Covering diverse communities

Thoroughness has always been a hallmark of good journalism. So has self-criticism.

In an effort to ramp up our efforts at both, Free Press staff recently met with representatives of Mankato’s growing diverse community, and we discovered we can improve our game, and our business.

The epiphany for me arrived a few months ago when I examined the picture the newspaper was portraying of the communities of color in our region. It was an exercise for a Blandin Foundation leadership program for editors, but it also allowed me to take a look at the broad picture we were drawing.

It also was prompted by a study of our newspaper by the Center for Small Towns at the University of Minnesota Morris. That study showed that compared to other things we covered, we were a little light on page one stories that showed diversity was valued.

While newspapers publish daily, the message we portray to the community is a story that develops over time. People don’t forget yesterday’s news. In fact, the continuing cycle of a newspaper paints a picture for people that leaves a lasting impression. My own realization suggested our picture of the people of color in our community was not so much inaccurate as it was incomplete.

We’d have a story about a cultural event, and then three crime stories involving minorities. Another good story, three negative. At the same time, numerous positive human interest feature stories in our newspaper involved white people that equal or outnumber the negative stories.

This is not a sin of commission, but rather one of omission. While we tell the “true” stories of people of color involved in crime, we often let that news dominate the painting of the broader picture. We do indeed cover so-called “positive” events of the diverse community, but they are often weekend features that one could view as a token way to cover the community.

Too often we neglect to depict people of color in positive roles, and where we do, it may not be enough, again, to help paint a broader, balanced picture.

These kind of omissions of coverage have lead many in the community to believe the people of color are the main crime problem in the city.

Too often, they are all painted with the same brush.

Young school children should not have to hear they are the problem in the community when they walk through the doors of our schools. They shouldn’t have to hear that they should “go back where they came from.”

That’s happening, and the sobering truth is that the newspaper is contributing to part of that, even if we’re not doing it intentionally.

The kids are blamed for crimes committed by “their people” even though they may have had nothing to do with those acts.

This change of thinking on our part doesn’t mean we’re not going to report crime. It does mean we’re going to try to paint a balanced picture of the diverse community like we are painting a balanced picture of the white community.

We’re able to more easily paint a balanced picture of the white community because, by and large the people who write Free Press stories are white and live in white neighborhoods. As one astute observer told us: “Where does the paper live.” He was saying, we write about places that are familiar to us and where “we live.”

So we’ll have to engage the diverse community, by inviting them to places the newspapers “lives,” but also going out to where they live.

Engaging works. Through meeting with the representatives of the diverse community, we found at least three or four good stories. These families who immigrate to Mankato have tremendous stories of struggle. They are overcoming odds to succeed in America, not unlike the immigrants of years past who came from places such as Norway, Ireland and Germany.

Many come from cultures with strong family bonds, something we in American could do better at ourselves. There is true value in the diverse community. The newspaper is one place that can help show that value, and create a more complete picture of the community as a whole.