Sept. 11, 2006

From coverage of Fidel Castro's health issues in Fort Myers, Fla., to an increasing number of Mexican migrant farm workers from Oaxaca moving to Salem, Ore., news organizations across the United States are making great strides in diversity coverage. In response to APME's latest request for examples, five newspapers shared their efforts, which we're sharing with you. If you have any examples from your print, online or niche publications, please e-mail a few paragraphs about the project, its Web site address and a visual element to Marisa Porto, assistant managing editor of the Wilmington News Journal, at mporto@delawareonline.com.

Miriam Pereira, assistant metro editor, The News-Press, Fort Myers, Fla.

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On July 31, the copy desk at The News-Press noticed a bulletin about Cuban President Fidel Castro's emergency surgery. Approaching deadline, the desk scrambled to remake 1A to get the story in the paper.

The following morning, we considered our next step. With almost 10,000 Cuban Americans in Southwest Florida, the population of this Hispanic group is not as large as Miami-Dade County on Florida's east coast. Still, we knew this was a story of historical significance. In his 47 years in power, Castro had never ceded his authority to anyone – until now.

At our 10 a.m. news meeting, several editors, including Gale Baldwin (assistant managing editor/news), Maribel Perez Wadsworth (assistant managing editor/non-daily products), Kate Marymont (executive editor), Cindy McCurry-Ross (managing editor), David Plazas (community conversation editor) and I began talking through ideas.

We knew the topic was emotional for many Cuban Americans who had to flee the country leaving behind family, memories, their culture and property because of Castro. Despite all the years that have passed, most Cuban Americans have hoped for the day when Castro would no longer be in power.

One of our challenges was conveying that sentiment to an audience who, for the most part, isn't familiar with the passion and emotion this topic stirs among Cubans. We knew we wanted to talk with Cuban Americans in our county's largest city, which also happens to be the hub of the local Cuban American population, Cape Coral. We decided to send two reporters to the mom-and-pop restaurants, grocery stores and other businesses we knew were Cuban-owned. We'd developed these sources over the years in our coverage of minority groups in general and topics that affected Cubans specifically.

We collected names and numbers of sources we've gathered over the years and assigned reporters in our main office and Cape Coral and Bonita Springs offices. Bonita Springs is south of Fort Myers and within driving distance of neighboring Collier County, which is home to more Cubans, than in our county.

Another challenge was the language. Most of our reporters do not speak Spanish. So we decided to pair up our lead reporter, Joel Moroney, with one of our summer interns, Cristela Guerra, who is from Panama, grew up in Miami and is familiar with the issue. Joel and Cristela headed to Cape Coral, sending us updates we posted on our Web site throughout the day.

In Bonita Springs, reporter Christina Cepero, a Cuban American, began calling Cuban-owned businesses in the area. She found a business owner who was a political prisoner in Cuba for years. His story became a sidebar to our package of stories.

Meanwhile, Fernando Zapata, the editor of our Spanish-language weekly Gaceta Tropical, interviewed local Cuban-American leaders and others for stories we posted online and printed in Gaceta.

Our graphics and visuals departments culled Census-type information of the island as well as locator maps and photographs of the people we interviewed.

We also asked the people we interviewed for their oral histories and photographs of their time in Cuba. We're posting those online as we get them.

The end result was that the stories became our 1A centerpiece that led to two additional pages inside.

Jill Fredel, assistant managing editor/niche, The News Journal, Wilmington, Del.

As newspapers expand their portfolios of niche publications, it is important that they maintain the same commitment to diversity in those publications as they do in the daily newspaper and online. We stress to editors that it is just as important to see diversity in smaller, regular features as it is to have it in major packages or cover stories. Some examples:

• Delaware Parent: In our monthly magazine for parents and grandparents, our editor used contacts she had made on a previous story to involve two little girls in a photo shoot to illustrate summer safety. She also goes to parenting events, neighborhood parks and playgrounds to enrich her list of parent contacts.

Click on the image above to view a PDF of the section.

• Delaware Pets: In our six-times-a-year pets publication, we have a regular feature about Delaware personalities and their pets. Through a contact, we tracked down Pamela Bell, vice president of marketing for JPMorgan Chase, and Max, her 10-year-old Maine coon cat. Just last month at an outreach roundtable of African-American readers and non-readers, the editor circulated a piece of paper and asked participants for their names, phone numbers and type of pets. She's also been to parks and pet events to make more contacts.

