most everyone here possesses the prized awareness of the importance of diversity in our media but as an editor in chief of a publication that centers the stories of people of color i began to have a problem with that word diversity communities of color in a media that only six percent of americans as a whole have a strong confidence in the gospel of diversity in practice so that you can change nothing else about your media outlet other than simply making an allowance for one person or god willing to from the coup come from the ranks of the marginalized of our country and that the problems of inclusion in our media will all be fixed however this quick fix will never address the stubborn problem found in our media and that is the problem of the lived experience of far too many in our society that continues to struggle to be seen and struggle to be heard and struggle to be told authentic in an authentic way because their narratives are not perceived as normal nor rational no relevant in newsrooms lacking in cultural sensitivity in newsrooms was dominant default in their judgments and viewpoints boiled down to often to white male centric when you cover one of the most diverse that goes in our country as i do you have countless stories illustrate of of that every day damage done by those default perspectives the story i carry with me in this work is of a little girl whose father michael was killed after an assailant burst into his apartment when a local publication reported on michael's death it would trade him on par with  worse than his killer the featured contents of michael's life focused on him being in a felon instead of a father rather than the tragedy that befits the early death of a teacher a basketball coach a community organizer a son a brother a husband you were presented with a formal criminal a blackmailer who evidently deserved an early death at the age of thirty three he was after all convicted of a gun charge a decade ago so for me that's why my community asked me to write a story about michael to give his life context because he was tired of reading yet another story presenting an incomplete portrait of another deceased when no one else would because no one else seemed to know how and the reason that sticks with me isn't to pat myself on the publication on the back it has its blind spots like any other now the reason that sticks with me is because i hope i don't have another moment like it and i want to know the day when someone's humanity is reduced to a two dimensional stick figure when someone has to big media to be seen not as perfect not  hero nor a villain nor a stereotype nor to stick nor a curiosity but to be seen as human with all of the death and complexity and richness that title implies whether black white trans gay lesbian or whatever it is not only diversity that we need in our media it is a revolution of cultural values for consumers of news you must continue to demand our media shines it light its light illuminating in affirming the humanity of all groups in our society where the dominant are marginal and for us within the media it remains unpaired of that we provide that light at whatever cost because equity in our society is a bargain at whatever price  paid me once if journalists ever get together to talk about how to do better than woman in what was done to her father i thought honestly that on most days we don't most days it's hard enough just to work enough to put food on the table and not be bludgeoned by the cynicism that comes with this job so often it's hard when you go home most nice apply the scalpel of scrutiny scrutiny that we possess upon ourselves in our profession and so i'm glad that she's here tonight so i can tell her that that's different tonight because tonight we have an all star panel of journalists of color and it is my pleasure to introduce the first we have been is behind she is the news editor of the we have reagan jackson  thousand and sixteen million fellow and also the co founder of the ever gray a new daily newsletter that is a wonderful site i take it for me check it out they also have andrew simon he's the director of fellowship programs and creative projects at grist magazine so what i hear in the term diversity is an aspiration that reflects a cultural value about how different we all are and how many people who are different there are that we serve in journalism i think it can be really useful when it brings out the interest in fulfilling that ambition in representing our communities better and telling better stories i sometimes wish that it would just fold into a broader definition of accuracy because if it's about serving our communities we don't just serve them with facts and information we serve them with perspectives and how can you have a good grasp on think it's an interesting word and can be kind of a problematic word at the same time because i think on the one hand there's that definition where diversity kind of just reflects who you know the definition of what we are and who we are that we're like  society with many different people in it but it's also i think it's a little problematic sometimes because i think people kind of think of it as well there's normality and then there's a verse and i think that that's that that when people start to think of diversity  that can start to get a little problematic kind of implying that diverse people are separate people are diverse people and that this is a special treat this is a special type of coverage when it's really we need to kind of and nothing at the same time it's a word that is very easy to grasp it's a concept that i think we all have in our minds tonight but when i do my work at the seattle times i don't think in terms of diversity i think in terms of what do i see when i walk down the street when i go to an event when i listen to some one story and i prefer the word experience i think someone  all come with a different set of experiences and life paths and our work here is to better understand those things and understand how they fit into the larger picture but diversity is easy i use  quite a few times in a story that is in the seattle times this weekend on diversity and inclusion in the tech industry and the lack