29th Journalism Opportunities Conference

Out of the house by 6:30 am and I luckily made it to the Biltmore Hotel in downtown LA by 8 am.
When I reached the downstairs lobby of the hotel, I didn't realize that I had just stepped into the West Coast's largest job fair for journalists.
With more than 60 recruiters from news media outlets such as NBC, ABC, KTLA, PBS, LA Times, McClatchy Newspapers, and New America Media.
This event was sponsored by the California Chicano News Media Association, and co-sponsored by the Asian American Journalists Association, Black Journalists Association of Southern California, USC, LA Times, and The California Wellness Foundation.

How it feels to be on the flipside...

I was an assitant for NAM helping recruit interns for spring 2008
Reviewing people's resumes was definitely a wild experience for me.
I never thought I would be in the position to help determine who is a valuable candidate.
Undergraduate and graduate students from USC, Brown, and Arizona were all there.
Even students from East Los Angeles Community College and Los Angeles City College attended.
A noticeable absence was from Cal State students.
More discouraging than that absence was realizing how bad the journalism market is today.
Graduate students from elite universities like USC and Brown were desperately looking for "paid work" as they said, but willing to settle for unpaid internships.
Julian Do, co-editor of NAM said journalism students need to be aware that the market is challenging because jobs are not readily available and more people get laid off every year.
He also said that journalists in todays market need three things: to be multicultural, multilingual, and knowledgeable in multimedia.
Although the journalism market may be difficult, one great thing I noticed was all the recruiters were of different ethnicities, and that was comforting.

Then came the LA Times Luncheon,
with a speech from NBC news weekend anchor, Ted Chen!!

Chen gave a speech about media diversity and raising cultural awareness.
He said, "People's perceptions are based on perceptions from the media."
He also asked thought provoking questions about the situation of todays media that hopefully the journalists of the future will help answer.
He said, "Are you going to get a true explanation of different ethnicities if everyone reporting is of the same background?"
And the answer to that is no.
Most, if not all, minority representation on television is based on white people's preconceived notions of how that ethnicity should act. For example, most coverage of hispanics, asians, blacks, indians, etc on tv news is if there is a crime, death, shooting, or it happens to be that specific ethnicities celebratory history month.
That is why most minorities shown on TV only perpetuate their own stereotypes.
Chen said that needs to be changed and the only way to do that is to "keep your game hats on."
Which means to stay objective and fair in your reporting.
Chen said that you can't show people that you are one-sided because you'll get categorized as "this type" of reporter versus an objective and fair reporter.
He said, "Minority journalists make stories deeper and better."
Minority journalists offer a very different perspective that now caters to America's changing population demographic.
I believe ethnic journalists should be given a real chance to be part of the mainstream media because only they can offer the mass audience a better understanding of their culture.
"You want to enlighten, you want to change minds," was Chen's final advice to the crowd of journalists.