• Midstate Living: For our every-other-week publication aimed at the fast-growing middle of the state, it's crucial that one of our most important features – 25 Who Matter – profile people of all ages, ethnicities, both genders and from a variety of towns.

• Signature Brandywine: In our quarterly upscale magazine, diversity is a challenge. Our editor has overcome that by being out in the community at more events, expanding her sources and by tapping into sources throughout the newsroom and via internal outreach roundtables. In our June 1 issue, all of that legwork paid off with this feature on a nonstop volunteer.

• Delaware Health: In our weekly health section, our editor and her two reporters look for opportunities to show diversity and to confound expectations. In an inside feature, we focused on a fitness program for teens. The images featured a diverse group of teen-age girls.

Victor Panichkul, managing editor, Statesman Journal, Salem, Ore.

In the course of covering her beat, Hispanic Affairs reporter Gabriella Rico noticed an increasing number of Mexican migrant farm workers from Oaxaca. She wondered if there was a change in the pattern of migration from Mexico and did further research with the Mexican consulate. What she discovered was that the majority of Mexican immigrants coming to Oregon were now coming from the state of Oaxaca, supplanting Michoacán, the previous leader.

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Gaby worked with her sources in the community to identify families with compelling stories to tell and find other ties between Salem and Oaxaca in order to line up interviews here as well as in Mexico. She identified two fathers with touching stories of why they came to Oregon for work, and she made arrangements to spend time with the families in Mexico. Gaby also found a parish in Salem with a sister parish in Oaxaca. She also uncovered several Salem residents who are making a difference in Oaxaca: one who volunteers at a parish in Oaxaca, a stockbroker who supports an orphanage, a couple from Salem who are working as missionaries in Oaxaca, and a physician helping Oaxacan women make an income by launching home sewing cooperatives. When the scope of the project became clearer, we also decided to assign one photographer for the entire "Oaxaca Connection" project and made the commitment to send the photographer to Mexico with the reporter.

In addition to the people-focused stories, we wanted to convey the impact of how this migration affects people here and those left behind in Oaxaca. Working with her sources, Gaby found that the agencies trying to reach migrant farm workers were ill equipped to handle communicating to Oaxacans in their native language, which is not Spanish but an Indian dialect. She also explored the issue of remittances, money that migrants send home, and how those funds help sustain some villages and improve the conditions of others. Once in Mexico, Gaby also discovered that in many villages, the number of men who left to find work in the United States meant that those who remained were predominantly women, children and the elderly. Once Gaby and photographer Lori Cain returned and we had a chance to see photographs, we also decided that the photographs themselves conveyed great emotional impact. So we created our first narrated slide show as an online extra to the story.

Meg Downey, executive editor, Poughkeepsie Journal, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

• A story about 15th birthday parties for Latin-American teenage girls. Reporter Michelle Lee wrote how these elaborate parties serve as coming-out parties. Her stories looked at the cultural as well as the business aspects of these parties, and offered an insightful look at a segment of the community.

• A multimedia presentation called "Black Dirt Chronicles" about the impact of local migrant agricultural workers, most of whom are Mexican immigrants. Journal photographer Darryl Bautista's package featured Jose Ramon Jimenez and his family, who live and work on an onion farm in Orange County's "black dirt" region. Bautista spent a year documenting their lives and conducted two long interviews later used for audio clips. Jimenez spoke of how Americans often look down on immigrants because they think they are taking away jobs but that the immigrants are doing jobs nobody else can or will do. His presentation was a sensitive look at the hopes, dreams and reality of everyday life for these families.

• A sports feature about a program called "Adaptive Sport Foundation" for disabled skiers and snowboarders. The story featured a local skier who suffers from a muscle disorder, and told about the upcoming event at a local ski resort that draws 1,000 people who ski and snowboard and have disabilities such as cerebral palsy, visual impairment and autism.

• "On the Job" is a regular feature in the Business section, and it highlights people of all cultures in their businesses. It is the perfect opportunity to highlight diversity in the community by finding and writing about minority-owned businesses. One recent "On the Job" looked at a business operated by Brenda Frazier-Moore, an African American who teaches people about etiquette and business protocol.

