Commitment to Diversity
From my work with ODYSSEY’s website and various social media platforms to my personal stories, diversity is something I try to hold at the forefront of my work. This has included doing regular audits on the website and focusing on stories that showcase the voices of those often underrepresented.
Learning about diversity
When I attended the NSPA/JEA fall convention this year, I did my best to attend as many DEI-focused sessions as possible, knowing that it’s an area where my staff consistently struggles. Two of these sessions that stood out to me the most were “Getting New Kids on the Block” and “Let’s Go All In on Inclusion!” The first one provided a lot of insight on making both our coverage and staff inclusive and equitable, suggestions from which I brought to my adviser with the hope that we utilize them in the future. The latter was helpful in understanding the “why” behind DEI and some of the different facets of it.
Diversity audit
After each story, we are responsible for inputting the interviews we have done into a diversity audit, which keeps track of information such as sources’ gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. Not only has this helped me reflect on the interviews I’ve done, but it’s also made me more aware of the stakeholders I’m choosing for stories on the front end, motivating me to reach out to people I wouldn’t normally talk to or are outside of my regular sphere.
Website audit
As Digital Editor-in-Chief, I try to be constantly aware of how diverse we’re being in coverage on our website, both in the types of stories and the topics. Myself and other members of the Digital staff did an audit of the website at the beginning of this year, focusing on preemptively making sure our coverage was balanced and using a critique from the National Scholastic Press Association to guide us (left). I did a similar audit at the beginning of November (right), taking note of where our gaps were and what types of stories we were lacking.These audits have often resulted in in-class discussions regarding what types of stories we need more of and what parts of our school community haven’t had sufficient reporting in. I also consider them as I make my posting schedule, prioritizing the stories that we do have that can help fill these gaps.
No fly list
Something our staff does is what we call a “No Fly List,” which is a database of all of the people our staff has interviewed or photographed noticeably more than anyone else. I’ve both participated in whole-class discussions regarding this and utilized it in my own work. This is also something I reference when helping staffers with stories, ensuring that they’re not defaulting to people we’ve covered multiple times, especially if others are just as equipped to speak on that particular topic.
LGBTQ+ History Month Package
I was looking through my program’s website one day at the beginning of my sophomore year and realized that we’d published a fair amount of stories about and surrounding the LGBTQ+ community. Since October was LGBTQ+ History Month, I decided to do a “Looking Back” package since I felt that a lot of attention is usually given to this particular community during Pride Month, but not really talked about throughout the rest of the year.. With the help of another staffer, I compiled twelve of the stories ODYSSEY had done in the past 10 years and used Prezi to put everything into an organized package.
Equal, not equitable
This editorial was one of the first ones I wrote and was about the lack of gender equity in the 2024 Summer Olympics. I tried to focus a lot on the examples of this and brought in as many scenarios as I could, and it was surprising to me how little these events, which were all significant examples of discrimination, were covered. I did my best to bring in a variety of voices, from a coach of the tennis team, which gets a lot of popularity, to one from the volleyball team, which our school tends to overlook.
Hispanic Heritage Month Package
This multimedia package was a compilation of all the stories we had done related to Hispanic Heritage during September. I wanted this package to reflect the culture within our school and tried to encourage and include as many local stories about it as possible, from a story about CCHS’ Spanish Book Club to a gallery from the annual Hispanic Heritage Month Festival that had taken place earlier in the month. In addition to editing all of the stories and creating the final package, I also wrote one of the stories, five reviews of books by Hispanic authors.
