Week 4: DC in AZ

Diversity Committee in Arizona Republic

Background:

The Diversity Committee at the Arizona Republic meets once a month to talks about diversity-related content and issues within the newsroom (such as articles that they think were offensive or misrepresent a diverse community), and to plan Diversity Dialogues. The Dialogues are live events the Arizona Republic hosts inside the newsroom where they invited panelist from one community (such as African Americans or Muslims) to come talk about the how the media covers their community. They tell the Republic about the issues they wish news wrote about. 

Meeting:

This past week I had the great opportunity of sitting in on a diversity meeting. It surprisingly has been one of my favorite experiences with the Republic because I finally saw disagreements between journalists discussing the more unique articles. Tons of planning and ideas were being thrown from one end of the room to the other, allowing journalists to voice their individual opinions. 

Here's a particular opinion piece that the majority of the members of the diversity committee found offensive:

 http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/robertrobb/2016/03/03/robb-asians-want-voting-bloc-sad/81274034/

Another big article that the committee spent most of their time discussing was an issue with a transgender individual who had been misgendered:  Ben Laughlin was initially named as a woman 

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/03/22/arrested-trump-protester-racially-profiled/82094336/

Important for Engagement:

The audience the newspaper engages are traditionally White and Baby Boomer or Gen X, and newsrooms across the country to do not have staffs as proportionally diverse as the communities they’re in. Therefore, to appeal to every type of community the Arizona Republic goes out of their way to get together every month to make a conscious effort to engage a diverse audience.

Stats show:

• Only 33 percent of Hispanics said the media accurately portrayed their communities

• Only 25 percent of African-Americans said the media accurately portrayed their communities

The Diversity Committee at the Arizona Republic/azcentral.com seeks to represent and amplify diverse voices in Arizona by allowing the newspaper to serve its unique communities and inform people of a wide range of issues.  

This month’s Dialogue is on the transgender community.