Last Updated: December 29, 2000
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Diversity
Elevating journalism in Indian Country
There are complex reasons why young Native Americans
often overlook journalism as a career path, but promising new projects
are planting the seeds of change
By Dennis McAuliffe Jr.
Dear Denny,
I’d hire a Native American journalist in a heartbeat, but where on
Earth are they? How can I get just one in my newsroom?
—Desperate for Diversity
Dear Double D:
Be patient—reservations weren’t built in a day.
The good news is that editors finally have noticed that the diversity
lineups in their newsrooms are one ethnic group shy, and some are starting
to finance university initiatives to actively recruit Native Americans.
American Indians long have been America’s invisible minority. They still
are, but some news executives, editors and educators are beginning to think
of them at least, to see that they’re not there.
There are complex reasons why they aren’t there. Many young Native Americans
never give journalism a thought when they choose a career path. In some
areas, positive role models are scarce. But there are several new programs
aimed to change this, and they are showing promise. Already, things have
gotten better.
Now the bad news: ASNE’s 2000 newsroom census counted 56,200 journalists
working at daily newspapers but just 292 American Indians. That figure
doesn’t include the majority of American Indian journalists, who are employed
by tribal newspapers, which are not included in ASNE’s survey.
People who don’t know Indians tend to say, “292? Is that all?” Within
Indian journalism circles, however, the reaction is “That many?” The watchdog
Native American Journalists Association says daily mainstream newspapers
employ only about a dozen Indian journalists.
The discrepancy lies in the minefield of Indian identity issues that
resonate across Native America: NAJA takes the tribal view — not shared
by the U.S. Census Bureau — that Indian ethnicity flows not from blood
but affiliation. Only people who are bona fide members of tribes have the
right to say they’re Native American, the argument goes. The word “enrolled”
is a decisive and essential adjective in Indian Country. Everyone else
— especially the countless Americans who claim ancestry to unknown Indians
who mysteriously landed in their family trees, apparently including many
of the journalists who identified themselves as Indians in the ASNE census
— is seen as bogus. “Wannabe” is a noun often heard among the 2 million
residents of Indian Country.
A word rarely heard there is “journalist,” especially paired with the
verb “wannabe,” as in “I wannabe a journalist.”
Why are there so few American Indians in journalism? There are probably
more theories about Native Americans and journalism than there are Native
Americans in journalism. Most of our head-scratching answers speak of the
same obstacles that many Asian Americans, African Americans and Hispanics
have managed to overcome — those complex cultural, social, educational
and linguistic barriers erected and welded into place by our history —
but that, for Indians, have remained insurmountable.
My answer is simpler than theirs: Young Native Americans don’t go into
journalism in greater numbers because no one thinks of it. Journalism is
the most overlooked career in Indian Country.
Indians who go to college do so to become lawyers or teachers or business
people or health and social workers — in part because role models from
those professions are in ready supply on reservations. It is hard to interest
Indian students in becoming journalists when they don’t see anyone remotely
resembling them in the profession. The only journalists they see, and the
only journalism they encounter is in small, weekly newspapers of non-Indian
towns that rim their reservations. Some of these papers reflect hostile,
anti-Indian views, writing only “C” stories about their Indian neighbors:
crime, courts and casinos.
About 150 tribes — nearly a quarter of the nation’s federally recognized
tribes — operate their own newspapers, in part to counter the coverage
in local papers. Tribal newspapers are owned by tribal governments, and
newspaper staffers are government employees. Many are excellent — and courageous
— journalists. Many are also out of work, or have had long periods of unemployment,
after publishing stories that tribal council members don’t want to read,
and especially don’t want others to read. (Tribal governments tend to regard
the First Amendment as not applicable on their reservations, and effectively
it isn’t.)
