MAYA CLEMENT
With Clarke Central High School and Athens being a minority-majority location, one of the ODYSSEY Media Group's goals has been to promote diversity. I feel as though it is important to make sure that a variety of voices are being told. I think that no matter your identity, you deserve to have your story told and community represented.
Scholars in SCAPE
I wrote this story with three other people on a club promoting inclusivity at my school. The Students of Color Achieving and Pursuing Excellence club aims to support underrepresented students thrive in advanced and Advanced Placement classes at Clarke Central High School. I enjoyed getting to help with the creation of this story as it is important for everyone to feel seen and our audience be represented in the stories we are telling.
Be an ally
I wrote this story while I was in the Journalism 1 class. Through this story, I promoted Asian American inclusivity and how I am an ally to the community. I wanted to write this story to make sure that people know that you can always show your support to people and to encourage it in a variety of ways.
Fake corporate support
This story is about companies only supporting marginalized communities such as the LGBTQ+ community during certain times or the year in order to benefit themselves. I had a hard time writing this story because I ran into a lot of issues with sources, data and word count. Because I didn't meet the necessary deadlines and it was towards the end of the 2021-22 school year, I didn't end up getting this story published. I am proud that I got the story completed in the end, though.
Do not interview list
As a part of ODYSSEY, we create a do not interview list where everyone has to fill out a form saying which stakeholders they have interviewed throughout the cycle. We then use this list to avoid interviewing the sources again unless it is not possible. This is important to our publication as we want to make sure that the sources we are interviewing are representive of our school and we are using a wide range of people. One thing that I hope to get better about is interviewing more people who don't look like me.
Keynote session
While attending a National High School Journalism Convention virtually during the 2021-22 school year, I watched a session of George Floyd and racial reckoning. From this session, I was able to learn how to approach sensitive and quick reporting in order to get a wide range of coverage. To me, I think that being exposed to reporting on diversity makes me more committed to trying to make my reporting more diverse.
Diversity audit
I completed a survey for the JEA Diversity Audit in order to share details about ODYSSEY. I enjoyed completing this survey because it was a way to reflect on the program and acknowledge some of the things we could do better in terms of diversity. I was also able to watch other staffers complete the survey and see what they knew about the program. I think that our program does an amazing job with diversity, but there is always room for improvement.
Diversity Sessions
Sessions on diversity can be hard to find at conventions sometimes because it is not an easy topic to cover. During the 2023 fall GSPA, I attended a session on sustainability. My publication does not cover sustainability very often, so I was able to expand my knowledge on the subject and convey the information I learned to the rest of the staff. Now, we are doing a story on recycling at our school for an upcoming newsmagazine. At the 2023 fall NSPA, I attended a session on covering athletes and disability. This topic is extremely sensitive, so I loved getting to hear how to handle it with care and be a more professional journalist.
Diversity Statement
Over the previous summer and beginning of the school year, the ODYSSEY editorial board and I worked to update our diversity statement so that we could publish it on our website and in the newsmagazine. I contributed to writing the inclusion and diversity to sources sections as well as editing the whole document. I value diversity because this is the best way to learn and get a variety of perspectives and experiences. We are still working on finalizing the statement, but I hope to finish this process soon so that we are able to show how dedicated we are to diversity as a publication.