Society of Professional Journalists: Diversity Guidelines

Dick Morris has been promoting his new book, Fleeced. In that book, he lists these points. He says that nearly every journalist in the US belongs to this society.

Oops. Tha date should be October 6, 2007.

tha = that

I can’t spell either.

down with the evil white man...

General ping to various parties.

Well, it's nice to see there is a "Republican-American" on their diversity committee! LOL. (See tiny bio below for Tommy Valuckas.) I guess by default the others are, ahem, not Republican.

I am LittleHouse: Republican-American, Irish-American, British-American, and I am an Alcoholic-American too. I am a forty year survivor of taxation tyranny and I approve this post.

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Diversity Committee Members

Robert Anthony
Editor, Stadium Circle Features

Marco Dominguez
Station manager, WIIH-Univision
Bio (click to expand)

Marco Dominguez is the station manager/anchor for WIIH-Univision for Indiana. He has been with WIIH since its inception in February 2003. Dominguez brings over twenty years of experience in the fields of television and radio to WIIH. In addition, he is one of the anchors for Community Link, a community show aired on Saturdays on WISH-TV. In 1980, Dominguez came to Indiana to study at Vincennes University and later at Butler University, where he received his Bachelor's Degree in Radio & Television Production. Soon after, Dominguez returned to Venezuela where he began his own production house and served as an advisor/director for Flamingo TV in Bonaire.

Dominguez returned to Indianapolis in 1993 to obtain his master's degree in Telecommunication Arts at Butler University. In December 1993, he received an offer from Butler University to be the Director of Productions for WTBU, the university's television station. He has become a pioneer in the field of bilingual communication, working in radio at WAJC 104.5 FM and television at WTBU.

Dominguez was nominated by the U.S. Small Business Administration as “Indiana Small Business Journalist of the Year” in 2004. He also is an active member of the community. Dominguez is involved in organizations such as the Indianapolis Press Club Foundation, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Better Business Bureau, United Way Central Indiana Committee on Diversity, American Heart Association Board of Directors and many more. He is married to Morella Dominguez and has three children, Marcos Alfredo, Gabriel Jose, and Betania Morella.

Beth Haller
Associate Professor, Towson University
Web site
Bio (click to expand)

Beth Haller is associate professor of journalism at Towson University in Maryland. She has been researching media images of disability since 1991. Her media and disability research has subsequently been published in Disability Studies Quarterly, Disability & Society, Journalism Studies, Journal of Popular Film and Television, Research in Social Science and Disability, Journal of Comic Art, Journal of Magazine and New Media Research, Mass Comm Review, and Journalism History. She also has written a number of book chapters on the topic and has been a media research consultant for the NIDDR-funded Center for an Accessible Society in San Diego.

Haller has worked as a county government, health and environment, and general assignment reporter at the Amarillo (Texas) Globe-News, The Ruidoso (NM) News, and The Southern Illinoisan. She worked in the area of computer-assisted reporting at the San Jose (CA) Mercury-News in 1997 as an American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) Fellow.

She has worked at Towson University since 1996, where she teaches Newswriting, Feature Writing, Media Law, News Reporting, and Magazine Publishing. She is the co-author of An Introduction to News Reporting: A Beginning Journalist's Guide (Allyn & Bacon, 2005).

Ray Hanania
Freelance columnist
Bio (click to expand)

Ray Hanania is a veteran Chicago political reporter and Middle East columnist. He covered Chicago City Hall from "Daley to Daley" and currently writes a political column for the Southwest News-Herald in Chicago. Hanania is Palestinian American. He writes a syndicated column analyzing Middle East issues for newspapers around the world including Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth, Palestine's Sharq alAwsaat, Saudi Arabia's Arab News, and newspapers in the United States including Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, and regularly for the Chicago regional Arlington Heights Daily Herald, originally distributed by Creators Syndicate but that he self-syndicates today. He is two-time winner of the SPJ Chicago Headline Club's Peter Lisagor Award, a co-founder of the National Arab American Journalists Association, and the author of eight books including the humor book "I'm Glad I Look Like a Terrorist: Growing Up Arab in America." Hanania also performs Arab American standup comedy that lampoons his life and unusual marriage to his wife, Alison, who is Jewish.

