Archives for December 2015

Early Experiences in Journalism:
0:00 – 1:30 Introductions and preamble
1:46 Clint’s introduction into journalism came from his father who was an editorial political cartoonist.

1:57 His father worked for the black press. For the Los Angeles Sentinel and the California Eagle.

2:09 Clint was an only child and his father worked at home.

2:18 He brought newspapers home and would read to Clint. His father’s interest in newspapers passed onto him.

2:33 He started writing very early. In elementary school he would write stories and share them with classmates.

2:48 He had a pretty good idea that writing is something he might want to do

2:55 Throughout high school and college he started to work on the school papers.

3:07 As a senior at Cal State Los Angeles – what he refers to as the “big awakening” – Clint was offered several positions after college. He said the college had a good track record at finding students jobs post graduation.

4:07 When the department chair talked to him about these opportunities, the first thing he said was “You know, I’ve looked around and nobody wants a colored reporter”

4:11 This set Clint off on a new path.

4:20 He knew he could write well. He had already been doing this professionally for several years.

4:46 This made him wonder, “why would somebody who has the talent not be able to get a job? Why would classmates – who were less accomplished – and not black or Hispanic getting jobs?

5:06 This set a research agenda for Clint.

5:16 The ironic part, Clint says, is that once he started in higher education, suddenly he started getting offers from newspapers. Even broadcast stations.

5:45 But by then he had his career set in education.

5:55 However, Clint would work at some of these places, like AP, during summer session, or he would take a sabbatical

6:10 His career had been established because he had been denied.

Background questions

6:18 Clint went to high school in LA at Fremont high school.

6:24 He graduated in 1961

6:31 At Fremont at that time, Clint’s graduating class had 640-something students, 70 percent African American, 25 percent Latino and the rest white.

7:02 Clint says, Fremont had a decade earlier, been an all-White school. But “the flight took place” and minorities, Clint says, became the primary population at that school.

7:25 While there Clint says he had a number of Latino friends and they all saw themselves in the same boat.

7:58 He had an “inborn affinity for an understanding of that [Latino] culture”

8:20 It was an excellent preparation for when Clint would meet Felix Gutierrez.

8:50 Clint says his parents rarely talked about the status of African Americans in the United States because “a lot of it was obvious.”

9:00 Clint read the black press – he knew the issues and what was going on.

9:10 His father encouraged him to get involved at an early age.

9:14 His father told him to make sure he voted and even took him to the polls

9:24 That, Clint says, was his introduction into the political side of things.

9:33 His father, as a cartoonist in the black press was tackling those issues

9:37 Prior to the Watt’s riots, the relationship between the African American community and the Los Angeles police department was tense.

10:08 Even now, Clint says, events like the Trayvon Martin case is reminiscent of the times he grew up in (“It’s not a lot different”)

10:19 Clint says it’s interesting that someone like him who came from a middle-class background, had never been in trouble, but was still “hassled by the police.”

10:41 One time in high school, Clint remembers, he started working at the Herald Examiner in LA. He was working late one night and on his way home he was pulled over and asked to get out of the car.

11:27 In college, Clint was pulled over and the officer told him racial epithets.

11:47 These weren’t isolated events. Clint says a lot don’t understand that this happens.

12:03 When the Watt’s riots occurred, Clint didn’t participate but he understood the frustrations.

12:14 You’re aware of the oppression, Clint says, just because you live in that community.

12:35 At the time, Clint’s mother was a union seamstress. She worked downtown in the garment district.

12:48 His father worked at a bank in the evenings, because he couldn’t make enough income solely as a cartoonist.

Awareness of Diversity

13:19 Clint says his family was active in NCAAP, active in church, and grew up in the club scouts. These organizations he said were to hopefully socialize one into a “midstream.”

13:54 At no time, Clint says, did it occur to him that high school was the end of his education.

14:09 It struck him that a large number of students at Fremont high school did not go to college.

14:23 Clint knew that his classmates were capable of going to college.

14:38 At that time there was tracking. Clint was placed in the college prep group.

14:47 Out of that group all of Clint’s classmates went to college.

14:55 The key moment, Clint recalls, was in middle school. Before moving to Fremont, Clint met with a counselor at his middle school to discuss the curriculum he would take.

15:30 -16:30 Pause in story due to background noise

16:29 The counselor tells Clint if he’d prefer woodshop, electric shop, the automotive program

17:12 Clint says he didn’t mind working with wood and he’d do that.

17:22 But when his parents found out they went to the school and asked why they were placing him in these vocational areas. With his test scores and other indications, Clint’s parents said he’d be able to do well in the college prep.

17:45 The counselor’s changed Clint’s curriculum.

17:51 As a kid, Clint thought woodshop would be an easier way out.

18:06 That was the nature of the schools at that time, Clint recalled.

18:12 Even if you had the intellectual capacity to do something beyond vocational tracks, you would be steered in that direction.

18:34 He never really thought about this moment until he was older and reflected on this time and how things were.

18:44 Growing up, Clint’s family didn’t have a lot of money. But there were options he said, like community college for little and work your way up. So Clint went to community college at LA City College

19:03 After LA City College he transferred to Cal State LA.

19:09 At LA City College he became a journalism major and worked his way up.

19:20 His last year there, elections for editor were held. He and another student – a white candidate – were the two running for the position.

19:52 His classmates told him that he’ll be the next editor.

20:04 On election day, Clint said that the next editor would be revealed by 1 o’clock during a staff meeting.

20:31 The meeting ended up starting late. The Chair of the department said it was a close election and that Clint’s opponent would be the next editor.

21:04 But Clint had reservations. He felt the chair’s wording was weird and that it was strange that the staff meeting was delayed.

21:10 The other students, according to Clint, were baffled, wondering how this happened.

21:18 In Clint’s mind, this was “racism at its best.” He was the only black student in his class and this was his first experience in a predominantly white environment.

21:38 The students were saying one thing, but the outcome was different.

21:53 The Chair said that since the election was so close that they would make Clint the managing editor. Normally, the editor-in-chief picks the staffs.

22:06 Years later, as Clint is working on his doctorate, he’s teaching at Cal State LA. One of his colleagues on the faculty had formerly been on the faculty at LA City College.

22:40 During lunch with Clint, his colleague revealed that he’ll “never forget how they kept him from being editor.”

23:00 The colleague goes on to tell Clint that the department had a faculty meeting and that the chairwoman told the faculty that Clint had won in a landslide. However, she was determined that there wouldn’t be an African-American editor as long as she chaired that department.

23:29 Clint never knew that, although he had his suspicions.

23:48 It’s an interesting area of study, Clint says.

24:00 He clears this up, adding: “Communication is so important. It can marginalize communities. If you don’t have a voice and you can’t acquire it in a mainstream environment, then you’re subject to whatever news they’re going to report about your community.”

24:38 The highest level of educational attainment for both of his parents was high school.

24:56 Clint didn’t concentrate on stories about African Americans.

25:05 This is because, Clint says, to be a well-rounded reporter you need to cover a lot of different topics.

25:13 So he started in sports.

25:24 There are events in sports, Clint says, that help you sharpen your journalistic skills.

25:39 Early on, Clint covered campus affairs, educational issues, etc.

25:58 A memorable story: Clint went to report on a lecture by a scientist from the jet propulsion lab. The scientist was discussing the lunar landing module.

26:15 On the blackboard were symbols, Clint knew he “was in trouble.”

(clip break)

­Other Experiences

26:41 At a conference in Houston, Texas during the late 70s, Clint received a note from the head of operation Breadbasket in Houston.

