Diversity

As a journalist, I am dedicated to celebrating and promoting diversity in our publications. We strive to include voices from all backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives, ensuring that every student feels represented, valued, and included. 

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Diversity comes in many shapes and forms, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, political views, hobbies, and even something as simple as the grade you are in. 

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As a leader in Utica's Arrow newspaper and Warrior Yearbook, I do my best to embrace diversity and destigmatize negative stereotypes in our community. In my 2023 "No Bark All Bite" story, I got the chance to spread awareness on what working dog sports actually are. Most think it is pure aggression, but don't see the time, effort, and training behind all of it. I wanted to showcase not only the work from the student trainer (and their family), but also show how it can be a positive thing. 

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In my 7 Grandfathers story, I was able to discuss the controversy surrounding our mascot, The Chieftain. The story discusses Principal Tim Youngblood's incorporation of the 7 Grandfather teachings, which was requested by Tribal Leader Al Pedwaydon, and the keeping of our mascot. Many students were confused, so having the ability to not only inform them, but highlight indigenous voices was incredible. Indigenous people have been historically silenced, so I wanted to let them tell the story even better than I ever could. While we don't have a high Indigenous population at Utica, I was able to get his take on keeping the mascot, as well as Pedwaydon's. 

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Through my Photo of the Day series on @uhswarrior, I achieve an insane amount of coverage of everything from Utica United (Utica's Gender Sexuality Alliance) to Basketball to acting out Hamlet in Mrs. Kevonian's class. Through this project, I try to represent every aspect of Utica High and its students. With hundreds of posts, I've highlighted students from every group and even students that fly solo. 

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This year, I've chosen to design a page to only feature students that have not met our coverage goal of three times. To start it off, I got the names of every not pictured student and interviewed them, because they automatically have one less feature in the book than everyone else. I think it's a great way to feature students that aren't necessarily in every club and sport. This page even fits with our theme, asking our students the question "What is a small thing that makes your day?" (our theme is smALL Things Considered)

 

Our coverage report makes it easy to find underrepresented people and give them a chance to be on more pages while we can also "blacklist" people that have been in the book more than we would like. Last year, we needed a photo for our parting page, so we looked for someone that had not met their coverage goal and pulled them out of class for a quick photoshoot. It is an amazing resource to make sure we represent our school as accurately as possible. 

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In a day and age when diversity if coming to the forefront of journalism, it is important to create inclusive content to make everyone feel represented and make sure their voices are heard. 

View my work and see for yourself the diverse representation I have achieved.