Missing Voices: Part 4 – Where Do We Go from Here?
“It’s ridiculous honestly, the lack of diversity in journalism, especially when you filter it for Black people specifically.”
The NYC High School Journalism Conference on March 10 drew student reporters from about 30 high schools, including the Academy for Young Writers, pictured here. Courtesy Shakana Jayson
It’s clear that disproportionate access to high school journalism is a consequence of broader education inequities. But, what about the news industry itself? In this episode, professional journalists shed light on the lack of diversity in the news industry, which is about 80% white, and less representative of the general population than other fields according to Pew Research. The lack of journalism opportunities for students of color feeds the diversity problem in the field.
Despite the odds, this has been a year of success for school newspapers, new and old. And they get their due recognition at an annual student journalism conference held at Baruch College. Great expectations, breath-holding moments of tension and unexpected triumphs all come to the fore in this fourth and final episode of Missing Voices. All eyes – and hopefully your ears – are on these high school journalists vying for glory in between the margins.
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The Missing Voices series was reported by Wesley Almanzar, Jadelyn Camey, Fredlove Deshommes, Edward Mui and Jayden Williams. Editing and production support from Sabrina DuQuesnay, Mira Gordon, Abē Levine and Taylor McGraw.
Scoring and sound mixing from Peter Leonard. Music from Blue Dot Sessions.
Made possible with support from the Education Writers Association and the Pinkerton Foundation.
Transcript:
Ayana: Give me a second. Um, My name is Ayana, and I'm currently working for the Bell as a research assistant with a project investigating youth journalism in New York City.
Edward: In 2021, Ayana Smith and three high school students conducted research for The Bell that was the catalyst for this series.
Ayana: Um so if you can introduce yourself with your name and role and organization.
Emmanuel: Yeah, my name is Emmanuel Felton and I am the race and ethnicity reporter at the Washington Post.
Edward: Emmanuel is part of a small number of Black reporters on the Post’s national desk. It’s been that way in every newsroom he’s worked in.
Emmanuel: It's always been interesting. I think. Honestly, I remember this conversation we had a really early on at the Hechinger Report…
Edward: The Hechinger Report is a nonprofit education news outlet. Emmanuel worked there for 6 years.
Emmanuel: where they were like, Yeah, we finally got a black reporter. This is great. And I was kind of like, Yeah, you know, it is great. But it also. I don't know you got a black reporter who went to private school and like, you know, just like a lot of experience working with white people throughout my entire life. And so, like, for me, it wasn't culture shock, but it was like how open like this still doesn't feel open. You know?
Ayana: Yeah.
Emmanuel: this still isn’t an openness. You know, I have seen very few reporters, Black reporters who didn't come from that kind of background. And so like that's my main concern. That like, yes, we're in these rooms now. But like, you know, have we really opened this space to have the wide range of the black community represented in our newsrooms?
Edward: Emmanuel goes on to explain part of the reason journalism struggles so much with diversity.
Emmanuel: You get into journalism by just doing journalism. It is really hard to get into this business unless you have clips.
Edward: Clips are published stories. And where do most journalists get their early clips? Student publications. In high school and in college. He didn’t have any.
Emmanuel: And so there are these gatekeepers and one of those gatekeepers, especially because like I hadn't done one of the internship programs in college or high school like that Gatekeeper was the journalism school at Columbia.
Edward: Emmanuel said he had a good experience at Columbia’s J-School, and it helped him break into the field. But he recognizes that for many, grad school is cost-prohibitive.
Emmanuel: you know, journalism in a lot of ways, has been a rich kid job. You need parents who can pay your rent or whatever. And I think, you know, there's been a lot of talk about ending that. But that's that's not going to happen until we get entry-level salaries up.
Edward: Currently, the average entry-level reporter salary is about $38,000.
Edward: But… Emmanuel was quick to add…
Emmanuel: It's a great job, right? Like, I think people want to shape how our communities are perceived. Cause like, you know, so for so long, you know, communities of color have had a passive relationship with journalism. Where have any of these people come into our communities and tell our stories? And I think there's a lot of interest in changing that paradigm. But, you know, I just don't think the business has really invested in making this a valuable career option for everybody.
