AAJA: Richard Lui offers the Top 10 reasons to go to the journalists' convention

RANDALL PARK will be speaking at the AAJA National Convention next week, but even he might be upstaged if one of presidential candidates makes an appearance. 

It may not quite the long shot that it might first appear to be. Since Nevada is one of the key swing states that could determine the next POTUS, organizers hold out hope that someone from the Clinton and/or Trump campaigns will make an appearance at the AAJA confab.

Because of the presidential campaign this year, CNN's Richard Liu (in the video, above) hints that someone from  one of the campaigns will be a surprise guest.

Randall Park

Of all the campaigns, Clinton's outreach efforts to the AAPI electorate has been the most aggressive.

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for U.S. President, has already confirmed that she would attend the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) and National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ)'s joint convention this week in Washington, D.C. 

The Asian American Journalists Association National Convention will be held in Las Vegas this year at Ceasar's Palace, Aug. 10-13. It appears that the AAJA event will include more community organizations than usual and thousands of AAPI are expected to descend on Las Vegas.

The co-emcees for the 2016 Opening Reception to be held Wednesday, August 10 of the 2016 AAJA National Convention  will be Michael Kim, lead host for 120 Sports, and Michelle Yu, sports anchor and reporter for SNY.

Ramy Inocencio, anchor and correspondent for Bloomberg Television, and Annalisa Burgos, a freelance journalist with over 16 years of news and lifestyle reporting, will co-emcee the 2016 Silent Auction to be held Friday, August 12. 

Angie Lau, anchor for Bloomberg Television’s flagship morning show First Up with Angie Lau, and John Yang, correspondent for PBS NewsHour, will co-emcee the 2016 Scholarship and Awards Gala to be held Saturday, Aug. 13.

Actor Randall Park will headline the big social event of the convention, the Annual Scholarship & Awards Gala. Park will be headlining the event. He is best known as Louis Huang on the hit ABC sitcom, Fresh Off the Boat, which was the first network television show to focus on an Asian/American family in 20 years.

Besides the main events each day, there will be workshops and seminars for journalists or would-be journalists to sharpen their skills, network or seek employment.

There are only a few more hours to register online. The last day to register online for the convention will be Aug. 3, 2016 at 11:59 PM EST. After this date, registration will only be available on-site beginning August 10.

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For more news about Asian/Americans & Pacific Islanders, read AsAm News.

Media: Where are the AAPI pundits on cable news shows?

CNN had Lanhee Chen, former Mitt Romney policy director, on a panel talking about Donald Trump's remarks questioning President Obama's sincerity when talking about the fatal shootings of police officers in Baton Rouge.

FROM THE admittedly biased perspective of "Views From the Edge," diversity -- or the lack of it -- racial justice and racial inequities are some of the underlying issues permeating almost every issue in today's world.

At a time of a growing tension, when Americans usually rally around the President, GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump chose to use the time to divide the country by questioning President Obama's sincerity when he expressed the nation's sorrow at the shooting deaths of three police officers in Baton Rouge. 

On the first day of the Republican National Convention (July 18), it was a pleasant surprise to see some Asian/American faces on the CNN news panels.

Well, OK, it was early morning and not prime time, but let's not quibble ... small steps are better than no steps.

Fareed Zakaria is one of the few Asian/Americans
appearing regularly on CNN.

Not surprisingly, Lanhee Chen, former policy director for Mitt Romney, and CNN senior political reporter Manu Raju, comported themselves well against the more experienced commentators. They were on separate panels at the convention in Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena.

Their contributions to the nation's conversation brings up the question: Why aren't there more AAPI experts, educators, politicians, commentators on these news panels and interviews? Our opinions matter.

RELATED: A new journalism needed for a new America

A week ago, a coalition of prominent Asian/American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) civic and civil rights organizations united to deliver an open letter to CNN, MSNBC and Fox News -- the three largest providers of cable news in the U.S. -- asking that the networks address the persistent underrepresentation of the AAPI community in their programming.

“Networks need to ensure that Asian American and Pacific Islander voices and perspectives are heard and that issues of importance to our communities are discussed,” said Christopher Kang, national director of National Council of Asian Pacific Americans (NCAPA). “If we are invisible in the media, racial slurs and inaccurate portrayals of AAPIs will persist, but when Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are better represented--in particular, in the news--it allows for a more diverse understanding across all communities. All Americans--including AAPIs--deserve more accurate representation in our media."

