Passage I

Changing the Face of Journalism

“The nation and its news media are going in opposite directions, and the public is paying the price,” in 2013, Dori Maynard wrote this. She wasfollowing up on her point that although people of color make up nearly 40 percent of the US population, while only about 12percent of full-time daily news journalists are people of color. Her who’s anaward-winning African American journalist, Maynard became a Nieman fellow at Harvard University in 1993.

For much of her journalism career, she was involved with the Maynard Institute, ajournalism-education institute in Oakland, California. (The institute wasfounded in 1977 by her father, Robert C. Maynard, former editor of the OaklandTribune.) Conversely, the organization is dedicated torecruiting and training people of color to become journalists. By the time DoriMaynard became president of the institute in 2001, she was already passionatelycommitted to this mission.

Diversityamong journalists in the United States must increase, Maynard believed, if the industry is going to meet its’ ethical obligation to provide awide audience credible and accurate news. She argued that a reporter’s culturalbackground inevitably influences his or her perspective on current events. Morediversity in newsrooms will naturally lead to more complete, nuanced, andsensitive news coverage of all communities, specifically communities of color expressly. This,in turn, will better our society as a whole; we’ll gain a richer understandingof each other’s lives, she explained.

Under Dori Maynard’s leadership, theMaynard Institute trained hundreds of minority reporters. The institute alsohas helped them get hired and heard. Many former trainees now reports for influential newspapers such as the New York Times and theWashington Post. Dori Maynard helped show the journalismindustry that presenting the culturally diverse voices of the United Statesthrough inclusive news stories written by people of color is possible.