How Three Youth Sections Worked Toward Greater Diversity
from the Fall 2001 newsletter

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Plan Calls For Adding Latino Students To Staff Mix
By Lisa Scheid, Voices reporter for the Reading (Pa.) Eagle/Times

Goal: To recruit and retain at least three Latino writers, artists and/or photographers who will participate at a high level (defined as attending monthly meetings and doing at least a story/assignment a month).

Make sure new staffers (including Latino teens) are comfortable at the meeting. Greet them, introduce them to interns, etc.

Phase I - Gaining understanding and building relationships

• Meet with the editors of our paper's Hola Berks section to identify people in community to connect us with Latino teens; renew contact with a local teacher at a vo-tech school.
  
  
• Develop a diversity-story idea list.
  
  
• Meet with five Latino gatekeepers who can help us to increase visibility of Latinos in the section with story ideas and recommendations for "In Your Face" profiles and "Hot Question" locations (regular features that run in Voices).
  
  
• Encourage discussion and awareness of diversity by holding a workshop with current staff. Adapt lesson/exercise from "The Full Palette Diversity Guide."
  
  
• Do one "Hot Question" a month in a place likely to have Latino kids. Bring a few copies of Voices to that location.
  
  
• Have one Latino "In Your Face" profile a month.
  
  
• Assign story ideas to Voices writers and adult Voices reporter.

Phase II - Recruitment (to coincide with our January new writers/artists/photographers meeting)

• Set up presentations at under-represented schools.
  
  
• Set up presentations at places/sources developed in Phase I.
  
  
• Make sure presentation materials show diversity. Include NAAF's "Newspaper Career Guide," reporter's notebooks and information from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
  
  
• Send ahead a flyer noting the day of the presentation and details on signing up.
  
  
• After the presentation, follow up with adults to remind them of our deadlines.
  
  
• Make sure new staffers (including Latino teens) are comfortable at the meeting. Greet them, introduce them to interns, etc.
  
  
• Continue to seek diversity in stories, "In Your Face" and "Hot Question."
  
  
• Evaluate plan thus far.

Phase III - Retention

• Follow up with teens' significant adults. Tell them of successes.
  
  
• Invite teens and their friends to be in photo shoots.
  
  
• Seek their advice on story ideas.
  
  
• Informally share information on Latino scholarships and journalists, and facilitate contact with newsroom opportunities (for particular promising students).
  
  
• Use testimonials from recruits for next year's recruitment promotion. Make sure materials for next year show diverse faces of Voices teens.
  
  
• Invite artists and photographers to put their bios on the Voices Web site.
  
  
• Evaluate and reconfigure plan to coincide with the September 2002 new staff meeting.

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Plan's Goal Focuses On Benefits To Staff As Well As Readers
By Jeff Garretson, Unleashed editor, Yakima (Wash.) Herald-Republic

Purpose: To increase and improve diversity in staff members and content in the Unleashed section to benefit readers and better reflect the makeup of the Yakima Valley.

Explore connections with our internal NIE program to establish contacts with area teachers in English, art and photography classes who could recommend minority students for inclusion in Unleashed.

Step 1: Explore connections with our internal NIE program to establish contacts with area teachers in English, art and photography classes who could recommend minority students for inclusion in Unleashed.

Step 2: Visit schools with more diverse student bodies in the Lower Yakima Valley area, targeting particularly Hispanic students who can be included in Unleashed.

Step 3: Create promotional ads with current members of Unleashed staff to reflect current staff diversity (or lack thereof) and encourage readers who bring a more diverse viewpoint to join the section. Also, a minority member will be asked to write a recruitment piece to run in the section addressing the value and importance of a wide variety of viewpoints in Unleashed.

Step 4: Increase access to Unleashed meetings by holding some meetings in the Yakima Herald-Republic's Lower Valley bureau.

Step 5: Conduct more in-depth internal Unleashed staff training to stress the importance of bringing diversity of viewpoints to all stories. "Cover Me Fairly - Getting Rid of Stereotypes and Biases" and "Total Coverage - Covering All Sectors of the Student Body" from "The Full Palette Diversity Guide" are good starting points for this lesson.

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Plan Targets Schools, Youth Centers
By Erin Orr, Buzzz editor, Modesto (Calif.) Bee

Part I (8-10 months):

Whatever isn't working, I'll either tweak or dump. What is working, I will boost up.

Make contact and develop relationships with at least three journalism/English or art teachers or guidance counselors. Throughout the course of these relationships, I will periodically visit their classrooms to talk with students about Buzzz (our weekly teen product), work with teachers or counselors to shepherd the most promising students toward our youth journalism program, and develop the mentoring portion of The Bee's program.

During this time, I also will periodically visit local youth centers that specifically target adolescents from lower-income families and neighborhoods. At least two of these centers have homework programs in which students work on their writing. Through these visits, I hope to discover some students who have promise and whose voice is presently unheard in our section.

I will continue my informal screening process of potential members of The Bee's youth journalism program. Those who show the most promise will be brought into the program and nurtured. Those who still need more work on their writing will be monitored for future progress.

Part II (6-8 months):

I will take a critical look at how the recruiting/mentoring relationships are working with the schools I've contacted. Whatever isn't working, I'll either tweak or dump. What is working, I will boost up. The same applies for the youth centers in our area.

Also, I will establish a working relationship with three more schools, with the emphasis on the strongest and most promising students.

This also is the time period during which I will work with our NIE coordinator to expand the distribution of The Bee - and specifically, Buzzz- into the high schools in our area. Presently, the paper goes only to elementary and middle schools, missing a target - and captive - audience altogether.

Part III (10-12 months):

I will develop and put on a writing conference for 50 to 75 teens, with a goal of attracting 50 percent minority participants. It will be an all-day conference. Participants will hear from professional journalists (reporters, photographers, editors) as well as journalism students. There will be mini-workshops, a panel discussion, "lunch with an expert," a mock press conference and more.

Advertising and recruitment for the conference will be done through house ads in The Bee, radio spots and flyers distributed at coffeehouses, youth centers and school campuses. The conference will be subsidized, so there will be minimum or no cost to teens.