Commitment to Diversity
Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Heng
Growing up Indian-American in Michigan, I’ve always understood the necessity of having diversity in a group. Diversity to me is not just an outward display of numbers or statistics, but instead is something that starts at the core of anything, be it a newsroom or an initiative. Choosing to amplify diverse voices and perspectives in all manners is a conscious effort that we have to keep making.
Diversity Mini-lesson
The idea of bringing diversity into the newsroom is something that has always been important to me as a third-generation Indian-American. Throughout high school, I've tried to do that in whatever way I can, but I realized that we never had really explicitly talked about its importance within our group.
That's why last year, I developed a mini-lesson on the importance of diversity in journalism. I go to every class and share this, and I also started presenting this at journalism conventions (both in New York at CSPA in 2025 and in Nashville for JEA/NSPA this past fall).
I go through some statistics and why diversity is important, and then a lot of it is discussion-based. Depending on time commitments, I try to add as many activities in as possible, including individual, small groups and whole room discussions.
Me presenting in Nashville. Photo by Sara-Beth Badalamente
This was the version that I presented in Nashville. It was slightly shorter, but I loved the main game that we played at the end. I passed out construction paper to each of the groups of 5 or so people, and had them draw a large flower on the paper with one petal for each person in the group. In each petal, they wrote unique characteristics that were special to them, and then in the center they wrote things they shared in common (I encouraged them to go beyond just "liking journalism!"). This is a great activity to help discover the strengths of everyone on staff and then work as a team to play to those.
This is ALWAYS my favorite slide! Especially when we have whiteboard access, it is really amazing to see all the different things people come up with and how each group is so unique in their thinking. When I'm presenting at school, I do this three times in a row, and each time the ideas are so varied yet all wonderful.
I love giving this presentation. It gives me great joy to see others getting enthused about this topic that is so near and dear to my heart. Diversity is really crucial to journalism, and although these kinds of things are on a very small scale, they still can make an impact.
JCamp
I was fortunate to attend JCamp through the Asian American Journalists Association this past summer. This experience felt so significant to me. This was the first time I got a glimpse into the field of journalism with the intention of uplifting and celebrating minority voices. Even though it was just a week long, I met some wonderful people and gained incredible mentors and experiences that I've carried with me into school now.
My JCamp cohort!
Multilingual classroom
Our staff is so incredibly diverse, and at any given moment, there are always at least two or three languages being spoken in our classroom. We make sure that is the norm in whatever way possible.
On our slides, for example, we always have everything listed in multiple languages.
We also do our best to ensure that people can be involved regardless of language. In fourth hour, for example, there are a couple of kids who aren't super comfortable with English, so our Sports Website Editor-in-Chief Jules sits with them and translates the majority of the class content into both Spanish and French for these students so that they understand what is happening.
We also make sure to have our handouts available in English, Spanish and French whenever we use those. If I am doing a mini-lesson with guided notes, for example, I'll Google translate those and print a few copies so people can use whatever language they are most comfortable in.
Annual in-depth storytelling unit
One unit that we never skip is our group in-depth storytelling unit. These are stories that dive deep into various human rights issues that we choose to cover from a localized lens.
This boosts our diverse coverage immensely. These our topics that our staff cares deeply about, and it shows in the quality of the work produced.
Last year, my co-print editor-in-chief Maya Fu and I decided to have our final print edition of the year focus solely on these in-depth stories. We did a short eight-page issue with a few of these in-depth stories included.
Click here to view the issue.
We wrote this note from the editors to explain our aim and thought-process for the issue.
Beats
We also assign beats out for throughout the year which helps with diversifying our coverage. Each staff writer will get to choose a club or activity to cover at a few checkpoints throughout the year. This is great for us to maintain club coverage throughout the year, even when things are getting busy and it's easier to overlook the smaller stories of what's happening at the school.
We use this spreadsheet to keep us organized, and we have deadlines throughout the year for people to link their stories in. We love pulling from this whenever we need to fill a little extra space on a page or have noticed that we aren't doing as much school news coverage.