RELATED: #JournalismSoWhite 

The letter from NCAPA and Reappropriate, responds to recent incidents that involve news hosts and guests who made disparaging remarks about the AAPI community on air. The letter highlights research by Media Matters that shows that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders make up less than 3 percent of invited nightly news or Sunday morning political talk show guests, even though more than 6 percent of the American people are AAPI.

Indian/American Manu Raju, senior political reporter for Politico and CNN, (left) joined a CNN news panel on the first day of the GOP National Convention.

"The profound underrepresentation of Asian American and Pacific Islander people on primetime news exacerbates the injury caused when someone like Ann Coulter uses her time as a guest of Hardball with Chris Matthews to mislabel Asian Americans with the racially charged term ‘Mandarins’, as she did last month,” said Jenn Fang of Reappropriate, an online blog on Asian/American issues. 

RELATED: MSNBC questioned on diversity

“Networks may not be wholly responsible for their guest’s commentary, but it is troublesome that they routinely enable the broadcast of offensive comments while they simultaneously deny members of targeted communities the same opportunity to respond and engage with our national political discourse,” she said.

The letter, signed by 23 civil rights and community groups, asks for a meeting with network executives to discuss representation and “recent incidents that involve news hosts and guests who made disparaging remarks about the AAPI community on the air.”

The letter says AAPIs make up less than 3 percent of invited nightly news or Sunday morning political talk show guests, even though more than 6 percent of the American people are AAPI.

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For more news about Asian/Americans & Pacific Islanders, read AsAm News.

MSNBC questioned on diversity after reducing airtime of journalists of color

Is Alex Wagner's future at MSNBC shaky?

IS MSNBC the latest poster child for #JournalismSoWhite? Rep. Luis Gutierrez thinks so.

In an unusual move, the Chicago representative took to the floor of Congress on March 2 to ask publicly and for the record: what the heck is happening at MSNBC which seems to be trimming the air time of their journalists of color.

What precipitated his question was the resignation of MSNBC television host Melissa Harris-Perry but it also was spurred by the reduction in airtime given to Asian/American journalist Alex Wagner, whose mother is Burmese, and Cuban/American Jose Diaz-Balart.  

“Last week, ... MSNBC television host Melissa Harris-Perry was abruptly pulled from the airwaves without even a chance to say goodbye” on her weekend interview program, said Gutierrez.  “NBC said they wanted a show that was more about politics.”

The congressman also mentioned Alex Wagner, one of the very few Asian/American journalists who hosts a news program on one of the national networks. She lost her weekday show on MSNBC last summer and subsequently was supposed to be in line to host another show this spring. However, last week MSNBC announced that that proposed programming had been cancelled as it shifts its efforts to covering the political campaigns.

MSNBC had to let go Melinda Harris-Perry

People close to Harris-Perry compiled a list of other minorities who've been dismissed or assigned to lesser roles in the past year. Besides Harris-Perry and Wagner, the list includes program hosts such as Al Sharpton and Joy Reid, and African-American contributors and pundits such as Michael Eric Dyson, Touré, Karen Finney and Goldie Taylor. 

Also, veteran Cuban/American newsman Jose Diaz-Balart has seen his daily show frequently bumped in favor of election coverage and is reportedly excluded from the networks coverage of the Florida primary, even though he and his show are based in Florida.

Three other African/Americans who have appeared as panelists and pundits - Janet Mock, Dorian Warren and the Rev. Jacqui Lewis - now mostly appear on Shift by MSNBC, the network's little-viewed digital channel.

RELATED: New journalism needed for a new America

Indeed, Washington Post media writer Eric Wemple noted that in 2014, there were five journalists of color hosting weekday programs from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. on the "left-leaning" network. Compare that to today, only two minority hosts remain, everybody else are Euro/Americans.

In interviews, MSNBC President Phil Griffin and Yvette Miley, the network's senior vice president of talent and diversity, say they have not stepped back from the network's commitment to presenting different faces and points of view.

"MSNBC has been a leader when it comes to diversity," said Griffin."We're in transition now, but that doesn't mean our commitment has changed. We're rebuilding, but our principles are unwavering."

The cutback of prominent journalists of color at MSNBC comes at a time when the news industry, broadcast and print, is being questioned about their lack of diversity in their newsrooms and studios.

