This interview has been edited for clarity.
I work for TEGNA which owns about TV stations across the country. I work on the corporate level and my title is executive producer of special projects. I work on various projects that impact how news is presented and how newsrooms run, in newsrooms across the company.
I'm the kind of person who's always trying to move forward and do the next interesting thing. So what caught my attention about TEGNA is that it was very much dedicated to innovation across the board in its local newsrooms. So part of my job is to run an innovation summit. So once every three or four months, TEGNA invites employees from across the company to come to the headquarters for three days and in those three days we talk innovating. How do we take what we do and improve it for this new age that we're in? That includes digital products, reinventing our newscasts that are on TV. Basically, we need to make sure local news is still relevant to people. One of the philosophies that I really believe in is 80/20. And what that means is 80% of our content should be original, interesting enterprise news and 20% should be the fire. The thing that local news seems to do so much of because it's easy to do. That spoke to me and what I wanted to with my career and why I got into news. They (TEGNA) are actually putting money and resources behind the ideas to change what their local newsrooms are doing.
My biggest things is to make sure that I bring up what others might be missing. One thing that is important in these innovation summits we hold is that we bring a diverse group. So it's not just about hiring diverse people and molding them to the company's standards but taking the diverse minds that we have and making sure their voices are heard and that their voices matter. That the company changes to reflect the thoughts of the diverse thoughts of the people it hires and not that we just hire people for the sake of diversity and then make them conform to the way the company has always been.
A while back when I was working in Houston, the station decided to have brown bag lunch with some community leaders and it was mostly management but they asked me to come because I was from that community. We just sat around and talked about how can we improve coverage and how can we make sure our voices are included. And to me that was such a productive conversation that I decided to take that to the next level and do that on my own in the ways that I could.
The first way I started doing that was speaking at various conferences and then I started being asked to speak. The topic I tried to focus on was empowering people in the community to demystify or pull the curtain back on what happens in newsrooms.
I think in a lot of minority communities there's this idea that the media is out to get us that there's some evil intent. But in reality it's just ignorance.
It was important for me to talk about that and to say that there's no evil agenda. They just don't know any better and they don't know what they don't know. It's very easy to reach out and get in touch with people in newsrooms. We are very accessible. But because a lot of minority communities and a lot of Muslim communities are very immigrant heavy they don't know how to do that. So my focus early on was let me pull back the curtain and how you how newsrooms work. Let me show you how you can work to influence what they do and to reassure you that they are receptive. On the flip side, while working in a newsroom it was to make sure I brought up issues and ideas important to them that I worked on breaking down that ignorance. That I worked on pointing out the implicit biases in the way we talk about things and the way that we write about things. Addressing the very basics that both communities need and connecting them with each other. That's what I've been doing in various fronts and now more formally as co-director of the Muslim American task force for AAJA.
I think the biggest thing is that there's always an excuse whether it's there aren't enough candidates out there or we can't find anybody. I think it's very easy for whoever is not being inclusive to come up with an excuse on why. Again, I don't think there's any malice involved. So, I think it's important that we challenge assumptions and continue to challenge them. Once you break down one assumption, there'll be another assumption behind it. It's important to keep challenging those and also bring solutions. We shouldn't just point out problems because they you just become white noise after a while. Some people may say that it shouldn't be on us as minority community to do that. But, if not us then who? Who's in a better position to breakdown assumptions and provide solutions when we're the experts in the situation so we should step up to that. It may not be fair but that's just the price of progress. You have to work a little bit harder in the beginning but it'll get easier. It's important to keep at it.
My angle has always been it's important to include diversity in mainstream and everyday things because that's where it's lacking the most and where the most eyeballs are. The other thing that is that inclusiveness in your coverage is a business proposition. If somebody reads something or watches a news item in which they are not represented properly their first reactions is "well they don't get this about my community right how can I trust anything else that they do."
The moment that you screw up the coverage about a certain community, the trust in your news automatically goes down.
As soon as we become more inclusive the trust factor will go up. And when the trust factor goes up, consumption of your news will go up and that's a business case. In terms of diverse pieces, I'd say we're all human and relatable to each other. The important thing is to make it relatable and interesting. People like Black Panther because it was interesting not because it took place in Africa.
I think there's always a debate over whether journalists of color should join mainstream organizations or help prop up minority news organizations. Someone asked me this question at the first conference I went to. There was some Muslim TV station and they said why not why not work there? My goal is to make sure that the coverage of my community is accurate and that people who are not in my community understand it.
To me it's really important that we stay in one mainstream organization because that's where the general public gets its information. and that tends to be more trusted and that's where I can have the biggest impact in terms of the goals I want to achieve. Another thing that took me a very long time to learn is that when you're hired at a place, the people who hired you care about what's in your mind and what you have to say. So don't sit in a room and not use your brain and not speak up. You think you should just follow the line, but you were hired because you have something to offer so make sure you offer it. It's super uncomfortable at first but you get used to it.
I've become that person in the newsroom to ask when things didn't make sense. It took me a while to realize my value as an employee. We talk about not wanted to be token hires but if you're not using your point of view to help shape the product then you are just the token. It' really important that young journalists realize that what you have to say matters and learning to speak up in a way that others will listen.
I would say that it can get really tough but it's worth fighting the fight. Also, despite all the stress of the business and the vicarious drama and the tough discussions it's a fun business. There's light at the end of the tunnel. If you like what you do, you do well and you assert yourself, you'll be valuable and companies will want you. I know it's hard to see that when you start out.