27:20 He wanted to talk to Clint because he had seen some of his research.

27:55 This man needed someone to come up with a program and asked Clint to join their board of directors.

28:16 This takes place over the period of a years

28:22   Clint was introduced and told them what initiatives and research.

29:14 All of tis happened in the 1980s during the Regan administration.

29:32 Before that time, Clint wasn’t a member of the Black Media Coalition

29:54 Black Media Coalition was a national group but it was based in Houston

30:16 The NABJ starts around 1975.

30:25 NABJ was inevitable, Clint says. Following a report, the mainstream media started hiring African-Americans into the newsroom. In doing so, they raided the black press

31:01 They were lured away with higher salaries and the opportunity to speak with a larger audience.

31:29 Clint describes this as a double-edged sword: this integration of African-Americans into white media was a major blow to the black press

32:31 The development of NABJ developed because of this integration. Black journalists were limited in the stories they’d cover, or they weren’t being promoted like their white colleagues were.

33:28 Although there was a larger number of African-American reporters, Clint said that insensitivity to these issues still continued.

33:29 This created friction amongst colleagues

34:06 NABJ became an institution in which those individual journalists could address those concerns in a collective kind of way.

34:36 At the same time the Kerner Commision asked higher education folks to put some people of color “in the pipeline.”

35:16 Everybody believed that integration was a good idea (in these higher education organizations) but no one was doing anything, Clint said.

35:26 At the local level, Clint was a founder of the BJA of Southern California, an NABJ chapter.

35:45 He was teaching at Cal State during this time. He began meeting with his black friends from area media like the LA Times and discussing these issues.

36:14 Three of them decided to start the organization.

36:20 (break)

36:36 The founders of the organization were Valerie (Clint can’t remember last name), she was a writer for the style section at the La Times; Bill Luis, a black cameraman at NBC – the 3 of them started talking and things developed from there.

37:18 They were able to get the organization started successfully and then applied to be apart of the national group. It still exists today.

Diversity and the newsroom

38:05 Clint remembers certain stories that advanced the cause of diversity in a negative way.

38:39 At the LA Times there was a black woman, and her colleagues made sexual comments about her.

39:02 Clint’s colleagues knew he wouldn’t partake in these jokes and stopped talking to him about it.

39:11 Another example, Clint says, happened at the times, too.

39:27 A story came across Clint’s desk. His story was about a shooting in South-Central LA. It was full of language implying this was gang related. But the facts, to Clint, didn’t seem to suggest this wasn’t the case.

40:18 There was one source, a cop, who believed this was gang-related violence.

40:32 Clint removed that graph from the article. The next day the reporter was livid.

41:16 Another instance, Clint recalls, occurred during a summer he worked at AP.

41:31 This occurred during the 1980s while Clint was at USC teaching.

41:38 A news advisory came across the wire saying that the LA county health department is going to have a news conference to discuss the deaths of 5 hispanics in East LA.

42:06 It didn’t suggest violence, Clint says. He then passed it on to the Editor’s desk saying this needed to be covered.

42:28 They didn’t do anything, however.

42:42 Later that day, they saw on TV, that the lead story was about these deaths, which were caused by tainted cheese found in this community.

43:24 They came to Wilson, who was on the desk at the time, and asked why this wasn’t covered.

43:33 They later recognized that they blew that story

43:49 They key thing here, Clint says, is that this happened in East LA. Any time 5 people die – for whatever reason – it needs to be covered. That’s news 101.

44:14 Days later they apologized to Clint, saying that they dropped the ball.

44:24 This mentality amazes Clint.

44:43 That experience, specifically, was very instructive because it showed Clint how things worked and why certain things are covered and certain things are not.

45:00 He hopes things are better now, but he says he doesn’t believe the Trayvon Martin story is an isolated event.

45:16 Clint mentions a movie, Fruitdale Station. It’s about a young man that’s kill by the police in that area. These events aren’t infrequent, Clint says.

45:30 Clint says that the notion that people in 2013 think this is an isolated event is mindboggling

45:57 His family didn’t talk about civil rights per se, but Clint was always told that when a cop approaches you don’t give them any hassle.

46:30 “You grow up that way – if you want to survive”

46:53 Clint says that younger colleagues were more observant of his role and status at the newspaper. Older ones, were resentful of Clint’s position.

47:23 There was a diversity role that needed to be filled, Clint says. Whether or not his boss at paper was sincere in his decision remains to be seen.

48:05 The reception generally among his colleagues wasn’t too warm, Clint says.

48:29 The Times wrote a series of stories about black criminal gangs leaving Watts to commit crimes.

49:38 The first headline read: “Marauders from South L.A. Invade”

49:47 Clint was shocked.

49:52 He says the Times spent a lot of money setting up a dummy storefront across the street from the neighborhood these reported gang members lived in.

50:08 Reporters hid inside. The idea was to notice people leaving, presumably getting on this freeway (which was referred to in print as “Nairobi highway”) to commit crimes elsewhere.

50:38 Clint wrote a letter to the editor about this, while he was still working the desk.

50:51 Clint says he was ostracized.

50:55 If something came across his desk, his colleagues would say “Clint wouldn’t want to deal with this ‘cause he thinks we’re all a bunch of racists.” These are the types of comments he received.

51:39 These kinds of stories, Clint hopes, are isolated now.

51:48 This whole thing has been a gradual process.

51:52 Clint is worried that as we get to the point where newspapers are declining in revenue and circulation, there will be fewer and fewer voices for underrepresented communities.

52:14 (quick pause due to noise)

52:29 Clint says there are fewer and fewer people of color that are representing those communities. There’s even a dearth of whites who are sensitive to these issues.

53:04 As these communities are becoming a larger part of the demographics of the United States, at the same time we see the media becoming less representative of those voices.

53:26 The interest in doing this kind of thing has peaked and we’re going down again. We’re loosing people right and left in the industry, Clint says.

Diversity and Academia

53:40 Clint got his Ph.D from USC.

54:24 For many years, Clint ran the summer programs for minority students. He started at Cal State LA.

54:45 For about 10 years he did this program. And were mainly funded by the Wall Street Journal.

54:53 They – Clint and Feliex – started with the multicultural group and as the program got larger they continued to get grants for their efforts.

55:30 The idea was to give these kids a start early.

55:33 The other issue was the de-emphasis of journalism in high school.

55:40 They were trying to fill that void at that level.

55:54 When you talk to educators, they say the main problem is there were pressures put on the curriculum to do other things.

56:09 Also, these programs were expensive. The equipment, how to print a paper – the costs added up.

56:25 At Fremont High School, Clint says they had their own print shop.

56:33 Their journalism program wrote the articles and the print shop printed the articles and the paper came out, Clint said.

56:44 The students, at the beginning of every school year had the option of subscribing to the paper – it was a means of making revenue.

57:08 The benefit for the print shop is they were teaching this craft so it all made sense, Clint said.

57:10 But not many high schools have print shops on campus so they had to find other means of printing.

57:29 That was only true in certain areas, Clint adds. “If you were in a more affluent area, you did have access to those things.”

57:55 Although there is the internet, Clint says students still need to be taught journalistic ethics, reportorial skills, what’s worth reporting and what’s not, etc.

58:05 (Break in recording)

58:19 Clint’s book is now in its 4th edition.

58:28 He’s not sure how many books have been sold, but it’s done very well.

58:43 Last he’s heard, more than 100 colleges and universities use it.

59:07 Clint says it’s rewarding because it laid the groundwork for that field of endeavors.

