Web Journalist Blog

I can’t express how honored I am to be recognized by the Online News Association with the Rich Jaroslovsky Founder Award, joining some incredible people and friends.

While I had an idea of what I wanted to say, I wasn’t sure I would be given a moment to deliver a speech.

Once I learned I was going to have a few minutes to speak, I quickly wrote my speech on the Notes app while at the luncheon table.

Here is the text, plus some edits I failed to include.

We come to this place… for magic.
We come to ONA to laugh, to cry, to care.

The real ones know.

First, thank you to my wife and son — their support and sacrifices enable me to be here.

Thank you my friends… the ONA Board and Rich for this incredible honor. Thank you to former ONA executive directors Jane McDonnell and Irving Washington for being allies and tolerating me. Niketa, you are warned. :)

I also want to do a special shout out and thank you to former ONA staffer Jeanne Brooks, who passed away earlier this year, for conspiring with me to make this community what it is today. Sher is dearly missed.

Thank you to this community for honoring me — despite knowing my, as a friend put it, “chaos muppet” energy.

I am a misfit that often feels out of place.

But I have been blessed misfit where people have looked out for me and welcomed me into spaces.

They shaped how I carry myself today.

At the NAHJ — and the executive director and friend for decades Yaneth is here — I began to see myself in this industry.

And here at ONA, I got to be myself — my nerdy self.

Whether it is the ONA Pajama Jam or it’s BLANK.

I tell folks we need these places to remind us that we are not crazy and that we are certainly not alone.

At ONA I got onto the board and am proud of the work done there.

It put me in rooms where decisions were being made — in rooms where it happens.

And it taught me that daunting responsibility to have the courage to speak up.

We need to have the courage to say the thing that makes us uncomfortable— make even our colleagues, friends and community uncomfortable.

And yet ONA still gave me this award. Ask me former board mates.

And, in that spirit… if I may.

If you are an immigrant, please stand.

Children, grandchildren of immigrants, please stand.

If you are part of the LGBTQi+ community, please stand.

If vaccines have saved your life, please stand.

If you have been impacted by gun violence, please stand.

If you believe in giving voice to the voiceless, please stand.

Believe in comforting the afflicted and — despite the attacks and false calls of bias — afflict the comfortable with good journalism, please stand.

If you are an ally. Please stand.

Look around.

There are more of us than there is of hate.

And I want you to keep all of us in mind when you have to get uncomfortable to say the needed uncomfortable thing.

Remember us standing with you as you approach your editor — or if you are the editor.

Stand up and speak up for the use of the correct words.

It’s not racially tinged. It’s racist.

It’s not alternative facts. It’s a lie.

It’s not “politics done the right way” it is politics aimed at dehumanizing and hate.

Women’s rights are human rights.

Trans rights are human rights.

And, if you are like me, what I am seeing happening is called genocide.

We have to use the right words even when it’s involving communities we love and support and are a member of.

Use you voice, no matter how shaky is may sound.

Thank you for what you do.

Stand up and keeping doing it.

Muchisimas gracias!

Adelante!!

NOTE: I quickly wrote up this post right before a flight and haven’t really copyedited yet.

Diversity and inclusion is a challenge that often feels like an overwhelming problem that we, as individuals, don’t seem to have the influence or resources to tackle.

We commonly say “I’m not hiring” or “I don’t have money to make an impact” and all these may be true.

But, as SXSW opens PanelPicker, CES calls for speakers, and conferences like NAHJ18 and ONA18 are quickly approaching, I wanted to share some practical things YOU can do to make a difference.

