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Commitment to Diversity
As the student newsmagazine it is important we think about the people who this magazine represents. It is meant to showcase our student body's culture, unique stories, and experiences. Our school is split into different art areas (visual, digital media, dance, communications, vocal, strings, band, piano, theatre. When we create content it is so important to not only take into account race and gender, but diversity in major as well. My co-EIC and I aim to educate our staff on our schools' population.
At the beginning of the year our Coverage Editors ask for all the school demographics which we then present to the class. I emphasize the importance of taking the demographics into account and then lead a discussion on how we can do better on our coverage. We have always struggled to cover visual since it tends to be something that is not performance based. Since it is our biggest group on campus I emphasized how we need to ensure we cover them more and that is something we have done better job on our website and in our print issues. I also explain how while people may be inclined to go interview their friend or someone they know because they will feel more comfortable, we need to branch out because there are so many people we are yet to cover.
We have a diverse staff on The Muse who have a variety of experiences. Often times staffers want to write stories they are interested in and while this may not be my area of expertise I listen, and often learn from them. Since students come from all areas from this school ranging from end to end of the county everyone has different backgrounds.
We have list of all the students their grade, major, pronouns and first and last names. At the begging of the year I explain the importance of always check this list so we can not only be accurate, but ensure that the people we are choosing to cover vary in grade and major. It is also so important that staffers know to double check pronouns because many time people they know may go by another pronoun, but we have to go by what is on the list since it is what we are approved to use by the school and if we violate it could even violate rules in the state of Florida.
The blacklist is so important to our publication and is something I refer constantly when editing. Our copy editing team are often the ones editing this. It is color coded with green meaning it is someone on the publication and each other color signifying how many times a specific person covered. When I reference this I check how many times that person has been covered, if they have been covered at all. If they are in the orange that signals to me that I should ask the writer if they have an alternative person or remember that in the future if someone else says they want to interview them. It is so important to me that The Muse represents the entire student body. This means that the amount of people without any color should be limited. I aim to suggest people who have not been covered because they have a story to tell and it is our job as a reliable student news source to tell it.