59:17 That helps people to publish in this area and build their portfolios.

59:32 It’s the combination, Clint says, of having a diversity standard and accreditation.

1:00:08 The first piece Clint wrote academically came out in Journalism Educator.

1:00:14 He was at Cal State LA. Clint’s research was on black journalism students. The research, Clint says reflected his experience: You have these people graduating but they’re not being hired.

1:00:53 In Clint’s research he found that students that are active on the campus newspaper had the best opportunities of getting jobs upon graduation

1:01:10 Those with internships also fared a better chance

1:01:16 But a look at the student body revealed that there were very few minorities

1:01:32 The faculty, Clint says, has a large part in that. They’re not pushing for recruitment, retention, or finding students employment post graduation.

1:01:49 Part of that, Clint believes, has to do with the fact that they’re white. “You look out for your own”, he says.

1:02:00 It occurred to Clint that they needed to get more people of color and women on these faculties.

1:02:10 There have been inroads, but it’s a work in progress.

1:02:20 That was around the time that Clint started going to AEJMC

1:02:35 Here, he met people, who were seeing the same issues in journalism he was.

1:02:48 Clint previously served on the centennial commission.

1:03:13 Armistead Pride was the chair at Lincoln University in Missouri, the prominent journalism university for African Americans

1:03:36 Pride was the first African-American faculty member in AEJ.

1:03:39 Clint read Pride’s book on the history of AEJ and wanted to include it in the centennial book (which never came out).

1:04:06 AEJ has had women almost from the beginning, but not many.

1:04:19 Multiculturalism needed to be a huge component of that book, Clint says.

1:04:38 Clint pushed for its inclusion. Others thought it was weak.

1:05:05 Clint believes there could’ve been a more concerted effort to track this information and the development of faculty of color down.

1:05:33 In 1978, there was a study of the faculty and the researcher found that as late of 1978 there 98 percent of the faculty were white males.

1:06:04 That was an astonishing realization, Clint says. The Kerner report had been out for 10 years by that point.

1:06:15 This is something that Lionel Barrel was addressing from the beginning.

1:06:23 Clint isn’t sure whether he was the second-ever black person at AEJ, but he was one of the firsts.

1:06:45 As we begin to discuss these issues of race in America, we look at the industry and point the finger, Clint says

1:07:00 Clint brings up an anecdote. He was reading an article in the Washington Post. The lead, he says, was essentially that as President Obama walks into a room to discuss race in America, all the reporters covering it are white.

1:07:28 When he comes into the room to discuss immigration, all the reporters are white, Clint says. There are no Hispanics in the room to ask questions or illuminate this issue.

1:07:52 Clint brings up this anecdote, because it’s still a problem still in the industry, but

1:07:57 Clint wonders what kind of innovative ways, if any, are being applied to bring in young, diverse people into the academy.

1:08:39 Clint uses another anecdote to illustrate a point.

1:08:48 His student, a doctoral graduate, recently got his degree. He’s an assistant professor

1:09:37 Clint was also weary of the fact that you have to do these things in the academy if you’re to succeed. Is this issue being taken seriously enough?

1:09:50 If they really want to get a diverse faculty, Clint says, extra effort will have to be made.

1:10:00 He suggests lightening the teaching load, or extra mentoring to make sure that these professors don’t get lost in the system.

1:10:22 It’s really no different than the industry’s situation, Clint says.

1:10:29 “It’s not enough to just give lip service to it”, Clint says. You can’t just hire a person and then put extra expectations on them that nobody in the organization has to address.

1:10:55 This takes extraordinary effort on the part of those in power, Clint says.

1:11:04 It won’t happen on its own, Clint says. “What incentive is there for somebody to go through all this when there’s no real commitment.”

1:11:40 These are bright people with options, Clint says.

1:12:14 These faculty members are “precious jewel”, Clint says. “You need to nurture this and help this person along.”

1:12:30 Clint’s graduate students often ask him if there will be a job for them

1:12:49 There are pressures on these students/faculty members, and Clint believes the academy needs to realize that.

1:13:05 While in graduate school, Clint didn’t have to get many loans. He could afford the tuition at Cal state and then used the GI bill to get his Master’s and doctorate at USC.

1:13:42 He was the only black student in the program. At both the Master’s level and doctorate level.

1:14:36 At Cal State LA his curriculum didn’t really center on diversity.

1:14:41 He taught news writing and reporting, history of media,

1:15:16 One of the things that attracted Clint to teach history was the fact that every history course he took never covered colored people.

1:15:41 The message, Clint says, is that these people are not important.

1:16:02 Additionally, he’s taught mass communication,

1:16:20 You have a certain student body, Clint says, and he felt it was important that they know something about their history in the industry.

1:16:33 At USC, he started his own course. The textbook, minorities in the media, became the basis for the course at USC.

1:16:47 This move was approved by the faculty. It became an elective course.

1:16:57 He also taught introductory mass communication course.

1:17:13 In this class Clint would introduce a unit on people of color in the media.

1:17:25 It was generally well received, he said. But there was always a handful of students questioning its merit.

1:17:41 At Howard, there was more of a background for teaching about people of color in communications.

1:17:57 There was already a course there called “History of the Black and White press.”

1:18:09 When Clint took that course over, he refined it to include the history of multicultural media. He wanted to be as inclusive as possible.

1:18:38 The cultural mix, at Howard, is greater than people think

1:19:03 Every couple of years, Clint teaches, an undergraduate course, but his focus has mainly been on graduate courses.

1:19:30 He has a course on the Black Press, specifically. The other courses he teaches are on pop culture and mass media

1:19:53 He also teaches a sports and media culture course

1:21:11 Clint is often interviewed by established news media, primarily around Black History Month.

1:21:25 Clint served several years on the board of the NAPA, the black press. He was the board of directors on their foundation.

1:21:47 A number of publishers will go to Clint, inquiring about the history of their paper, or if he’ll write a history of their paper.

1:22:10 He’s done a couple of NPR interviews

1:22:17 People in the community don’t really seek out Clint.

1:22:23 At USC he did more community engagement.

1:22:36 He had a couple of seminars for the community on how to deal with the media. For example, a church group would ask how they get positive messages about the community out.

The Media and the community

1:23:20 There is a distrust, Clint says, of general-audience media in the community.

1:23:33 The summer Clint worked at AP, one of the anniversaries of the Watt’s riot came up. “Wilson, that would be a good assignment for you.”

1:23:50 In doing that story, he found there was a lot of distrust, because he was representing AP.

1:24:05 It takes a while to talk to people and show them your sincerity, Clint says.

1:24:25 “I may work for the enemy, but I’m representing you”

1:23:53 Clint thinks it’s all about the readership because anything he does “is filtered through my cultural experience.”

1:25:19 There’s no question that either an editor or as a reporter, Clint decides the content that’s in there.

1:25:35 If something seems too stereotypical, Clint avoids it. He want readers to see causal things, how did things get to be this way?

1:26:09 It’s the responsibility of all reporters to be accurate

1:26:19 Years ago, Clint wrote about his belief that in many instances many well-meaning white reporters are unaware. “When they go into our communities it’s like going into a foreign venue.”

1:26:45 It’s almost like sending an American reporter, who doesn’t know any background information, to Afghanistan, and starts writing away.

1:27:02 A lot of that is subtle, but to Clint it’s fundamental reporting that his job is to present the truth as he sees it. And when you only have a part of the truth, your reporting is affected.

1:27:43 Much of the reporting is the truth, but not the whole truth.

