Zethiopia

Mysh bzi. Hallo.
   Moremble.
Salaam. Hola. Ciao.
        Guten Tag. Namaste. Konnichi Wa.
Bonjour. Salut. Chao.

Hello there, and welcome to my pseudo-ethnic greeting; a place where I pretend for just a moment that I am, in fact, perfectly capable of listing all of these diverse forms "hello" off the top of my head, and that I didn't, in fact, type "hello in many languages" into Google search.

And now we return to reality.

Today, Angie Chuang, a professor of ethnic journalism at American University, spoke to us about - you guessed it - ethnic journalism.
It's so funny, because despite all my talk of being overwhelmed by the amount of diversity in D.C., until today I never once thought about how all of these multi-ethnic groups deal with journalism and the news. It was really eye-opening to hear about all of the different ways that ethnic journalism can be approached. There's so much variety in who commissions it, who writes it, who it's aimed at, who reads it and the areas and issues it covers.

Ethnic media also serves an essentially different purpose than "mainstream media" - whether it be 'immigrant media' or 'minority media' (minority often being a sort of falsity in itself), and Angie spent a lot of time talking about some of the deeper differences inherent its approach.

Journalists often claim that they are not out to change anything - and if they are, it is only in the sense that by exposing something it will in turn affect people. Their mission is not to alter the state of events. However, ethnic media is more concerned with enacting change. A lot of the articles address an issue, and serve as a sort of "how-to" guide for how to deal with it.

For example, before today's class we read an example of an article that highlighted institutions' propensity not to hire those with "African-American sounding names", and it essentially explained how to better ensure being hired if your given-name falls within this category.

Angie asked us to think about how this article would fare if placed in, say, The Washington Post. She said people would be outraged, because it assumes that the state of things are as it says, and provides very little contrasting data or observations. It doesn't approach the issue in a 100% objective method, something that more mainstream publications are supposed to always do .

This however, she says, is just how ethnic journalists write - they look and write from inside a community, rather than from an outside perspective.

Because they're writing for a specific audience with specific needs, they approach topics in a manner that consists of less plain explanation, and more advice-like qualities on how to deal with day-to-day issues that their readership faces.

It was great to hear her speak, especially since she has so much experience in the area - and I'm definitely going to pick up an ethnic publication next time I see one, if only to see what types of issues it speaks about.

I also came away from today with an appreciation of some of the difficulties of being a member of a "minority" group and working in journalism. People always expect you to know and to want to write about your respective ethnicity - and I think that would get incredibly tedious. Angie seemed to deal with it really well, but I know that I'd get really sick of people's assumptions. I guess that would apply to all areas of my life, though, and not just my journalistic duties.

So go read El Tiemo Latino and expand your horizons!

Ciao.

Ps: I totally failed today and forgot to take a picture - I was a wee bit distracted (read: I was about to go shopping). So here's a picture of Angie Chuang for your reference, courtesy of AU's website [you go ahead and feel free to mentally photoshop some cute journalism students in behind her - your imagination could use a little practice anyhow]