Imagine working a big portion of your life for a specific goal. Imagine doing all in your power to be able to make said goal. It’s all you want, and yet you know the odds are stacked against you.
Recently, I had the privilege of attending the Fall National College Media Convention in Atlanta. Throughout different workshops and speeches, there was one moment that sadly stood out to me.
A journalist from another school who has a disability went up to ask a question of one of the keynote speakers. He said he does not see many journalists/reporters with disabilities and wanted to know what else he could do to eliminate the stigma toward journalists with disabilities for him to achieve his goals.
The keynote speaker simply said, “What you are doing is enough.”
I, for one, was extremely dissatisfied with this answer. There was a person, clearly passionate about what he does, wanting to know how he can be more successful in his field, and he is given an answer that feels more of a cop-out than anything.
The frustrating part is before giving this mediocre answer, the keynote speaker talked about how race, gender, sexuality, etc. do not matter when it comes to writing and journalism. She said that if you tell a good story, you will be heard.
Does this not include people with disabilities? This whole interaction really made me wonder why we don’t really see too many people with disabilities in mainstream media.
Journalism is all about perspectives. Excluding an entire demographic from main-stream media for no real reason means we are missing out on a side of news we tend to not see.
I don’t think newsrooms should hire people to fill in a quota of minorities or people with disabilities, but if you look at our own media team, we have an extremely diverse group which has led to our Richland Chronicle being ranked as the sixth best in show for two-year college newspapers in the U.S, with a team that only has a few months of experience.
Diversity is not something we should strive for to show how tolerant we are, if anything that is the bare minimum. The whole point of diversity is to get different perspectives of people due to the different experiences and point of views they bring to the table.