1:28:00 That kind of perspective is the absolute epitome of solid reporting. We don’t get that if we don’t have a cultural understanding, Clint says.

1:28:38 Clint has no problem telling a source the quote he’ll use because he wants to be as accurate as possible.

1:29:03 He likes to think that almost all our reporters of color and women see things through another lens. There’s a sense of obligation to be accurate.

1:29:37 Without the Kernner Commision report, Clint believes we’d still be where we are today.

1:29:50 Clint doesn’t see any particular allegiance to the report.

1:30:01 He thinks that within 10 years of the report it became passé

1:30:16 He believes there have been other forces that have been more important, socio-cultural events that have made a difference.

1:30:33 Specifically, the movements, gay rights, issues with respect to reproductive rights. Clint says there’s been a shift in society.

1:30:58 Changes in demographics have also had profound influence.

1:31:15 There’s been – in some instances – better reporting by whites, Clint says

1:31:22 The Kerner report brought it to our consciousness, but that’s it

1:31:42 Clint uses an anecdote to illustrate his point

1:31:42 A professor once told him that ‘Americans can’t concentrate any one issue for too long. They may seem gung-ho about it, but something else will happen and draw their attention away.”

1:32:16 When Clint thinks about the Kerner report he sees it in a similar vein. It was something that struck at the communication industry, but the general population has no idea what this report means or its implications.

1:32:34 Clint believes that the initial reaction was one of embarrassment

1:33:32 It had the collective attention for a few years, Clint says, but there was no commitment.

1:33:40 The first couple of years were an attempt to fix that initial embarrassment

1:34:00 Clint wonders why summer programs for minority journalists stopped. “Are we suggesting this problem has been resolved?”

1:34:13 Clint says that some use the recession or state of the newspaper industry as an excuse: “how can we hire more people?” The irony of that, Clint says, is that some papers could’ve survived had they taken note of the demographic shift

1:34:30 In an article Clint co-wrote, Otis Chandler, publisher of the LA Times, said when African-Americans, Latinos and Asians get sophisticated enough they will become readers of the LA Times and when they become readers then our advertisers will jump on board

1:35:07 Clint doesn’t agree. “Advertisers have no allegiance to the media, only to those who can deliver the audience.

1:35:19 “If you’re sitting in the middle of Los Angeles in a sea of black, brown, yellow – all kinds of faces – and you’re not addressing the needs of those communities, you are going to die.”

1:35:50 Clint believes that if diversity “takes a back seat” then our society will be in trouble.

1:36:00 Corporate America will be the first to take notice the demographic shift, because their livelihood depends on extracting dollars from the consumers

1:36:46 Media that doesn’t change will be in trouble.

3:30 The major daily newspaper in his hometown of Nashville did a story about two competing neighborhood editors, Stuart and a kid from down the street.

3:57 When they interviewed Stuart for the article they asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up. He told them that he wanted to own the paper – their paper.

4:05 Stuart says they were amused.

4:16 When he went to college he majored in sociology.

4:24 After he graduated he went looking for a job and decided not to go into sociology. He went by the newspaper and applied for a job.

4:33 In those days, Stuart says, it’s a lot easier than it is today.

4:42 They told Stuart that there wasn’t an immediate job opening but he could apply and they’d let him know when positions became available.

4:48 The newspaper remembered Stuart from the childhood story that was written about him.

4:54 They said, “He’s the kid that wanted to buy the paper, right?” and hired him.

4:58 The newspaper called Stuart about a week before graduating college and offered him a job.

5:06 The position was a starting reporter.

5:23 The managing editor – although Stuart had wanted to take the summer off before working – said he needed Stuart to beging work the Monday after graduation.

5:28 He told Stuart that if he couldn’t take it the job would be gone. Stuart took the offer.

5:36 “I went to work like a week after I graduated and I haven’t stopped work since and that was more than 40 years ago.”

5:47 Stuart says that he loves what newspaper do now and he loved what they did then as a child.

6:10 Stuart grew up in a “city where news is very important to all people”

6:19 There were weekly papers, there were the two major daily papers. Those weren’t papers for kids, though, Stuart says.

6:27 Stuart says that he wanted to have a paper not because the other papers were for adults, but because he wanted to be involved in “this enterprise of gathering information.”

6:50 The idea, Stuart says, was to be the first to know about things in his neighborhood.

6:57 The inspiration, Stuart says, was the desire to get the news first and disseminate it.

7:07 Stuart shortly realized that despite how good the local papers were, there was still news that they couldn’t cover.

7:17 They didn’t have enough people, time, or they just didn’t know about things.

7:25 Stuart wrote about the things he thought should be in the paper.

7:37 He had news stories in it, he had a friend make cartoons for the editorial page, entertainment news, a gossip column, a music column – it was hyper-local news, focusing on his street.

8:13 Stuart did that for 3 years and it evolved into a really good following.

8:23 Stuart’s rival editor, who lived at the end of the street, took care of his end of the neighborhood.

8:30 “It was growing on an innate feeling that there’s more news out there and I want to tell about it.”

8:45 Stuart gives an example of the kind of stories he’d write. The hospital in his neighborhood was going to expand and build a new wing – he wrote about that.

8:51 There were back-to-school stories.

9:01 He had a fire-prevention week story.

9:06 It was “nice stuff”, Stuart says, that he found interesting as a young person.

9:37 His early endeavor was “ a reflection of what was going on around the neighborhood – it was important.”

9:45 Stuart called it “The Neighborhood Times”.

9:50 He named nicknamed the paper “TNT” – after the explosive material, a reference to the Cold War Era, Stuart says.

10:26 Stuart wrote some of the stories, but he also relied on his neighborhood for help. Older people in the area helped Stuart with cooking columns or secretarial tips columns and kids his age wrote the gossip and music column.

11:10 Whenever these people didn’t have time to write, Stuart would write it.

11:18 He would then type it up on stencils and would have it printed at printing department at the hospital, who Stuart had befriended.

11:33 He would charge Stuart a dollar or so for 100 sheets of paper

11:38 Stuart would write for a couple days, sell ads for a couple days, then print on a Thursday or Friday and distribute the paper.

11:50 Stuart says that at some point his paper gained popularity and he reached “national circulation”

11:59 “National circulation” included all of Stuart’s relatives across the country.

12:43 Stuart says his innate feeling to cover and disseminate the news was because he “must’ve been nosey”

12:47 “I liked reading the paper…I just thought that newspapers were cool because they talked about stuff and I liked to talk about stuff.”

13:10 Stuart read many newspapers growing up, including The National Tennessean, The Banner, Life Magazine.

13:40 Stuart got these at the library. He was a paperboy and “threw” the Banner so he kept a copy for himself.

14:04 Stuart goes on to list several more newspapers and magazines that he read and that were available to him.

14:48 The main thing, Stuart says, is that they all had something new and different.

15:14 There wasn’t a particular theme or topic that Stuart enjoyed the most. He “liked it all”

15:30 A lot of things, Stuart says, you learned as you went. “You started off saying I want to know what’s in there, and then you start picking and choosing.”

15:46 For Stuart some of his disinterests included sports. He liked science, and politics. He wasn’t a big culinary enthusiast, he adds.

16:25 There were things that were important, Stuart says, that he may not have had an interest in, but others did.

16:42 Stuart says he learned a lot about the importance of the skillsets that were described in his columns, such as cooking and typing.

17:22 Stuart’s mother was a “big reader”, his dad read Western fiction and the paper. But they weren’t “consumed with reading” – it was jut a part of their routine.

