Idea No. 16 for keeping AAJA extraordinary:

I believe that we all should consider ourselves secret agents for AAJA’s MediaWatch program. By “secret agents,” I mean each of us should always have our antennae up for offensive, inappropriate or outrageous media coverage of Asians, Asian Americans, our communities, our issues or AAJA itself. The National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association not only promotes fair and accurate coverage of LGBT issues, it has a Rapid Response Task Force of working journalists who comb newspapers and airwaves for problematic news coverage.

What does AAJA get out of it? The explosive growth of social media requires us to have even more eyes and ears scanning the airwaves for stereotypical, biased and racist news coverage, so we can respond - where appropriate - both quickly and decisively.

We did a great job of this with AAJA’s Jeremy Lin advisory (read it here), but that’s because committed members were able to jump in on short notice.