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UNITY offers student projects a diversity lessonBy Anthony Stokes NABJ Convention Online Staff This year’s NABJ student development program is offering a lesson in diversity. Students from the Asian American, Native American and Hispanic journalist associations are participating in NABJ’s student projects. The exchange program, sponsored by UNITY, Journalists of Color, Inc., sends students from the four ethnic journalism organizations to each other’s conferences. UNITY is an association that includes NABJ, the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA), the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ), and the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA). Levi Long, a graduate of Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., is a member of NAJA. He said Fort Lewis doesn’t have a journalism program so he was only able to take a few journalism-related courses. By coming to the NABJ convention, he said he had a chance to strengthen his training. “My mentors told me that NABJ was real intense and real big, and because of that it would be a good opportunity to network and get better training,” said Long. “NABJ is bigger and has more clout. You all have a huge bank of resources.” Long, who works on the staff of the NABJ Monitor, the student-produced convention newspaper, said he’s had a good experience. “It’s awesome. Everyone’s been very accommodating,” he said. In the future, Long said he would like to come back and work with the student projects. “Like Michelle Johnson (project coordinator for nabjconvention.org, the NABJ convention Web site) … she lends her talents and knowledge to students,” says Long. “I want to come back and work with the students, too.” Jackie Fernandez, a student at Florida International University in Miami, gave up the NAHJ convention in New York to attend the NABJ event in Dallas. “My mentor Doug Mitchell (NABJ radio project coordinator) thought I’d be a good candidate,” said Fernandez. “It’s been a very fun experience and you do learn.” Fernandez is a part of the NABJ radio project and said she would like to participate in the UNITY exchange program again. “It’s important because you get to be with people you probably wouldn’t be with normally, and you get to network much more,” said Fernandez. Thanh Tan, a student member of AAJA, attends the University of Southern California and, like Long and Fernandez, said she was encouraged by her mentors to attend the NABJ conference. “I was in the AAJA student-development program in San Diego in 2001, and after being accepted into the program again this year my mentors asked me if I would participate in the UNITY exchange at NABJ,” she said. Tan, who is working with NABJ-TV, says she loves the experience. “We are all students, and we’re all learning,” she said. Tan was selected as one of the anchors for the first broadcast of NABJ-TV and she admits that she felt a little awkward accepting the position. “Since I’m Asian, I felt a little awkward anchoring NABJ-TV because of how people might accept it,” she says. But Tan says the other students were very open. And it’s that openness that’s the spirit of the UNITY program. As a UNITY representative, students get to learn more about another culture while sharing their own culture with others. In the end, according to UNITY, it’s about opening the doors for all journalists of color, and making sure that there’s unity not only at conventions, but also in newsrooms across the country. Anthony Stokes can be reached at anthony@anthonystokes.net |
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