17:56 Radio news was marginal in those days, Stuart says.

18:07 Television was a half hour a day. No noontime newscast, or evening news. Stuart said he had 3 stations: NBC, ABC, CBS.

18:30 Stuart says that the 30-minute newscast only allowed for so much. The news generally included sports, weather, and regular news.

18:46 Eventually, Stuart says, more and more stations began having newscasts, what they called “rip and read”

18:55 Stuart says they were called this because on the FCC mandates you have 5 minutes of news every hour if you were a certain category of station.

19:05 According to Stuart, everyone had news. They might be “ripping and reading” Stuart says, but they had news.

19:14 That’s important, he continues, because you grew up in an environment of being informed.

19:41 Stuart says you couldn’t listen to one station all day long. “You had to get some information on which to make decisions about things. And that was cool.”

20:04 Stuart says that he learned that “gossip is valuable”

20:15 “Even the smallest information you have – that’s a story.

20:25 You also learn, Stuart adds, that as a newspaper editor or publisher you have a lot of power, you have a lot of responsibility.

20:52 In TV you learn the same thing, Stuart said.

20:54 “You’re reaching thousands of people at one time. It’s a very delicate and fragile responsibility.”

21:48 Stuart says that when you have only a certain number of people on the staff you can’t cover everything.

22:24 A lot of publications couldn’t cover everything because they didn’t have the manpower, Stuart says.

22:33 Another reason is that as a news organization you make a judgment about what’s important and what needs covering.

22:42 A lot of times you make a judgment that reflects your history, what your interests are, etc.

23:05 This is why, Stuart says, that broadening the ranks of newsmakers became so important.

23:15 News organizations soon realized that they weren’t covering the whole community; they weren’t covering people of color, they weren’t covering poor people, women, etc.

23:28 As these organizations open their mind to what’s important, Stuart says, then you’ll start seeing things that weren’t being covered.

24:30 Stuart says he was too young to recognize that they local papers weren’t covering these issues.

24:40 There were a lot of social changes between when Stuart was a kid and when he began working.

24:52 It’s then, he says, that he realized what the issues were

25:13 Stuart offers an example of how he understood news as a kid and as an adult

25:17 Nashville had a lot of colleges and the paper had a “vibrant” sports section

25:43 You realized after a while, Stuart says, that some of the black colleges were only getting a couple paragraphs worth of coverage – even in their winning season.

26:05 Clip abruptly cuts

26:33 Stuart says that American Airlines – the major airline servicing Nashville – had a strike coming up. This kept him busy
26:44 One time, he went to the airport and noticed a factory that was making the wings for what was then a type of plane, the jumbo jet.

27:14 This inspired Stuart and he went back to the paper saying that he’s found his beat: “a combination of transportation and aviation”

27:29 Although reluctant at first, the paper allowed Stuart to work this beat. He ended up writing at least 2 front-page articles a week for the next several months.

27:50 Stuart says he had to learn how to write newspaper style first and had to find his niche. “You had to figure out a niche, this is yours, aviation and transportation were mine.”

28:13 “Those little things,” Stuart adds, “were important, teach-ful moments that helped me get focused as a journalist.”’

Diversity in the Newsroom

28:53 Stuart was the first full-time black news reporter. There was a part-time black religion writer and one full-time black person running the photo lab.

29:12 “It was a diverse as you were going to get in 1968”

29:33 Stuart says there weren’t any problems that came up in the newspaper

29:38 The problems that Stuart had were “external.”

29:47 Stuart had a problem with the police department. He realized that the speech they used when talking over the radio was antiquated, “they were stuck in the 50s and before.

30:29 Stuart went to the Police chief and asked them if they still used the term “colored.”

30:40 By then, Stuart adds, they were being called “negroes.”

30:50 The police chief was hesitant to believe Stuart, asking if he had research to back up the claim that they didn’t want to be called “colored.” So Stuart started a survey.

31:09 Stuart then did a survey, asking members of city council and civic leaders of the black neighborhood.

31:18 He took the survey back to the chief. But Stuart doesn’t think it every changed anything.

31:35 Stuart says that the paper was very supportive.

31:38 What the paper wanted, Stuart said, was people – regardless of sex or color – who were in to journalism, who had spark, who could go out and do things.

32:06 “What I also learned was that if they gave anybody hell, they gave everybody hell.”

32:26 It didn’t matter who you were, Stuart said. “If your stuff was bad, your stuff was bad”

32:32 When Stuart realized that the structure of checks and balances on people wasn’t limited to race or sex, he saw that the newspaper had a high standard of productivity and expectation.

32:57 The newspapers commitment to journalism was greater than any discriminatory practices.

33:16 Stuart watched a couple people who got one-day dismissals because they weren’t reporting well.

33:46 “It wasn’t a double standard or triple standard or a black standard or a white standard – it was a standard for journalism and you had to be good at it.”

New York Times?

35:44 At the times, Stuart says, there was a high standard as well. What you didn’t know you had to learn fast

36:21 They were a superbly edited newspaper, Stuart adds. “If you work with them, they worked with you.”

36:57 The level of diversity at the Times was about the same as the Tennessean

36:59 Stuart says this is because newspapers were two mindsets 1) they were going to find journalists or 2) they were going to find untrained people and teach them journalism skills.

37:36 No one is really qualified, Stuart said, adding, “the question is are you ready for the challenge?”

37:46 Stuart says that news organizations were going to have much more luck in finding a successful reporter if they looked for spark and drive – not color or sex.

38:09 The Times was looking for people ready for the challenge.

39:08 Stuart, however, does say that there were plenty of times when diversity needed to be addressed in the newsroom.

39:13 There were two lawsuits against the New York Times, Stuart says, both about hiring women and minorities.

39:22 Both lawsuits looked at the number of people being hired and salary discrepancy.

39:36 “They were at points in time for the Times that you could use that boost of attention to keep doing progressive things – not because it was the law, but because it was the right thing to do.”

40:14 You don’t find many people saying that today, Stuart says.

40:28 When Stuart got in the business he says there was a passion to change things.

41:01 Stuart says that could be said of all the places he worked. “In that era it was the time to do the right thing.”

41:29 You had degrees of moving forward

41:41 You could identify the different paper’s ideologies, Stuart says, by reading them for a couple weeks. What are they covering? What are the editorials saying? What kind of columnists do they have?

42:25 Stuart says that to “you wanted to make sure you had a complete report” when reporting.

42:36 His report would be diverse when it needed to be. He didn’t ignore anything.

42:50 “You got to remember there’s a lot of discrimination that’s active and there’s discrimination that’s passive.”

42:55 He says that a lot of discrimination that was before his generation was passive.

43:02 A lot of discrimination was active, too. Stuart says that you could find a lot of newspapers – primarily in the south – that actively didn’t cover.

42:19 “That was a reflection of who they were as an institution”, Stuart says.

42:25 Stuart saw influencing diversity as part of his job. “My job was not to go out and make sure the race news got covered, my job was to make sure that the news we covered was inclusive.”

43:38 Stuart says that it’s a sematic difference, but that it’s a very important one.

43:41 There are some things, Stuart says, that he would find that he would want to be covered that wouldn’t be normally.

43:55 Stuart gives example

43:55 Stuart says that if he’s writing a story about the demise of the old military-related retiree clubs, historically you would write about the white club. But he says he would find the Black club and include the two American Legion Clubs together.

44:23 It’s a subtle shift in what you’re doing, Stuart says, but you’re still writing about the same topic.

