Working Environment

Making Diversity News
How Interns Can Generate News Coverage of the Diversity on Your Campus

Diversity.
Good for Students.
Good for Colleges and Universities.
Good for American Society.

Diversity News Lab
A Project of The Campus Diversity Public Information Project
A Program of the Ford Foundation

During the 1996/97 academic year, a dozen colleges and universities in Washington state and Pennsylvania hired undergraduate student interns to work in their public information offices as part of the Campus Diversity Public Information Project, a program of the Ford Foundation. The interns were given a specific assignment:

To generate news and feature stories on the many aspects of diversity at the institutions and in the communities they serve.

The results were remarkable. Paid a $1,000 stipend per semester or quarter with funding from the Ford Foundation and supervised directly by the institutional public information directors, the interns identified, researched, wrote and placed dozens of news stories on various aspects of diversity.

They successfully placed stories in mainstream, ethnic and student newspapers, and on radio and television throughout their media markets. Some also placed stories in national publications that focus on higher education or diversity issues.

A few of the many diversity-related stories generated and placed by interns were:

• Two articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Swarthmore College's Harambee festival of cultural, ethnic, religious, ideological and sexual diversity;
• A Seattle Times article on University of Washington students who are tutoring local inner city high school students in academic jeopardy;
• Suburban newspaper articles on the Tri-College Peace Studies Mission, which sent students from Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges to Cuba to learn more about various political and cultural policies;
• A front-page Seattle Post-Intelligencer story on a Black College Fair at a local community college;
• Student newspaper articles on a pilot project designed to increase the number of Native American college students who choose to go to law school; and
• A story that ran in an African-American newspaper on the coordinated studies program adopted by Seattle Central Community College.

The interns appreciably increased each participating institution's promotion of diversity stories. Their work demonstrated that media outreach on diversity stories can generate positive and balanced news coverage and communicate the benefits of diversity for all students and for society.

The benefits were not limited to the institutions. The interns who participated reported that they learned to:

1. better understand diversity at their institution and in society;
2. write more complex stories;
3. understand how the media works; and
4. think in new ways about the many kinds of diversity that affect their lives.

Most also gained valuable experience that may well help them get jobs after graduation.

Although not without glitches, the 1996/97 experience was so successful that every participating institution will continue the program next year.

Participating institutions in the first year were:

• Bryn Mawr College
• Community College of Philadelphia
• Haverford College
• North Seattle Community College
• Seattle Central Community College
• Seattle University
• Shoreline Community College
• South Seattle Community College
• Swarthmore College
• Temple University
• University of Washington

In addition, at least one more Seattle institution (Antioch College) and two more Pennsylvania institutions (University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney University) plan to hire diversity interns next year.

Several participating institutions have indicated that they will allocate money from their own budgets to continue this work when Ford Foundation support ends.

This handbook is designed to offer simple steps for setting up a diversity internship on your campus.

Structuring a diversity internship
Before deciding to establish a diversity internship, be certain that you have institution-wide support to generate more diversity news about your college or university.

The benefits of an internship may be considerable, but remember that an intern will require time and supervision from you or another expert in the public information office. Careful screening to select a capable and committed intern can help tremendously, as can structuring the internship so both the institution and the student will benefit. However, particularly at the start of the internship, the student will need supervision from an experienced professional. If you or a colleague will not have time to provide that supervision, you may want to postpone the internship. Also remember that, no matter how bright or motivated, a student intern cannot replace a staff person or contribute as much as a staff member will. Decide up front how much time you expect your diversity intern to work. Do you expect the intern to work eight hours per week? More? Less? Decide before you hire your diversity intern. You should also let the intern know how many stories you expect over the course of the semester or quarter (i.e.: one per week or three per month).

Decide how you plan to provide supervision.
Generally, weekly meetings to review an intern's work have been successful; any less supervision may leave an intern direction-less particularly at the start of the internship.

Determine how you will handle the intern at the start.
You may want to assign the first two stories, but ask the intern to contribute story ideas by the third week. News stories on diversity may have sensitive aspects, so it is important that you establish ground rules for the job. Possible ground rules:

• that you and your intern will discuss her/his story ideas openly, and all ideas will be considered;
• that you will sign-off on all story concepts, news releases and other media materials;
• that you will sign-off on the media targeted before pitching begins; and
• that an intern may not independently try to place a story that the public information office rejects.
• Only intern candidates who agree to these types of ground rules should be hired.

