Commitment to Diversity
Reflecting our diverse student body
With approximately 73% of our student body identifying with a non-white racial group, ensuring that our content reflects this diversity is immensely important to our staff. We do this by encouraging all of our staff and especially our staff writers to contribute when we brainstorm content for our publication. We are very proud that our own staff strongly reflects our diverse student body. We strongly value the diverse perspectives brought by our staff, many of whom come from ethnically, racially and culturally diverse backgrounds. Our goal as a staff is to cover a wide array of issues that impact our students. The only way to do this is to celebrate the unique opportunity we have to tell important stories through diverse perspectives. Below are some examples of content that was brainstormed and executed by our staff members, who prioritize representation and equality.
While covering the Black Lives Matter protests that occurred over the summer last year, we understood how complex and important this movement is for our students and the entire world. In addition to covering the movement through objective news articles, it was important to our staff writers that we offered our audience ways to get involved and educated about the movement. There were also many opinion articles that were eye-opening and absolutely essential to this conversation. Here are the different angles taken for our coverage.
Nagorno-Karabakh attacks on Armenia
As the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan grew over the Nagorno-Karabakh territory, we quickly noticed the impact it was having on our school community. Despite us being virtual, students were showing their support by changing their Zoom meeting photo to supportive images for Armenia and spreading awareness on social media. Glendale, a city near our school, has the second-largest Armenian population in the world and there is a significant student population that identifies as Armenian. Our staff writer Antonio volunteered to write a story about this conflict that was also impacting our community. He was able to interview a DPMHS alumna who graduated with a degree in political science. This was a very complex topic, riddled with confusing political jargon that Antonio was able to explain in language that teens could understand. We also accompanied this story with a listicle about ways students can help Armenia.
Click the image to be redirected to the article.
Covering Black Lives Matter
Advocating for underrepresented students
Toward the end of our 2020-21 fall semester, there were a lot of rumors circulating about if and when our district would be returning to campus. As a staff, we believed that returning to school would be dangerous to the students and staff, which is why we decided to focus our December editorial on that topic. I wrote that editorial with our Entertainment Editor Sara. In this article, we emphasized that COVID-19 was impacting Black and Brown communities at a significantly higher rate than their White and Asian counterparts. We cited this as a reason why reopening campuses was dangerous, given that the majority of our districts belong to this community.
Black and Latino Californians aged 18 to 64 are dying more frequently than their white and Asian counterparts. Given that 73.4% of LAUSD students are Latino and 10% are Black, the risk of reopening schools will disproportionately risk the lives of these students.
Black and Latino Californians aged 18 to 64 are dying more frequently than their white and Asian counterparts. Given that 73.4% of LAUSD students are Latino and 10% are Black, the risk of reopening schools will disproportionately risk the lives of these students.
— DPMHS Editorial Staff
Click the image to be redirected to the article.
Covering the violence against Black transgender women
While brainstorming for the December 2019 issue of our magazine, I was having trouble coming up with a focus for my section. One of our staff writers pitched a story about the violence against Transgender women in this country. At that point, I was not well educated on this topic but the writer explained that this should be seen as a national crisis. I really appreciated her passion and enthusiasm for this story idea and was excited to see what she came up with. Transgender violence wasn't a big topic of conversation at that time and I agreed with her that it would be valuable to cover it. She was able to localize the topic by interviewing the co-president of our school's Pride Club. While laying out my page for this story, I felt that an infographic would be a great addition to this package. As an editor, I really appreciated being pushed by this writer to research a topic I hadn't before while making this graphic.
Click the image to be redirected to the article.
Taking a step back to read and educate myself
In addition to working on diversifying my content as an editor, a main priority for me is educating myself on important topics outside of my cultural/ethnic bubble. I make sure to do this by constantly consuming the content created by other writers and editors on staff. I really enjoy taking a step back and appreciate the amazing work created by our staff that I had no part in. Below are some of my favorite articles written and edited by other staff members that helped me educate myself on important issues.
Feel free to click on each image and read these articles!
Utilizing Social Media
Inspired by Humans of New York, our staff decided to start a segment on our Instagram called "Humans of DPMHS." We believe that every student has a story to tell. The goal of this new series was to highlight students and staff that are difficult to reach through our traditional reporting and help tell their stories. This also enabled us to showcase students from diverse backgrounds. Our social media editor and Online Editor-in-Chief took control of this series that would upload a "Human's of DPMHS" post every Wednesday last school year. Below are a few of these posts.