2nd newspaper career conference draws 112 Native Americans
By Beverly Kees
freedomforum.org
05.01.01
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| Lanell J. White Eagle |
CRAZY HORSE MEMORIAL, S.D. — Lanell J. White Eagle was happily headed toward a career as an elementary school teacher. Both teachers and students told her, when she was a teacher's aide, how good she was with children and that she should be a teacher.
Then the fickle finger of fate pushed her in another direction. At Si Tanka Community College in Eagle Butte, S.D., White Eagle read a notice about a new course in journalism. Interested students were invited to show up. She showed up. Her brother, Morrison Egna, also a Si Tanka student, showed up. No one else did. Not even the instructor.
White Eagle found out that the class had been canceled because only the two of them had expressed interest. White Eagle likes to write and thought this class, and the student newspaper it produced, would give her opportunities. So she went out and recruited students for the class. The newspaper started last year as a four-pager. In March, Volume 2, Issue 5, was 16 pages.
And White Eagle, 28, found herself at the Second Annual Native American Newspaper Career Conference at the Crazy Horse Memorial in Custer, S.D., inspired by the speakers and engrossed in the opportunity to hone her skills with professional journalists.
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| Ray Chavez, Freedom Forum Diversity Fellow and chairman-designate of the Department of Contemporary Media and Journalism at the Unviersity of South Dakota, works with Morrison Egna on story for conference Web site. |
The conference brought together 112 American Indian high school and college journalists from seven states and 25 tribes, plus 25 advisers, April 24-26. It was sponsored by the South Dakota Newspaper Association, The Freedom Forum Neuharth Center, University of South Dakota at Vermillion, South Dakota State University Journalism Department and the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Becoming a voice
Mark Trahant, chairman and CEO of the Robert C. Maynard Institute in Oakland, Calif., led a panel discussion on how journalists can make a difference.
He began with a story of his own: In 1987, shortly after the Navajo Times became a daily newspaper, a Navy B-52 bomber crashed several miles away late one night, after the paper was put to bed. Trahant and his staff replated the front page to get in a bulletin about the crash, then headed off to the crash site.
The Times team ran into a roadblock by Navajo police, just after a television news van had been turned away. The police assumed the Times journalists lived in the area and waved them through. Trahant and his staff drove as far as they could, then got out and hiked for four hours to the site. A photographer started shooting pictures and, as each roll of film was used up, Trahant tucked the film in the collar of his jacket.
And sure enough, when military authorities pulled up, they confiscated the film they found. But they didn't look in Trahant's collar.
"We said 'Oh, no,' " Trahant said with a smile. "The next day the story and the photos appeared on the front page of the The Arizona Republic in Phoenix and newspapers across the country." That day everyone on the staff knew they could be as good as anyone else.
The panel turned to newsroom diversity issues and experiences.
Mary Annette Pember, president of the Native American Journalists Association, said that when she joined the Green Bay (Wis.) Press Gazette as a photographer, she was aware of the skepticism about "this whole minority hiring thing" among some of the veteran staffers — especially an older white male reporter.
But she decided to concentrate on doing her best. When she went on assignment with that reporter, she worked hard to do a good job. Later she happened to overhear the reporter talking to an editor, who was arranging for a photographer to go with him on a story. The reporter said: "Send Pember. I want someone who'll work."
Jodi Rave interviewed for a job as a business writer for Lee Newspapers. When the editors realized she had an interest in and knowledge of Native American news, they created a new beat for her — native affairs regional reporter.
Rave, who is based at the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal Star, noted: "We have a different view from white reporters. ... You need to let editors know what's going on in your communities. Otherwise these stories will never be told. You don't want to be just a brown face in the newsroom — a quota."
As Félix Gutiérrez, senior vice president, Newseum, told the student journalists, "You can create understanding. (Because of) the power of the media to disseminate what you write, you can be the voice of your people."
Derrick Henry, writer for the Associated Press in New York, told how his ability to speak Navajo gave him an advantage over every other reporter covering a crime story.
After the panel, Henry explained how his career course veered as oddly as Lanell White Eagle's. He was a mechanical engineering student at New Mexico University when he had an opportunity to go to Washington, D.C., and hear President Clinton speak. As usual, he took notes to put into his diary.
On the plane back to New Mexico, he entered the Clinton story into his diary and realized it read like a news story. Back home, he gave the story to the student newspaper's editor, without much hope of seeing it in print. The next day he picked up the paper and "WOW! There was my story and byline on page one!"
The following week he was in the journalism department to talk about switching majors.
"My parents were a little concerned," he admitted, but he's never looked back.
After the panel, the students broke up into small writing, photography or graphics teams, each team mentored by a journalism professional who gave them their assignments for a conference Web site newspaper.
White Eagle's mentor was Kate Kennedy, Freedom Forum director of partnerships and initiatives, who sat at the computer with the students, going line by line over their work.
Like most budding journalists, and a lot of veterans, White Eagle craves as much helpful criticism of her work as she can get. She admits one of her problems as a writer is that she never wants to let go of the story.
