A cursory glance at the courses in Nick McBride’s teaching load at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst would suggest his priorities and goals mirror journalism educators everywhere.
Like his colleagues, McBride wants his students to hone their writing skills. He wants them striving for accuracy. And he wants them to be fair and to consider all the sides to any story they report, edit or photograph.
But, unlike many of his counterparts, McBride, an associate professor of journalism, routinely pushes students to consider issues of race and ethnicity and to examine historically marginalized populations in their class assignments. Courses developed and taught by McBride titled “Covering Race” and “Community Journalism” reveal his passion — and insistence — that his students, most of them White, learn how to cover disadvantaged people in their reporting and how to interact with them on a daily basis.
McBride and others believe it’s imperative to sensitize future journalists to racial issues so that they can adequately report on hot-button topics such as this summer’s arrest of Harvard University professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. by a White police officer.
Unfortunately, this level of commitment to diversity and cultural sensitivity among journalism faculty around the country remains rare, says Dr. Linda Florence Callahan, chairwoman of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s commission on the status of minorities.
Why?
“There aren’t enough faculty who are comfortable handling diversity issues,” Callahan says. “Too many faculty don’t try to find out how to incorporate diversity. They have no incentive either. If anything, there’s disincentive.”