Leo Laurence
Editor, San Diego News Service

Curtis Lawrence
Journalism Faculty, Columbia College Chicago
Bio (click to expand)

Curtis Lawrence joined the Columbia College Chicago faculty in 2004 after working for nearly 20 years as an urban affairs reporter. Since 1980 he has worked at six daily newspapers and at the Chicago Reporter, a monthly publication that focuses on issues of race and poverty. Most recently, Lawrence worked at the Chicago Sun-Times where he covered a number of urban issues, including extensive coverage of the Chicago Housing Authority’s plan to replace its high-rises with mixed-income housing.

Lawrence earned a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Mass Communications from Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill.

Lawrence has been active with diversity issues for the past two years. He is involved with recruitment and retention issues at Columbia with a special focus on diversity. He and Nancy Day, the Journalism Department chair, were instrumental in securing a grant from the McCormick Tribune Foundation to direct an outreach and journalism education program for Chicago Public Schools students and teachers.

Sally Lehrman
Science and medical writer
Montara, Calif.
Work: 650/728-8211
slehrman(at)bestwrit.com
Bio (click to expand)

Sally Lehrman is a director at large for the SPJ National Board of Directors. Additionally, she is an award-winning reporter and writer for some of the top names in national print and broadcast media. Her byline credits include Scientific American, Nature, Health, the Washington Post, Salon.com and the DNA Files, distributed by NPR. She specializes in medical and science policy reporting, with an emphasis on genetics, race and sexuality. Distinguished honors include the 1995-96 John S. Knight Fellowship; a shared 2002 Peabody award, Peabody/Robert Wood Johnson Award for excellence in health and medical programming, and Columbia/Du Pont Silver Baton (for the DNA Files); and reporting and writing awards from SPJ, Case, and other organizations.

Besides SPJ, Lehrman is active in several organizations that promote diversity in the media. Her volunteer work in diversity has been recognized by the 2003 Wells Key, a 2002 SPJ President’s Award, the 1998 Howard Dubin Outstanding Pro Member Award and an award for service to the NorCal SPJ chapter. She is author of News in a New America, a fresh take on developing an inclusive U.S. news media, and is a USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism Expert Fellow. Lehrman also serves as SPJ’s Diversity Committee chairperson.

Andrea Lewis
Co-Host, The Morning Show, KPFA-FM
Bio (click to expand) Andrea Lewis is a veteran journalist with over 20 years of experience as a writer, editor and broadcaster. She is currently co-host/producer of "The Morning Show," which airs on Pacifica Radio's flagship station KPFA in Berkeley. During her career, Lewis has worked in the editorial departments of HarperSanFrancisco (a division of HarperCollins Publishers), Pacific News Service and Mother Jones magazine, among others.

Lewis is a regular contributor to The Progressive magazine and The Progressive Media Project (where she is also a member of the advisory board). Her essays and articles have appeared in a number of publications including USA Today, The Miami Herald, The Baltimore Sun, Mother Jones magazine, and The Black Women’s Health Book. Andrea has also been a contributing writer for Snap.com, Gay.com., and other Internet sites.

Lewis’s media activism has included work with the National Radio Project, the Feminist Publishing Alliance, and Media Alliance, and she has received awards for her broadcast work from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, and the California Teachers Association. A veteran performing artist, Andrea is a 20-year member of the Grammy-winning San Francisco Symphony Chorus.

Ray Marcano
Deputy Managing Editor, Dayton Daily News
Bio (click to expand) Ray Marcano is Internet general manager at Cox Ohio Publishing. Marcano has held multiple editing positions with Cox Newspapersâ Dayton Daily News during the past 21 years, including a supervising role for multimedia as deputy managing editor. He has won several awards for his reporting work, and his editing positions include night city editor, sports editor, and metro editor. The New York native is a former national president of SPJ.

Mike McQueen
AP Bureau Chief, New Orleans
Bio (click to expand)

Mike McQueen has been a journalist for nearly 30 years for large news organizations. He now is assistant chief of bureau for the Associated Press’ operations in Louisiana and Mississippi. For Gannett, he was on the national reporting staff of USA Today and the regional reporting staff for Gannett News Service. For Knight-Ridder, he served as managing editor in Macon, Georgia, day city editor of The Miami Herald and a reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat. He has been on the journalism faculty at Florida International University and the University of Miami. He helped direct coverage for two Pulitzer Prize winning stories — Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Andrew in 1992. He is a graduate of Florida State and Florida Atlantic universities.

Tommy Valuckas
Waterbury Republican-American

Samaruddin Stewart
Senior Photography Editor, AOL News
Bio (click to expand)

Samaruddin "Sam" Stewart, Senior Photography Editor, is part of a team that edits and presents editorial photography on AOL News for millions of daily viewers. He earned both his B.A. in Journalism and his Masters of Mass Communication degrees from Arizona State University. Before embracing multimedia journalism, he worked for several newspapers in Arizona including the East Valley Tribune and the Arizona Republic.