Edward: From the Miseducation Podcast, this is Missing Voices, a four-part series on the journalism gap in New York City public schools and why it should concern us all. I’m your host Edward Mui.
Edward: So far this series, we’ve focused on New York City high schools that have, or are trying to start, school newspapers. Today, in the final part of our series, we zoom out to examine the industry that many of these student journalists hope to enter one day… Its lack of diversity…It's “gatekeeping,” as Emmanuel Felton put it.
Edward: So how can the Faulty Journalism Career Pipeline be fixed? This question has been in the background of our whole series. Today, it’s front and center.
Edward: This is Part 4: Where Do We Go From Here?
Edward: Up first, here’s Fredlove.
Fredlove: To be honest, I haven’t had the best experience with the news.
Fredlove: Last year a student at my school got caught with a gun in his backpack.
News Clip: A 17-year-old is under arrest after an apparent ghost gun and about $30k in cash was found inside his bookbag at a public school in downtown Brooklyn….
Fredlove: Scary to think about, but this wasn’t a potential school shooting or anything. The next day I found out about it on Instagram. Someone had shared a New York Post story with the headline: “School of Glock.”
Fredlove: At first this may sound witty or catchy, but as a Black girl going to school with mainly other Black and brown students, it’s not fun being the butt of a joke rooted in stereotypes of gun violence in Black communities. This is the dilemma for a lot of us. We want to love the media, but it doesn’t love us back.
Steffen Nelson: I think the news is extremely important. It's how you learn one of the ways you learn how the world works. But when the world doesn't work in your favor, that might not be of a big interest to you.
Fredlove: This is Steffen Nelson, the parent coordinator at Park Slope Collegiate High School in Brooklyn. Another school that’s mostly Black and brown. He’s explaining why journalism isn’t the school’s top priority.
Steffen Nelson: Journalism is the furthest thing from their mind, right? We're interested in getting our black and brown students prepared in math and science, making sure that their four years of English and social studies is rigorous, making sure that they're prepared to be successful in college.
Fredlove: To Mr. Nelson, it’s not a matter of whether journalism education is valuable.
Steffen Nelson: … I know that journalism is incredibly important. But, you know, I took my daughter on college trips and we went to some very fancy colleges that are only five and 6% black. I don't think that's a journalism problem. I think it's a systemic racism problem. Right. So, you know, if the journalism world mirrors the college world, then only five or 6% of journalists are black. That's not a journalism problem. That's a societal problem. That's an education problem. So if we want more journalists to be black and brown, we need to have integrated schools that are funded fairly. And then all the students in those schools would get similar opportunities to be journalists. I don't I don't think the problem is that there aren't journalism programs in black and brown schools. The problem is there are black and brown schools.
Fredlove: Mr. Nelson is right. The lack of journalism programs in Black and brown schools is a symptom of much broader inequities… that schools like his shouldn’t have to solve on their own.
Steffen Nelson: The New York Times wanted to sponsor journalism programs in ten schools across the city, they could do that tomorrow. You know, either, either send a reporter over here to teach it or simply pay for some of the equipment and give some training to some local teachers over the summer. And We could have an elective in the high school program very easily. They could create scholarships at journalism schools. I don't know that it's high school's responsibility to create these things.
Fredlove: The New York Times does have a summer program for high school students… but it’s open to kids from across the world… and it costs six thousand dollars to attend. (Limited financial aid is available.)
Fredlove: It’s not just the New York Times, though. In the media capital of the world, very few news organizations — work with high schoolers. The one that’s the most active in the youth journalism space is a small nonprofit outlet in the Bronx called City Limits.
Fredlove: In the past decade, they’ve trained hundreds of public school students in paid journalism internships. More than probably every other media outlet in the city combined.
Fredlove: But while Big Media isn’t doing much from an institutional level, individual journalists around the city have stepped up to support the next generation. Wesley and I sat down with one of them.
