“We are alarmed by DoJ’s position that census confidentiality protections are open to debate. In our view, there is no debate.” – Corrine Yu, Leadership Conference Education Fund
By Mark Hedin, Ethnic Media Services As the Census Bureau prepares for its 2020 count, concerns about new plans to question respondents about their citizenship status have taken center stage. But now, civil rights activists and others focused on the importance of...
What
We Do
Ethnic Media Servces works to enhance the capacity of ethnic news outlets to inform and engage diverse audiences on broader public issues with the goal of building more inclusive participatory democracy.
Ethnic Media Services does this by:
• Convening roundtable briefings that bring ethnic media together with experts, officials, nonprofit leaders and advocates to exchange perspectives on urgent issues, generate media coverage and expand cross-cultural and cross-sector communications.
• Organizing professional trainings and fellowships for ethnic media reporters that expand their knowledge of key issues, connect them to sources and provide financial support for in-depth reporting.
• Coordinating social media and marketing campaigns that enable government agencies, foundations, nonprofits and public affairs firms to customize messaging that resonate with diverse audiences and expand ethnic media’s access to critically needed ad revenue.
• Producing, translating and syndicating multilingual original news stories to ethnic news media partners on how policy issues impact their audiences, helping bridge the information gap between the public realm and otherwise isolated
• Developing communications projects with underserved groups that deepen their engagement with and amplify their voices in the public realm.
• Profiling ethnic media practitioners that puts a human face on an otherwise invisible ethnic media sector.
Why
Ethnic
Media
Ethnic media are news outlets that serve audiences isolated by language, race, ethnicity and sexual identity from the wider society. A feature of America’s media landscape for centuries, they provide news, information, cohesion, identity and a collective advocacy voice.
“We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us,” proclaimed Freedom Journal, the first black newspaper in New York in 1824. It continues to define the qualities that make ethnic media a distinctive genre of journalism — a parallel universe of news.
Evolution
of Ethnic
Media
Ethnic media exploded with growth over the last 40 years, paralleling an unprecedented influx of immigrants from all over the world. By 2009, an estimated 60 million American adults relied on some form of ethnic media — print, online, TV, radio — for news, information and entertainment. In California, over half the state’s new majority of ethnic minorities named an ethnic news source they referenced regularly or occasionally.
Today, like general market media, the ethnic media sector is buffeted by the challenges of the digital era — from the collapse of the advertising model to the explosion of social media. Their survival depends on diverse audiences having somewhere to turn for trusted news, for visibility, for a voice.
Ethnic media will evolve as the communities they serve evolve. Knight Ridder began as a German newspaper and turned into a corporate media giant. In Nashville, the largest Kurdish population outside Kurdistan communicates through WhatsApp on the imam’s iPhone. In Richmond, California, a black news outlet is now bilingual, in Spanish and English, and targets not just one ethnic group but the entire city.
Mainstream media have imagined ethnic media as insular and parochial. What if it’s the other way around? As climate change results in global migration tripling over the next 30 years, the media-serving diaspora populations could become the new mainstream.
Current
Focus
Areas
Tracking the highly charged politics of immigration reform and its intersection with human and civil rights.
Partnering with the Federal Trade Commission to build ethnic media’s capacity to report on scams in their communities.
Promoting awareness of LA County’s efforts to modernize its water management system to deal with drought and extreme storms.
Expanding ethnic media’s coverage on and about the environment — from sea level rise to wetlands reclamation.
Developing a peer-to-peer messaging model to break the stigma of depression on community college campuses.
Enlisting ethnic media as an advocacy voice to promote voting rights and shine a spotlight on voter repression.
Training and producing youth writing and art to document new forms of youth expression in the far suburbs.
Coming
Events
Los Angeles, California
11:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M.
More information or to RSVP contact: info@ethnicmediaservices.org
Edmond, Oklahoma
11:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M.
More information or to RSVP contact: info@ethnicmediaservices.org
CONTACT: INFO@ETHNICMEDIASERVICES.ORG
(415) 533-0765; (415) 626-1650; (650) 248-9522
1663 Mission Street, Suite 310, San Francisco, CA 94103