1. Pitch a session! There is a difference between those on stage and those sitting in the audience, and often it’s not the level of expertise. It’s about who took the time to fill out a form and who didn’t. You are qualified to be on a panel about something you are genuinely passionate about. Invest some time to fill out a form increase the likelihood of unlocking some financial support to attend the industry conference, ranging from registration to travel and lodging.
2. But don’t make your session about diversity. I have been on countless of diversity focused panels, typically presented to a nearly empty room. My most recent one was at SXSW and that will be my last “diversity” panel. My new approach, and one that I recommend to you, is to be on the leading topics of our industry. I – like many of women and people of color – are qualified to be on panels besides the topic of diversity. And being on non-diversity related panel helps normalize that women and people of color are naturally among the experts about the topic. And, let’s be real, more people will attend a non-diversity related panel.
3. Recruit a reflect panel. If your session was selected, make sure your panelists are representative of our diverse community. Do you best to include panelists from diverse backgrounds to debunk any stereotypes. Don’t only think about gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation, but think geography, size of their organization, skill/experience level, etc. The panelists should not look all like you or share your background.
4. Panelist rather than organizer. If you aren’t the organizer, you still have some influence about who is participating in the session. Ask how diverse the panelist group is and offer to recruit someone qualified that also looks different from the rest of the panel. Often you are help the organizer out. If it is all male, I really encourage you to give up your spot and recruit a replacement that reflects diversity. This simple and powerful step really amplifies others.
5. Give away your registration. If you are employed, I highly encourage you to ask your employer to pay for your conference related expenses. And, if the conference is offering to cover your expenses STILL HAVE YOUR EMPLOYER pay. And giveaway your conference – and possibly the other resources – to someone else. Look, they were going to pay anyway and they were going to comp you anyway… why not pay it forward to someone who needs help. Everybody wins.

I have done each of these – multiple times for years. I have no money. I have a kid to fund. I am not hiring anyone. But these simple ways can have large impact.

If you truly care about inclusion and diversity in our industry – or any other industry – try a few of these tips to help make a real impact.

Please let me know if you have other tips and if you have done these too. We have more influence than we think.

Today is the last day to vote for the Online News Association board.

If ONA has ever done anything for you — led to a job, given your skills/training, connected you with a new colleague — you owe it to the organization (and the industry) to take five minutes and vote.

#GetupOffaThatThing and vote here: http://journalists.org/about/board-of-directors/board-election/2015-board-of-directors-slate/

DEADLINE IS 11:59 p.m. ET <-- Pacific folks have three hours less!

Watch my entire #ONA14 on Wearables + AR + Journalism here: http://ona14.journalists.org/sessions/wearables-ar/

My slides are here: http://bit.ly/ona14-wearables-ar-journalism

Voting will open Friday, Sept. 26, and end Oct. 14. All ONA members in good standing as of Sept. 24, 2014, are eligible to vote. More details here.

In the four years I have served on the board, ONA has gone through some significant changes. And while I serve alongside some of the industry’s best and brightest leaders, I – humbly – would like to think I’ve played an active role in the organization’s positive changes.

During my time, I have tried to truly represent the diversity of our needs as members, from different skillsets to different backgrounds.

ONA is the one journalism conference that brings diversity in digital together. Whether we do social media or data or multimedia storytelling or something emerging, ONA brings us together in the hopes of sharing our knowledge and experiences with one another. ONA believes in the strength found in the sharing of our differences.

My work reflects this core mission:

1. Teaching professors how they can be more digital, by co-teaching at Poynter’s Teachapalooza.
2. Outside of my classroom, talking to students as a keynote for Journalism Association of Community Colleges and Associated Collegiate Press conference.
3. With colleagues, recently re-launching the Diversify Journalism Project, which is on a mission to eliminate the we-can’t-find-a-digital-journalist-of-color excuse.
4. #wjchat, more than four years old, continues to bring people together to nerd out about what we do. One recent highlight was an international edition with ONA Jerusalem.
5. Sharing my work, most recently with my Glass Journalism class. No, I’m not a Glasshole. I’m a nerd that is putting on this dorky looking supercomputer on my face in the name of journalism… and sharing via Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress and IRL meetups.

