Pluralizing Journalism Education

The Rodney King verdict and the subsequent Los Angeles riots dramatized how important it is today for mass-media communicators to help Americans deal with a widening gulf in understanding between classes and races. Current population statistics demonstrate how important non-whites and women will be in our educational system and in the workforce by the year 2000. This handbook for teachers and practitioners shows how to pluralize the curriculum to encourage diversity, how to recruit and retain journalism students and faculty of color, and how to make college newsrooms and classrooms more multicultural, both in attitude and action. Academics and professionals concerned with the issues surrounding the mass media in a racially and ethnically pluralistic America will find this reference guide and text full of useful data, ideas, and resource materials.

A carefully chosen team of communications experts were recruited to contribute to this professional reference guide. The first section of the handbook serves as an introduction, providing a rationale and a brief history of efforts to pluralize journalism education to date. The second section defines ways to recruit and retain students and faculty of color. The third section systematically surveys ways to pluralize the curriculum in relation to African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and women. It then considers stereotyping, using special presses and methods in teaching, the selection of bias-free textbooks and using laboratory and other publications. The fourth section of the work concerns pluralizing the student media through media coverage, and special campus recruitment and organizations. Bibliographies and lists of key sources of information arranged by chapter with careful cross-referencing offer resource materials for students, teachers, and journalists in mass communication and multicultural studies. A full index makes this reference guide completely accessible for many types of research. Exercises, case studies, and provocative questions make this a basic text for teaching journalism education in a pluralistic society.