Before joining AOL, Sam worked as a photography editor at Agence France-Presse in Washington D.C. In addition to editing photographs for AOL News, Sam occasionally photographs for AOL; coverage has included both the 2004 Republican and Democrat national conventions, the 2005 Bush Inauguration, immigration issues along the Arizona/Mexico border, Live 8 in Philadelphia, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Sam also has interests in aviation travel and photography. His aviation experience includes documenting a 56-day around the world trip in 2001 which turned into a photographic book and a 25-day air race in New Zealand in 2004. Sam is in the initial phase of planning another adventure around the world via the Poles, presently scheduled for late 2007.

Sam lives in New York City and is an active member of the National Press Photographers’ Association, the White House News Photographers’ Association, and Society of Professional Journalists. Sam also has presented at SPJ's annual convention, NPPA's Northern Short Course in Photojournalism and has been a guest lecturer for the Department of Defense Armed Forces Information Service. In July 2006, Sam was awarded the SPJ Diversity Leadership Grant for 2006-2007.

Venise Wagner
Associate Department Chair, San Francisco State University
Bio (click to expand)

— Cover the victims of harassment, murder and other hate crimes as thoroughly as you cover the victims of overt terrorist attacks.
Unless the victims happen to be white.

— Do not imply that kneeling on the floor praying, listening to Arabic music or reciting from the Quran are peculiar activities.
No matter how peculiar it looks.

— Regularly seek out a variety of perspectives for your opinion pieces.
All journalists write "opinion pieces."

Groupthink.

— Cover the victims of harassment, murder and other hate crimes as thoroughly as you cover the victims of overt terrorist attacks.

Okay ... so victims who feel harassed in the workplace should be covered as thoroughly as the victims who were blown up or incinerated by terrorists? Many readers would find that perspective surprising and newsworthy if they paid enough attention to notice.

— Seek out experts on military strategies, public safety, diplomacy, economics and other pertinent topics who run the spectrum of race, class, gender and geography.

It's not enough to seek out experts on military strategies, public safety, diplomacy, economics and other pertinent topics who are selected based on their expertise alone?

— When writing about terrorism, remember to include white supremacist, radical anti-abortionists and other groups with a history of such activity.

I'm shocked, shocked I say - that they left out environmental and animal rights terrorists, and other leftists such as Alinsky. I expected a fair and even-handed set of guidelines from the unbiased mainstream media.

Avoid using word combinations such as "Islamic terrorist" ... Alternate choices ... include ... "political Islamists."

It's nice that they found a pleasant, non-judgemental phrase to describe the people who engage in political activities comparable to harassment, with no difference beyond their use of explosives instead of harsh words.

— Ask men and women from within targeted communities to review your coverage and make suggestions.

I assume these new Society of Professional Journalists guidelines have received approval from Osama bin Laden, or his representative from within the "targeted community" of Al Quaeda.

You wouldn’t want to call, say, a Nazi an evil white man. That might be racial profiling.

Start calling the terrorists divinity scholars.

What, no token Asian?

That’s discrimination.

“Portray Muslims, Arabs and Middle Eastern and South Asian Americans in the richness of their diverse experiences;”....

What a load of crap!....I wonder how this group would do on a jet watching terrorists slit flight attendants throats!

They’re liberals. Many liberals hate Republicans more than they love the US.

Groupthink.

Exactly. I honestly don't know why they publish guidelines. It's ingrained.

Did you go to the Al baby skool of righting

This very same compassionate group of hypocrits have no problem comparing our troops to murderers of children and Bush as Hitler. Is this what these liberal skunks call THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE?

Well, we are in their way...

If this is Sigma Delta Chi (SDX), I used to belong to it when I worked in radio in the 70s. They weren’t like that. This is NOT what journalism should be about.

At one SDX lunch, I got to meet Gordie Howe.

Good work. Here's another one...

"When writing about terrorism, remember to include white supremacist..."

"Avoid using word combinations such as "Islamic terrorist" or "Muslim extremist" that are misleading because they link whole religions to criminal activity."

Except when including "white supremecist" in terrorist groups because, you know, all whiteys are racist.

I got to meet Gordie Howe

Howe about that! :)

We’ve known for years that they operated this way. But now they have the brazen gall to codify it and publicly publish it.

:-) He was very nice.

I looked at the site, and it is SDX. Phbbt.