Newsroom Diversity: Let there be a thousand Elaine Quijanos

Veteran journalist Elaine Quijano.

OPINION

Friday night, (Oct. 30) CBS aired a segment on Asian American voters and the role they are playing in this year's presidential election as reported by veteran journalist Elaine Quijano.

The report is the latest in a series that Quijano and CBS has done in recent months on the Asian American community. Last month, Quijano hosted a half-hour CBS news special on Asian Americans and their fight against the rising tide of anti-Asian hatred. Before that, she reported on the Filipino American healthcare workers impacted by the coronavirus. 

Quijano is an example of what diversity in journalism can achieve and the importance of having an inclusionary newsroom. I highly doubt, if not for Quijano's presence and insight, CBS editors would have thought up the idea of Asian American subject matter.

As a veteran journalist with 30 years of experience in the field, I have always thought of Asian American community as part of the broader American community and the news events and issues that affect the general public, Asians are also affected.

As I became an editor, I have always tried to impart to journalists of color starting out their career to never forget their personal experiences as a person of color growing up a world dominated by white culture; that their experiences make them unique and give them insight and a perspective that White journalists don't have.

It is not enough to just become a journalist, hoping that a big important story gets assigned to you. Journalists of color need to be advocates for their communities. They need to introduce story ideas and angles missed by White journalists. They need not be afraid to be outspoken.

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The highpoint of my career were the years I worked at the Oakland Tribune when it was owned by Robert Maynard, the forward-looking African American journalist who practiced what he preached -- integrating the newsroom and giving reporters and editors of various hue an opportunity to pitch and carry out their stories.

I recall sitting in editors' meetings in which the day's  story offerings are weighed and the play they should be given: front page, section front, back page, editorial, etc. Of the 15 journalists in the room, there were only two white, straight men. Usually, I was the only Asian American present.

What was wonderful about the experience was It was not necessary to "justify" or "explain" a lot of editorial decisions because there was a shared understanding that served as a shorthand among the staff as to the importance of a story. Because of this unique environment -- unfortunately, it is still a "unique" experience -- I was able to contribute a column about the cultural importance of Bruce Lee for Asian Americans; edited a story about Oakland's Black policemen and a series of columns by Bill Wong about Oakland's Chinatown; and provided input on how these stories and columns should be presented on the front page with appropriate illustrations and headlines.

The front-page stories were often the same stories used by other newspapers across the land: stories about politics, the economy, the school system and world-shaking events, etc. The difference being the diversity of news sources used in the story. Because of the great diversity of the readership in the East Bay and it's rich racial and social milieu, it was not a big stretch. 

And justifiable.

It took months before the nation's mainstream media, dominated by the Eastern Seaboard outlets, began mentioning that Kamala Harris was not only Black, but that she was also Indian American.

To paraphrase a famous saying among journalists about local news: There's always an Asian American angle. That's the idea behind this blog, Views From the Edge, to take news of the day and make it more relevant to its largely Asian American readership.

In reality, its not an easy leap. One must be bold, but not foolhardy. At the beginning, one has to choose the subject matter and  weigh the timing carefully. Even if the "big" story gets rejected, there are ways to attain the goal of wider representation -- a kind of guerrilla-journalism -- by integrating diverse  "experts," sources and those affected by events into one's story. 

Quijano and other Asian American journalists -- Richard Liu at MSNBC, Lisa Ling at CNN, the Washington Post's White House correspondent Weijia Jiang, Fareed Zakaria at MSNBC come immediately to mind -- can and have used their positions to expose their wider audiences to the people and concerns of Americans of Asian descent. But they had to swim against the tide to get to that status of influence. 

The newsroom disparity in race and ethnicity exists across all age groups, according to a 2018 survey by the Pew Research Center. Non-Hispanic whites account for about three-fourths (74%) of newsroom employees ages 18 to 49, and they represent 85% among those 50 and older.

Put another way, racial and ethnic minorities comprise almost 40% of the U.S. population, yet they make up less than 17% of newsroom staff at print and online outlets, and only 13% of newspaper leadership, according to the Census Bureau.

So, let's applaud Quijano's efforts. The role she is playing at CBS as an incubator of ideas, pays off for the network and it pays dividends within the Asian American community and in the long run, it benefits the nation as a whole as we learn more about strangers, they become our neighbors. It's a win-win-win.

Institutional transformation is a long, hard road. It took my entire career to become a decision-maker in the newsroom and I was still being met with resistance. I was still the only Asian in the room. 

Different skills may be at play today, and sometimes metrics outweighs journalistic judgement to determine the worth of a story. In today's fast-paced, internet-centered world, it seems stories change minute-by-minute and editing occurs instantaneously, the world is smaller. Tech news outlets are rivaling traditional media publications and networks.

The Asian American community, which can't find themselves or any relevancy in the output of most mainstream media, obtains most of its news and information from the Internet, eschewing traditional media, according to a report from Nielsen. 

Change in the news industry in terms of representation, is occurring at the speed of light. It can't come soon enough. 

Let there be a thousand Elaine Quijanos.

EDITOR'S NOTE: A word of caution, this is news sprinkled with opinion. Readers are encouraged to seek multiple news sources to formulate their own positions.