thereof but there are so many levels of diversity implied by you know that story it could be about race it could be about geographic diversity gender a lot goes into that word and yet i feel like there are times when we gets overused and in its over use it becomes diminished and  so what i try to do is i use it as a writer and put it in the story but when i'm out in the world i don't even think about diversity i try to pursue my work with very open eyes and an open heart and hope that through that i'm getting the full richness of complexity of whatever story i'm working on and that i'm really seeing the community for everything that it is and that's a more meaningful approach for me  i would say the diversity it's been overused and i definitely agree with with monica's assessment is that it's being kind of something that we're aspiring to kind of and kind of not i think more often than not it's it's become kind of this oh let's be diverse and let's do diverse things but there's there's not enough i feel like read a point where it's no longer serving us to just talk about diversity i think it would serve us more to really speak the truth of what we're trying to accomplish and i think in the context of newsrooms as human storytelling i tend to like the word representation you know i like to think that publication represents the people that they speak to and i think a newsroom should reflect the people that they speak to in the communities that they speak to so i tend to like the word represent a representation to diversity because i agree with the other panelists i feel like the terms gotten watered down over time well we throw in what i think it shootings that happened in the summer in baton rouge and also by the dallas officers that were that were shot and killed a group of us got together one day after this and we just  we were all bit shaken about what's happening and by the way you know it was a mixed group of people and through that we started to have this conversation we're very small operation in case has less than ninety people and about forty people gathered a couple days later to have a conversation about where are we here and you know where are we where we as far as as as people that provide content and what we're reporting but also how we were feeling about these things so gradually we developed this committee first it was going to be called the diversity committee and then there was a conversation about is that the right term and then we decided that no  wasn't the that it needed to be called a race and equity committee because those are two issues that are affecting us the most and race obviously is a concern today of what's happening in our society but equity is even more so and so i think people grasp onto that as to how we're looking at what we do so i think in many ways we're also still struggling with that because we were  representative and quite frankly as a person of color and i'd like the rest of you to speak about this too i think it's important that i know what's happening in my community and let you know i pay close attention to let you know if there are always report those issues no have i reported those issues a lot yes and i do it because i have fought for this for a long time that i need to do it do you guys feel that way from your communities so i had an interesting experience recently so i was being screened for a certain like a radio show and they talk about you know kind of topics of the week and it was interesting so when i was being screened i'm you know they asked me well so how did your all really interesting stories we you know so the seattle globalists tends to cover so we want to cover things that aren't already covered in the community and so and we want to make sure that diverse voices are heard and that they are you know so we depend a lot on what people are experiencing in their communities and so you know we're not always necessarily covering the top stories or when we are the sort of with that angle and so i didn't get on the program and the first i was like for about two hours i was like oh man that i mess up i really messed that one up and then i thought no you know we're doing exactly what we're supposed to do we're trying to create a media environment where we can tell stories that aren't being covered already so we're just talking about like the same thing that all the other news stations are covering then we're not doing our job we're not you know where we're not getting those stories out there so so your best chance of being on the radio show because you can talk about whatever you want to start with another there with them probably were other reasons but you know i'd i do you know i kind of like kind of just thought about that that that might have been that might have been part of it for you know for two hours but then after that i was like you know we're doing exactly what we're supposed to be doing and we should be covering things that aren't being covered and i'm ok that i'm ok that they were about the rescue were do you feel you know were of the issues and things that they you may have about in your community do you feel like that's something you need to cover or are as it's you know just part of the job of the everyday thing you've got to find i was going to say i  feel in a lot of ways that that's exclusively what i cover ourselves that south and issues are issues of people of color because that's what's of interest to me so that's the reason i am a journalist and actually  actually when i hear you talking about oh well we didn't cover this or even cover that i'm thinking you know they didn't cover all the stuff that we covered and that's to the to the core point of the problem is why why are they covered why why is there such a difference between the top stories on major news outlets and what we cover guys you know as a magazine writer at the seattle times i get to pick most of my stories and i did a piece earlier this year on gentrification in the central district and this is a story that's been covered in one way or another so we noticed the demographic realities but for me i also am a member of this community meaning seattle and i as an african american i can see the change in this part