What’s the point of gaining knowledge if you don’t share it? What’s the point of having access, if you don’t bring others with you? What’s the point of being part of an organization if your not actively participating?

With that in mind, I’d like to declare my candidacy for re-election.

And I’d like to call on you to do one simple act: participate.

How? Step one: vote.

I don’t care if you vote for me or for one of the other amazingly candidates are running, but please vote.

In addition to voting: Speak up.

Using your voice to express what you want from ONA is vital to the organization’s future and relevance.

Lastly: Act.

Don’t be on the sidelines simply complaining about or just benefiting from this community. Give back. In fact, take over. This is yours.

I’m asking for your vote.

I’m asking you for your voice.

I’m asking you to act.

This organization works for me. As a board member, I work for you. As a whole, this community works for us. I am proud and honored to have had a seat at the table shaping how this community grows and develops.

There is still more work to be done. I’d like to continue to help.

It was about a year that I was boarding my plane headed back to the West Coast, recharged and inspired by SXSW12.

By the time I landed, I had coded and launched this new project.

Man, what a difference a year makes.

Frustrated (and starting to get desperate) with finding partners to collaborate/experiment with, I figured I should put off the inevitable and teach myself code. I know I wouldn’t be the best coder — like I’m not the best audio storytelling or photographer — but I respected the craft and know its power.

I had been director of development for seattletimes.com where we designed and built cool shit, which was ahead of its time… and now feels… so… quaint.

In my quest for dev skills, I tried a variety of different non-journalism, code classes… from video to web-based tutorials. I, as ONA pre-conference and NAHJ conference coordinator, recruited friends and colleagues to craft custom journalism focused all-day coding workshops.

I even offered a (nearly free) all-day, intro to Python bootcamp at USC Annenberg thanks to the awesome PyLadies.

For the record, while this benefited the community as a whole, I was doing it for me. And none of it worked… for me.

But after SXSW, inspired by Codecademy‘s Code Year (even though I had given up on it like other New Year’s resolutions) and a curious user of Google+ Hangouts, I created the Learn Code for Journalism with Me project.

Yes, it’s a loooooong name. My partner-in-crime Kim Bui openly hates it. I know.

But it comes from a series of projects I’ve hung around the domain journalismwith.me.

Anyway, the idea was a simple one and the reaction to it was overwhelming. I was clearly on to something… and I wasn’t the only one trying to solve this.

Cindy Royal of Texas State University was trying to build a curriculum, Dave Stanton (who was joining two other friends and myself in launching a cooperative consulting firm) had expressed interest and I’m sure others were trying to grapple with this issue.

But, again, what a difference a year makes.

As I wait for my plane to take me back to the City of Angels still recovering from SXSW13, the landscape for this has completely changed.

There are two projects I want to point out:

First is Sisi Wei‘s Code with me project that offers weekend coding bootcamps for about $85.

Second is For Journalism, the successfully-funded kickstarter from Stanton, which will create journalism-focused coding tutorials.

Outside giving money to For Journalism and being a cross-country supporter of Code with me, I had nothing to do with their launches.

Even if their project names sound familiar, as people have point out … to be fair, my loooong title clearly had all the right words required for any successful coding for journalism project aimed to empower the community.

For my little project that is reaching its year anniversary, I didn’t have the bandwidth to make tshirts to use crowd funding.

It was just me.

Actually, it’s not just me anymore.

It’s me and my amazing cohort of determined classmates-turned-friends that still meet every Monday at 3PM PT via Google+ Hangouts since April of last year.

We’ve abandoned Code Year and have been developing our own journalism-based, project-focused coding lessons. We’re teaching each other code and hoping to share what we learn with others.

You can hear about the LCFJWM phase 2 in this View Source podcast interview or read about what I’ve learned in this post.

What a difference a year makes. And I am so glad talented people have come into this mix and found ways to address this need… in ways I couldn’t have for lack of the bandwidth or connections.