• A Sunday centerpiece story on a Hispanic fashion designer named Viviana Llaurador getting ready for the big fashion show at Marist College in Poughkeepsie. Llaurador is a minority student in a program that is primarily made up of white students. In addition, the budding designers, quotes about what inspires them and a look at their fashions were featured in an online package.

Don Effenberger, St. Paul Pioneer Press, St. Paul/Ramsey County team leader; and Laura Yuen, urban life reporter

Instead of playing up the typical Fourth of July articles about parades and festivals, we marked the occasion this year with a subtler story of patriotism that came to us by way of a unique source: a tombstone.

Photographer Chris Polydoroff was walking in a St. Paul cemetery when one Hmong couple's grave marker caught his eye. The inscription included the typical milestones of birth and death but also noted the date that the couple arrived in the United States.

Polydoroff started to wonder about the couple and the family they left behind. What made this couple so proud to be in this country that they would want their date of entry etched onto their headstone?

He teamed up with urban life reporter Laura Yuen, who had some experience writing about the Hmong-American community in St. Paul. Through death records, Yuen tracked down the surviving children and learned that the couple, refugees from communist Laos, lived quietly in Minnesota into their dying years. But many of their grandchildren went on to Ivy League schools and successful careers. They spoke eloquently of their grandparents' sacrifices that helped future generations reach extraordinary heights in this country.

We weren't prepared for the number of readers who called or e-mailed to thank the newspaper for running the article. One Hmong woman said it struck a chord with her, an eldest child of refugees. But most of the responses came from non-Hmong readers. "I often feel the average St. Paulite knows so little about his or her neighbor," one woman wrote. "Thank you for sharing one family's journey and how many lives they've enriched."

The story follows (click here to read it in a separate file):

THEIR GRAVESTONE SPEAKS SIMPLY OF WHAT A NEW LIFE IN AMERICA MEANT TO THEM

BY LAURA YUEN, PIONEER PRESS

It takes a dozen bends in the road and a final turn onto a gravel path to reach the headstone of Nao Tou Yang and See Lytongpao.

Click on the image above to view a PDF of the section.

Family members buried the couple about a year apart in Oakland Cemetery on St. Paul's North End. As the first generation of Americans in their family, Nao Tou and See were not known to wave the Stars and Stripes from their doorstep. They did not learn the words to the national anthem, or more than a handful of English phrases.

They rarely spoke of what America meant to them. But in the couple's final years, the new world reversed their family's fortunes in a way Nao Tou and See could have never dreamed.

On their grave marker, their arrival date in the United States has been inscribed between life's bookends of birth and death.

This is their journey.

FLEEING LAOS

Their son Blong Yang, a schoolteacher, and his sister Bao, were the first to flee Laos after the country fell to communist rule. Before their 1975 escape, Blong left his parents a note urging them to meet him in Thailand.

Nao Tou and See and their two youngest children left behind their Laotian village and started inching toward the Thai border. They settled and farmed new plots of land, sometimes staying for a year at a time, as they advanced toward the Mekong River.

But when they finally crossed into Thailand four years later, they learned Blong had already left for the United States.

Border guards took all Nao Tou and See's money and possessions. On audiocassettes that Nao Tou would mail to Blong in Milwaukee, he spoke of nights sleeping in the jungle, their only comfort a campfire.

Blong, a young father struggling to raise a family in a strange land, wept when he listened to his father's tapes. As part of the first wave of the Hmong exodus to reach America, Blong cried as he told his father of his guilt over leaving his parents and siblings behind.

On recordings he'd send back to the Ban Vinai refugee camp, he pleaded with his parents to join him in the United States.

It's a good country, but it's hard, and I really need you here, he would say into his cassette player.

But life in a cramped shantytown without enough food to feed his family broke his father's spirit.

When Nao Tou recorded his next tape in 1979, he told Blong he should have taken his own life instead of moving his family to the camp. In his despair, Nao Tou denied Blong was his son. It was his way of shutting out hope.

When Blong heard his father's words, he hugged the cassette player, retreated to a closet and wept. His young children heard his sobs but didn't know what had caused them.

Blong vowed he would do everything to get the rest of his family back, even if it meant writing letters to every humanitarian agency and old acquaintance he could think of. After years of foiled plots of trying to bring his parents to safety, these last attempts worked.

Within a year, he sponsored his family's arrival in Minnesota.

