Part I: What is diversity?

Chapter 1: Fault Lines -- Casting a wide net

Ask a group of journalists to define "diversity" and they are quick to bring up race and gender. Indeed, much of today‚'s media coverage breaks the country into black and white, male and female, and even into north and south.

But doing so fails to capture the complexity of American life that we, as journalists, need to portray. To address that complexity, the late Robert C. Maynard created a framework that casts a wider net. 

Maynard was a co-founder of the Institute for Journalism Education, which was renamed the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education (MIJE) after his death in 1993. A former reporter and columnist at the Washington Post, Maynard became the first African American to own a mainstream American newspaper, The Oakland Tribune. Under his leadership as editor and publisher, the newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake.

Not only were Maynard's credentials impressive, but he also had vision. After years of living with the geographical fault lines that lie beneath the earth's surface in the San Francisco Bay area, and after his experiences covering the social earthquakes of the 1960s, Maynard identified five 'Fault Lines' of race, class, gender, generation and geography as the prisms through which we in this country see the world. The race' Fault Line also includes ethnicity; the "gender" Fault Line also includes sexual orientation.

"This country cannot be the country we want it to be if its story is told by only one group of citizens," Maynard said. "Our goal is to give all Americans front-door access to the truth."

Diversity is a core value of the Maynard Institute. MIJE has trained hundreds of journalists and business-side managers at news organizations around the country; at regional workshops and national conventions; and at the institute's signature programs, including the Media Academy, the Multimedia Editing Program, and Maynard Management at Kellogg. All MIJE training includes application of Fault Lines to news coverage and to management situations.

The exercises in this manual are both real-life and hypothetical. Whether you work for a professional news organization or Web site, or for a student publication, we hope these examples will help you use the Fault Lines tool to:

- Brainstorm coverage that reflects the character of your community.
- Build more-diverse source lists to include more voices in stories.
- Improve credibility and accuracy by reporting with completeness.
- Create nuanced coverage that goes beyond the obvious Fault Line.
- Acknowledge where you sit on the Fault Lines chart so you can try to see the world through someone else's eyes.


The Five Fault Lines

Race/Ethnicity: Black, Asian, Hispanic/Latino, Native America, mixed race, white.

Gender: Male, female, gay, lesbian, transgender.

Generation: Youth (0-19), 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s+; baby boomer (born 1946-1964), Generation X (born 1965-1976), Generation Y or Millennials (born 1977-2002). While age can alter a point of view, that same point of view often is defined by generational experiences. For instance, Generation X didn't watch Richard Nixon resign as president. The baby boomers did not live through the Great Depression.

Class: Rich, upper middle class/wealthy, middle class, working class, poor.

Geography: Urban, suburban, rural; plus region.


Fault Lines Perspectives -- Yours, and Your Sources'

Race/Ethnicity: Your race or your ethnicity influences your view of events.

Gender: Your gender or sexual orientation affects your view of events.

Generation: When you grew up affects your view of events.

Class: Financial circumstances influence perspectives.

Geography: Where you're from can shape how you see events.


Fault Lines versus "Fissures"

There are social fissures such as politics and religion that also come into
play. But these are not as constant as the Fault Lines and often they are
influenced by the five Fault Lines.