Consider beginning by giving the student intern a formal orientation to the public information office. The student intern should have the chance to meet all the employees and learn what roles they play. Few students have been exposed to public information offices, even at their own college or university. Explaining roles, goals and functions can prevent confusion and make a student intern much more productive.

If your institution offers journalism or public relations classes, consider exploring whether the diversity intern can receive course credit for work produced.

Selecting an intern
Determine in advance what kind of assistance from an intern will allow the public information office to place more diversity stories. Do you need a diversity intern with the connections and skills to identify developing stories that you might not otherwise know about?

Do you need your diversity intern to write news releases? Do you need someone with good telephone skills to pitch stories to reporters and producers? Do you need someone with graphic arts skills to develop posters and other materials? Knowing your needs will help you choose the right student for the internship.

Generally, students who have succeeded in journalism courses tend to make good interns. You might check with journalism faculty at your institution or one situated nearby to recruit a student intern.

Students with experience working at a student newspaper or radio station also tend to make excellent interns, but generally it is better that a diversity intern not work at a student newspaper or radio station at the same time s/he is serving the internship. Doing so can create conflicts that are better avoided.

In your recruiting interview, find out about the student's interests and competing demands on her/his time. You will also want to request and check writing samples and references including those from professors familiar with the student's work.

Be sure that during the interview you explore how the student views diversity on the campus. One option might be to show her/him a news story from the local newspaper and ask how s/he would research the story to include more diverse voices and perspectives. If you expect to continue the diversity internship beyond one semester or quarter, you may prefer to hire an intern who would be available longer term.

Productivity usually increases over time.
If you have not worked with an intern before, you should note that past performance does not always predict how well an intern will do. Changes in students' circumstances (grades, living situations, majors) can affect output and work quality. Be prepared for the unexpected, and to be flexible.

Training an intern
Providing training for diversity interns can be critical to their success. The Campus Diversity Public Information Project provided training to diversity interns from several schools at once. If other colleges or universities in your area also are hiring diversity interns, consider developing a training session together. If not, try to provide the training components listed below for your interns.

Training should include some or all of the following:

• Meetings with working journalists from local newspapers, radio and television stations to discuss how they decide which stories to pursue, what kinds of pitches they consider most effective, and how they try to include diversity in their reporting;
• Exercises in news gathering conducted by journalism professors;
• Information about the many types of media outlets in your community or market;
• Information on biases and stereotypes in media coverage of diversity;
• Presentations by diverse sources from the college or university, and the surrounding community. These might include leaders of ethnic student groups, neighborhood associations from throughout the community, etc.
• As part of the training, be sure to provide your intern with a copy of the style manual the office uses, and explain its function. Also provide your intern with samples of news releases and other materials generated by the public information office, and some of the articles and broadcast stories they have generated.

Supervising an intern
Early in the semester or quarter, expect to assign the intern a diversity story or two to help her/him get started. Especially at the beginning, make assignments well-defined, simple and manageable. After a while, you should work together with the intern to develop story ideas.

Provide the intern with feedback on her/his work quickly and in detail. If a story requires rewriting, ask the intern to do it rather than rewriting the story yourself. If questions are unanswered and more interviews need to be conducted, ask the intern to complete the research.

At the start of researching a story, ask your intern to develop a placement plan that includes targets for story placement. Then, be sure that s/he includes sources that will make the story placeable in those outlets.

Be sure to give your intern deadlines and stick to them. When a story is placed, ask the intern to share the success with the program featured and with the sources s/he interviewed.

While you will certainly talk to your intern frequently over the course of her/his internship, you may also find it helpful to set aside an hour at the mid-point of the internship for an evaluation session. Make it a two-way conversation, in which you evaluate the intern and the intern provides feedback on how the internship has been structured.

When discussing story ideas and ways to pitch stories, give your intern an opportunity to defend her/his ideas and approach. You may find a good compromise, and your intern will learn more about developing and shaping stories.

Schedule a final review of the intern's work. Discuss previous feedback and assess the ways in which the intern has progressed since the mid-point evaluation.

Collecting an intern's work products
Keep in mind that maintaining a file with a diversity intern's work products is much easier than trying to recreate that file later.

Make maintaining this file a part of the intern's ongoing job, and specify what materials should be in the file. These might include:

• notes from interviews;
• news releases and other media materials;
• pitch letters;
• notes from pitching; and clips and story placements.

Organizing a diversity internship and training and supervising an intern will require an investment of your time, but the results are well worth it. As you look over the file of diversity media materials and clips your intern has generated over time, chances are you'll be impressed!