majority as a part of their grass roots base.

As an Arab, I feel like a reverse vampire. I don’t prey on anyone. But, when I look in the mirror, I see nothing. No Arab image in the media, in society, on television, on the radio nor in government. I start thinking that no one else sees me, except as a vampire threat. That’s how Arab Americans live in this country. We accept that we have no reflection in life, or we turn towards extreme measures to break the mirror of exclusion.

Thanks for listening

Ray Hanania

www.hanania.com

The mainstream American media seems to define diversity based on race, ethnicity and religion. But diversity has no race, ethnicity or religion. Viewing diversity in that respect is not diversity at all.

And I’ve written about it today on my blog at the Arab Web Site www.Arabisto.com.

Rather than reposting, you can check it out there. But I tend to think the mainstream American media is not interested in taking on the real challenge of diversity because the narrowly defined diversity we do address is convenient and easy to handle.

Ray Hanania

www.hanania.com