Diversity at Work

No doubt, organizers of the New America Media's National Ethnic Media Expo & Awards were heartened when more than 500 attendees, mostly ethnic-media journalists, showed up in Atlanta last week.

Encouraging numbers provided a high point for the two-day event when pollster Sergio Bendixen unveiled new data confirming that ethnic newspapers, television, radio and Web sites may be the fastest-growing media sector. The audience for ethnic media grew by 16 percent in the last four years, now totaling more than 57 million.

Yet, at the same time, attendees said, anecdotal evidence shows that many ethnic media are suffering as much as, if not more, than their mainstream counterparts.

Ethnic "newspapers and radio stations are disappearing," said Steve Franklin, ethnic media project director for the Chicago-based Community Media Workshop. "Two to three years ago, ethnic media hit the bottom. They are in crisis."

Many outlets have still not made the online transition, either because of a lack of resources and time, or because of digital and generational divides. Mohammad Jehangir Khan of the New York Community Media Alliance said, for instance, that Bangladeshi community newspaper publishers are reluctant to go on the Web because they fear they will lose advertising dollars.

Despite the difficulties the ethnic media are facing, there is still good work being done and reason to celebrate. During the awards portion of the expo, 17 national award winners took to the stage and told the back-stories of their winning entries.

Do Quy Toan of San Jose, Calif.-based Viet Tribune accepted an award for coverage of ethnic elders for his piece on predatory lending.

Farkhunda Ali of College Park, Md.-based Muslim Link, explained that her winning story on the 60th anniversary of Israel's declaration of independence from the Palestinian community's perspective began with an effort to educate her 5-year-old son about Al-Nakba, or "The Catastrophe," as it is known to Palestinians.

Alejandro Manrique said that the Charlotte, N.C.-based Qué Pasa made its first editorial endorsement ever for the 2008 presidential election because of North Carolina's status as a battleground state and the importance of the Latino vote for Obama. Manrique's editorial won an award, and Obama won North Carolina by about 60,000 votes -- by about the same number as the 67,000 Latino voters in the state.

Kai Ma, who won the best in-depth/investigative category for her story on gay marriage for KoreAm Journal, spoke about the importance of not thinking of the Korean American community as a monolith. Though 72 percent of Korean Americans voted in favor of California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8, Ma spoke to Korean ministers who opposed it (one who requested anonymity, for fear of community backlash), and gay Korean Americans whose marriages would be nullified by the law.

The morning after the awards ceremony, attendees looked at new projects, such as the work of Charles Ding, an award-winning reporter for the Chinese-language newspaper Sing Tao Daily.

When he set out to tell the stories of veterans in his community, he knew he faced an uphill battle, as the Chinese immigrant community doesn't have a tradition of U.S. military service because of its emphasis on higher education and negative associations with mandatory military service in the home countries.

Cultural taboos about sexual crimes and psychological illnesses such as traumatic stress disorder meant that stories like those of double-amputee Chang Wong's struggles with depression and disability, or that of a 23-year-old Chinese American female veteran who was sexually assaulted by a U.S. contractor in Iraq, were unlikely to ever be told by outsiders.

So New America Media teamed up with Arizona State University's journalism program and with ethnic and mainstream media in Asian, black, Latino and American Indian communities to tell these veterans' stories.

Ding's stories work because they help break down the barriers of "ethnic" and "mainstream" while hinting at new models of collaboration and aggregation that may be journalism's salvation in these gloomy times.

It's this kind of boundary-crossing that New America Media Founder and Director Sandy Close alluded to in her closing remarks at the expo. She heralded the 200th anniversary of the Latino press in the United States and reminded us that it had been 182 years since the publication of Freedom's Journal, the first black newspaper.

"And five years from now, let's celebrate no longer using the term 'ethnic media,'" Close said, explaining that the rapidly shifting demographics of the country and definitions of journalism will soon make ethnic the mainstream. "The lines are blurring."