This post is an update on the progress of my and Hailey Lee’s final project. Our original proposal can be found here.

Our Working Title: Minority Representation in the Boston Television News Industry

One interesting fact that was pointed out to Hailey and I in class was that Boston is now a “minority” dominated city, so the terminology of our paper might get tricky. Once we collect more data, we will decide what terminology to use. Terms suggested in class were “people of color” or “marginalized groups” as an alternative to minorities.

The three groups we have decided to focus on are blacks, Asian Americans, and Hispanics.

Another distinction we will make in the paper is the separation of mainstream media, public media, and community media. We will focus on mainstream media.

On the question of how to measure democratic participation, we will look to census data and voter turn-out, although Sasha pointed out voter-turn out data may be inadequate in some areas.

Now for an outline of our paper:

1) Overview of minority participation in TV media in US in general
-Discuss census-demographics of USA from past 10 years
-Compare census demographics to minority participation in TV media (10 yrs)
-We have clarified ‘participation’ as active members of the newsroom
(on-air, news photographers, producers)
-We will then make our thesis statement about why this issue is important: democratic participation, diversity and accurate reflection of demographics

2) We will seek to find out whether reduced minority representation in TV media affects democratic participation (voter turnout, census participation)
-Our hypothesis is that there is not accurate representation of the minority population of Boston in minority participation in TV
-When we ask people on the street whether or not seeing people who look like them on TV or seeing stories of their communities affects their democratic participation, they will say yes
– We are looking for literature on relationship between mainstream TV and minority participation in democracy. Suggestions would be appreciated!

3) Overview of the types of Television in Boston
Types of TV media in Boston:
-Mainstream: NECN, WCVB, WBZ, WHDH, WFXT, WSBK, WTMU,
-local TV: Cambridge Community TV, WUNI, Boston Neighborhood Network, WLVI (additional suggestions would be great!)
-public TV: WGBH
-We will focus mostly on mainstream but will consider other two in analysis
-We will look through organizations’ websites to obtain minority reports

4) Overview of blacks, Hispanics, Asian American media participants in Boston (10 yrs)

A) Hispanics
-WTMU, WUNI
-demographics
-Boston
-Media
-compare representations in the city versus TV.
-interview: NAHJ

B) Blacks
-demographics
-Boston
-Media
-interview: NABJ

C) Asian Americans
-demographics
-Boston
-Media
-interview: AAJA

5) Here, we will investigate whether or not the rise in ethnic media in Boston is due to a lack of minority representation in mainstream media.

6) Conclusion

Video:
The second part of our project is a 5-7 minute long video that will reflect the arguments made in our paper. We are collecting names of potential individuals to interview from the Boston Census office, minority on-camera journalists, and producers at mainstream media stations. We would also like to incorporate a “man-on-the-street” type of interview, that asks minorities about how they feel about media representation.