Hasani: My name is Hassan Gittens, and you don't have to call me Mr. Gittens. Don't do that again. Call me Hasani or Hace or Ace or Skip. Anyway, I work for the city. I'm a deputy editor for the city. I was one of the founding editors of the city. The city is not in the city, as in the city of New York, which everyone confuses us with constantly, every single day still. But the city is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, Uh local news outlet.
Wesley: Hasani regularly volunteers his time to lead workshops for high school journalists, both in and out of school. He talked to us for over an hour, telling story after story… and there was a lot of Wu-Tang references.
Hasani: the editor in chief was this dude who's a 5% or, you know, five percenters, like Wu-Tang,
Hasani: I may reference like cash rules everything around me in a in a story and like one of my fellow editors didn’t get it and I was like how you not going to get that.
Wesley: Early in his career, he had a big decision in front of him. He was an undergrad at Baruch College,…
Hasani: Go Bear Cats
Wesley: … had just started writing for the college newspaper, and one of his professors recommended him for an internship… at the New York Post.
Hasani: and I didn't even want to work at the post. I think it's worse now honestly, but even back then it was like, this terrible news organization, it's racist. They're just crazy out there.
Fredlove: Hasani went to his aunt for advice. As a former activist in the Black freedom struggle, he thought she could give him some insight.
Hasani: I was like, What do you think? Of me working for the post or going to post, and she was like, you know, sometimes it's better to be on the inside than the outside. You know, like you can do a lot of work there.
Fredlove: He took the offer – and followed his aunt’s advice, not just at the Post, but everywhere he’s worked since.
Hasani: I've always just fought it- like like hard both speaking up and just being like, hey, you guys realize you're all white, right? Like, this is you and you get this perspective and just literally speaking out. And I think I've been honestly lucky that I haven't been fired or brought up on HR charges too many times. I have a few times, but like you got to speak your mind and I speak my mind a lot. And that helps both to change a place or to let people know what the deal is, or at least what the different perspectives are, And it also helps you to sleep at night, you know, like you didn't just not say anything.
Fredlove: Hasani has clearly gotten comfortable speaking out, but that’s a heavy burden for Black people in any industry to have to carry.
Hasani: A lot of journalism organizations, especially now in the last few years, have these diversity initiatives and committees and stuff like that. And it helps. But it's funny how you'll, you know, you'll see the committees and you'll see the talks and the essays and all the things and then, you know, and then another old white guy gets hired, like you know what I mean. At least you're talking about it… But you're not doing it.
Hasani: But yeah It's ridiculous, honestly, the lack of diversity in journalism and especially when you. Filter it for black people specifically.
Hasani: And like sometimes you look at a place that says they're very diverse and it's just a bunch of light-skinned faces and I have nothing is light-skinned people but like, it's you're like, hmm. you know what I mean.
Fredlove: I understand what he’s saying. It’s not just in journalism where the diversity agenda gets watered down. Many institutions think when they’ve reached a certain “diversity quota,” the work stops there. The differences in experiences within and between communities of color get minimized.
Wesley: We see similar dynamics in high schools here, where you have top schools like Townsend Harris that are 80% students of color — but very few are Black.
Wesley: According to the Baruch College study we’ve referenced a few times now, of the 50 high schools in the city with the highest proportion of Black students, just four have a school newspaper. Meanwhile, of the 50 whitest schools, thirty eight do. We asked Hasani what he thought about stats like these.
Hasani: All those kind of disparities are just so sadly obvious a lot of times are you would expect, like even before the study comes out, you're like, go figure. Huh Really? Oh, the black schools are getting less. And it's like, Oh, I wonder why. And there's a few reasons. It's not just white supremacy, but, you know, it's a lot of that.
Wesley: So let’s summarize what we’ve learned so far. Newsrooms are very white, even in cities like New York that are majority people of color. And I should add that racial diversity isn’t the only thing that’s lacking. Women are underrepresented. So are members of the LGBTQIA+(PLUS) community, folks with disabilities, and other marginalized groups.