44:46 Across the South, Stuart says that there were a couple of teacher associations. There was the white one and there was the black one.

45:12 De-segregation happens and these two organizations dissolve and unite into one. But the merger occurred differently on both sides, Stuart says.

45:25 In some of them “all the black structure would disappear” and blacks would just be members they wouldn’t be leaders.

45:35 In others you would find that blacks were merging as leaders or in some higher capacity.

45:41 In writing about this simulation, Stuart says, you would focus on the shortcomings of the mergers, e.g. people aren’t paying dues. Race, Stuart says, adds “a whole new layer of discussion.”

Journalism education

47:20 Stuart first got started with journalism education in the 1970s. At this time, he says, there was still an effort to accelerate the pace at which they were bringing people of color into the newsrooms.

47:39 Several programs emerged out of these efforts. One was by the Ford Foundation out of Cornell University in New York. It eventually moved to UC Berkley.

47:55 It was called the Summer Program for Minorities in Journalism

47:57 Stuart says you would recruit about 15-20 college graduates who wanted to be journalists and you would bring professionals in to mentor them about 6 days a week, 8 hours a day.

48:18 The idea was to teach the students in about 8-10 weeks what they would normally learn in 1 year in a newsroom.

48:25 This is where Stuart got started in journalism education.

48:46 By this point, Stuart had 12 years experience in journalism.

49:07 The mentors would teach how to structure a story, how to report it, what the ups and downs are of doing so, ethics, writing style, etc.

50:01 These students, Stuart said, needed to figure out what a reporter does. Which he says is to find people, go to situations, and get them to talk. The second part is to write it.

50:42 Nowadays, he adds, you find that too many reporters – particularly television reporters – you find that you’re told what a source says, but never hear from them.

50:56 “Your job, truthfully, is to facilitate people telling the story.”

51:19 You need to tell their story effectively, coherently – in either long form or briefly. Stuart says that a lot of what the students wanted to know is how to do that.

51:30 “You got to ask questions”

52:39 Stuart says that the program taught these students how to report and in the process of good reporting “the adjectives will provide themselves”

53:24 We’d also teach them to learn that “they’re not important, the story is”

54:18 It’s the philosophy of being inclusive. You can’t just say you’re looking for the truth, Stuart says, you need to be looking for the facts – the truth will emerge.

55:50 Stuart says that the questions that the program’s students asked (about diversity) were generally expected.

55:55 “’I’m going into an all-white newsroom. What do I do?’ and my answer is pretty stupid, ‘be a reporter.’”

56:02 Stuart says he doesn’t want to inject more skepticism, or self-intimidation into your thinking before you get there.
56:20 If you’re not productive, if you’re not good, they’re going to target you, Stuart says.

56:25 Stuart says that thinking that they’re picking on you because you’re black is the wrong thinking.

56:35 He says that’s because your work may be sloppy. “There’s a lot of reasons they don’t like you and race is not the main one.”

56:50 Stuart says he’s worked with people who were racists.

57:14 Stuart says that sometimes when you can overcome the other reasons that they’re picking on you, the race factor will disappear.

57:41 “You can’t play the race card over and over again when you’re not producing up to speed, when you’re not carrying your part of the load.”

59:19 Stuart says that the main thing you need to understand about teaching journalism is that the people you’re teaching aren’t dumb just because they don’t know what you know.

59:32 By the same token, Stuart says, you need to understand that people that have been here longer than you know more.

59:46 Stuart says he was interviewing a student who wanted to be a sports writer. He gave him a name-recognition quiz, tailored for sports. The student failed it.

1:00:14 “That doesn’t mean he’s dumb, that doesn’t mean he’s stupid – it does mean he’s not qualified, but he’s ready for the challenge.”

1:00:29 Stuart says that if he spends time working with this student on his knowledge gap then he’ll be ready in a couple years.

1:01:06 “So when you’re teaching you have to understand that you’re going to wind up with a mixture of people who just really are late. There’s lots that they don’t have.”

1:01:26 If you can find someone who wants to learn, then share your knowledge with them, Stuart says.

1:02:14 Stuart tells an anecdote of a graduate student.

1:02:25 This student had to take a math class. And she said in the middle of class, “I’m not here to learn math, I’m here to cover politics and government.”
1:02:47 Stuart says she missed the whole point. “Wherever you are – politics, entertainment, science, health – it’s money.”

1:03:19 Stuart says that this student was too narrow in her thinking of what a journalist does.

1:03:40 Stuart says that he meets a lot of people in college that want to be entertainment writers.

1:04:00 But, Stuart says, what happens if they star gets in trouble? You need to know how to write a court story, follow their arrest procedure, etc.

1:04:41 “Will you lose the story once it goes to page 1?”

1:05:52 “It’s so important to write about the whole story. We’re talking about inclusiveness – that’s the whole story.”

(switching SD cards)

The News Industry Today

1:07:06 Stuart says that overall the role of diversity in newsrooms has cooled off. The economy, Stuart adds, has also contributed to this

1:07:26 The enthusiasm of journalism is not present today, Stuart says.

1:07:40 People still say the right thing, but we don’t see them doing the right thing, Stuart says.

1:07:55 In that respect, Stuart says, diversity may be important, but how important it is to the people has come down a few notches.

1:08:09 There’s no one making noise about it, Stuart says.

1:08:18 The consequence of this is that the newsrooms will regress to where they were years ago.

1:08:30 Newsrooms that were once making progress in bringing diversity to their ranks and no longer doing that.

1:08:49 You don’t want this to be a fluke decade or era, Stuart says, in regards to diversity efforts, but that’s what it’s become.

1:09:52 Media owners still have a lot of money left, Stuart says, and they need to invest in people of color.

1:10:06 There are a lot more companies now moving online and social media, Stuart says. And he hasn’t seen a serious effort there to bring emerging people of color into these areas

1:10:44 “The same effort you had for print and broadcast 30 years ago, 40 years ago, you need to have that same presence today for emerging media – and I don’t see it.”

1:11:43 Stuart says that we need to be straightforward in asking for more people of color.

1:12:01 We want a broad array of meaningful programing aimed at a broad audience.

1:12:10 If we don’t get the consumer giving us feedback, Stuart says, then the people “running it” don’t realize that they’re missing anything.

1:12:32 If you hear more people complaining, then you’re going to hear it, Stuart says.

1:13:06 The reader, the public may need to wake up, Stuart says, and say something and the newsrooms will respond and “get their act together”

2:56 interest in math didn’t “match up” once he got to college.

3:05 He witnessed protests to Vietnam War at University of Puerto Rico and what he saw personally differed from the media accounts.

3:25 These differences caused him to say: “There’s something wrong here – why?”

3:37: He excelled in the area of social sciences and decided to explore media

3:52 During his last year of college, the university introduced the master’s degree in public communication.

4:05 He was one of the first 33 students to enroll in the program at the University of Puerto Rico

4:15 At this point he wanted to be a journalist, he wanted to write about journalism.

4:17 He worked at the San Juan Star as a copy boy. Because of this position he was able to do some freelance work for the SJ Star.

4: 29 Here he also witnessed the lifestyle of journalists in the newsroom and realized that wasn’t him.

4:43 At the end of his master’s degree he started weighing the options of a Ph.D in communication because he wanted to do research about media.

4:48 He was admitted to the University of Wisconsin at Madison

5:09 His work has been a “social science approach to the field”

5:54: As a Puerto Rican in Puerto Rico, he was the majority; only minority in political beliefs.

