DEI Update from CapRadio
We reached out to Jun Reina, General Manager, for an update on how the DEI work at CapRadio has been progressing since joining Public Media for All. He offered the following.
What’s one DEI success you’ve had at your organization recently?
CapRadio has formed an affinity group to give team members of color a safe space to discuss issues related to DEI and to potentially transfer discussion into action for CapRadio’s DEI growth.
What’s one lesson you’ve learned about DEI work at your organization?
That change needs to be structural. We can’t simply hire more people of color. Our hiring practices, organizational documents, and communication all need to reflect the more equitable experience we’re aspiring to.
What resources and support does you need to improve DEI at your organization?
The work can’t be at the staff level alone. The Board needs to be fully invested in the work. Thankfully, we do have a Board that is willing to invest both their personal time and organizational resources to become a fully inclusive and equitable organization.
Additionally, CapRadio has created a tracking document to transparently share how they’re advancing towards Public Media for All’s DEI action items.
DEI Update from NHPR
We reached out to Jim Schachter, President & CEO, for an update on how the DEI work at NHPR has been progressing since joining Public Media for All. He offered the following.
What’s one DEI success you’ve had at your organization recently?
Building on an initiative to provide pandemic-related news to Spanish speakers in New Hampshire, we secured a Report for America position that will allow us to hire a bilingual reporter to engage with and cover the state’s growing Hispanic communities. We hope this will help us not just push reporting at these under-served residents but to produce journalism based on their concerns and interests. We’re working with an advisory board of Hispanic community leaders to develop our plans.
What’s one lesson you’ve learned about DEI work at your organization?
This work requires everyone’s engagement. Management has to give up control and invite not just the participation of frontline staff but their leadership. And management needs to invite the staff to hold it accountable.
What resources and support does you need to improve DEI at your organization?
We’ve been inspired by the DEI strategic plan shared by our colleagues at KUOW and the accountability report published by Louisville Public Media. As we develop similar documents, it would be helpful to know what other stations are doing to put a narrative to their DEI work.
Public Media for All will be working with the leaders of organizations that have joined us to model successes, share lessons learned, and get the support and resources they need to do this vital DEI work to ensure that public media serves everyone.
DEI Update from WYSO
We reached out to Luke Dennis, General Manager of WYSO Public Radio and President of Miami Valley Public Media, for an update on how their DEI work has been progressing since joining Public Media for All. He offered the following.
What’s one DEI success you’ve had at your organization recently?
We no longer offer unpaid internships. We now offer paid internships in three areas (news, music and development / marketing) three times a year (fall, spring and summer). We pay $15 an hour. Interns can work with us for as few as 10 and as many as 20 hours a week.
What’s one lesson you’ve learned about DEI work at your organization?
That it cannot be a separate plan -- a side initiative -- that it must inform every aspect of our work every day. At first we thought about creating a separate diversity plan for WYSO, but now are integrating DEI ideas into every operational area.
What resources and support does you need to improve DEI at your organization?
We need to be held accountable. Making a pledge to do this work -- publicly, in the way that Public Media for All asked us to do -- was needed and appreciated.
We need outside audits of our hiring practices, salaries, etc.
We need to build long-term relationships with colleges and universities (we hope to do this better through the new paid internship program) that will create a pipeline of POC who want to work in public radio.
We need to be able to talk with other stations of similar size and similar markets to learn what their successes and failures are with DEI work.
Public Media for All will be working with the leaders of organizations that have joined us to model successes, share lessons learned, and get the support and resources they need to do this vital DEI work to ensure that public media serves everyone.
DEI Update from Nine PBS
We reached out to Amy Shaw, President & CEO, for an update on how the DEI work at Nine PBS has been progressing since joining Public Media for All. She offered the following.
What’s one DEI success you’ve had at your organization recently?
We’ve expanded the voices we have on our air for breaks and station announcements to represent more authentic voices from our community.
What’s one lesson you’ve learned about DEI work at your organization?
For some people, we’re moving too fast and for others, we’re moving too slow. In any case, we have to have a steady drumbeat of this work in order to see any real change.
What resources and support does you need to improve DEI at your organization?
Best practices from other organizations, how to address some of the common obstacles that arise, how to stay focused and consistent amid tumultuous times.
Public Media for All will be working with the leaders of organizations that have joined us to model successes, share lessons learned, and get the support and resources they need to do this vital DEI work to ensure that public media serves everyone.
WUNC Joins PM4A
Connie Walker, President & General Manager of WUNC, offered the following about why they decided to participate.
“We’ve been talking about the need for more diversity in public media for a long time. We have varying degrees of understanding and sophistication about what that means. But many in public media say this is truly something we need to do and yet it hasn’t happened across the system in the past. So now is the time to act on the current climate in society and just what has been needed all along. We need to make it so.
Will it be easy, no. Will we make mistakes, probably. Should it be all put on people of color to do it, absolutely not.
These are some reasons why WUNC radio has enthusiastically signed on to the Public Media for All pledge. We are committed to making even more change toward diversity, equity and inclusion, than we already have.
WUNC has established a staff committee to lead these efforts, but we see this as a responsibility of our entire staff. Our board is assisting and also supportive. I’m very proud of the strides we have already made.
There is a quote that is often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” ... Gandhi in fact said: “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.” It resonates either way. WUNC is working on change, as are more and more other public media institutions.
WUNC serves about half the state of North Carolina with transmitters serving the region from Greensboro to the Outer Banks. The station is headquartered in Chapel Hill, with additional offices and studios in Durham, Raleigh, and Greensboro.”