Idea No. 6 for keeping AAJA extraordinary:

I believe that the goals of AAJA and the UNITY Journalists alliance are not mutually exclusive. When AAJA was invited to join the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists and the Native American Journalists Association for the historic UNITY94 alliance, we did so knowing that together we were more powerful, more influential and harder to ignore.

Unfortunately, in recent years, some people have seen UNITY as competing with its alliance partners for sponsorship, despite the fact that the alliance was founded on ideas that were bigger than dollar signs.

What does AAJA get out of it? More than 40 years after the Kerner Commission cited the lack of minorities in newsrooms, and as the ranks of minority journalists keep dropping, the media industry needs UNITY Journalists and its partner groups to keep pressing for greater diversity in hiring and coverage and more opportunities for journalists of color and other underrepresented groups. Simply put, how can we possibly tell the nation’s stories without a range of faces, voices and perspectives in our newsrooms?