God only knows what the next year will bring, but we all know we’re going to benefit from this work.

There’s more work to be done.

A lot more.

Simply put, that’s why I am running for re-election to stay on the Online News Association‘s Board of Directors.

As I said when I first ran, I believe ONA needs to be the center organization leading and guiding our industry forward. That goal and need is as strong as ever.

A core part of my work — from teaching/training to #wjchat to Learn Code for Journalism to Tech & Tools to Horizontal Loyalty — is in sync with the organization’s mission: empower journalists to move our industry forward.

I’m proud of the work we have done in the last two years with the board. The organization has added more training, offered more scholarships, expanded its programs and has taken important steps to solidify itself as an essential part shaping the future of journalism.

But please don’t think it’s easy.

It takes a lot of work and I am fortunate to work along side with incredibly smart and passionate board members and staffers that give it their all. You have no idea. (If you see them at ONA12, please thank them for their work. Hell, buy them a drink!)

I feel that I contribute to the organization. I bring diversity — culture, age, ethnicity, location and experience — to the group. I bring my Web/tech background and experience to the organization. And I… how do I put this? I’m that guy … that one who asks tough questions to keep us honest and hold us accountable. Some of you saw that with the Patch thing. It was not a fluke. Ask my peers, they see it in our board meetings.

We face other challenges too.

As an organization, we need to find scalable ways that tap into the diversity of our members’ skills/experiences to share them and help them grow.

Web journalism is a broad term. Because we are inclusive, it’s an incredible strength for ONA. But if we don’t take advantage of it correctly, we look unfocused and diluted.

I think ONA needs to be the place that brings the diversity of Web journalism together to grow stronger together… and I’d like to continue to be at the table to make this happen.

Please help shape the future of this organization and journalism by voting.

And, if you think me worthy, please consider voting for me. I’d truly appreciate it.

Thank you,

Robert
Read my bio here

[Posting this late]

During ONA11, I was a guest on WBUR’s On Point show along with Derrick Ashong and Mandy Jenkins.

This was my first time on live air on a national show… um, and I had a cough.

The topic was Crowdsourcing And The Future Of News. Awkwardly, here it is:

[audio:http://audio.wbur.org/storage/2011/09/onpoint_0923_2.mp3]

NOTE: Originally ran on Online Journalism Review: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/webjournalist/201101/1926/

If you ask a Web journalist what the newest, important tool a news organization needs to embrace today, they’d probably say Social Media. They’re right, it’s not a fad.

If you were to ask them to make a prediction or guess where the future of technology is headed, chances are they’d say mobile. Smart phones are getting smarter, smaller and cheaper. (And, one day Verizon will carry the iPhone – I believe!)

If you were to ask me what one element newsrooms need to embrace, outside of technology, my answer is a simple one: diversity. Can we make that a New Year’s resolution?

I’m not talking about being politically correct. I’m talking about having diverse experiences and points of views that shape and literally define what is news.

I believe that the lack of diversity – gender, age, religion, sexual-orientation, socioeconomic background, politics, bus riders, cyclists, video game addicts, etc. as well as ethnicity – in our newsrooms in all roles, especially leadership ones, is one of the main causes of lower circulation and loss of general reader/viewer engagement.

Again, I’m not talking about being politically correct. I’m just saying if we are not made of all our communities, how are we expected to relate and be relevant to all those communities?

Let me give you an example:
One of my early Web specials I did in my career was the 20th anniversary of the AIDS epidemic. I was representing SFGate.com as I sat around the table with print reporters and editors. You have to understand, the San Francisco Chronicle was crucial in the news coverage twenty years before with the incredible work by Randy Shilts.

These people were professionals and I was still the relatively new kid working with that new medium.

But as they spoke, I noticed that all the stories were about gay, white males. No one talked about that the fastest growing HIV/AIDS demographic was straight, black females.