Since the programming shakeups, there have been some minority reporters introduced but they lack the executive influence to drive the programming or determine the guests to interview.

RELATED: #JournalismSoWhite born out of #OscarsSoWhite

Filipino/American journalist Jose Antonio Vargas launched the #journalismsowhite hashtag on Twitter which trended nationally and has sparked lots of conversation about the power of diversity in the media. He is trying to fund an effort that would cover the issues that concern communities of color.

“This is not about quotas, window dressing or checking the diversity file," said Guiterrez. "Journalists of color bring a different texture, a different perspective on what issues matter and what should be discussed and debated on television.”

“The reality is that our nation has become more diverse,” Gutierrez stated, “and our television and our news media and our political institutions -- including the Democratic and Republican parties -- have not kept up.”

A new journalism needed for a new America

Jose Antonio Vargas launches a crowdfunding campaign for a new kind of media - #EmergingUS.

AS THE United States makes the rocky transition to a minority majority country we see the great institutions - political, judicial, educational, entertainment and others struggle to adjust to the new demographic because they know if they don't, they will quickly lose their usefulness and their credibility.

One of those institutions having trouble is the news media - from the way they view what makes the news down to the composition of its work force. Right in the middle is Jose Antonio Vargas, a Filipino/American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, who happens to be undocumented.

Besides becoming one of the most outspoken advocates for immigration reform because of his immigration status, he is using his journalistic skills to force the news industry to change the way they perceive the news and especially how they cover communities of color.

Recently Vargas launched a crowdfunding campaign for #EmergingUS, a news agency he believes can fill the void in covering troublesome issues usually covered by the traditional media giants. All he needs is a million dollars.

RELATED: Jose Vargas will make you uncomfortable

“I cannot talk about Black Lives Matter and not talk about the immigrant rights movement, and not talk about the LGBTQ movement and not talk about income inequality, and not talk about working-class white people," Vargas said in an interview with The Huffington Post. "All of those issues are interconnected, yet for the most part in newsrooms, they’re thought of as separate.”

"The way most of the East Coast-based news organizations talk about these issues," he added, "doesn't reflect the reality that is happening across the country."

Recently he created #JournalismSoWhite when he challenged the major newspapers to assign reporters of color to cover the presidential campaigns, especially since race and immigration are such huge issues.

"Asian people in this country are actually more immigrant than Latinos are," said Vargas, who now lives in L.A. "But how do we cover immigration? Is it because we think Mexican, we automatically think Latino, and then we automatically think the border, and then we automatically think illegal?"

RELATED: #JournalismSoWhite challenges news media

#EmergingUS was born in the L.A. Times newsroom, but after publisher Austin Beutner was fired in September, Vargas was forced to seek other sources of revenue in order for #EmergingUS to continue as a video-heavy independent news service.

The other big issue is the demographic shift in the country's population where census experts predict that Euro Americans will become less than 50 percent by mid-century. How Whites adjust to their new status is a major story that is already showing up in the Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders candidacies, both of whom draw heavily from working class whites who feel their privileges and entitlement slipping away.

From the #EmergingUS website, these are some stories that will be covered:

• Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, the co-founders of #BlackLivesMatter, who appear together on camera to describe the origins of this modern-day civil rights movement 
• Americans who explain their complex relationships to the race categories on the U.S. Census – who has a box and who doesn’t? Are the boxes we check accurate? 
• Immigrants who respond to Donald Trump’s policy of re-admitting the “good immigrants” to America after his proposed mass deportation. Who gets to be a “good immigrant,” and who gets to decide? 
• White Americans are an emerging racial minority in many parts of the country; White students became a minority in K-12 public schools for the first time during the 2014-2015 school year.

RELATED: America's challenge is learning to live with itself

Since the crowdfunding campaign was launched 15 days ago, #EmergingUS has raised 13 percent of their goal, or over $136,180. If you would like to help, click here.

For Vargas and the rest of the journalists of #EmergingUS, diversity is not just a goal, nor is it a side issue that is covered in Black History Month or Asian/American Pacific Islander Heritage Month - it's life in the new America every day. And that's what mainstream media is missing in their story selection and news judgements.

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

 

#JournalismSoWhite: Oscars' dilemma shared by the news media

THE LACK of diversity among Oscar's acting nominations has provided a lot of tsk-tsking and wagging fingers and plenty of grist for journalists and media watchers, but it has also prompted other professions to take a cold, hard look in the mirror.