of town so i wrote that story out of deep concern about my own place as a black person in seattle and i obviously went to this community and to other and to other neighborhoods where african americans have migrated to understand little bit  about the reasons why and what the city is becoming in the face of this kind of change but it was a personal story you know i sat in the living room of a pastor  i went in to a church at actually several of them and skyway and you know rock to the tambourines and you know some old time gospel shaken and clapping and but i did that because i felt like i wanted to celebrate my own blackness by celebrating the blackness that was being lost in the city and i it's funny because i didn't know that until i said that just now why did the story but i did that because i think you know as journalists we were our job is to go out and tell other people's stories the fact is we come from the world that we report on right so it's hard to separate yourself from the topic especially when it comes near and dear to you this is my experience too and so i try to tell other people's stories as a way to understand why it is i still live here you know why am i still hold out by understanding why others hold on to the central district and why it's still a part of their heart and soul i got a sense of what makes this city special to me and it validated my outrage a concern about the loss of this community now that's not particularly objective but i don't think it matters in this case because i think the story stands on its own i think these people's experiences are valuable in my willingness to go and sit in their living rooms in churches and other gathering places form relationship between the seattle times and this community in between me and these folks that is it so newsworthy an interesting and yeah it was very personal for me and there are times when i feel called to do a story because of who i am and of us of the times when it's just newsworthy but it's what's great is that in this case it was a little bit of both right and this is something that the whole community should be concerned about the whole neighborhoods are being up ended by development here and i think that it's ok right now to to admit that we're concerned personally all those yes so my organization has a national audience and so i see my to try to reach out to more communities and get more voices from different communities across the country you know we can only cover the environment with the focus on climate change and there's a subject area called environmental justice a lot of you're probably aware of it it's basically an idea that says the mental problems of climate change does not affect all people equally does not affect all groups of people equally and i'm really trying to be an evangelist and organization and there are others too who are trying to find the voices from these communities who are adversely affected by pollution climate change and cetera and hear stories from more people across the country you know what i find that even though we're national publication we're in a little bit of a bubble here in seattle and we could do a better job of you know creating a greater network of voices across the country to tell stories and my organization the ever gray which is a new seattle newsletter we just launched if we have one bias it's just that we believe that seattle ought to be a more accessible and inclusive and exciting city for everyone so i feel like where my brat background comes into that is just  there's all kinds of identities all kinds of differences and they're not always apparent they're not always evident but we do need to find ways to see the communities we serve the way they see themselves not just the way some dominant culture might see them whatever that dominant culture might be so i take i take very seriously that responsibility and i think just the ways that my difference has manifested itself and in my career you know ways big and small keeps reminding me to your point about numbers that organizations are not just people organizations are also systems and they're cultures so if what you do is change the people you haven't finished the job you need to make sure that those people can then change parts of the system can change parts of the culture can change parts of the perspectives because newsrooms and we were talking earlier are these machines that are often churning out daily things they're not necessarily built for long games and diversity is sort of a long game but is it the right came and you know are we are we building it into our daily is it emitting a brat in our work or is it something that we checked off a list every time this becomes a hot topic well let's talk about newsrooms and talk about how they operate and about whether the people who run them and and whether there's enough representation of people of color in those news rooms i have i don't work in a daily newsroom but i have in the past and i would have and i would argue that no there's not much at least in seattle hasn't been much representation there and that it has been ebbing and flowing as far as you know ok we care about people of color and some are numbers and diversity i'll say diversity because they can see numbers we care about  right now maybe in a year not so much because i think that that's kind of how it's been so what does that then do to the quality of what's being reported or the people that are giving an opportunity to work in a newsroom i would argue that it doesn't give much opportunity at all jump in you're absolutely right and the thing with the versity as frustrating as that term is you know we can't get away from it and it can get away from it but if you're newsroom doesn't have a good mix of people then that means that there's a really good chance that you're missing out on stories that you never even thought to conceive of in the morning meeting or in the weekly sort of sunday meeting or for me i  do stories once a month you know i i think that representation in newsrooms is a really important because it's almost as if we don't know what we're missing and i wonder what newsrooms would be like i wonder what coverage of the obama a ministration