6:10 He wasn’t aware of being a “Latino or Hispanic” until he had to fill out forms and felt “that’s the closest category – I’m just a puertoriqueño.”

6:35 (more on Vietnam protests): The experience of the protests and then reading the newspapers the next day is one that told him there was something wrong with the system and how stories are covered, their political meaning.

7:33 Until that point he was apolitical, but those contradictions alerted him and urged him to study that.

His Studies

8:00 His studies at Wisconsin were directed with his desire “to understand the political economy of the media system of Puerto Rico.”

8:13 He wanted to understand the decision why the decision makers in Puerto Rico, in terms of news construction, did what they did.

8:42 Expanded his research to include the political economy of not only Puerto Rico but Latin America.

8:48 Another turning point in his decision to continue his communication studies was an international conference in San Jose, Costa Rica, where “the most progressive minds of media in Latin America” were meeting.

9:45 He was beginning to understand how media, politics and the economics work together.

10:01 At Wisconsin, his studies were a challenge because the university was very much a social science empirical oriented university and school of journalism

10:16 He did the coding for a study on Hispanics in Chicago and was allowed to do studies on this data, which would eventually become the basis for his dissertation.

11:44 The body of his research was new and pioneering – he was supported to continue his efforts.

12:12 His first job was at the University of California Santa Barbara where he learned what it meant to be a professor. By 1992 he began work at UT Austin.

12:20 At the time he had no intention to stay as a professor in the United States.

12:29 He wanted to go back to Puerto Rico because part of his studies had been funded by the University of Puerto Rico presidential system.

12:42 As he finished his studies and began working, the political power in Puerto Rico shifted form center to right wing. The president of the university system, Federico found out years later, didn’t want any more pro-independence professors in the school of communication.

13:11 As much as he applied and tried to get back to Puerto Rico, he never got a positive response from any university in any system in the country.

13:29 While at UT he did the first study on the political economy of the media system of Puerto Rico.

12:45 He continued his interest in Puerto Rico and developed the study of Latinos in media in the United States in all branches, children, politics, etc.

13:58: The third branch of his interests became race and media relations in Brazil. He performed these studies with support from the LLilas office (Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies).

15:52 While at Wisconsin, he realized that there were two emerging tracks on Latino Media studies were: The ownership and history of Spanish media in the United States and

16:33 Overall there were very few studies on Latinos and media.

16:56 There were hardly any studies, Federico recalls, that connected the use of media and political knowledge and opinions and behaviors among Latinos.

17:17 There had been studies about the use of media and politics, but the research wasn’t quite aligned with Federico’s overall research goals.

17:59 Still as of today, there are a lot of studies that look at history, ownership, use of media, and now there’s content analysis of films, TV shows and print

18:26 There’s still a sizeable gap in terms of survey research that connects use of media and knowledge.

18:44 An area he’s developed is emergency communication, how people who are not English-speakers understand there’s an emergency.

18:55 There’s a huge gap in terms of policy, knowledge and implementation for Latinos who are primarily Spanish-speakers.

19:09 Federico had to find the gaps that had not been developed and then explore them – at Wisconsin it was all beginning. Now there’s an explosion of literature.

Diversity at Wisconsin

20:11 At Wisconsin he had the blessing of open-minded professors who allowed him to engage in the field of work he was interested in, but there wasn’t a professor who could teach him what he learned about in Latinos and media.

20:41 Diversity at the time meant Blacks and Whites. 

20:44 There was a sense of awareness, but not as much as it is today, recognizing changing demographics and the growth of Latino populations and their media.

20:53 Some of his professors at Wisconsin weren’t aware of these populations and their media.

21:07 There were, however, professors that guided him to literature.

21:12 While at Wisconsin, he was supported to engage in this fledgling field

22:44 In the time he’s taught, there’s been a dramatic change in the field of communication. There’s recognition now of the demographic shift.

22:54 There’s a need to embrace research in these arenas.

22:57 One of the contributions to the change has been the recent graduates who became professors and studied in this field.

23:49 These graduates have populated this area, doing research and engage in teaching others.

23:57 What is still lacking is the institutional higher level decision makers who validate and support this work.

24:11 Even at UT Austin, the school of journalism has Latino professors but there isn’t a whole track dedicated to the research of getting a Ph.D in Latinos in Media.

24:31 The department of radio-television-film had an interdisciplinary concentration of diversity and media. But didn’t have the research to go with it.

24:42 The college of communication has not had, developed and promoted an integrated Masters and doctoral program to attract, train and prepare future researchers in the social science of communication.

25:08 That is missing still.

25: 10 In these 30 years, the studies, the content analysis, the history of these works is growing.

25:25 Kent Wilkinson – not a Latino – has branched off and done similar studies and is now a director at Texas Tech.

25:50 It’s not just a privy for Latinos or other minorities it’s still a lack of institutional recognition of the value of these programs.
26:08 At the undergraduate levels there are courses here and there but there isn’t an institution dedicated to this research.

26:56 A Senior professor at UC Santa Barbara told Federico’s student that here Latino studies was a dead end.

27:17 This, Federico says, implies that not only were this student’s efforts not worthwhile, but neither was Federico’s.

27:23 UC Santa Barbara has yet to hire another Latino professor who can engage in these studies, Federico says.

27:55 The decision makers there haven’t recognized the need for it.

28:03 The institutional, high-level effort to make change is not there.

28:11 At UT, the environment was more supportive.

28:21 Federico left to New York temporarily, returned to UT, and was told by the key decision maker of the radio-television-film chair department that “that Latino stuff you do is not a priority here anymore, so I’m not going to hire you.”

29:24 He then moved to Texas State University.

29:35 Within a few months he developed a program that became the Center for the Study of Latino Media and Markets. It flourished for 5 years.

30:01 Support dwindled and wasn’t as strong as it needed to be for the center to survive and to keep him there.

30:10 Now at Kent State University

30:26 In 1992, he proposed to school director at UT a program – for the college – to develop Latinos and media issues. The dean at the time told him, “that’s not relevant here.”

31:07 When he moved to Texas State, he updated the proposal and within a year he had the center.

31:20 It depends on the decision makers, he says, who are either open minded or not.

32:16 Some of these decision makers don’t have the capacity to value these programs because they were educated in a narrow field, in which Latinos weren’t a topic.

33:00 It’s not part of their radar, of their value system. It’s other.

33:15 Federico says, in 30 years the demographics have changed, the media have changed, the political power of Latinos has been demonstrated and there is a different mindset.

33:42 Given the changes, the need for a professor who can teach the social science of Latinos in communications isn’t a priority, he says.

34:15 The perspective may be that what they’re doing is good enough.

34:54 The one university that comes close to having these programs/institutions is the University of Urbana- Champaign.

35:21 There’s still the need to enhance – at the college level, at the university level – an integrated effort to study these populations, their media and their effects.

37:01 Federico has seen that 1/3 or more of the applicants – people who have earned or are about to earn their Ph.Ds – are people with Asian backgrounds in their names.

37:26 Federico hardly finds a Latino name.

37:40 He says we haven’t done a good enough job to develop, at the high school and undergraduate level, degree programs and interest in Latino media studies. The same goes, he says for other ethnicities.

38:10 Even though there are Latinos engaged in graduate-level education, they are not in the social science and statistical analysis.

38:43 Statistical skills are a necessity for this field, which may not available to many Latinos.

39:15 Federico says he believes that those – namely Latinos and African-Americas – who lack these skills are encouraged to become teaching assistants.