Wesley: This leads to misrepresentation of our communities in the news, which makes us want to tune it out. But even if we do want to pursue journalism, it’s very unlikely that our schools give us that chance. So we leave high school with no experience, no clips, and somehow, we’re supposed to fight for a spot in an industry that’s given us no indication it wants us there in the first place. Sure.
Fredlove: Annnnd on that note, now that we have a clear enough picture of how the lack of journalism in schools feeds the lack of diversity in the journalism industry, we can end our podcast. Thanks for tuning in guys, see ya later.
Wesley: Peeaacceee.
Fredlove: Just kidding. We’re not that pessimistic.
Wesley: After this short break, reason for hope. Edward takes us to the annual NYC high school journalism conference, where students from Townsend Harris, Pace, and lots of other schools come together in the same room.
Wesley: Hey listeners! I know it’s weird because I just spoke so I’ll let a good friend take it from here…
Jayden: Ay let’s go! This is Jayden again.
Jayden: We believe in the power of young minds and their ability to change the world through their reporting.
Wesley: Like what you’re hearing? Just go to give dot bellvoices.org and choose a one-time or monthly contribution. You can even donate in honor or in memory of someone. Once again, that’s give.bellvoices.org. Thank you for supporting student voices like ours!
Wesley: Now, back to the episode
Edward: Um, I'm excited for the award ceremony. I'm not sure what it'll look like. I'm not expecting it to look like the Oscars, but like I'm hoping it’ll be like cool lights, cool trophies.
Edward: It’s March 10th. My producer, Mira, and I are at Baruch College in midtown Manhattan for the Annual NYC High School Journalism Conference and awards presentation. This is The Oscars of local high school Journalism. The awards are called Newsies.
Mira: All right. I guess we should probably head up and check it out. Okay.
Edward: We get in the elevator and head to the 14th floor…
Speaker 1: And what’s your name?
Edward: Oh, Edward, Mui.
Speaker 1: Oh there you go, this one? Yeah, ok perfect. Ok
Edward: After making it past the registration table, we find a ballroom with gold curtains lining the walls and a stage up front.
Mira: Some of the teams are wearing coordinated t-shirts. Pretty crowded, pretty well attended.
Edward: New York City public high schools with newspapers have been invited to bring up to eight students per school, along with their Journalism advisor as a chaperone. All told, there are around 30 schools in attendance. Each has its own round table.
Mira: Okay. So I think that's Townsend Harris.
Edward: the one in front of us?
Mira: With number seven. I think, just cause I think the advisor looks familiar.
Mira: Oh, there's David Rolfing that's Pace. Okay.
Edward: I don't think I ever went to a gathering of different high schools this large.
Edward: A couple kids get up and walk around, passing out print editions of their schools’ newspapers to each table. This is kind of a flex given that most schools don’t have the resources to print their newspaper.
Geanne: Okay. Hi, I'm Professor Geanne Belton.
Edward: Remember Professor Belton from part one of our series? She’s the one who led the high school newspaper study and who runs the professional development course for new journalism advisors.
Geanne: And this is our annual New York City High School Journalism Conference.
Edward: She runs through the day’s agenda. First, the students will split off and attend workshops taught by professional journalists. After lunch, there will be a press conference with State Senator John Liu. A panel with some members of Baruch College’s newspaper, The Ticker. And then … the Newsies winners will be announced.
Edward: Students here are hoping to win awards in categories like Features, Multimedia News Reporting, Photojournalism, and the coveted “Best Online Edition.”
Edward: But that’s later. For now, the students are ushered into conference rooms for the workshops.
Edward: Are we in this room?
Mira: Yeah I think so.
Edward: At lunchtime, I spot Ramata from Pace High School. We met her in Part One — she’s the writer for The Pacer who spoke about being inspired to increase Black female representation in the media.
Edward: So what do you guys think about the workshops?
Ramata: I think the workshops were very great. You know, I learned lots of things when it came to, like, the law aspect of journalism. Yeah. Stop, You guys keep laughing. Stop laughing. Sorry.
