Commitment to Diversity
Newton South is a unique environment. On one hand, we are an incredibly racially and gender diverse community, yet, we are an extreme echo chamber.
Diversity is purely about understanding the other perspective
I pride myself in my identity as a Chinese-Armenian woman, and also the fact that I am from the Midwest. Having grown up primarily in Kansas, Michigan, and Massachusetts, I have witnessed the prejudice of each region, and it goes beyond racial, gender, or sexual diversity.
The difference that I notice is a general rejection of the opposition. On both sides. Trying to understand perspectives that don't align with you own is difficult.
But as journalists, it is essential that we hold ourselves to the standard of seeking both opinions.
Below is an essay that I wrote for fun this fall about the Fairness Doctrine. It demonstrates the fact that diversity in journalism needs to be a conscious and constant effort.
The reason why writers always seek the minority perspective is because they bring, as per the definition of minority, the lesser-known ideas. But that philosophy extends to every type of minority that could exist.
I am incredibly fortunate to be living in a community that celebrates racial and gender diversity; however, our issue lies in our diversity of opinion. That has been our focus on the paper, and it is my one fixed goal that I will not wave during my writing.
To me, my commitment of diversity is demonstrated through my use of multifaceted perspectives. I actually will not even allow an article to go through without it.
Racial/gender diversity gone wrong
Oh how the tables have turned
Ironically, almost all of the "leaders" at Newton South fit a type. There is not much of a range among academic club enthusiasts/leaders and athletic enthusiasts/leaders, race-wise. I mean, look at the Roar staff. Our Volume 40 senior staff was entirely Asian and entirely female. That might be rare in other places, but that is the norm at Newton South. The joke among our staff is that the 9 boys out of 27 members on our staff were "diversity hires", but the sad thing is, to an extent, that was true. When we were building our staff, we purposefully hired certain members because we just didn't have any representation of males. Particularly, white-males.
It's a little bit strange.
Obviously, we don't have a quota, but if we were deciding between two people, and one of them was more represented within the group than the other, we would almost always pick the latter. Even if it goes against whats usually considered a "diversity hire."
And our same logic applies to our article topics as well. The same stereotype of the driven teens-of-color forced us to to find other stories, even if that sometimes meant missing something cool that they've done. We couldn't keep covering the same stuff. We even had a blacklist of people who we weren't allowed to talk to because they "control" too much within the academic community in our school and we always talked to them. The annoying thing was, they were almost all persons-of-color.
Essentially, the only place where that wasn't a problem was in the sports section, because everyone of every race and gender plays sports at our school. But in news, it was really bad.
I mean look at our city councilors.
Newton local politics was the complete opposite. Much of the time, when I worked on the local politics beat, I was pretty much just only talking to old, white, people. Which is fine, obviously, it's just that when the entire political sphere is dominated by one race, whether that be white or a version of an American minority, it gets quite difficult to find that form of diversity.
Buts not impossible, at all.
Come with me through some articles
*note: my edits are in the green and gray
This news article that was published on Feb. 16, was about the recent strike that occurred in Newton Public Schools. This is only an excerpt of the article, but it was very clear that writer did not get diverse opinions on the strike, as the only quotes in here were pertaining to the support of the Newton Teachers Association and the positive impact that the strike will have.
And although that is a valid perspective to take, as a news article, there is no room for opinions and editorialization. I was adamant with this article (especially being an article on a sensitive topic) that the writers seek out more diverse opinions that counter the beliefs of those supportive.
is an article that I oversaw earlier this volume. As the subhead, "In response to community complaints, NPS grapples with preserving traditional educational approaches while promoting DEI." suggests, in accordance with the very liberal and blue city that we live in, there is a clear cut answer that the community is expecting with this perspective. And at first, the writers who presented this article to me gave me that clear cut answer; however, it felt incomplete.
The article, it its lede, addressed a protest that occurred against the recent implementations of DEI initiatives in the schools, but at the time, there weren't any quotes or supportive evidence to back up that perspective. The entire article, while meant to be an in-depth report on this large event in our community, was a call-to-action that aligned with the echo chamber of our community.
And so I pushed incredibly hard for them to get Richie Diranian's perspective, or simply any perspective that would cut the common idea. By the end of the editing process, I was so happy to see the work that the writers put forth, and that they were opening up the story to a unorthodox (to Newton) perspective.
Centerfold: METCO
Most recently, the centerfold team, which I oversee, wrote an article about the METCO program at our school, which allows students from Boston to bus in and attend Newton Public Schools.
I was incredibly happy with the way they wrote this article, and I believe it to be one of my favorites. They interviews they did were diverse, and one of their topics were even about how METCO is traditionally considered a black-exclusive community, but is actually non-exclusive. They conducted numerous interviews and told the story of METCO kids in a way that celebrated their uniqueness, whilst also telling that unique story.
I'm really proud of them for that achievement.
Israel-Palestine
Yeah, I'm gonna talk about it again, but only briefly. The whole point of the Israel-Palestine article was so that we could bring light to the minority perspective, which were Palestinian Muslims. Although, typically, Israeli Jews are considered a minority, their voices and presence was felt by everyone in school. Many had very little issue with speaking their mind.
With the Israel-Palestine article, we purely had diversity at heart. We made sure that we spoke to the same amount of people from each "side", and when we included quotes, if it was flagged for an uncertain degree of severity, we had to make sure that there was an equally severe quote on the other side.
You get my point.
Inclusivity in articles
We really refrained from limiting ourselves to "Christmas" at all costs. During the holiday season, we do a lot of themed articles, especially in the features section, and we actively do our best to use that opportunity as a way to either bring light to a cultural practice that hasn't received it recently, or lump everything together as "the holidays" and call it.
The Common Application, in my opinion, is actually the most diverse article and series we have. We were really deliberate in choosing who to follow. We knew that the series had potential for nightmare fuel, so we wanted to reflect the application process of as many people as possible. Each senior is a different race, from a different socio-economic background (which we know, because we're friends with them), and the are split 50/50 in terms of gender. Interestingly, 3/4 of them are gay, so I guess thats extra representation?! But honestly, picking out the people to write about was incredibly unsettling. Picking and choosing who I'm interested in purely based on the things they can't control, to me, feels like a weak move, but in this circumstance, I'm starting to come to terms with the fact that its for the greater good. Seniors love the Common App.
For the sex article, we wanted to include diversity of gender, race, and of thought. Its annonymous, but the writers were split 50/50 on gender, had pretty good racial balance, and were quite varying in thought. It was really nice helping to produce a work that more accurately represents humanity.
Women in sports
As I was overseeing sports last volume, I wanted to make sure that our section's lead article were about sports teams that don't recieve that much attention. After some research, I realized that many of the girls' teams were the ones who were lacking attention. Whether they were female or not, I was intersted in pursuing the articles about teams that are different. If they are girls, even better.
Alongwith that, there were a lot of male sports reporters this year, but there was an abnormal amount of interested in womens' professional sports. Many reporters and editors had pitched me ideas about them, so I assigned them to those articles, but I never knew they would mean so much to people. I guess I need to learn to have more faith.