Journalism has been wrestling with the lack of diversity among its own ranks for decades with little improvement to show for all its lofty intentions. The discussion about hiring more minorities in the media has been an on going  conversation limited to the industry but #JournalismSoWhite, launched by Asian/American journalist and immigration advocate Jose Antonio Vargas, has pushed the profession's ugly little secret to spill out of the newsroom and into the public realm.

I have often been the lone journalist of color in thousands of editorial meetings throughout my 28-year journalism career, which involved an ethnic community newspaper and four (or was it five?) different mainstream newsrooms under a similar number of ownership groups in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The only exception was my time spent at the Oakland Tribune under the late Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Robert Maynard, one of the country's strongest advocates for diversity in American newsrooms. He was the first African/American owner of a newspaper in a major city and he practiced what he preached. The Trib had one of the most diverse news staff in the profession. Editorial board meetings always had a wide range of perspectives where sometimes, there would be only one straight, white male in a room of 10 editors.

In the other newsrooms, most of the editors I worked with were Euro/Americans. It was hard not to notice my minority status in those meetings. Knowing that my experiences in my circuitous route to a journalism career was unlike the other writers and editors in the room, I always made it a point to offer news angles or assign stories that other editors might not have thought of. 

In news meetings, as we evaluated stories and their placement in the print newspapers, I always offered value judgements of stories that they might have passed over but which I thought might be of interest or importance to minority communities. In the diverse Bay Area, this perspective was invaluable from a business standpoint because our readership is as diverse as they come in the United States. 

It was a balancing act because I didn't want to be the "representative" of all minorities in those meetings. At the same time, I could not stand by and stay silent. "Uh, excuse me but with all due respect, ..." Kowtowing? I don't know, I thought I was being polite.

I'm not sure how the work environment is in television or radio, but in print, my minority status was hard to ignore. Being Asian in a leadership position was rare back then. Funny thing, the more management talked about increasing minority representation, compared to my time at the Maynard Tribune, the number of minorities in journalism seems to have declined as time passed. 

I hope it is different in the big city newspapers but newspapers in the suburbs, which until relatively recent have been the domain - or, should I say, refuge - of Euro/Americans remain largely white even as the suburban demographics are shifting with minorities seeking the American dream of home ownership. Today, the Beaver Cleaver neighborhoods - at least in the San Francisco Bay Area - are harder and harder to find and increasing the number of journalists of color becomes even more critical.

Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, probably the best-known undocumented immigrant in the country, opened up a can of worms recently when he tweeted the following.

Vargas, who started the organization Define American in his quest for citizenship, is a Filipino/American who came to this country at age 13. It wasn't until he was in his late teens that he discovered he was undocumented. 

He won a Pulitzer while working with the Washington Post. He revealed his immigration status in a Huffington Post confessional. Since then, he has been in the forefront advocating for immigration reform, including a documentary about his situation and a TV doc "Dear White America." 

RELATED: Jose Vargas, an undocumented American

Continuing the #JournalistsSoWhite conversation, he tweeted these queries:

When candidates for the U.S. presidency are spewing anti-immigrant hate and hurling racist  statements against Asians, Latinos, African/Americans, Syrians, Muslims, etc. It becomes critical that our voices are heard amidst all the mischaracterizations and stereotypes but sometimes - like me - one can get tired of holding up the banner for diversity.

Maybe it becomes a case of burnout when journalists of color get tired of trying to explain themselves and the communities they came from to editors and management who -- despite their best intentions to diversify their staff -- still preferred to hang out with people who look like them, go golfing with them, joke with them, and share the same values and perspective that they hold. In other words, it was never a meeting in the middle. One always had to move into their enclave, talk like them, dress like them and let the everyday slights slide off one's shoulders. 

According to the American Society of News Editors' census released last summer, the percentage of racial minorities at newspapers was at 12.76 percent in 2014. With minorities making up 37.02 percent of the U.S. population, our newsrooms are not representative of the society we live in.

For every 100 employees in the media industry, 2.8 are of Asian descent according to the ASNE survey. 

RELATED: Find out how diverse the American newspaper industry is with our interactive.

Sadly, my anecdotal observation is also true, minority percentage of newsroom employment is on a downward track, falling to 12.76 percent in 2014. A year earlier it was 13.34 percent. ASNE president Chris Peck in a press release, hailed this as good news saying the stats shows employment of minorities as holding steady. I don't know about that; to me it looks like its is getting worse.

