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Diversity is vital to the successful of any publication—it is the foundation of what makes a staff welcoming and people feel supported. As a student at a school that is one of the most diverse in the nation, I place upon myself the responsibility to tell the stories of the very diverse student body accurately. Minorities are not commodities, they are real people. I approach tjTODAY's commitment to diversity in two ways: product and process.
PRODUCT
A world without queens: gender representation in chess
Because Jefferson is a magnet school, our school day begins late and ends later, at 4:00 p.m. Rather than the typical after school clubs most high schools offer, Jefferson has 8th period—a built in block for students to explore clubs and get help from teachers. As a long-time chess fan, my excitement revitalized by the boom in chess streamers during COVID-19, I decided to go to one block. When the captain started pairing up matches, he instantly walked up to me when my name was called. He knew my name not because we were friends, but rather because I was the only girl out of 50 students (and I wasn't a regular member). That day, I pulled out a camera and took the featured image to the right, of boys playing against one another, not a single girl present in the frame.
To ensure accurate and balanced reporting, I interviewed the one female captain, as well as her male co-captain on their thoughts. As I mentioned previously in this portfolio, I begin every feature with a question. In this case, it was, "Why are such few girls willing to join the chess club?" I conducted ample research, finding and quoting a project by female grandmaster Jennifer Shahade who put together an art piece of a chess board, each square filled with an insult she received during gameplay. I also pulled statistics from FIDE, the International Chess Federation, and a study done in Oxford that explains why the community of the chess world is intimidating to girls, not the game itself. From there I was able to connect the global lack of gender diversity in chess to the Jefferson stage and ways the Jefferson chess team was aiming to remedy it.
This article remains one of my favorite features I've written for one sole reason—three years later, as a senior, I went back to visit chess club, interested in playing a game and catching up with the sponsor. Except that time, I saw six girls gathered together at a table in the corner, four of which were tjTODAY staff writers. They later told me they had been playing chess together online for weeks, and gathered the courage to attend an in-person club meeting after finding my article, from two years ago, while researching for their own TJ Media assignments. This article resulted in concrete, tangible changes to the makeup of chess club, and is something I am most proud of to this date.
Ramadan at Jefferson
I wrote this cover story with my good friend Anya Raval, who was print EIC at the time. This article marked one of the first times I wrote about a topic I knew very little about. As someone who is not Muslim and does not celebrate Eid, I felt out of my depth in multiple ways leading up to this story. The process of working through interviews and drafting the "One day at a time," "Lessons learned from others" and "Ramadan and sports" sections of this article gave me the push I needed to feel more comfortable writing about topics I personally did not know much about. Diversity in my own coverage is now one of my top priorities following the publication of this magazine, solely because of how much working on this story broadened the horizons of my life. Now, I no longer balk at writing about religion or culture I am not familiar with—rather, I welcome the learning experience with open arms.
Students across Virginia protest transgender model policies
Covering this protest was the first time I interviewed people as an event took place, and also the first time I worked alongisde TJTV News to publish an article alongside a video feature. The conversations I had with the students who were choosing to walkout against model policies put forth by the Virginia Department of Education (DOE) showed me that there are multiple ways to represent the diversity of a school within a publication. Every feature story is undoubtedly important, but it is also a clear necessity to show what the student body is currently fighting for and talking about. In this case, it was the rights of transgender students and how a large group of students did not believe the model policies upheld those rights.
We came for the sports
Diversity in journalism is not just identity-based, but also school-specific. Because I attend a STEM magnet school, I've noticed a distinct lack of equal sports coverage throughout the recent years, especially sports articles with unique angles—the handful we do have all follow the same monotonous structure, reflecting on a game or looking at whether the team has grown or not. We have a common phrase at Jefferson, "We came for the sports," intended to poke fun at STEM-based nature of students at Jefferson and the common assumption that all sports teams are bad. This article pushes back against that assumption and highlights teams that have not only improved but are back stronger than ever before. Go Colonials.
Diversity in history
I wrote this story in freshman year, and it remains to this day one of the features I am most proud of. It was my first time writing what I now consider an "in-depth," looking deep beyond the surface, trying to pull back the covers and understand the inner workings of the system. I interviewed multiple sources, researched for days and ultimately published what, at the time, was the longest article I'd ever written. I still remember being shocked at a "lengthy" interview I got from a history teacher, at ten minutes. Now, my shortest interviews surpass that.
This article marked the beginnings of my love of reporting and interviewing, of getting people to open up and tell me their stories. If I were to write this article today, I would take it ten steps further: create an interactive timeline that shows how diversity in history has been treated by Virginia and United States legislature, reach out to more students to attempt to understand how a lack of diversity in education impacts the daily lives of teenagers and, most importantly, invest time into taking more candid photos that truly capture the experience of learning history as a Jefferson student. This story remains, to this day, as one of my favorites.