Tribal newspaper reporters and editors have the potential to be those
essential journalist role models that young people on reservations might
want to emulate. The number of college-age Native Americans going into
journalism suggests otherwise. One reason could be that tribal journalists
are constantly under fire, fired or about to be fired, and young Indians
see only the penalties of journalism. Another reason is that too many tribal
newspapers, especially those with revolving staffs of family members or
other supporters of tribal council members, are amateurish mouthpieces
of government — a job that requires neither training, talent nor commitment,
just connections.
Another sad truism in Indian Country is that tribal newspapers tend
to be the only newspapers on reservations. With the exception of the occasional
and sporadic newsletter, there are no school papers, either in reservation
high schools or the nation’s 31 tribal colleges. Something else you won’t
find on reservations: journalism classes, even at the tribal colleges.
That means journalism has no chance of competing against other career options
introduced to the 25,000 Indian students at tribal colleges — two-year
institutions awarding certificates and associate degrees.
Thus the routes to the newsroom for nearly every working journalist
— school papers and j-courses — have no on-ramps on Indian reservations.
The very few reservation schools with newsletters or anything resembling
journalism may be doing more harm than good. An English teacher in charge
of a journalism project at her reservation high school — for the record,
she was non-Indian — sent me this note accompanying a student story: “Here
is another artical for you to prove.”
Needless to say, some future Johnny Appleseed of Native American journalism
has a pretty long row to hoe. Amazingly, people are actually out there
planting, and the fruits of their labor may produce the solution to the
Native American journalism problem.
The University of Montana has become the academic center of Native American
journalism: the 14 Native Americans enrolled in its journalism school represent
the highest number of Indian students of any program in the country. The
school employs a professional Native American journalist in residence (the
author of this “artical.”) Indian enrollment at the school has doubled
since the position was created a year and half ago under a Freedom Forum
grant.
This summer, the University of Minnesota journalism school is holding
a 10-week training and newspaper internship program for American Indians
with at least four-year degrees in fields other than journalism. The 10
students take journalism classes three days a week, then for at least two
days a week they work as reporters at area newspapers including the Pioneer
Press, Star Tribune, St. Cloud Times and some weeklies.
“All of the beginning reporters have had bylined stories published,
and most have had several stories published since the program began,” said
program director Sherrie Mazingo. “It’s been a huge success — we surprised
ourselves.” The program is in partnership with NAJA and funded by the Freedom
Forum.
NAJA has been crucial to the development of young journalism talent
through college scholarships and newspaper training programs such as Project
Phoenix and Native Voice, for high school and college students respectively.
About five of the students NAJA has supported since 1994 have joined mainstream
newspapers, including Jodi Rave, now Indian affairs reporter for the Lincoln
(Neb.) Journal Star and Lee Enterprises; and Derrick Henry, an AP reporter
in New Jersey. NAJA also has hosted eight journalism workshops for high
school and college students around the country this year.
The Native American Newspaper Career Conference — co-sponsored by ASNE,
the South Dakota Newspaper Association, South Dakota State University,
NAJA and the Freedom Forum Neuharth Center at the University of South Dakota
— brought more than 70 high school and tribal college students to Crazy
Horse Mountain, S.D., where a 560-foot monument to the Lakota leader is
being blasted out of the mountainside. Native American professional journalists
attended from as far away as Seattle and Washington, D.C. The workshop
actually put the students to work: For two days, they wrote stories and
took photos for an online conference newspaper (see it at http://www.nativejournal.com).
Most importantly, the conference launched an ongoing mentoring program
that teamed South Dakota newspapers with Indian students who expressed
interest in doing more, and some already have done assignments for their
papers.
These South Dakota students also represent another important need in
Native America: They are candidates to become the first generation of journalist
role models for even younger Indians to emulate. If that happens, so complete
will be the acceptance of Native American journalists in the media that
the formidable obstacles they face today will be of little consequence.
And you will finally get that Native American journalist in your newsroom.
McAuliffe, a former editor at The Washington Post, is the Native
American Journalist in Residence at the University of Montana.