It may be too late for the newspaper industry. Minority journalists are finding a place for themselves in the new media platforms which have younger and more daring owners who are more open to the diverse ideas those journalists bring with them. There is a fear that newspapers are the dinosaurs of media. Their inability to change and adapt to the changing demographics and technology may be its undoing.

The tech industry has been under heavy fire for its lack of diversity and opportunities for minorities and women but compared to the print media, they are light years ahead. Google, for example, said this year that 60 percent of its overall staff is Euro/American. At Facebook, only 55 percent of the overall staff is white. Euro/Americans at Microsoft make up 59.5 percent of its overall staff. (Of course those numbers are misleading because the inequities come in the board room with minorities clustered in the lower paying jobs and women in supporting roles.) 

RELATED: Asians hit a bamboo ceiling in Silicon Valley

BuzzFeed founder and chief executive Jonah Peretti says that diversity is a priority for the company. “We care about diversity for moral reasons,” explains Peretti in not to employees “but we also know a diverse staff is a competitive advantage that allows us to recruit from the broadest possible pool of talent and have team members with a wide range of experiences and perspectives.”

The cynic in me says "I've heard this song before," but maybe the online news sites may be the proving ground for minority journalists in the future. The news outlets on the Internet have the advantage of not having the historic template that perpetuates the old boys' networks. 

I like to think that there will always be a place for good journalists. Computer skills don't automatically translate to good story telling. Digging for information, getting the facts straight and writing compelling stories are skills that will always be in demand, no matter the medium.

The Poynter Institute's Kristen Hale, whose article inspired this discussion, wrote: 

"Journalists love holding people and institutions accountable — we speak truth to power. That is our job. But given our own power, are we holding ourselves accountable? #JournalismSoWhite is meant to spark conversations, uncomfortable as they may be. I would like to think, and I hope, that the conversation that was started online can move to offline conversations in newsrooms across the country (and also in journalism schools, where the new generation of journalists are being trained). One of my favorite quotes about journalism came from the playwright Arthur Miller: 'A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.' Since #JournalismSoWhite, we are nowhere close to hearing everyone."

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BuzzFeed beefs up its Filipino content

TWO RECENT hires by BuzzFeed gives you an idea why that site is so popular with Asians, Asian/Americans and other minorities.

Last month, Advertising Age, noted BuzzFeed's successful strategy of targeting ethnic groups with their very specific content:

"Asian-Americans have quietly overtaken Hispanics as the fastest-growing multicultural segment in the U.S., albeit from a much smaller base, and brands are taking notice. Combined with the fact that the median household income for Asian-Americans surpasses that of the total U.S. median income by 28%, you have a highly lucrative segment that demands to be courted.

"By publishing content aimed at specific ethnic groups such as "22 Signs You Grew up With Immigrant Chinese Parents" and "21 Annoying Comments Filipinos Are Tired of Hearing," BuzzFeed has become a destination for Asian-American voices that are fresh, funny and truthful." In order to make that strategy work, BuzzFeed knew it had to create relevant content.

In 2013, while in college, Matt Ortile started out as an editorial fellow and summer staff writer for BuzzFeed. He was given free rein to talk about his Filipino identity.

Matt Ortile

Today, Ortile, at the ripe, old age of 23, has been given the role of Buzzfeed Philippines editor.

"It's quite casual, but it's been a lot of fun producing Filipino content for Filipino audiences," he said.

But for Ortile, writing BuzzFeed Philippines  #Asianallows him to stay close to his Filipino roots.

"How I dealt with being someone of color, someone who is gay, it was just really sticking to what I knew -- finding a home in that, really learning to love that part of myself," he added.

A week before Ortile's appointment, BuzzFeed hired Meredith Talusan as its first openly transgender writer assigned to write about issues concerning that community.

EDITOR'S NOTE: In earlier versions of this post, a picture of Manish Dayal was misidentified as Matt Ortile. We apologize for the error and any confusion it may have caused.

"My goal is to examine transgender issues for BuzzFeed in dynamic and multifaceted ways," Talusan told The Huffington Post. "I think BuzzFeed is an amazing fit because they also publish in many genres, and I'm really excited to see how I can utilize as many of them as I can to give readers a really deep picture of what it means to be trans in the U.S. and the world today, while still finding ways to have fun."

