Commitment to Diversity
Our publication's - and my own personal - commitment to diversity is an essential aspect of student reporting. As a student representative of the school's DEI committee and member of the A World of Difference (AWOD) club, embracing all forms of diversity is a concept that has always been extremely important to me. Our publication, as a platform for student voice, is incomplete without covering a full range of perspectives and experiences.
Part of ensuring a commitment to diversity means leading by example. In my own coverage, I aim to deliberately seek out a wide variety of perspectives, especially those often underrepresented. As a publication, we do the same, putting an emphasis on covering everything from sports and student government to the robotics team, culture clubs, and the theater program. With our limited staff and majority white and Asian population at our school, we also know that to cover diverse perspectives isn't always going to be easy - but this endeavor is what constitutes the integrity of our paper. Now, with the current backlash against DEI programs nationwide, it is more important than ever.
Editorial Policy Work
After attending several DEI related workshops, especially at this year's fall 2024 JEA convention, I, along with other editors, returned from Philly inspired to act on our commitment to representing all voices and social justice with our platform.
Step 1: The Mission Statement
The first step, we decided, was to revise our mission statement, which had been written long long ago. Since DEI is an area we, as an editorial staff, truly prioritized, we wanted to make sure it was reflected in our mission and set the tone for future staff as well. In our revised draft, we made it a goal to emphasize our commitment to representing underrepresented voices while also creating a safe space for writers. The light blue box contains values we wanted to emphasize, while the highlighted portions contain language that does so.
Step 2: Creating a DEI Statement
After attending a workshop geared at helping publications articulate their commitment to DEI, I completed this draft of our statement. With the second slide, I wanted to ensure that our goals were actionable and detailed, setting an example for upcoming years. For reference, I researched statements written by other publications, both high school and professional, along with the ones shared at the workshop. We then tweaked and solidified this statement as a staff before I created a page on our website to share this with our audience.
I wrote the below excerpt with the goal of encourage readers to share their stories and make it clear that we are always welcome to story tips, ideas, and improvements. Through forms like this, we are able to better understand what our community values and wishes to see represented.
Step 3: Creating a Policy of Action
I felt it was extremely important to create a policy of action when faced with instances of hate. By forming an editorial policy that requires our publication to take a stance when instances of hate occur, we are able to ensure that our words are not empty, but are actually accompanied by action when our community needs it most. For example, when I was a freshman, I remember an incident in which fans from our school's student section hurled racist and sexist insults at a player from another school. In this instance, the senior staff had written a news article and also released an opinion article taking on the stance that this behavior is not tolerable. This was extremely impactful in recognizing the hurt that these actions caused and acknowledging systemic issues, sparking much discussion. Recently, I had noticed the staff sometimes shyed away from more controversial topics like these and wanted to emphasize & re-instatet that that this type of coverage, at minimum, should be standard practice as it is our responsibility to cover our community - both in its high and lows.
Step 4: Staff Training/DEI Terminology
The below slideshow was created this year by junior managing editor Kate Kelly and details DEI related terminology that all staff and editors should be aware of. This very thorough guide is an important step towards ensuring that our staff is educated and respectful in our terminology, especially as DEI evolves over time.
Click the image to see the full presentation
Written Work
I attempt to incorporate a diversity of sources in all my work, whether that means gathering students from different grade levels or an even gender balance when possible, for example. One of our publication rules that I love is that we are not allowed to cover groups we are part of or simply interview our friends, as it helps maintain a diverse range of sources and story ideas. From as early as our freshman year, Elitsa and I had noticed and strongly wanted to change that a lot of our coverage seemed to center around sports and not as much on students & groups that receive less attention. Now, four years later, I think our publication has grown immensely when it comes to covering a diverse range of topics and students.
The articles I've written outlined below deal not only with diverse sources, but with topics that are either not always covered or that deal with different aspects of identity. Among these articles, I could not pick a favorite, as I truly enjoyed writing every single one. From inspiring me to attend the town's Juneteenth event and learning about the town's often untold history of slavery, to bonding with South Asian students when writing about SASA, each experience has given me so much more than just a story. I'm also particularly happy to have covered the Unified Basketball photo gallery as it is a team that is not often covered when it comes to photos, despite most of our photo galleries being sports related.
Click on each image to check out the full story.
Student Spotlight Series
We created the student spotlight series last year as an assignment for first-year reporters for a variety of reasons. Some of them included increasing our video coverage and helping the first-year reporters with their interviewing skills. However, another huge aspect of this was about spotlighting students at random (we literally used an online "random wheel spinner" and assigned reporters to students picked at random). Although we had discussed spotlighting club leaders or specific groups at a time, I am ultimately glad we realized a true student spotlight would entail seeking out everyone. In doing this, we were able to reach out to and share the stories of so many interesting students we would have otherwise never thought to cover.
