Let’s Do It Better!
Welcome to The Authentic Voice: The Best Reporting on Race and Ethnicity, a multimedia teaching tool based on a collection of award-winning stories from the Let’s Do It Better! Workshop on Journalism, Race and Ethnicity at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
We offer a teaching guide, news stories and links to additional resources aimed at helping journalists, educators and the public deal with one of the country’s most profound and challenging issues — relations between people of different races and ethnicities.
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Our Stories
This section introduces you to stories that have been honored at the Let’s Do It Better! Workshop on Journalism, Race and Ethnicity.
Here, the award-winning journalists discuss the evolution of their stories, the challenges, their mistakes, ethical issues and all of the work that goes into quality reporting, with particular focus on issues that can arise when a story involves race and ethnicity.
The workshop, founded in 1999 and supported by a Ford Foundation grant, highlights best practices in print and broadcast on the coverage of race and ethnicity.
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Teacher’s Guide
The pursuit of excellence in covering race and ethnicity begins with a conversation about diversity, the umbrella under which these issues reside. It’s critical, then, to have a shared definition of what diversity means and a clear articulation of why it’s relevant to journalism.
Get chapter-by-chapter analyses of the stories highlighted in The Authentic Voice, tip sheets and interviews with the honored journalists about handling everything from getting people to speak candidly about race and ethnicity to writing with authority and depth.
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