black lives matter women's rights l g b t q advances would be like if more of those types of people were reporters and editors and designers and photographers and videographers and so on what kind of media w be if it looked completely different and it's a frustrating question because i know that this is not going to change right away and the seattle times also goes up and down in terms of its represent representation of different kinds of people and you know it can be like walking through the desert sometimes and there's other years when it feels really good but i think that we've got to work very hard on on maintaining some consistency as people leave and as turnover and budget cuts and  things you know take hold we've got to make sure that this is always a priority for us and you know again doesn't have been at the seattle times or twenty two years as years when it feels like this is a major priority of his years when it feels like it's little bit as we try to survive  company you know and i think that for me i don't stop being i don't stop bringing my diversity even though diversity might not be at the top of the list so it's a weird thing right i i want to stay there and continue to do good the community but i think it's incumbent upon me and some of my colleagues who are in the audience tonight to keep pushing and and lifting each other up when it comes to these issues to make sure we don't we don't drop the ball it's very easy to win under  stresses that newspapers in particular are feeling well this way please i think it's a it's an interesting question when it comes to hiring i think hiring managers might have a certain you know i've been talking was talking with the students about about this and they asked like well why won't they you know why is it that women you know get communications degrees and they but they don't seem to enter into the newsrooms and i think it's partly because there's a certain set of there's a mindset of like what qualities we're looking for you know and and there's like some stereotypes about like who has those qualities which schools have those qualities which candidates have those qualities and you know i guess maybe i worked in seattle my whole career or worked in washington state my whole career so maybe i'm a little bit naive and i'm like you know i've never been you know nobody's ever not called me because i'm asian american but you know i don't know because i didn't get it right and i don't know who who didn't who never called me back but i think that there is you know i don't know what assignments they decided not to give me because you know well we need we need somebody who's kind of a forward tall person that that would exclude me you know and i think that it's a it's a little bit of that kind of a bias as well the sort of this presumption of who do we need in our newsroom and what kind of qualities do we need to get the type of news that we've been producing all these years and there's not like a lot of wealth we bring people in with different experiences and with you know different backgrounds and maybe they didn't they went to different schools and didn't major in journalism you know we might be able to get different angles on stories you might get different types of stories i think i'd like i like a media environment where all the news stations and all the newspapers are have a different on it and it's like yeah i'm getting kind of a complete picture now i'm getting you know different different perspectives on this event and i think that we're missing it might be a subconscious thing and not a conscious thing when people are going out and seeking candidates for their jobs in addition to a storytelling incentive i mean let's also be pragmatic there's a business and impact incentive as well right in a day and age where we measure page views and facebook likes and know what our audience numbers are immediately there's an do but i want to answer kind of a different question because i feel like the question that you ask is very it's very quantitative and the answer i want to give is very qualit because i don't know what enough looks like in terms of when is it enough when when do we have i don't i don't feel like that's a that's a numbers question it's a question of are we covering what are we covering issues that are important to our communities is it resonant are there diverse perspectives are there interesting perhaps opposing perspectives coming out of the same media outlet like these are the things that i want to see in all of journalism so i don't know how many black people how many latino i don't know like i don't have like a number for what what the perfect ratio is or what the perfect balance is because i don't think that's how it works i think it works the way that it works is that we figure out how to create structures that support everyone in the community to have as much of a boys as they possibly can and that's when great journalism starts to happen to echo that i think reagan's exactly right it's that question what does diversity look like seems like the wrong question it's what does it feel like how does it behave and the best you know evaluation of that can come can only come from communities themselves so that's really who you have to ask you know not the newsroom itself but but the only test is out in the community is that trust coming from your community in such a way that they feel that you can speak for them that you understand them as they understand themselves and that you can you can create those conditions for all the communities you serve where they can come together and sort of blend in that way so yeah it's less about what it looks like or you know a bar you have to hit and again more about the systems in those cultures and those cultures embracing the different perspectives and the different communities you want to serve i want to invite folks to come up and join us we have a question or comment that you'd like to make we have a microphone right here we have someone that's going to man come on up we'd like to work you into the conversation because i think that it's it's very important i ask that if you're going to make a comment that you make it and question that you try to