Talusan, whose background is in academic and creative writing, said she believes in tackling serious issues with a certain level of humor -- what she calls "balancing social commitment with self-care."

BuzzFeed LGBT Editor Shannon Keating told HuffPost:

Meredith Talusan

"Meredith's particular worldview — as someone who grew up in the Philippines, as an academic, as a trans woman well-connected to the world of trans advocacy — will enable her to take on a wide variety of projects," Keating said.

The Philippines is a viral heaven for BuzzFeed. While only 4 out of 10 Filipinos are internet users, the Philippines ranks No. 1, with 6.3 hours, when it comes to the number of hours spent using the internet per day. The U.S. ranks 12th.

When it comes to number of hours spent on social media daily, the Philippines is tied with Argentina for the top spot.

Buzzfeed's Philippine-related stories have gone viral, many reaching more than a million hits.

"Anytime a Filipino topic comes up on a global platform, one of the first comments will always be, I'm proud to be Pinoy right? You can't help but feel so happy and proud to see your motherland on a huge, huge global stage," Ortile said.

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Asian American journalists meeting in SF this August

THE 2015 Asian American Journalists Association National Convention will be held in San Francisco this summer.

If you're a news junkie, this is a good peak into the state of the world of contemporary  journalism.

Back in the day, when I could include myself in that profession, I attended a few of the annual gatherings and found them always to be informative and fun. It's a nice to meet friends from across the region and sometimes to meet people who've read your material but we never had a face-to-face meeting.

As a journalist, you always wonder who is reading your material ... or, if anybody is reading your stuff. So to receive that reaffirmation is always a shot in the arm to get your journalistic juices flowing again.

Each time I went, I always marveled at how young everyone looked. I guess it is natural to think that for you, time stood still and everybody else aged and all these people entering the profession keep looking younger and younger.

With the state of journalism as it is: newsrooms cutting staff, more media businesses cutting payroll by preferring inexperienced J-school grads over more seasoned journalists, news content being managed by people who have no connection to their communities and there's more emphasis on being first rather than being accurate because of the 24-houre news cycle. 

I was struck by how the people who worked in television looked so good and neat compared to the scruffier radio and print journalists. Indeed, judging by the proliferation of Asian newscasters and TV reporters throughout the country, I trust a lot of those people got good-paying jobs.

Even with what might seem like a "proliferation," diversity in the 2015 newsroom, no matter what medium you're working in, is still lacking. Despite all the high-sounding words favored by news executives, it is still overwhelmingly a white media run by white-thinking corporate types. 

I imagine that these days, even the TV folks are looking over their shoulders at the new media offered by high-tech and more search engines offering their own news services, media outlets are having to compete in unfamiliar fields. At the same time, the news being produced by Yahoo, Google and their like need more than just regurgitating the work of the print and TV journalists. They need reporters and editors who adhere to the old values of accuracy and objectivity.

I always thought that it would behoove the major news outlets to use the ethnic newspapers much like major league baseball uses the minor leagues. Use the minority news outlets to train their reporters as they hone their craft. That would allow the young reporters to hone their craft and it would give the news organizations not only more experience staff, it would give them a perspective of the communities that have normally receive media coverage in most sensational situations.

However, that situation seems more and more unlikely as the bottom line continues to dominate the decision-making of media outlets. 

This year, the AAJA convention is in San Franciso, which will draw a substantial number journalists. So if you're hanging around the Hyatt Regency in August and notice a higher number of Asian Americans in the lobby and across the street at the Ferry Building, now you'll know why.

There's still time if you want to register for the convention. If you want to find out more about the convention, go to the AAJA convention page.

Whether you are a media industry veteran, new to the field or still in school, the convention is a can’t-miss event for media professionals and aspiring journalists looking to network and grow in their careers. The four-day convention includes plenary sessions, panel workshops, seminars and other activities with interactive discussions about industry and community issues. 

The list of speakers is a who's who in journalism from the TV networks to the Internet.

The convention’s Career Fair & Expo features top news and media companies, universities and journalism industry services, along with one-on-one critiques with veteran journalists and other opportunities for professional and student journalists.

I especially recommend it to the new media folks who have assaulted the mainstream media's sensibilities and changing journalism as we knew it. They are the new purveyors of news (as they see it) and who are making critical news decisions without the training, experience or judgement of professional journalists. There is so much more to journalism than just being first.

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