By
Mallary Jean Tenore
Odette Keeley of
New America Media (NAM) said she looks to journalism as a way of amplifying voices that often go unheard in the mainstream media -- not only the voices of Latinos, Asians and African
Americans, but also those of South Asians, Native Americans and Cambodians. This is what she's worked to do at NAM, a nonprofit news and communications network of about 3,000 ethnic media outlets. As NAM's chief of staff and broadcast news anchor and producer, Keeley has spent the past two-and-a-half years helping to bring together the work of ethnic news organizations and provide coverage of news related to
Africans,
African Americans,
Asians,
South Asians,
Europeans,
Indigenous people,
Latinos,
Middle Easterners and
the intersections of these ethnic groups.
I interviewed Keeley to hear her thoughts on what it's like to work at New America Media and to find out how she incorporates diverse voices into the stories she produces.
How would you say New America Media (NAM)'s coverage of diversity differs from that of mainstream news organizations? Keeley: NAM's news exchange is intrinsically diverse, by the very nature of our network of ethnic and youth outlets across the country. We are able to access stories, commentaries, op-eds, video, interviews, images and other content not easily seen in mainstream news coverage. Our news exchange gives a chance for untold stories and voices to be seen and heard.
One concrete example is when we did
a round-up of Latino, Arab, Asian and Native American media coverage and insights of Sen. Barack Obama's race speech. While the debate over Jeremiah Wright's comments was focused on the traditional black-white dialogue, the round-up reveals that: a columnist from the Spanish-language paper,
El Nuevo Herald, called Obama the next Castro; one of the biggest Korean papers, the
Korea Times called the speech "a fearless challenge"; Chinese-language paper
Sing Tao Daily said interracial relations remain a concern of the Chinese American community; the country's biggest Spanish-language paper
La Opinion, based in Los Angeles, praised the speech as a symbol of unity; and the Jordanian newspaper,
Al-Ghad, featured a commentary expressing disappointment that Obama was very quick to deny being Muslim and that he added to "Islamophobia" in the United States.
Recently NewAmericaMedia.org's homepage featured a story about the children of recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Iowa,
most of whom are awaiting deportation, and a story about the
personal agony of a Spanish-language interpreter who finds himself having to help the government put hundreds of workers in jail.
How do you come up with ideas for your stories?Keeley: Stories I pursue and cover come from the news coverage of our ethnic media network, as well as pitches that comes to us from various sources. I also regularly monitor the Filipino-American media not only for our TV and radio features, but also to make sure that their headlines and stories are included on our Web site as part of our news exchange. Here are some of the sites I visit:
ABS-CBN News OnlineABS-CBN GlobalInquirer.net -- Philippene NewsAsian JournalManila Bulletin USAPhilippene NewsAsian Week NAM's newsmaker briefings, immigration summits, professional development seminars, social marketing campaigns and meetings with members of this sector also provide a rich supply of ideas and perspectives that are important to deliver to our audiences. NAM's multilingual national polls on such issues as immigration reform, views on the Iraq war, ethnic media usage, and the annual event we are most known for, NAM's National Ethnic Media Awards, unearth stories from minority communities that are just waiting to be told.
You do a lot of multimedia work, such as your recent video interview with Sen. Obama's half-sister, Maya. In what ways do podcasts and videos enable you to enhance your diversity coverage?Keeley: The current news audience hungers for the various visual and audio platforms available, such as online videos and podcasts. These forms of coverage enable audiences to access "news-as-they-go" or "news-as-they-need-it," to tell stories in a compelling way and to reach more viewers and listeners.
What communities do you think are underrepresented when it comes to the media's coverage of diversity? Keeley: Members of our news exchange include the less media-dominant, but no less viable and important, Native American, Russian, Persian, Assyrian, Hmong and Cambodian communities. We try as much as we can to regularly monitor and cull stories from the media sources we know of from these communities, but we know that they still remain largely underrepresented in the media arena.
What are news organizations doing well in terms of diversity coverage? What still needs work?Keeley: News organizations across the board have continued to develop and expand their coverage of America's growing ethnic communities and have highlighted many compelling issues that are important for America and the world to know about. Major news companies, some with the extensive resources that they have, have harnessed the power of multimedia in very creative ways that have reached millions of audiences. NAM's vision of stronger collaborations between mainstream and ethnic media to cover more stories and issues together and create richer content can be a big step to improve diversity in the media landscape.
Next week, Keeley will join about 40 other journalists for Poynter's "Diversity in the Digital Age" pre-UNITY workshop to talk about diversity-related content, craft, staffing and recruiting. Diversity at Work will feature live blog updates from the workshop, which is scheduled to take place Tuesday, July 22, and Wednesday, July 23. 