Student locator sheet
No person is too hard to find! We really try to talk to a varied group of sources. Our school is so big and it is so important to be representing as much of it in our coverage as possible. This student locator sheet allows us to easily reach anyone in the school at any time.
We also make sure to train our staff to interrupt with minimal disruption and to be flexible about this. But having this resource allows us to vary our reporting of the school.
Sports coverage coordination
We launched a new sports website this year in collaboration with the Athletics Department, which was a huge step for us. Now, we have our print paper, our online news-website, social media and this sports website, gorats.org.
We felt it would be good to have a person dedicated specifically to the sports website, so we decided to appoint a Sports Website Editor-in-Chief who is responsible for keeping up with sports coverage and posting.
We also collaborate for sports coverage a lot between the sports website, The Emery and The Enthymion yearbook. For photography specifically, we often will send photographers from different programs out to take photos and write captions.
Most of the time, the newspaper editors are not as involved with sports, so it's been great having a few people that we can turn to for ideas on what to be covering and the latest updates in the sports world. This is a key factor for us when making sure that we are reporting on sports from all areas.
The homepage of the sports website features upcoming games and latest announcements.
Sourcing
I have been trying to push our limits in terms of sourcing recently. Whenever I'm working with someone on editing their news story, I make sure that they have represented as many people as possible in their coverage. Sometimes this looks like helping them brainstorm who else they can reach out to. I try emphasize the idea of representing as many sides to our stories as possible. This is central to our mission at The Emery of giving the full picture, so I try to uphold that both in my own work as well as beyond it.
This is a screenshot of this year's Issue 3 story pitch submission form that I made. Anyone who selects News will continue to this section, where they must include three sources that they will reach out to. More than the number, the idea is to have them think as holistically as possible for their stories.
Last year, we also created a Chief Content Editor role on the editorial board whose main priority is this. Their goals are to check our coverage to see that we are inclusive and broad with what we are covering.
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IN MY COVERAGE
Breaking Barriers
This was a three-part series that I wrote during my sophomore year featuring the stories and struggles of different groups of people. The first story was actually my personal project assignment that all sophomores at my school did. I realized that this was such a wonderful way to learn about people's lives different from my own, so I continued this throughout the year.
Graphic by Ella Yip
Graphic by Ella Yip
Graphic by Brody Turner
I received a Best of SNO award for this story.
I wrote this with a group for my freshman year in-depth story. This was the first time I dove deep into a topic in this way, and I was amazed to learn about the incredible resilience that so many people in the community have because of the struggles of food insecurity.
This was also the first time I story of mine was on the front page, which was super exciting for me at the time!
Design by Anna Lee
Photo by Satvika Ramanathan
I noticed that we rarely write articles about sports games – our written coverage mostly extends to photo captions, and that's about it. I definitely see the benefit of that, but I also felt it would be nice to diversify the type of coverage we did, so I went to this JV field hockey game with both my camera and my pen to take notes. I combined a photostory with a recap of the game.
BEYOND THE NEWSROOM
Balavihar
Outside of school, I am also committed to diversity through my extracurriculars. I am a student teacher at my Sunday School, Chinmaya Mission Ann Arbor Balavihar. I plan weekly games for eighth graders and coordinate with my head teachers and co-student teacher to create activities connecting Sunday school content with everyday life. I also help plan and organize events for the temple, including guest speakers from around the world, celebrations and festivals, and functions for religious holidays.
This is really important to me to help give back to the community that has done so much for me.
We had the kids paint candles relating to Hinduism for a fun before-winter break activity. Photo by Satvika Ramanathan
CORDUSA – Global Network
I am a Youth Ambassador for CORDUSA – Global Network. CORD is a nonprofit started in Himachal Pradesh in India over 40 years ago. They expanded globally in 2022, and since then, I've been a Youth Ambassador, which means I attend women's groups and take international trips for training and starting new programs. Through this work, I am able to meet people from around the world whose lives are so vastly different from my own. Yet, we are still connected through a true care for each other.
Himachal Pradesh, 2023, when I visited to learn about CORD directly from where it started. Photo by Satvika Ramanathan