Diversity
Equity
Inclusion

Since our founding in 2006 as the first public graduate journalism school in the northeast, we have embraced the school’s mission to provide greater access to students from all income levels, races, and ethnicities, and to bring reporters with more diverse voices and lived experiences into our profession.

To support that mission, we have intentionally taken a non-traditional approach to admissions, offered scholarships to more than half our students, and provided a living stipend to any student whose required summer internship is unpaid. In 2016, we launched the nation’s first  bilingual graduate journalism program to strengthen our students’ ability to report for and with Latinx communities. In the last five years, as these statistics show, more than half our students have identified as Black, Hispanic, Asian, or multiracial. An increasing number has identified as transgender, non-binary, or gender non-conforming.

As the school has grown, we have also developed programs for mid-career and executive level journalists, and in doing so, we have maintained our commitment to diversity. More than half the participants in those training, certificate, and executive programs are women and people of color. 

As a public institution, we have also felt a responsibility to support news outlets in communities that are often underserved by what is called mainstream media. We own two news outlets in the South Bronx: the Mott Haven Herald and the Hunts Point Express. And through our Center for Community Media, we serve as a national hub of information, resources, and training for news organizations that provide coverage for immigrant communities and communities of color.  

This webpage highlights our approaches to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Our Goals

Since Spring 2020, the school has undertaken a reexamination of our approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion. To aid us in that work, we launched a needs assessment with an independent consultant. While that research was being conducted, the entire community began the process of  updating our Strategic and Diversity plans. We launched a multi-pronged approach, led by five subcommittees of the Diversity Committee, to examine every aspect of the school through a DEI lens and produce a five-year plan mapping best practices and goals that will be measured and attached to a timeline. The Diversity Committee approved the 2022-2027 Diversity Action Plan in November 2021, and the Governance Council approved it in May 2022. The plan will be reviewed annually to assess progress on each goal.

Our Campus Culture

We want all members of the school community, as well as guests, to feel the school is a safe and welcoming place. Below are some examples of ways the school is working to ensure this.

  • If you wish to report discrimination and/or harassment, as defined in CUNY’s Equal Opportunity and Non-Discrimination Policy, please do so by utilizing the University-Wide Discrimination and Retaliation Reporting Portal
  • We review our events for both internal and external audiences as well as school-produced newsletters and offerings in our Research Center to ensure that the topics and speakers we choose reflect the school’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
  • Our public safety team, the campus’s first point of contact with the community, has been participating in training to learn skills on how to engage with students effectively, including students who identify as LGBTQIA+.
  • We are reviewing the interiors of our facility to see if there are better ways for the art and messaging to reflect our diversity and the diverse populations we serve.

Our Teams

The J-School benefits from two key groups leading initiatives in all areas of the school to ensure that we’re building an equitable environment for all members of our community.

Diversity Committee

The Diversity Committee is a standing committee reporting to the J-School’s Governance Council. It consists of faculty, staff, students, and an alumnus. The committee advises the school on strategies to achieve diversity in ethnic and racial origin, gender, age, income, physical abilities, and sexual orientation. It also oversees the development of the school’s Diversity Plan and recommends ways to ensure, for example, that DEI is well represented in course content and administrative policies.

DEI Taskforce

The DEI Taskforce was appointed by Dean Emerita Sarah Bartlett in July 2020 to advise the Diversity Committee on key initiatives, including assisting in contracting with a consultant to execute a campus-wide campus climate survey. 

Our Policies

The Newmark Graduate School of Journalism is one of 25 schools under the City University of New York.  Below is a list of CUNY policies, as well as J-School policies, which our community can refer to regarding DEI concerns.

Our Academics and Training

We are committed to supporting our faculty in developing cultural competency and incorporating DEI into curricula. 

  • Part  of updating our Diversity Plan (see “Our Goals”) includes revisiting the learning outcomes for all students.  
  • We are looking at building more flexibility into our master’s programs to make it easier for  students  to attend part-time.  
  • Faculty are sharing their models for teaching with a mindful DEI approach. We are developing a resource repository to launch by the end of Spring 2021 for faculty to learn from each other on approaches to teaching their students to critically examine news media around communities of color and for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
  • In collaboration with news outlets, our Career Services team has been holding “readiness” workshops to help students from marginalized backgrounds navigate professional environments as interns and long after they graduate from the school, and to help white students become more effective allies. 
  • The Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism hosts a “community of practice” made up of mid- and senior-level journalists whose primary focus is to advance DEI within their newsrooms.
  • Through our News Integrity Initiative, we have invested in and supported organizations that are advancing DEI initiatives around the world through their research and trainings, including those that address misinformation and disinformation campaigns targeted at communities of color.

Our Recruitment

We use a DEI lens in our recruitment of students, faculty, and staff.

Students

  • We hired an associate director of multicultural recruitment in Fall 2019 to enhance our outreach to underrepresented communities. 
  • We recruit at historically Black colleges and universities, and Hispanic-serving institutions.
  • We regularly recruit at conferences for professional organizations, including the National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Native American Journalists Association, and Asian American Journalists Association. 
  • We regularly enroll more than 50% from communities of color. Please go here for the latest stats on our student body.

The school has a number of active student organizations, including the National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Women’s Club, and Queer Club. For a full list of student clubs, please go here.

Staff & Faculty

  • As a CUNY school, our search process reflects the university’s commitment to recruit staff and faculty from a wide talent pool. Committee members are offered information and documents on how to conduct a fair and equitable search. For faculty, we regularly advertise in places like the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the South Asian Journalists Association, and others. Our search committees are diverse and now often include students. 
  • In December 2020, we launched trainings for managers to ensure a DEI lens is used to support more intentional career development for our staff; we will continue those.
  • In Fall 2020, we committed to $10,000 in annual funding support for professional development requests from our staff, matching a fund used to support faculty research and conference travel.

Our Journalistic Partnerships

We partner with a variety of journalistic organizations to help us achieve our goal of increasing diversity in journalism. Below are just a few examples.

  • We have raised more than $600,000 in support of scholarships for members of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, which focuses on increasing the representation of people of color in investigative reporting
  • We offer a full Reuters-NABJ scholarship to a student member of the National Association of Black Journalists. 
  • Our Career Services Department has developed partnerships with employers eager to connect with our students skilled in cultural-competency reporting. For a list of organizations where students have interned, please go here. The office also works with student organizations like the National Association of Black Journalists, which will launch a media fair in Fall 2021 with school support.
  • We contribute $5,000 a year to enable current students to attend annual conferences of professional groups of Black, Hispanic, and Asian journalists.

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