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.

From left: The Authentic Voice Co-Authors Arlene Morgan, Keith Woods, Alice Pifer, and reporter Jodi Rave of Lee Enterprise Newspapers. Rave’s series, “Broken Trust,” was honored by The Let’s Do It Better! Workshop and included in The Authentic Voice.

The textbook, DVD and Teacher’s Guide contain a series of case studies based on stories that have been published or broadcast in national news media outlets such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News (“Nightline” and “20/20”) and CBS News (“60 Minutes”).

The Authentic Voice is published by Columbia University Press and funded through a grant by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Each story in the project has received an award from the journalism school’s Let’s Do It Better! Workshop, a Ford Foundation program that recognizes excellence in reporting on race and ethnicity throughout the news industry.

Ted Koppel, former anchor of ABC News “Nightline,” Bob Simon of CBS News “60 Minutes,” New York Times reporter Mirta Ojito, and Washington Post reporter Anne Hull are among the accomplished journalists included in The Authentic Voice. They 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 the issues that can arise when a story involves race and/or ethnicity.

This teaching Website allows us the opportunity to continue the discussions sparked by the newspaper and television stories highlighted in the book and on the DVD. We believe the book, DVD and Website will help working journalists, college students and others cover issues of race and ethnicity by offering examples of best practices, chapter-by-chapter analyses of the stories, links to tip sheets and resources, 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.

For more information about the project, please contact:
Arlene Morgan
Special Assistant to the Dean for External Affairs
Temple University School of Media and Communication
[email protected]

The Authentic Voice

Our Stories: Read excerpts from stories featured in The Authentic Voice project.

Teacher’s Guide: Get chapter-by-chapter analyses of the stories highlighted in The Authentic Voice, links to tip sheets and interviews with the award-winning journalists.

About Us: Read bios of co-editors and contributors to The Authentic Voice book, DVD and teaching site.

DVD Discussion Questions: View a list of discussion questions from The Authentic Voice DVD which can used in a traditional classroom setting, with small discussion groups, or for self-directed learning.

Let’s Do It Better – Invoke the Best, Inspire the Boss: Read highlights from the first Let’s Do It Better Workshop on Journalism, Race and Ethnicity, founded by Sig Gissler, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes. We invited honorees to share their work and their lessons learned with an audience of  “gatekeepers” — 17 newspaper and television newsroom managers from the Northeast.