Oct. 21, 2006

From the role of Filipinos in Hawaii to coverage of the growing Hispanic community in Arizona, news organizations around the country are succeeding in reaching out to minority communities in their markets. Most of these examples shared with APME's Diversity Committee went beyond the print product to online efforts. Some included TV partnerships.

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

Click on the photos above to view a larger version of the page.

Executive Editor Mark Platte, The Honolulu Advertiser

• Filipinos' role in Hawaii likely to get even bigger

The celebration of the 100th anniversary of the arrival of Filipinos in Hawai'i prompted a series of stories on the rise of this community in numbers and influence. We profiled Filipinos from a variety of demographic groups to hear about their experiences, successes and challenges. The online presentation includes video clips of the interviewees. Editors hoping to do a similar series might start by finding out if ethnic communities in their area are celebrating immigration milestones.

• Saga of the Sakada

Waialua, a town where Filipino immigrants contracted to work in the sugar plantation fields, honored its surviving "sakada" in an event that brought back memories for many residents. Online, we posted video of the retired sugar workers talking about their lives on the plantation. Editors may want to look for similar occasions honoring the elderly of various ethnic communities. In our view, events like these are more meaningful to cover than festivals since they provide a good opportunity to tell the history of diverse groups.

• From Korea to Ke'eaumoku

Korean immigrants have been drawn to a part of town called Ke'eaumoku where many have opened shops and services for their growing community. Our reporter interviewed dozens of people in the area to capture the flavor of a changing neighborhood. Our online package includes links to more statistics on the Korean community. Similar stories can be told wherever ethnic communities thrive. Editors should give reporters enough time, however, to get to know these neighborhoods in order to get a rounded and accurate view of the inhabitants.

Executive Editor Ward Bushee, The Arizona Republic

As Arizona and the nation began to grapple in earnest with possible approaches to better managing illegal immigration and securing the U.S. border with Mexico, The Republic undertook "The Immigration Equation" project. This 2005 project included a four-part, graphic intensive series that featured case studies of representative undocumented immigrants; the live forum of state and national leaders, law-enforcement officials and prominent researchers; in-depth analyses and commentaries in the newspaper's Viewpoints section; a state poll; a Weblog debate among Arizona opinion leaders; a "sound off" section on readers' reactions to the series; and a week of special TV reports and shows on immigration by KPNZ, The Republic's media partner.

One of the major findings of the project was that most undocumented immigrants are now families who are sinking roots in communities and are enmeshed in the economy. As a result, any attempt to deport the estimated 500,000 undocumented immigrants that make up 9 percent of Arizona's population, would be wrenching. The project also found that most Arizonans do not favor a wholesale deportation of undocumented immigrants and that the polarization of the two cultures among older generations is giving way to a fusion of cultures among younger Arizonans who grew up during the great immigration wave of the last 15 years.

Executive Editor Linda Austin, The News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne, Ind.

We've done two projects involving presentation of the news in different languages:

• Fort Wayne has the largest number of Burmese refugees in the United States. To help explain the Burmese migration to Fort Wayne, we sent photojournalist Steve Linsenmayer, who has been covering the Burmese locally since 1998, to Burma and Thailand. The result was a 32-page, full-color magazine inserted in the paper, as well as a multimedia project. That site, which includes the public TV and radio programs based on our reporting, also includes narration in Burmese.

• Sports writer Maria Burns did daily columns during the World Cup in both English and Spanish, geared to completely different audiences. The English column was more for the novice soccer fan. The Spanish column was written for soccer addicts and focused heavily on Spanish-speaking teams. Our decision to run the Spanish column on the Sports front with the English one drew fire from some readers. We opened up a forum online for people to comment on the bilingual coverage and got pro and con comments, which we excerpted in the paper. But we didn't stop running the Spanish column.

Deputy Editor/News Chris Coppola, The East Valley and Scottsdale Tribune, Ariz.:

The city of Mesa, Ariz., is in the throes of a fundamental demographic and cultural shift, from a city that has long been white (and in particular Mormon) to one that is primarily Hispanic. The burgeoning Latino population is butting up against the dominant Anglo population in many ways that are as fascinating as they are problematic.

The 2005 series, "Mesa en transicion: The changing face of Mesa," examines key aspects of this change, from life within the Hispanic communities and businesses, neighborhoods that are struggling in the midst of change to the politics of the city and the practicalities facing the school system.

"Mesa en transicion" is the first in-depth effort to get the community thinking and talking about what kind of place Mesa is becoming. Over the course of the year, we sent seven reporters and two photographers into the field to explore this changing community from the perspective of the people who are living through it. The series generated quite a bit of public debate, much of it still echoing through the city.