The session will encourage attendees to seek and pitch stories about demographics that are underrepresented in mainstream news. While offering suggestions on how to cast more diverse characters for stories by thinking of where LGBTQ people could be the main characters of a piece that impacts all American’s equally regardless of their sexuality, as opposed to casting the traditional husband and wife. The panel will also encourage a discussion about casting a wider, more diverse net in LGBTQ coverage to encourage greater perspectives of women and people of color.
Download the presentation here.
Moderator: Michelle Miller
Panelists: Simon Bouie, Sharif Durhams, Bethany Grace Howe, Patrick Lee
SIMON BOUIE is a national Emmy Award-winning producer for the “CBS Evening News” in the Los Angeles bureau. A native of Los Angeles and graduate of the University of La Verne, Bouie began his career at KCBS in 1999 where he started as a production assistant. He would go on to become an assignment editor and occasional undercover investigative producer. In 2005, Bouie joined CBS Network News as a booker and associate producer for “The Early Show.” In 2014, Bouie’s responsibilities shifted primarily to “CBS Evening News” as an associate producer and digital archivist. In 2017, Bouie was promoted to producer for the “CBS Evening News,” a position he continues to hold.
SHARIF DURHAMS is president of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Jourrnalists. He is a senior editor for news and alerting for CNN Digital, where oversees daily planning decisions for CNN’s desktop homepage and mobile alerts. Durhams was previously a homepage editor at The Washington Post, where he helped to structure coverage of the 2016 Olympics and election and directed homepage breaking news planning after the shooting of four police officers in Dallas and the announcement of Fidel Castro’s death. His team helped The Washington Post surpass The New York Times in digital traffic for the first time. The Post won the Online News Association’s General Excellence in Online Journalism award in 2015.
BETHANY GRACE HOWE, PH.D. is a former newspaper writer and editor, as well as having served as a high school journalism teacher in the Pacific Northwest for 15 years. Having recently completed her doctorate at the University of Oregon, she continues her research into transgender identity as it is impacted by media and interpersonal communications. She serves as a writer for The Syndrome Mag, a feminist humor website, and The Eugene Register-Guard, in Oregon’s southern Willamette Valley.
PATRICK LEE has been with CBS News for almost a decade, as an award-winning producer and editor for “CBS News Sunday Morning.” In 2011, he joined the editing staff at “60 Minutes,” and continues as a contributing producer for “CBS News Sunday Morning.” In 2010, he directed a short documentary on microfinance in Kenya. He also co-produced a documentary, “Black Women in Medicine,” which was being shown in various film festivals and had been broadcasted on World Channel during the spring of 2017. In addition to news and documentary experiences, Lee has written and directed a half dozen works for the theater. As a playwright, two of his short plays were funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s HIV-AIDS Awareness Campaign for the New York Chinese community, and later turned into educational films. He was also a script consultant for the musical “Shanghai Blues,” which premiered in China in 2016.
MICHELLE MILLER is the co-host of “CBS This Morning: Saturday.” Miller joined the broadcast in July of 2018. Her work regularly appears on the “CBS Evening News,” “CBS This Morning” and “CBS Sunday Morning.” She has also appeared as a correspondent on “48 Hours.” Miller joined CBS News in 2004. Miller’s reporting has earned her several prestigious journalism awards including an Emmy for her series of reports on the National Guard’s Youth Challenge Academy, an Edward R Murrow for her coverage of a day care center stand-off in New Orleans, and she was part of the Alfred I. duPont – Columbia Award winning team for coverage the Newtown school shooting. In 2019, Miller won a Gracie award for her reporting on the hidden world of sex trafficking in “’48 Hours’: Live to Tell: Trafficked.”