A Diversity of Voices, Views Enriches the Learning Experience

Two contributors to Black College Wire, Chris Wallace, a student at North Carolina A& T State University in Greensboro, and Kendra Toussant, a student at Southern University in Baton Rouge, were selected for a prestigious journalism workshop at Columbia University�s Graduate School of Journalism May 26-30, 2003. Black College Wire asked each one to write about the experience.

By Chris Wallace
Black College Wire

The College Editors Leadership Workshop, sponsored by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, gave me a view of journalism at the top that I couldn�t have gotten otherwise.

Chris Wallace

However, I left the workshop feeling that a few pieces were missing from the program and all of them had to do with diversity. Having more speakers from diverse backgrounds would have helped students walk away feeling even more fulfilled by the experience in New York.

I was co-editor at North Carolina Agricultural &Technical State University�s student newspaper, The Register. It was a great honor to be selected for a program like Columbia�s, considering that I was going to be there with students from larger schools such as Princeton, Columbia and Colgate. I knew that it would be different from other workshops and seminars. And only two other black colleges, Spelman College and Southern University-Baton Rouge, had representatives there.

After getting preliminary matters out of the way, the workshop got down to serious business on Tuesday. The most effective presentation was by Addie Rimmer, a visiting assistant professor of journalism at Columbia University and one of only two African-American speakers. She talked about how to get people interested in writing and how to deal with difficult situations amongst the staff at a newspaper. She talked about setting up a board of directors, getting help with deadline performance, motivating staff and helping with difficult conversations between staff members.

I was struck by her approach to meetings. Rimmer said each meeting should have a focus and that everyone involved should know what it is beforehand. All meetings should start and end on time. Late arrivals should be announced to make them aware that they are late.

Her presentation was absolutely fantastic. Many of the other students also walked away impressed. They talked about her speech later that night, saying that she was honest and made points they would remember.

During the Wednesday session, Michael Hiestand, a staff attorney for the Student Press Law Center, entertained us while he taught us some laws of the press.

I was able to talk about my story about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks who obtained an undergraduate degree from my university. I described how I went about doing the story and the problems I faced while doing the story, including the reluctance by some on campus to highlight his connection to North Carolina A&T.

The topic of race and ethnicity also came up. That session became heated when we felt that one speaker gave conflicting answers in talking about diversity and left some of us confused.

I was interested to learn that a few of the white students had problems covering race in their newspapers. For example, one of the students talked about how it was difficult to cover a cultural dance event while another said reporters have to chase black students down to get them in the newspaper because they are reluctant to be quoted.

Those comments led me to speak up again. I said that culture and race are subjects you ought to sit and study. It is possible to cover an event without knowing any background ahead of time, but your story will be better if you study a little. I gave the example of someone trying to cover a basketball game without knowing the rules of the game.

Also during this session, I became increasingly aggravated when the phrase �people of color� was thrown around. Though it is considered a correct term to use when referring to blacks, Asians, Hispanics and Native Americans, I feel that the specific terms �black or African-American� are more appropriate to say whenever possible.

Other speakers, from newspapers, television and the Columbia Journalism Review, talked during a round-table discussion about how to build relationships.

Thursday began with a visit to Time magazine during their editorial meeting. The visit allowed us to see how professionals can disagree with one another when a man and a woman on the staff argued heatedly over whether a story should run or not.

Lunch was with Betsy Wade, the first woman hired as a copy editor at The New York Times and a plaintiff in the landmark gender discrimination suit against the newspaper. She was absolutely astounding in her presentation and I really enjoyed listening to her. She talked and talked with us about everything we wanted to know. We showered her with questions about what having a career as a copy editor is like and what difficult situations she�d faced. Ms. Wade then showered us with answers, filling us in on the difficult aspects of life as a copy editor, including the long and irregular hours.

A mock editorial meeting with eight newsroom professionals followed lunch. The speakers posed the question to us, now that the war in Iraq is nearly over, should the United States invade Iran?

We then were split into groups where the speakers reviewed our papers. My paper, The Register, received pretty good praise for its layout. But it was criticized for its lack of sufficient and quality photos. Everyone else seemed to have anywhere from 15 to 30 staff members at their newspapers. My staff of 7 was the smallest, by far.

The critique group lasted nearly an hour, and Colgate�s newspaper was ripped the hardest of any newspaper in my group for some of its layouts as well as for having some stories that were too long. I found that even though some of the newspapers had 20 or 30 pages, a well-planned 12-page newspaper could do the same job as that 30-page newspaper.

On Friday, we had the opportunity to visit The Wall Street Journal, a trip that everyone had been anticipating. We saw the she World Trade Center site, which is nearby, had a great lunch and talked about issues dealing with corporate scandals. Each of the reporters who talked to us went into detail about how they go about finding reliable sources.

Overall, I think the workshop would have been better if there had been more variety among the presenters. Of the 40 speakers I counted, only two were black. It was not a diversity conference, and I was well aware of that. However, I feel that the white students and even the black students can get a better view of American culture by hearing the perspectives of black people or Asian-Americans or Hispanics or Native-Americans.

The lack of diversity reminded me that there still is a lack of diversity in the field of journalism.

Another major disappointment was the cancellation of our visit to The New York Times. We�d had a little conversation about the Times� troubles because of former reporter Jayson Blair�s fabrications. I had expected the topic to come up more often than it did.

The Times backed out of its invitation to us and the reason given was �the aftermath of Jayson.� We were informed that they had some internal problems that were under investigation.

Coincidentally, the Times� two top editors resigned shortly after we returned from the workshop.

Chris Wallace is a senior journalism and mass communication major at North Carolina A&T State University.

Posted June 18, 2003