It's Arrived!

Four years and thousands of planning hours later, the mother of all journalistic conferences, UNITY, kicks off this week in Chicago.

The quadrennial convening is organized by UNITY: Journalists of Color, a strategic alliance advocating news coverage about people of color and more diverse news media. More than 10,000 journalists are members, drawing from the four national organizations that comprise UNITY: Asian American Journalists Association, National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and the Native American Journalists Association.

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama is slated to speak, among other dignitaries, including the President of Senegal. For the full schedule, visit: www.2008unity.org. You can catch the McCormick journalism staff at a number of McCormick-funded events and projects, including:

• The student projects ( more than 60 diverse college students are covering"the conference through print, online, broadcast and multimedia)
• A research study measuring the diversity of the Washington Press Corps (in conjunction with Arizona State University's Cronkite School of Journalism)
• A video, produced by the McCormick Fellows, documenting how newsrooms have changed since the 1968 Kerner Commission. It will be shown at Thursday morning's plenary.

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Walking the Walk

The McCormick Fellows aren't just paying lip service to the multimedia landscape, they're putting themselves behind the lens.

The group of nearly 90 high-powered minority media executives recently launched their first foray into online video. You can catch their responses to the question: "Where are we today when it comes to diversity in the newsroom?" at http://www.mtfellows.org/video.asp

Expect more on this topic from the group at UNITY this year, where it premiers its own documentary about the media's diversity progress since the 20th anniversary of the Kerner Commission. The commission, which released a final report in 1968, was created upon the order of President Johnson to investigate the causes of 1967 race riots. It claimed the media didn't present an accurate portrayal of the riots and conditions leading up to them.

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Cutting Back on Diversity?

UNITY's president is calling for media companies to begin collecting and releasing the racial and ethnic breakdown of employees laid off or taking buyouts in the past year's flurry of journalism job loss. According to UNITY President Karen Lincoln Michel, the group will be brainstorming in the coming weeks ways to slow the loss of talented diverse staffers in the newsroom. Personally, she's advocating for companies to collect and release the racial and ethnic breakdown numbers of departing staffers as a way to track the situation.

You can read Lincoln Michel's column here: http://www.unityjournalists.org/presidents/przmsg_070507.html

What do you think is the best way to address journalism diversity erosion in a tumultuous business time?

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