ARRIVAL IN MINNESOTA

Nao Tou and See stepped off the plane during the brunt of a Minnesota winter. When father glimpsed son for the first time in five years, he brought his hand to his mouth, as if in shock. At 67, the old man spilled waves of anguish as he embraced his son. The family cried so hard, Nao Tou couldn't stand or walk.

It was "the most happiness in the whole world," Blong recalled.

He took them home to the McDonough Homes on St. Paul's North End, where he and his family had resettled in 1978.

When one of Blong's daughters, MayKao, saw her grandparents for the first time, she couldn't help but notice the difference in their sizes. He was nearly 6 feet tall – a head taller than any other Hmong man she knew. See stood 4 feet 10 inches. She was "the smart one in the relationship," Nao Tou liked to say.

They were master storytellers, punctuating every tale of ghosts and Hmong folk tales with fluttering hands and booming voices. They'd gather grandchildren around them as they regaled them with stories of their homeland, tag-team style.

Although Nao Tou and See became U.S. citizens in the late '90s, they knew their future in this country held little promise of great success. Nao Tou often told his son that he, as an old man, could get only so far in America. It was up to future generations to take up where he left off.

In the twilight of their lives in their mid-80s, Nao Tou and See lived largely isolated from American culture. They never held jobs in the U.S. or learned how to drive. Five of their children had resettled in the Twin Cities, and they spent their days with their children and grandchildren.

But they were still the anchors of their family. They greeted the grandkids at the bus stop after school. They helped them catch grasshoppers in the back yard.

They never considered themselves Americans, but America changed them. In earlier times, their hobbies included tubing on the Apple River in Wisconsin or catching carp on the St. Croix. "Coke" and "two Big Mac" were among the only English words they knew.

They bought other treats from McDonald's as well, often two at a time so one could be refrigerated for later.

"Apple pie was their favorite," Blong said.

3 SONS, 4 DAUGHTERS

Two war tragedies made Blong the eldest in his family. His older brother, Yia Yang, was guiding an American pilot over Laos in 1973 when their plane was gunned down during the Vietnam War. Chia Yang, his sister, was killed the following year when North Vietnamese troops ransacked her village.

Nao Tou and See's five remaining children and their families resettled in the Twin Cities. Blong, now 58 and a Maplewood resident, spent his first year in this country using his own version of sign language instead of speaking English. He eventually became a Hmong-American pioneer in Minnesota and an admissions adviser at Century College in White Bear Lake.

His biggest contributions, though, were in the home.

He made his daughters sign a contract agreeing not to marry until they finished college.

To build their vocabulary, he also demanded they write a new word on a sticky note every day until the basement walls in their North End rambler were covered with Post-Its.

After completing a high school program in Germany, MayKao became a camp counselor at the Concordia Language Village near Bemidji, where one summer she taught German to Chelsea Clinton. The thought still makes MayKao's father giddy with laughter.

While his children were still in elementary school, Blong borrowed a book on the top U.S. universities. Prestigious names like Brown, Penn and Vanderbilt caught his eye. Three of his children eventually graduated from those schools, and two others finished their studies at Carleton College and Mankato State University.

ONE GRAVE, TWO LIVES

Nao Tou Yang was 88 at the time of his death. When See Lytongpao saw the marker her children prepared for her husband's grave, she was upset.

Whoever chiseled the inscription placed the words to the far right of the headstone. She asked Blong why Nao Tou's last tribute was not centered. She did not realize – and her family did not want to tell her – that the left half was left blank for her.

"We tried to make her happy," said their youngest son, Vang Yang of Vadnais Heights. See died a little more than a year later at age 86 after complications from a routine kidney stone operation.

MayKao Hang, now a director of adult services for Ramsey County Human Services, often thinks of the sacrifices her grandparents made. They lived quietly in this country. But they gave her a sense of confidence and completeness that spoke far louder.

"No matter how different I was in this larger, white Western world that didn't quite fully accept me, somehow I belonged here," she said. "I had a role, even if it was only as a granddaughter."

The couple's children arranged elaborate funeral rites, each lasting four days. When they pay their respects at the gravesite, they leave fruit, flowers and Big Macs.

And when those gifts cease to adorn the grave, the rest of the stone will speak for itself: Mother. Father. Birth, death, and U.S.A.

One day Nao Tou and See's great-great-grandchildren will read that and learn of their roots in this country, Blong said. "Someday, somehow, we need to know that," he said. "It will be a good story."

Laura Yuen can be reached at lyuen@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5498.