make it short and sweet and that you nice and if you're not nice you're not going to be here very long that's all there is to it all right good sir then yeah i have a question about i feel that it's possible that the ebonics movement in the ninety's had a way of lowering the bar for a skillset for journalists to come in the future you know and i believe at the same time shortly after that maybe fifteen years as this group mature  doing have a change the quality of the writing the question is in order to be a journalist need to be do some sort of writing now of fifteen years prior for someone going to college and there they're being taught don't even worry about speaking proper english and wouldn't put a damper on writing proper english and at the same time the requirements were raised in the entry level for going to school to thinking when i first started in this would have been you know this was actually in college but i didn't have a journalism degree but i kind of came in thinking well i'm just a really concerned citizen who wants to cover my community and as you know and and be part of a newsroom and you know have a lot of fun and that was kind of my whole goal all those years ago and there are a lot of different types of journalism that you can do and you know there's a photo you is necessarily the key that unlocks the media for you i think that it's just kind of being open and fair and wanting to be accurate and and just having that dedication and i think that there's to be somebody who who will see that you know and say yeah you can you can enter there's plenty of people that are made of in this business that do not have journalism backgrounds they just are just good writers and communicators and you know more people and there are a lot of good examples out there i just was reading today in the guardian about paul beatty winning the booker prize an african american novelist and i felt at this moment of pride i mean i think that there are plenty of people out there who are demonstrating that there's a great power in the use of language and and using language to really convey experience so i'm not particularly worried about that i think that young people are going to go into a world where there are so many models to follow and they will create their own i think that's what happens when generations turn over and this is what we're kind of going through right now in our time and people will find new ways to use language to express themselves and you'll be really devastated in a good way by by what's to come that black twitter is kind of where it's at right  there's a whole movement happening where you know language is being created and you know turned upside down and it's been using for when you can use for protest being used for journalism i mean it's it's really exciting that this is happening and that the internet allo themselves are interesting and complex but again there's a way that language can move us in directions that we're not ready to go but we have to be willing to listen and sometimes stand out of the way and let that that language kind of flourish and that's the key person in the news media to the extent to which we invite people in either through stories or literally into our newsrooms as workers to contribute to that change and to help our own language evolved our own a new way of bringing new people in to try to understand all that so all right going to question here so you guys were talking about sometimes when times are lean it's hard to maintain accurate representation and i assume by lean you mean kind of profitable right and then the publication profits are kind of always there so i'd be curious to hear if you think that an accurate representation is sometimes at odds with profitability or if they're actually a line that's a that's a that's a good question and a tough one and i can i just like i'll take that as i think they're aligned i  think when you when your news organization doesn't reflect the community and they kind of feel and so there are certain aspects or parts of the community who don't feel like they're being represented or you're not talking to them you're not worried about their issues or you're always there you know the media always representing us in a poor way or like just not understanding us then you kind of like lose that audience so it's not just a matter of you know we're doing this because it's good and because like we you know we just to be pure and we have like couldn't tensions it's also a matter of media survival i think if we want to stay relevant we have to reflect our audience we have to reflect the community and the community is becoming increasingly diverse and i think that  i also think that like advertisers are looking at this to their they're wanting to reach all parts of the community anybody who is looking for their product and so and so for for profit and traditional news outlets that this is something that they have to really pay attention to i agree i actually i want to agree and i kind of don't i wan see that alignment i want there to be that alignment but what i'm seeing is a lot of news that a lot of news outlets that are covering diverse issues are not seeing the same amount of funding and are not becoming sustainable in the way that they need to be and when it's clear that the community is crying out and saying we want this and we want to be represented we have to look at who holds money and who they want to align with i think it is true that that it's and there's a little bit of a contradiction on the surface right but you know for example after americans latinos use digital media their devices phones and tablets but mostly phones to get news and information at rates that are actually higher than the general population so there's a real opportunity there to tap into a market that we haven't already i don't know what the formula is but there is no lack of interest in getting news that reflects who you are and where you come from and what you're concerned about again it's a question of how do we do those stories and now we in and bedded in those communities enough to figure out how to tell the stories in ways that resonate and that make people want to pay a dollar you know for