Edward: Mira goes over to chat with the students from Townsend Harris.
Mira: Well, how does it feel to see all these student journalists from around the city?
Speaker 3: It feels really nice because it's like, like a once in a lifetime type thing. Like to see all of these people, like, from different journalistic papers, like coming here and like being able to even interact with them in different workshops. I guess it's a really nice networking opportunity and also just a way to see how other newspapers work as well.
Edward: We also have a conversation with students from Unity Center for Urban Technologies High School. Their newspaper was founded a year ago, and – as of the conference – they haven’t published anything so far this school year.
Mira: What do you guys think of seeing all these other schools and newspapers?
Student: It's overwhelming, probably because a lot of them know. And we we just were just figuring it out and seeing the people that are who have figured it out is really, like, scary. Like, oh, we want to be as good as them, but you never know. We might not have the potential to be like them, but I think everyone does if they put their mind to it.
Edward: Looking around the conference, you can sense which students come from schools with more established newspapers…. They have on matching T-shirts, They confidently ask questions in the workshops, They pass out their papers during the breaks.
Edward: But as the day goes on, the students from the newer programs feel more comfortable — like, hey, we belong here, too.
Edward: Like when Ramata from Pace stood up to ask the keynote speaker, Senator John Liu, a tough question about disparities at the city’s specialized high schools.
Speaker 2: I know that you're a supporter when it comes to specialized high school tests. But what are you doing? And plan on doing when it comes to helping schools with low funding prepare for specialized tests? Should a student’s performance on one test determine the outcome of their future and where they spend the next four years of their life?
John Liu: OK, well listen, I don’t think there’s a shortage of funding for students who want to get tutoring…(fade out)
Edward: The politician gave a politician answer.
Edward: After the senator Q&A and a few more sessions, the moment everyone in the room has been waiting for: The Newsies.
Geanne: Okay Thank You. We've created a new division for newspapers. So that newspaper started after 2020 cannot have to compete against the newspapers that win awards year after year and a kind of newspaper for a long time.
Edward: That’s right. This year, for the first time, all the new newspapers, many of which were created with the help of Press Pass, are competing against each other. It’s only fair. They’re also still eligible for overall prizes.
Edward: Each category was judged by a different professional journalist, including a Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist and the sports editor for the New York Times. Hasani Gittens, who we heard from earlier this episode, judged the “best online newspaper” category.
Geanne: I'm going to start announcing some of the winners. This is, I know, the moment that a lot of you have been waiting for.
Geanne: First place. In the features division, Townsend Harris High School.
Edward: In addition to first place in features, Townsend Harris takes home first place for Op-Ed, second place for multimedia, and an honorable mention for sports writing.
Geanne: And the first place for school communities news both in the newspaper division and city-wide is, pace high school.
Unknown Speaker: Oh My God!
Edward: The Pace students are in shock. They’ve just won the top award for school community reporting — not just in the new newspapers division, but in the entire city. No small feat for a newspaper that was founded just two years ago.
Edward: Pace takes home four awards, tied with Townsend Harris and Francis Lewis for the MOST of any school in attendance.
Geanne: We're looking forward to hosting you again.Thank you so much.
Edward: Afterwards, the newspaper advisors corral their students for photos with their new plaques and medals. I see the Pace group in one corner, arranged in two rows, grinning with pride.
Speaker 2: Good job Mr. Rohlfing
Edward: Mira walks over to congratulate the students from the Laboratory School for Finance and Technology – one of the schools in the new newspaper category.
Mira: Do you want to say a couple of words? How do you feel now? You're wearing your medal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it feels nice too, I guess to win second place um, especially city wide, we're new, and we didn't expect this, but. We feel great.
Mira: Yeah. How do you feel?
Speaker 5: I'm glad that the whole team in school was able to succeed. And as an editor, I'm proud. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: I'm going to lie. I have high expectations. But, like, when they said the name, I kind of knew. I've got to stay confident. I got to believe in the, in our, in our hopes are, like, become one of the best newspapers in the state. City.
