Teaching nowadays can seem like a zero-sum game. As the need for multimedia skills expands, for example, will other areas of curriculum like diversity get squeezed?
The University of Southern California 's (USC) Annenberg School of Journalism is luckier than most schools because it offers a course titled “The American Press and Issues of Sexual Diversity,” which was created by the late Leroy F. Aarons.
This first-of-its-kind elective course focuses on how the news media has covered LGBT issues. It is open to all undergraduate and graduate students, and fulfills USC 's multicultural requirement. However, most of the students who have enrolled in the course so far have not been journalism majors. As a result, I have had to look for other ways to infuse diversity lessons into courses that I teach to ensure that students get some exposure to LGBT issues.
There are several ways to do this:
- Contact your local NLGJA chapter for names of members who are willing to come in and talk to students. These guest speakers can include journalists who are “out” in mainstream newsrooms as well as media professionals who work for the LGBT press.
- Include a module in your introductory news writing, reporting or history courses focusing on news coverage (good and bad) of LGBT issues and the history of the LBGT press. My “Gender and the News Media” course, for instance, includes a discussion of the lesbian press in the United States. Require students to read or view books, articles or documentaries that focus on LGBT issues. One example is the two-part Showtime documentary “The Opposite Sex,” which focused on male-to-female and female-to-male transgender experiences.
- Include LGBT issues in discussions about ethics and practice. Among other things, you can describe how The Associated Press' stylebook entry for “transgender” differs from NLGJA's stylebook definition and the controversy over “outing.”
Student reaction to these lessons has been positive, at least in Los Angeles. Young people have some exposure to LGBT individuals at least through pop culture (think Ellen DeGeneres, among others), so there is a basic level of comfort there. But critical thinking about the damaging stereotypes that exist, which stories get covered and how these stories are framed is absolutely key.