that coverage and i think that we've got we've got we've got to work very hard  at pairing those two things up because i don't want them to be exclusive and they shouldn't be there's too much of an opportunity to break into new markets for us to excuse ourselves because we don't think that people in certain communities are going to and i think that maybe we should sell it differently or have different content or build new relationships and let people tell us what the news is and ways that we haven't before you know just an ad i think that fusion done that is a pretty good model  for inclusive perspectives that scale and i believe they reach an audience of somewhere between ten and twelve million people a month and i think that goes along with that at least saying that their staff is sixty percent white so i mean i think you know that's a very early example of what a well resourced operation can do when they're in the reached attic and when real money is put behind you know diversity equity from an organizational perspective i'd say that it's also you know while while profitability and diversity in these things are aligned i think really the short term sort of allusion is that they are at odds because an organization if in or if an organization continues to do what they've always done that is cheaper that is less time that is less money so when we feel strapped for resources it's harder to make the case that a hiring process should take longer that you should do more you know intentional work to make sure that you're busting out of the typical networks and at the end it's human nature people want to hang out you know in the networks they already know that's the easiest networks to tap but if we're going to make those changes that are going to have a lasting impact you have to break out of that and long term it's absolutely the most profitable direction to go and say i said this at the last at the last meeting like this but i sometimes feel like we should start calling we should start calling that and innovation rather than a risk that  kind of been talked about or this election cycle is the polarization of news sources and as we talk about people finding sources that speak to them people sometimes find this way of migrating and into sources that only speak to them they can if they like great bar they can get all their news from braeburn or if they like the route they can get all of their news from the root because that speaks to them at what point is it what's the where do you draw the line between speaking to an audience and trying to understand them and pandering to an audience very connected i asked this question of my fellow panelists earlier just how many facebook connections have been severed this election cycle right because it's not just about sources of news official sources of news that  tend to gravitate to wherever they feel they can agree it's each of us so i'm actually scared of the damage being done when the channels that exist for potentially awesome conversation get shut down because it's so difficult to expose ourselves to different ideas and difficult ideas and sometimes we can't we just can't do it we can't stomach it  i don't know about you guys but emotionally this election i mean some of the coverage you just want to seek solace over here you want to seek some some risk in something kind are over there and there is this emotional aspect to how the news works plurality of sources and plurality of people in our own networks providing these sorts of things we are over time choosing our paths and i'm afraid that we may be you know that the other potential pads are getting overgrown and hard to walk through and that does that does worry me because then if that's the incentive right because it reflects human nature again we want to go where we feel most welcome and if if that's where the money is and that's where most of the traffic is  that how that's a becomes a really critical challenge how can we make sure that people still want to come to a space where they may encounter somebody very different from them and how can we make sure that people do the work it takes to put themselves in that position when it's so much easier to go somewhere where there's no argument i think is a challenge you know for us as journalists you know to keep that balance and and somehow try to give those voices an equal opportunity to to be heard and pretty and i think you know obviously in this presidential election year it has been really a tough one to do but i would hope that that that's the one thing that we would you know keep on keep a hold of us our ethics that we are going to you know make sure that we're going to let those voices be heard but yet also at the same time that take sides you know but i it's that's a tough one it's just a real tough times and you know frankly i think that i've seen a change more to in some respects of  that's important and the other hand i'm thinking like a kind of an old school guy here journalists i'm thinking i don't know that i feel that comfortable with that but but you also have to remember too that he's got a hell of an audience we in the news media without even acknowledging it or even knowing it pander to white people and guys every day and it's never called pandering it's called the news quote for you when you go and it's not that it's not news it's just that there's more news and so it's not necessarily pandering to bring a voice into the to the coverage that wasn't there before and to do it in a way that feels a little more sentimental or sympathetic i don't particularly edit that out of my conversations with people in the community i covered the trump rally in lyndon this spring and i skipped across the street you know talking to supporters as well as the bernie sanders supporters at the time who were yelling and screaming at the trump supporters just to get a sense of how the public's discontent was sort of driving our politics and i met a woman there was a muslim american who told me that she stopped wearing her headscarf because she didn't want to be questioned and doubted in the community that she lived in up in bellingham and  i decided to put that in the story the moment she started to cry about