Race and Ethnicity in Journalism

REFLECTION PAPER #3

Race and Ethnicity in Journalism

This week’s reflection paper will give you a chance to learn a little more about two stellar faculty members in the department of Journalism and Media Studies. Both discuss the role of race and ethnicity in journalism. Both are, themselves, accomplished journalists. And both are teaching courses next semester that may interest you: Dr. Kumanyika is teaching a course on Podcasting and Audio Documentary; Professor Gonzalez is teaching a course on Investigative Journalism as well as a course called The Development of Mass Media.

In this reflection paper, I invite you to engage with the arguments my colleagues are making about race and ethnicity in journalism.

Prompt 1: Chenjerai Kumanyika

In 2015, while still at Clemson University (now proudly at Rutgers University), Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika wrote an essay for Transom, which was picked up by National Public Radio (NPR), in which he talked about how all the voices on NPR sounded so White. He reflects on the ways this phenomenon shapes how journalists see themselves and also how it also affects the audience. As he says, “Different hosts with different voices tell different kinds of stories. And vocal styles communicate important dimensions of human experience. What are we missing out on by not hearing the full range of those voices?” After listening to his essay and watching his interview at UMass-Amherst, reflect on the following:

What is the essence of Dr. Kumanyika’s argument?

What does this argument mean to you, as an audience member and/or as a future journalist (if that’s your path)?

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/01/29/382437460/challenging-the-whiteness-of-public-radio (Links to an external site.)

https://amherstmedia.org/content/chenjerai-kumanyika-interview-amherst-media-0 (Links to an external site.) (scroll down to find the video)

Chenjerai Kumanyika is a researcher, journalist, an artist who works as an assistant professor in Rutgers University’s Department of Journalism and Media Studies. His research and teaching focus on the intersections of social justice and emerging media in the cultural and creative industries. Currently, Kumanyika is the Co-Executive Producer and Co-Host of Gimlet Media’s new podcast on the Civil War. He has also been a contributor to Transom, NPR Codeswitch, All Things Considered, Invisibilia, VICE, and he is a news analyst for Rising Up Radio with Sonali Kolhatkar.

Prompt 2: Juan Gonzalez

In our conversation (see link below), Professor Juan Gonzalez talks about the long history of people of color being systematically excluded from so-called mainstream press, even though issues that were central to their lives were being covered. He describes how he was able to get into reporting at the Philadelphia Daily News, and why journalism is so central to democracy.

In the course he is teaching next semester, “The Development of Mass Media”, Professor Gonzalez describes how he will cover the historical and current roots of alternative presses – in large part because no one would let Black, Latinx, and other BIPOC into the newsroom, forcing them to come up with their own narratives. Based on what Professor Gonzalez described in our conversation, as well as the chapter’s coverage of “ethnic” newspapers, your paper should reflect on the following:

What is the importance of having diverse perspectives – whether gender, racial, ethnic, to name a few – that operating outside the mainstream press?

What is your opinion of whether and how mainstream news organizations should or could be representing the demographic contours of US society?

Link to conversation with apologies for my very amateur editing which cuts off the start and end!

Juan D. González is an award-winning broadcast journalist and investigative reporter. A two-time winner of the George Polk Award (Links to an external site.), he is co-host of Democracy Now! (Links to an external site.), author of “Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America,” and a founder of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. He spent 29 years as a columnist for the New York Daily News.