PROCESS
1. Staff Diversity
Publications tend towards having majority-female publications. In other classes, as well as journalism, I've noticed that the divide tends to come from boys and girls self-separating into groups when hanging out or working in sessions. For the past two years, I have made a point of ushering all tjTODAY staffers to sit together, not separated based on gender.
The photo to the right is the group of students we took to the NSPA convention in Pennsylvania.
2. Mission Statement
The mission of statement for tjTODAY goes as follows:
"TJ Media is the official media outlet of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. tjTODAY refers to both the print edition, which is published monthly by the journalism staff, and the online news website tjTODAY.org. Techniques is the student yearbook. TJTV is the school’s broadcast program. All serve as vehicles for student expression and are open forums of issues of interest and concern to the school community."
At the start of every school year, the editors will sit down with the staff writers and brainstorm goals for the year and how we will accomplish them. One of our goals last year was diversifying coverage and writing about topics that typically were not covered in the past.
I take a special interest in the end of the mission statement, particularly "issues of interest and concern to the school community." The most effective way I've found to translate that goal into the published articles on the website is through brainstorming.
3. Online Spreadsheet
On the online spreadsheet, I will highlight areas where we need to improve in orange, drawing attention to it. For example, at the end of last year, I noticed the website had very few opinions being published for a few weeks in a row. Within the brainstorming section of the spreadsheet, I highlighted the opinion section in orange to draw attention to it. That was effective in getting staffers to think more about opinions to write, and we remedied that issue.
In order to qualify for leadership positions, a staff writer must write at least eight articles. We kept track of these articles per staffer on another page of the spreadsheet. When I noticed we were lacking equal coverage on a certain topic, I would announce it to the staffers in a Messenger notification. The first person to write that topic would get their box highlighted in yellow.
For example, Karen Lee, the top row in the table above, received a yellow box for her article on Regeneron STS semifinalists. This was during January, when students were returning from winter break and we were struggling to find news articles. Karen was the first person to finish and publish a news article coming back from winter break, and as such, has it filled in yellow.
4. Lead-Editorial Conversations
For each print cycle of tjTODAY, we write one editorial that represents the opinion of the entire staff on a topic of importance at that specific time. In these conversations, it is more important than ever before that every staff member feels welcome and valuable, their voices meant to be heard. To keep the environment active and lively, I move the desks out of the way and everyone gathers around in a circle. At the beginning of class, everyone has a few minutes to read through a document Hannah, my co-editor-in-chief, and I put together on the topic of conversation. Once that time is up, laptops go away and conversation begins (only Hannah and I have our laptops out to read the questions). I will pay attention to students who are not talking and ask questions directly to them. These steps ensure that the Lead-Ed represents the opinion of all staff members, not just the editors.
This photo was taken while everyone was given 15 minutes to read through the document (below) on their own.
This was the document Hannah and I put together to prepare the staff for the Lead Editorial discussion. We wanted to write about the cell phone ban across Virginia taking place and listed some relevant sources of information that would aid the discussion. Giving everyone time to prepare for the discussion ensures everyone has the time to form their own personal opinions, and thus the conversation will yield diverse viewpoints that we may not have considered without the large group conversation. For example, a big topic of contention in this discussion was safety from gun violence should phones not be accessible. Because I attend a magnet school, students come from all over the county and beyond, and there was a clear divide between which students were concerned about safety and which ones were not. Those differing viewpoints come from having diverse backgrounds and feeling comfortable and confident enough to speak up in a large group discussion.
5. Interviewees
I make a point to have students of different grade levels per article. If a certain article only discusses upperclassmen, I will ask the writer to interview a freshman. If the back page WIL (What I've Learned) typically features a certain grade, I will go out of my way to select another. This happened last year, when we noticed on our fifth issue of the year that all previous back covers featured a junior or senior. That day, we randomly selected a student from the freshman class to be on the back cover.
I also encourage the same of social media. When I noticed that the first two "Faces of TJ" posts both featured senior girls, I asked the social media manager to pick an underclassman boy for the next one.
(Left) I messaged the social media manager to ask her who she was planning on covering for the third "Faces of TJ." When she said the plan was the feature another senior girl named June, I requested to do a guy who was either a freshman or a sophomore.
The two square photos are the first and second "Faces of TJ" posts on Instagram from this year, both of whom were senior girls.
After that conversation, this was the third "Faces of TJ" post, which featured Shaurya Bisht, a sophomore boy. The comments on the right side of the post emphasize the importance of having diverse subjects in coverage, as they bring with them a new part of the Jefferson audience.
An effective publication represents the body of its audience, in both product and staff. While tjTODAY and the greater TJ Media is not perfect, we are consistently working towards having a publication that represents the Jefferson population accurately and effectively.
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