They were the pros. I was just a punk kid.

Staying quiet is one of my biggest regrets in my career. I swore no matter how awkward or uncomfortable, I had to always speak up.

That chair I was sitting in wasn’t just for me. It was for all the communities I was a part of… and all the others that I wasn’t, but weren’t at the table. I have to rep everyone. You know, that voiceless thing.

Here’s another example:
Do you remember when someone tried to reinstate the draft back in 2003? I was sitting at the morning news meeting as the draft talks began to heat up and we started brainstorming on how to cover the story.

In a room of incredibly talented and experienced journalists, the angles included talking to teachers, parents, Vietnam vets, recruiters … but I was shocked that well into the discussion I had to raise my hand and mention, how about talking to high schoolers?

The room forgot to include the demographic that was going to be most affected by the draft.

But the lack of diversity in newsrooms isn’t new. Women have been battling the glass ceiling for decades and studies, like the one from ASNE, have shown a depressing lack of ethic diversity for years.

So, why am I bringing it up?

Let me give you another example:
In a recent PEW study, it found that African-Americans and Latinos “are more than twice as likely to use Twitter as are white internet users.”

In several not-so-recent studies, they found that Latinos are ahead of the curve in embracing mobile devices and its behavior. They are more likely to text message, download music, play games and access social networking.

Yet, how come there isn’t a reflection of that diversity in those Web journalism jobs? While there is a lack of diversity in newsrooms, why is there even more so on the Web side?

The digital divide? Sure, but not the one you are thinking. Those studies show “minorities” are on the advanced side of the divide and others are behind.

Diversity, and the possible lack there of, was raised as a concern after the recent invitation-only Newsfoo submit.

At last year’s SXSWi panel about the future of news it was all white men.

Look, I’m not saying that your ethnicity or gender or whatever is a requirement to do a better job for any of these tasks.

What I am saying is that if we don’t reflect our communities – both on- and off-line – we’re doomed. If we don’t listen to others outside of our own, individual communities we’ve missed the point of journalism.

This isn’t about hiring “us” over “them” … this is about how all off us strengthen journalism by reflecting our diverse communities through relevant coverage … and that the coverage is shaped by those that make up the newsroom.

That’s the premise of hyperlocal journalism, isn’t it? That a local or insider would know what is more relevant to their community rather than an outsider.

So, why can’t we overcome this challenge? It’s 2011.

PBS’ MediaShift recently held a Twitter chat on media diversity.

Thankfully, it’s on people’s minds again.

I routinely get asked for names of diverse candidates to apply for Web journo jobs… but here’s the thing, while I know plenty of reporters, editors photographers, etc., my network of diverse Web journos isn’t as strong as it should.

Y’all, I’m a lifetime member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, board member of Online News Association, been to nearly every alphabet soup of conferences and I’m still struggling to diversify my Web journo network.

So what do we do about it? We need more solutions outside of forming another damn diversity committee.

The fact is, these diverse communities are already on the advance side of the tech divide… but they are not on the journalism side. Perhaps they aren’t aware of a journalism career as an option? Perhaps they don’t see themselves in our coverage? Perhaps they feel like there is no place at the table for them to help shape news?

Whatever it is, we need to do something. And I need some help in figuring this out.

In addition to being on the ONA board, I’m overseeing the all day workshops at the next conference, I’m co-program chair for UNITY 2012, I’m the New Media track coordinator for the NAHJ annual conference and I run #wjchat, a weekly Web journalism chat.

If we don’t invest in recruiting and training members of diverse groups to help us do and advanced journalism … we are royally screwed.

My New Year’s resolution is to harness my access and network to improve diversity across the board for Web journalism. But I need your help. I need your ideas.

More importantly, in your newsrooms, your communities (and those you are not a part of) need your help. Reach out, connect, participate, preach and downright fight to ensure your news org’s journalism reflects the diverse community it covers. Help it stay relevant.