"I rewrite my stories so many times that I can lose the focus of what I was writing about," she admitted. "Sometimes I rewrite stories even after I've turned them in" — a habit not unknown among professionals.
Soon after the mentors handed out assignments, they became news sources as the students pinned them down for details on program segments, journalism education, the school mascot controversy and the most recent American Society of Newspaper Editors newsroom diversity survey. Their work appears in the online Native Journal.
Another conference panel concentrated on further training and internship possibilities for the Native American students. As the conference wound up, White Eagle was filling out the application form for the American Indian Journalism Institute at the University of South Dakota at Vermillion.
The Second Annual Native American Newspaper Career Conference was working.
Diversity difficulties
Part of the context for the Native American Newspaper Career Conference is that it wasn't a good year overall for diversity in the nation's daily newsrooms. The annual survey of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, released in early April, showed a slight decline.
The number of Native Americans fell to 249 this year from 292 in 2000.
Arnold Garson, publisher of the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., was upfront with students about the purpose of the conference: "We hope to interest you in the newspaper business. We want more Native Americans in newspapers around the country. They are vastly underrepresented in general circulation dailies."
Garson is also chair of the Minority Affairs Committee of the South Dakota Newspaper Association.
Allen H. Neuharth, founder of USA TODAY and The Freedom Forum, explained The Freedom Forum's involvement in the conference this way: "Why do we care? Because the lack of Native American journalists is skewing the coverage of America — not just Native America, but of America. … You have an opportunity to make a difference for your tribe and your country."
Covering native cultures
White Eagle said, "I grew up in a largely white community. There were maybe five native families. Going to college opened my eyes to my culture."
She has also become aware of what newspapers can do. "Papers cover a lot of bad news. I used to think they covered only bad news. But I like doing people stories — how they handle situations and what they think and what their perspective is."
During the first full day of the conference, two sessions stood out: "I was really impressed with Mr. Gutiérrez. Everything he talked about" and "the panel on how to make a difference in your community."
Mainstream coverage of native people has usually fallen into two categories: "problem people" or "zoo stories," Gutiérrez had told the students. "Native folks have been pictured as 'problem people' — causing or beset by problems such as alcoholism, tribal lands lost, welfare dependency. The press first examines with a microscope to find a problem, then puts a magnifying glass on it."
At the zoo, "you see each animal on display and in a cage," he said. Native Americans are seen "when they're at a powwow or dance competition — something out of the 19th century. (The press) will show up for that one day of the year but not the next day or the next. But you don't live one day of the year. You live all year 'round."
Gutiérrez told the students about "the dean of American Indian journalism, Richard LaCourse, a role model as a scholar and as a writer," who wrote stories that would not have been in print otherwise.
"His role was to tell the truth, and that truth in turn helped the readers — all readers of all races and all nations — to understand themselves and others better.
"This is not something newspapers have always done well," Gutiérrez said.
LaCourse, who died in March at age 62, was associate editor of the Yakama Nation Review. He was formerly news director of the American Indian Press Association in Washington, D.C., and founder of two tribal newspapers, who started his career at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
"You have the same opportunities," Gutiérrez said. Because of advances by people like Richard LaCourse, "you have people and organizations around you that want to see you succeed."
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| Dynamite blast to remove rock from Crazy Horse sculpture was timed to go off while student journalists could watch. |
Why at Crazy Horse?
Crazy Horse monument sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski (pronounced jewel-CUFF-ski) once said, "When the legends die, the dreams end; when the dreams end, there is no more greatness."
"We picked this site for the conference because this is where dreams are made," said Jack Marsh, director of the Neuharth Center.
Towering over the Crazy Horse Memorial conference center is a mountain slowly being blasted and jack-hammered into the shape of the great Oglala Lakota warrior.
After World War II, Boston-born sculptor Ziolkowski was invited by Chief Henry Standing Bear to create a memorial to Native Americans in the Black Hills. The memorial was dedicated on June 3, 1948, with the first dynamite blast.
In his remarks, Al Neuharth noted that in 1948 he was a summer reporter for the Rapid City Journal. He covered the dedication. A lot of people thought the sculptor was crazy, Neuharth told the student journalists. "They called it Korczak's Folly."
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| Al Neuharth receives handmade quilt from Doris Giago, journalism professor at South Dakota State University. Jack Marsh, center, was program moderator. |
Neuharth admitted he was one of the skeptics. It would take decades of blasting away sections of the mountain before any recognizable details would appear.
"Korczak didn't know when it would be completed, only that it was important to get started. All great journeys begin with a single, little step," Neuharth said.
Now the face of Crazy Horse has emerged from the rock and the dream of the sculptor, who died in 1982, and of the late Lakota Chief Standing Bear, is becoming a reality. Ziolkowski's wife, Ruth, their 10 children and other workers carried on, and the face of Crazy Horse was unveiled at the 50th anniversary in 1998.
"Don't let anyone limit your possibilities," said Neuharth, the closing speaker of the conference.
Related
Native American Newspaper Career Conference
Information on a journalism career conference for Native American high school and tribal college students.
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