40:03 What’s missing, Federico says, is the need to purposely recruit and train the minorities that don’t have those skills but have to be trained to get that knowledge and go into the research field.

40:49 It’s a cycle that can only be broken by training these specific students who are underprivileged or understudied.

41:00 They then can become future publishers and do training and recruiting for future generations.

41:31 He wants to emphasis that there are individual efforts; there are people who recognize the need to understand Latino/African-American populations.

41:53 Rarely will you find an institution that will incorporate this as part of its flagship.

42:35 We need doctoral-level classes that teach the research on the political economy, history, on the uses, on the content analysis, on the effects of media on diverse populations.

42:48 We need more than just a “catch-all course.”

43:00 (Siren in the background, interview stopped for several seconds) (ask maggie about this part)

44:58 The interesting thing about studying race in Brazil is that the leading scholar is a white Italian (heritage) Brazilian woman.

45:34 This professor’s students, who have graduates, are now the ones teaching these issues in Brazil and teaching the next generation.

45:45 They are, however, behind in the national recognition for the need to enhance and teach these issues. It’s an incremental process as it is here.

46:20 Most of the studies he’s familiar with in Brazil are content analysis on how the media has treated race issues.

46:56 The reason for Brazil being behind in is there’s an ideology that there is no racial differences. The reality, however, is that there are major differences, Federico says.

47:33 Still we have a gap in people who are trained and can train others to engage in research in this arena.

47:51 For too many years, Federico says, it was assumed that racial issues were minority issues in passing.

48:02 Some of the first academics writing about this assumed that minorities emigrated with very little knowledge of the U.S., learned about it and left their old cultural values behind – which Federico says is old hat.

48:30 Latinos – and other groups – hardly ever assimilate, they adapt. It’s a sum game. These groups learn about U.S. culture and learn about their heritage.

48:54 The term Federico uses to describe this is situational ethnicity

49:21 It’s not a linear process of leaving behind old culture, taking on new culture.

51:06 Some recognize that there’s a problem.

51:56 Study after study makes it evident that there is a problem in the underrepresentation and the misrepresentation of Afro-brasileros in their media.

52:16 Federico wants to aim bring this research to the decision makers to press the need for change.

52:44 He doesn’t think there’s a need for that much individual research in Brazil to figure out that need.

52:58 Negative images cause harm to the stereotyped individual and to the general population that assumes incorrectly who and what those “others” are.

53:13 If we can get that research to decision makers in advertisement, in television – there will be a great leap forward, Federico says.

53:51 It’s not just enough to say there’s a need bring minorities into the school of journalism, there needs to be a systematic effort.

54:03 This is related to the quotas in Brazil, Federico says.

54:08 Federico explains that kids aren’t given the same advantages as others. He uses analogy of kids running a race, some have shoes, some have been coached and others have had neither.

55:00 He says the same applies to journalism schools and mass communication.

55:06 Years of undertraining – not lack of skill – is what hinders some students. It’s important to recognize that.

56:19 People will act when they’re pressured to do so. But part of that process to be convinced requires more background, understanding of the situation, Federico says.

56:39 Too many decision makers don’t have that background

56:58 Major decisions require money, Federico says, and money then is directed to those who they see in their experiences that are pressuring them.

57:17 One of the most recent programs that was developed form the Dean’s level is at Cal-State Fullerton. The dean recruited and developed their center, specifically to teach about Latinos and media.

57:54 There were some reluctant members of the faculty.

58:07 At this institution, dean was proponent. At others, there’s usually more support from faculty but not from decision makers.

59:00 He hopes that there’s more higher-level decision making processes, given the change in demographics.

59:25 It’s imperative for major efforts to be directed at Latino populations and media, the uses and the effects on this population and general population and other ethnic minorities.

AEJMC

1:00:29 Federico says that it was through support from AEJMC that he gained validation for the work he was doing

1:00:36 His first AEJMC conference was in 1976.

1:00:39 That year it took place at Wisconsin.

1:01:01He attended the conventions, became a member, and started to receive the journals.

1:02:05 Federico says the support he received from AEJMC members was widespread – but he wasn’t receiving this kind of support from his faculty, professors at Santa Barbara.

1:02:35 Federico was either a graduate student or a young professor when he was recruited to be apart of the minorities in communication division.

1:02:47 He was then nominated a position within that division, became a chair, and was recruited to the commission.

1:03:03 During those years of participation, Federico says two things happened: He received validation for his work and he was able to talk to (and be listened to) about the value of diversity.

1:03:27 Whether it was panel opportunities, involvement, research, it helped him on the way to get a foothold with the organization.

1:04:24 The value of AEJMC for diversity issues is twofold.

1:04:28 With its minorities in communication division, anyone that does diversity issues has an opportunity to get their work evaluated even if it’s not accepted for a convention.

1:04:49 The work is evaluated and given feedback that can contribute to the enhancement of that research.

1:05:00 For those whose paper is accepted, the conference is a place where they have full support – they don’t have to justify, Federico says, it’s a given that it is valued.

1:05:16 This networking contributes to the enhancement of the scholarship of minority issues in communication.

1:05:44 As students and scholars present their work in these other divisions (not just the minorities in communication division), then diversity is acknowledged and valued and expanded into those other divisions as well, Federico says.

1:06:29 One of the projects that AEJMC had was the journalism leadership institute for diversity (JLID). This brought together a number of minority faculty, women and minority. Federico says it often went to white women who learn leadership skills for being department chairs and deans.

1:07:22 Some applied, Federico says, and were not ready for those positions.

1:07:26 That program wasn’t funded after a time. Federico is unsure why.

1:07:49 The effort, Federico says, was directed towards anybody, but not purposefully towards those who didn’t have the preparation (“running shoes” as Federico says, referring to his earlier analogy.)

1:08:29 AEJMC should return to the JLID program and make it more sophisticated.

1:08:40 They could also then express the importance to other faculties across different universities of diversifying their faculty.

1:08:56 From there, Federico says, it’s important to also teach the maintenance, the training needed to retain diverse faculty.

1:09:55 AEJMC has changed dramatically its gender diversity.

1:10:45 In terms of recruitment of more outreach to diversity it lags behind, Federico says.

1:10:57 AEJMC has done a great job in the gender disparity that used to exist, from when it started to today.

1:11:06 In a study, Federico says, we noticed that more than half of the leadership of AEJMC has been female in the divisions and at the presidency.

01:11:34 The leadership on the gender side, primarily white women and some African Americans, has improved, Federico says. But at the “rank and file” AEJMC is “decades” behind.

01:11:59 AEJMC is way behind in terms of recruitment and retention of Latinos.

01:12:17 Federico says he would recommend a JLID program specifically for Latinos for AEJMC.

01:12:40 There needs to be a similar effort, Federico says, for other underrepresented groups as there are really way behind.

01:13:50 It’s well document that the portrayals of Latinos in the media are not what they should be. Federico points to some of his research for support.

1:14:07 Federico points to a controversy with MSNBC that’s currently going on.

1:14:18 Federico mentions member of MSNBC who dressed up with a sombrero and maracas and some liquor for a “cinco de mayo” segment.

1:14:44 The decision makers in these institutions should do better. The problem has been documented, Federico says, but they haven’t changed their mindset.

01:14:54 It should fall upon the schools of journalism, the decision makers at the schools of journalism, the scholars at the schools of journalism to bring to the decision makers in the news media the imperative for better, more diverse images.

01:15:18 Federico hopes that the decisions of these schools create substantial change and influence.

1:15:46 Now it’s time for change in the content and representation of these groups.