Commitment to Diversity
Staying committed to representing the full CCHS and Athens community is essential to responsible journalism. As a first-year staffer, I recognize this is an area where I can continue to grow, and I hope to push myself to seek out more diverse and inclusive stories in the coming years. Even so, I have remained mindful of the importance of representation, which has been strongly emphasized by the OMG. Through thoughtful story selection, attention to voice and collaboration with staff, I have worked to ensure that our reporting reflects the diversity of our community. The examples below highlight ways I and the program actively prioritize inclusivity and give space to underrepresented perspectives.
The first way the OMG shows its commitment to diversity is through our cycle reflections. This is when each staffer reflects on many things from the past cycle, including on how they have been doing in terms of representing CCHS accurately and diversifying who they interview. This gives time for staffers to reflect and be held accountable. Acknowledging that you have failed to represent accurately is the first step to making strides to improve this.
Cycle Reflections
Another way the OMG shows its commitment to diversity is through the do not interview list. At the end of each cycle each staffer inputs everyone they have interviewed into a google form. This form shows us our data on the races, gender, and ethnicity's we interview more of. This helps to hold us accountable and shows people we have interviewed excessively to make sure we don't keep going to them and instead, get the voices who are less represented.
Do not interview list
Trivia
This is a scene I wrote for softball senior night. Armani Young, is a senior who used to play for the softball team but then became disabled and now can't. However, she was still being honored at the senior night ceremony! me and a peer worked together to create this scene to represent her as we were for the other seniors.
Social Media Scene
This was an adjunct trivia I made for Asian American Pacific Islander month which takes place in May. AAPI Month is lesser known but still so important. So, creating this trivia brought to light the month and made sure we as a program are representing people of all ethnicities. I was able to put together this trivia in a timely manner and made sure to pick questions representing many different cultures.
One way the OMG has worked to ensure diversity this year is by creating and publishing a comprehensive Diversity Statement. The statement outlines what diversity means to us, the steps we are committed to taking to reflect a wide range of voices and how we plan to create inclusive coverage across all platforms. This is a vital step because it publicly holds us accountable and reinforces our commitment to truly representing our entire community.
Diversity statement