Edward: After the students and advisors clear out for the day, Mira and I stick around to reflect.
Edward: The kids are really happy, and there's a lot of competitive nature, so.
Mira: Yeah. What did the Pace high school students say?
Edward: They said they're going to win more next year and they're going to be all the high schools that got word that they thought they should have got.
Mira: What do you think about the fact that this is, you know, 25% of high schools have a newspaper program? In light of this conference?
Edward: I think that Geanne said that a lot of the new schools won awards because they have a lot of stories that normally aren't told. So we're missing like 75% of the stories that are just not covered in New York City. And like, it could be amazing and this event could be bigger
Edward: I left the Baruch conference more hopeful than I’ve been at any point in this series. It’s clear that Press Pass NYC has made a real difference in bringing new voices into student journalism. At the same time … major gaps still exist. A lot of schools are going to need lots more support to create lasting equity in youth journalism.
Edward: So where should that support come from? Whose responsibility is it to train the next generation of journalists?
Jayden: Based on our reporting, we can confidently say that this responsibility is too big to leave up to individual schools to figure out. This is Jayden, by the way.
Jayden: And believe me, I saw up close what’s possible at schools like Pace and the Institute for Health Professions, where — out of sheer will and determination — students and teachers are creating great journalism programs. But without more of a systemic push from the Department of Education, there will continue to be Haves. And Have Nots.
Jadelyn: And — this is Jadelyn — here’s the other thing. The journalism industry, and individual news outlets, cannot be left off the hook.
Jadelyn: To paraphrase my good sis, Fredlove: Why should kids like us care about the news when the news doesn’t care about us?
Jadelyn: Existing, quote-unquote, newsroom diversity efforts are not enough. For one, they start too late — often targeting college or grad students who are already studying journalism.
Jadelyn: In other words, they’re competing for the same, limited pool of candidates who have already made it halfway through the career pipeline. Efforts like these do nothing to actually expand who enters the pipeline in the first place.
Wesley: Mmmm. So true. This is Wes. If I hadn’t found The Bell, I would have never been exposed to journalism. And that would have been a shame because I’ve got things to say.
Fredlove: Oookay Wesley. I hear you though. Not a lot of people can say they had an internship like the Bell to help open their eyes to the issues in high school journalism.
Fredlove: As someone who has experienced the problem of misrepresentation and then got the tools to investigate said problem, I can say that this isn’t one of those happily ever after stories with a nice ending.
Fredlove: This story is still going and the lack of space for people of color in the media today is a detrimental issue. It’s up to more people to decide if they wanna invest into the solution.
Fredlove: It's up to you to decide what you're gonna do with the information we’ve given you.
Edward: That’s a wrap for Missing Voices. But we’ve got a bunch of folks to shout out, so hang tight.
Edward: This series was reported by Wesley Almanzar, Jadelyn Camey, Fredlove Deshommes, Jayden Williams, and me, Edward Mui. You can’t see us right now, but we’re taking a bow.
Edward: Our producers and editors were Abe Levine, Sabrina DuQuesnay, Mira Gordon, and Taylor McGraw.
Edward: Sound mixing and scoring by the one and only Peter Leonard.
Edward: Special thanks to Erica Huang and David Herman at Good Studio, and also Ray Rodriguez at Spotify Brooklyn studios for helping us record all of our narration for the series. I won’t tell you how many hours it took.
Edward: More special thanks to Adrian Uribarri, the Center for Brooklyn History, Yelena Dzhanova, Stephen Czaja, and the entire team at Reel Works. And of course, this project wouldn’t have taken shape without the student journalists and their advisors who contributed their voices and welcomed us into their school newsrooms.
Edward: The Miseducation Podcast is a production of The Bell. Learn more about our work and listen to all of our past episodes at bellvoices.org. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter @miseducationpod.
Edward: This series was made possible in part by the Education Writers Association, the Pinkerton Foundation, the Summerfield Foundation, and FJC.
Edward: Thanks for listening, everybody.
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