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Latinizing the media mirror

New ASU dean plans big changes

Mia Martinez pictures her future self writing or editing a major magazine in a big city, telling compelling stories and changing readers’ lives with her words.

“I’ve always wanted to be a journalist,” says the 20-year-old, now in her junior year at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Communication
     
Yet today’s statistics depict a dismal picture of Latinos like Martinez in media.
     
The American Society of Newspaper Editors’ annual newsroom census shows the number of Latino journalists working at U.S. dailies went from 4.17 to 4.29 percent of all journalists, a paltry 0.12 percent increase.
     
Latinos in the nation’s TV and radio newsrooms fared worse. The percentage of Latino journalists working at local TV stations dropped slightly, from 8.9 percent in 2003 to 8.7 percent in 2004.

Working journalists and journalism educators say those numbers are extremely low considering the explosive growth of the Latino population in the United States. There are an estimated 41.3 million Latinos in the U.S in 2005, comprising 14  percent of the total population. In Arizona, the state Latino population is estimated at 24 percent.

The scarcity of Latino journalists covering the Latino community is a concern, says Anita Luera, the president of the Arizona Latino Media Association, or ALMA. ALMA provides training workshops to local media members and strives to get young Latinos interested in journalism careers.

However, ALMA soon may be getting help in its mission from an unexpected source: The ASU Cronkite School of Journalism.
     
Founding Dean Christopher Callahan, who started with the school in July, says he is creating a unique, multidisciplinary program to recruit more Latinos to journalism and improve coverage of Hispanics.
     
In addition, the new track will help Callahan infuse diversity into the department. Last year, ASU’s Cronkite school was threatened with a provisional re-accreditation from a journalism accrediting council. The Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications recommended that ASU be placed under provisional status if it did not improve its diversity in students, faculty and curriculum.
     
“Inadequate,” is how Callahan describes current diversity at Cronkite.

Current minority student enrollment at the Cronkite School is 21.8 percent, according to Callahan. There are 245 Hispanic students among 1,995 total students at the school, he says. There are no Latino faculty members.

“The fact of the matter of is, we are in a region in which the Latino population is growing enormously,” he says. “We not only have to bring in Latino students into the building, but also on to faculty.”

Callahan helped lead the University of Maryland’s journalism program to national prominence as the school’s associate dean. He is  considered an expert in the areas of journalism ethics and diversity. At the U of M, he persuaded the National Association of Black Journalists to establish its headquarters on campus.

“Arizona State is getting one of the most talented administrators in journalism education,” said Maryland Journalism Dean Thomas Kunkel when announcing last year that ASU had hired Callahan.

Callahan says his goal is to make ASU Cronkite school the “best journalism school in the West.”

SPECIAL PROGRAM

One of his ideas to do that is to create the new specialization to train Latino and non-Latino journalists in covering the complex issues of the Hispanic community.

“I think you need journalists that understand the Latino history, the culture and the perspectives,” he says. “And the notion that the Latino community isn’t a single Latino community.”

Callahan says he is currently seeking funding to create the new program. The journalism students would pursue a journalism major, but with a minor in classes offered by the ASU Chicana and Chicano Studies Department.

The new dean says he’s also writing grants to fund two positions for Latino journalism instructors.

“As far as I know, there isn’t a school out there taking this type of interdisciplinary approach,” he says. “What strikes me is that it’s so obvious. This country is growing more multicultural every day, and if we are going to cover it well, you need people of al ethnicities to cover all the issues.”

He continues, “The better coverage, the more comprehensive, the more sophisticated information you can give to people, it only improves everybody’s understanding of each other. Latino issues are not just important to Latinos, but to everybody.”

Callahan says implementation of the program depends on funding, but is optimistic that the new track will begin next year.

Luera, for one, was glad to hear of Callahan’s proposal.

“I think they (the Cronkite School of Journalism and Communication) have something to address and correct,” she says. “It looks like they are looking for him to take them along that path. I’m optimistic. Anything that looks at the differences like this is a good thing. And to target Latino journalists with a specialization like this is long needed.”

ALMA and ASU have been jointly coordinating an annual journalism workshop for Hispanic high school students. Callahan says he hopes to expand the school’s relationship with the Valley Latino media group.
     
Student Mia Martinez is also encouraged by the proposal to train journalists to cover the Latino community. She’ll graduate next year, too late for the new program, but feels the curriculum will attract other young people like her to ASU.

“It would help to get Chicanos involved with journalism,” she says.