the experience of sacrificing a part of herself in order to be a part of our world and her world she's a citizen and she has every right to dress ever she wants but like she needed to do something in order to keep from looking suspect and i did that out of deep concern for her but also because i feel like that's the kind of story that everyone else needs to hear we have different pathways to our experience as americans it's not always easy but i think what we discount quite often is the level to which we pander to the people who represent the majority or who represent our sort of recognizable market at any given time and it's people like her who have to stand on the side of the street and cry to a reporter who have to kind of beg to be in that conversation so at that point i don't care if it's pandering or not i think it's something that we all ought to incorporate into our thinking about politics and the way our society is organized and also it's just an interesting story what it is to be an american in two thousand and sixteen and so i don't really worry about that question so much i think moments like that are compelling enough and worthy enough to put in and if people think it's pandering that's fine but i would say read the rest of the paper and you tell me which one which is which i think they go for all media and that's not just for the seattle times i mean i think that's generally generally the case with with maine with the mainstream media in the in this country and so i don't want to sound like i'm picking on my own employer although we have responsibilities in this regard as well right but that's what i'm hoping that i'm doing a lot of my colleagues are doing but basically go to go ahead briefly i don't want to cover what's been covered because i feel like he did it he said it perfectly but i will say i just recently wrote an article called white biased media is ruining your life whether you know it or not and i i recommend that you read it just also i think in general kind of what you're getting at is is the idea there's still this this misconception that somehow journalists are unbiased or that we're actually legitimately able to claim some type of objectivity and my me personally as a journalist i don't i don't believe in that and i would rather just tell you the ways in which i'm biased so you can make up your own mind we were writing questions for this and the night before we spent like three and a half hours in a bar trying to go on or all these questions about were going to ask that long anyway but one of the questions that i i ha several questions that were dealing with eastern washington but also we're dealing with issues that i thought were state why but also national and one of them had to do with the shooting of and tanya's and brown a mont and also this issue of rather malice is something that it's being questioned now and whether a law should be changed about that and we had a discussion where one of the other people was wondering was that one we should lead with in that conversation or of the questions that night and we went back and forth over that because this one individual i mean he he brought back a point he just thought that it was sort of broader question and i argued that i thought it was a broader question that i thought it also was a important local question and that we were had to remember where we were and what you know and my point was that i kind of grew up in that area and i said you have to remember that you have a large latino population in a place like pascoe which is fifty five percent you know so that was something that i brought to the table that nobody else knew there you know who i didn't know that you know i know that it was fifty five percent here and i said well it is so i think you have to keep those things in mind so i'd like think that you know that knowledge and having grown up there brought something to the table in this in this conversation and it's a gubernatorial thing so i think if there's a bias  was that i was i was arguing for that question but i just think that we bring those things to the table and they're very important we should bring that to a newsroom we should bring that to an argument with our general managers or whomever and so that they understand and i think that that's our responsibility that we have you know i'm going to more traditional setting i'm not a small operation but i you know i think we do have that responsibility to speak up shooting and how the community in a way responded and called for change and in ways that they hadn't before and so i interviewed a lot of folks in pascoe in the bettina community about what that shooting meant to them but also what it meant to live in the tri cities and i came away really in ridged by the experience and speaking across language barriers of my really awful spanish and people were so gracious to me and i you talk about bringing things to the table as a person but sometimes as reporters we have to set a table and allow people to come to it and talk to us and really honest and open terms i don't come from the community of pascoe and i'm not with you know but i let my curiosity sort of guide me there this create a space where people could share those stories about what it was like to live in a place that is is majority latino but where economic and political power are concentrated with among whites and how bad in and of itself  kind of plays out in the aftermath of a police involved shooting and so it was great to go there and sit at other people's tables but i felt like as a reporter with my notebook and photographer with a camera we were creating another table that the seattle times goodly claim to and share with folks on this side of the mountains about a really important story that's really being told in communities all over the country and perhaps the police shootings unfortunately but thank you so much for being here this evening this is you know this is an important conversation a complicated one it's a tough one but you know thanks to my fellow panelists for being here in marcus and town hall for doing this  and i guess we're just going to have to come back and have another conversation and see if you got a job thank you