As a high schooler, Denise Wong soured on journalism while writing for a youth newspaper produced by the New York Daily News. She felt stories about ethnic minority and openly gay teens were so tightly edited that they lost nuances crucial to news coverage of those demographics.
But Wong’s feelings about journalism have changed since joining the staff of hardboiled magazine, the Asian American student publication at the University of California, Berkeley.
“I love expressing myself without conforming to expectations. I’m learning a lot about Asians and getting to dialogue about it,” Wong says.
Her passion mirrors that of her peers at not only hardboiled, now in its 14th year, but at other U.S. colleges having newspapers, literary journals and e-zines focused on Asians. It’s not known how many such staffs exist nationally, but students typically work without pay and operate on shoestring budgets. Some have prior journalism experience; others have none. What they all share, though, is a commitment to exploring topics relevant to young Asian adults that aren’t necessarily covered with depth by official campus papers or any other establishment media.
“There’s no question such periodicals will continue to proliferate,” says San Francisco State University journalism professor Jon Funabiki. “Considering the many Internet and desktop publishing resources available, today’s climate makes it possible. As time goes on, you’ll see more diversity and fragmentation, too.”
The general public’s consumption of U.S. media has declined steadily in recent years, but segments of ethnic media have seen “significant growth” nationally, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The Project reports that a 2005 survey conducted for an association of ethnic news outlets indicated that 24 percent of American adults consumed news produced by ethnic media. All this coincided with the U.S. immigrant population jumping from 19.8 million in 1990 to more than 35 million in 2005.
Funabiki says the formation of ethnic media, whether among adults or college students, springs from “a natural desire to connect with each other and to establish community identity.” He adds that, even in areas heavily populated by minorities, their voices aren’t necessarily represented in the so-called mainstream media.
