News & Events
Learning to live without lined paper
At a Knight Fellowships Board of Visitors dinner on Jan. 26, I gave this speech about how my year at Stanford led to Gateway California. Before my Knight Fellowship, this was a metaphor for my life – lined paper. I was good at following set guidelines and had very defined ways of seeing myself, journalism and my career. I always bought lined journal paper to write daily notes and schedules and at the stationary store, I would always wonder, who were those people who bought the blank journals? After all, the two notebooks were the same price. So for the same money, I could get lines. But during my year at Stanford, the need for lines began disappearing. I think...
Read MoreTips on crossing the language barrier
Growing up, I discovered the easiest way to get rid of someone soliciting from door to door: Just say your family doesn’t speak English. Most visitors turned away quickly. Occasionally, a church group would really persist and invite themselves in. After some awkwardness, they managed to communicate with us, even though my parents’ preferred language was Vietnamese. They used me as a translator, showed books with photos and after patiently sitting around for a couple of hours, found out that my father did speak a little English, albeit slowly and shyly. Many journalists could take some inspiration from those Baptists and Jehovah’s Witnesses who visited our North...
Read MoreCapacity crowd at Gateway’s media training
“Held our attention.” “Informative.” “Much needed.” “Awesome/useful handouts.” “Will save me time.” Those were some of the comments from the evaluations that we got back from our first media training for nonprofits. The main criticism that the 40 participants voiced? They wanted more time with us. The three-hour training seemed to fly by. Patricia Gardner, executive director of the Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits, the event co-sponsor, said she was amazed that there was hardly any “drop-off” in attendance. Often, people can’t commit to a full morning or are disappointed in an event’s...
Read MoreA Partner: Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits
Within a few minutes on the phone, Patricia Gardner of the Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits and I knew that our two organizations would be a great match. Five years ago, SVCN created an “Ethnic Specific Service Providers Network,” which has grown to 40 groups. SVCN provides training opportunities so that the leaders of these groups can increase their influence and contributions as voices representing communities of color in the area’s decision-making bodies. This is not a project born out of political correctness; it’s political reality. The majority of Santa Clara County’s population is made up of Asians, Latinos and African Americans....
Read MoreTerm “minorities” is overdue for update
Is it time to stop using the term “minorities”? The word has long been used to describe people who are not white. But changing demographics make the term outdated and oxymoronic. Consider the word usage in these stories: From the Associated Press: For the first time, minorities make up the majority of babies in the U.S., part of a sweeping race change and growing divide between mostly white, older Americans and predominantly minority youths that could reshape government policies. From KTLA-TV in Los Angeles: Not surprisingly, most of the states that experienced growth in populations of minority children are the ones where white children are in the minority:...
Read MoreMedia language: Illegal v. undocumented
Should journalists call Jose Antonio Vargas an illegal immigrant or an undocumented one? Discussions about how to refer to an immigrant who isn’t authorized to live in the U.S. have popped up periodically in newsrooms. But Vargas’ recent New York Times essay — and his stature as high-profile, Pulitzer-winning journalist — has thrust the media into a bigger role in the debate. In his essay, Vargas refers to himself as an undocumented immigrant. In a tweet last week, he noted that many people were tweeting about thecontroversial essay with the hashtag #undocumented immigrant. “Undocumented immigrant is trending,” he tweeted from his @joseiswritinghandle....
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