like us on facebook. and follow us on twitter. next, discussion about media coverage of the asian-american community. we will hear reporters from public radio international, national public radio and founder and editor of angry asian man plog blog. asian american man association hosted this event.blog. asian american man association hosted this event. all right, everybody. shall we get started. thank you all for coming to this panel and people get situated and everything. so this is a panel, why and how should we cover the asian-american community. so those are good questions. the question is not, should we cover the asian-american community, because that answer is yes. but my name is phil yu, i'll be

the moderate forthis. i'm the foundereder to of angry asian man.com. thank you.&,heñ so let's see here. how shall we go about this. let me talk about this panel itself. so i was on the last year's version of this panel as a panelist last year. when i was asked to be on the panel, i was like, what kind of -- you know, it was something like the title was something about covering the asian-american community. i was like, that seems really broad. i was like, ú asian-american community, yes. and through the course of the actual panel, it occurred to me, oh, i understand what this panel is about. because you know, i don't know if you are familiar with what i do on angry asian men but i cover the asian community, several hours a day upon day upon day. that's what i do. i realize that a lot of people attending here might be coming from news rooms where the some people here or some of you might

find that to be a challenge in your own news rooms. so hopefully, you know, this panel, you will be able to walk away with insight into ways you can tackle that. asian-american community. let's -- let me introduce our panel. the way we -- prior to the panel, we sort of discussed ways that we could present this material. so we -- everyone sort of decided upon a story that they've covered in the last year. covering the asian-american community. something that they can use as draw examples from and use as sort of a concrete example. okay. so why don't we go down and i'll let our panelist introduce themselves. and also talk -- please introduce yourselves and the particular story that you want to -- that you're drawing from during the session.

hansi. >> thank you, phil. my name is hansi lo wang reporter at npr headquarters in here in washington, d.c. i'm part of a new reporting team called code switch. we are a team of nine people covering race, ethnicity and culture. one of my particular subbeats is asian-american community. i produce regular features that you hear nationally on morning edition, all things considered, weekend edition and also things for our blog. so my takeaway tip for folks interested in covering the asian-american community and working not on this particular beat is to embrace the stereotype, which is -- maybe that's not the right word. but holidays coming along and i'm thinking often the lunar new year is a very big holiday in a lot of asian-american communities. and that often is a time when newsrooms want to find a story about lunar new year. or chinese new year it's often i have been given that assignment two years in a row. partly because i also am

interested in -- i see it as a challenge, because i think we pretty much have all seen the chinese new year story with the firecrackers, with, you know, learned this phrase, learned this food, and i see it as an opportunity, a peg, if you will, for us in the newsroom, to explore some more in-depth issues about our community, things that are happening in the community that relate to other communities. i'm going to play for you a story. i don't know if everyone will be able to hear it. i hope so. this is a little clip from my reader's story. it is about a lion dance troop that is all female in boston. and this is jenny guan, one of the members. >> my students don't know what i do on thursdays. this is kind of a secret life. >> a secret life that she says her father wasn't very supportive of at first. and her mother? >> she told me i'm crazy.d/á1ñ

i ask her and i say, well, mom, if you had a chance to do it, would you do it? >> hello! >> jenny's mother said if she had the chance to do the lion dance when she was younger, she would have absolutely done it. but back in china, she says, women were seen as less than. now, as women in living in america -- >> we do, she says, whatever we want. >> so this, long story short, this was an opportunity to do a story about lunar new year that wasn't just about lunar new year. it was about exploring a traditional that traditionally is all men performed this lion dance. but there's a group in boston, all women, and specifically the leaders of this group wanted to break that gender barrier that prevented a lot of women traditionally from entering and doing this type of martial art. and it was really a story about a group of women who came together once a week, and these are teenagers, these are high school students who came

together, formed a sisterhood, supported themselves, in their life goals and dreams, and it was really a story about that and it aired on lunar new year. so it's an opportunity to do stories like that. to think more creatively about what else is happening. >> hi. how's it going? i'm shefali culcarney, producer for public radio international program called "the world." specifically i work on the global nation desk which is our immigration desk for the radio program. so i cover immigration, but i cover various immigrant groups. among them asian-americans, as well. i'm trying to think of my advice and my tip, and it's a little bit opposite of what hansi said. i'm sorry. >> but i remember when i was interviewing for this job one of the things i talked about was

you know, we're having conversations in these communities, we're having conversations like among family and friends, among other south asians for my purposes, and asians, whatever, and that's all that we're doing is we're having these conversations. but that's the only place they stay.$l&tf so my thought process was if we're covering immigration why do we just have to have these conversations among ourselves? why can't we write about this? why can't we have this as a topic to talk about? a good example that i think comes to mind is, i always had a lot of issues with the way people pronounce my name. it was always something that came up. and it wasn't just among asian-americans. it was like, you know, ordering coffee. at starbucks. that was always an issue for me. so like i would gave fake names. or i would say my nickname is chef. you can call me chef. i thought about it. we're all having this conversation. like everyone mispronounces my name. everyone mispronounces my name. so we invited for one story i reached out to a comedian, i'm sure some of you guys have heard of him, and he had posted

something that he's like i reach at galifianakis status because people stake the time to pronounce my name. we interviewed him about that. that's awesome, man. why did you call it zach galifianakis? he said because everybody makes a point to pronounce his name properly. me they're like harry cone-da -- and they struggle with it. he said now people are making an effort to say my name properly. so we had a conversation about that. and part of my job as digital producer is we're taking this radio program and trying to figure out how do people interact with it on the web like most of our audience is now coming online, so, we did a social chat. we did a chat on twitter. and we asked people like you know, how do you pronounce your name? we did hash tag that was like actually #mynameis. biggest hash tag in the world. so we had some people submit things like vines and little videos here and there saying, you know, this is how i say my name.

this is what this conversation is about. and the funny thing is, you have those kind of stories that are like oh, everybody knows this and it's like those eye roll moments of like oh, yeah it sucks when i like, have my name mispronounced. or it sucks when i go indian grocery shopping like the food is stale. why is that? we all know it. you go to the store and things are stale. so irritating. but that's the kind of stories i feel like if we bring that to that to you, you know, on online conversation, that to me is like good coverage of immigration communities. because they're conversations that we're all having it's just that we kind of wall ourselves off. i think that's part of the tricky thing about covering immigration is that you have these like moments where it's like, well i'll only talk about this with my south asian friends. i'm not going to talk about it with like, white people. >> they look at the photographers. >> is that okay? whatever, they know they're white. safe space, right? this is safe space.

so it's one of those, it is true. it is interesting like for example with the story with the name pronunciation where we got people from all walks of life where the name is like this from an irish background and nobody pronounces it correctly. suddenly irish folks are like i didn't know asian-american folks dealt with that, too. it is so fascinating. we are bridging gaps and bringing us all closer. that is my two cents on what might help in terms of covering immigrant communities. >> thank you. >> my starbucks name is alexa. it is true. it is my daughter's name. i do, i have a starbucks name. i was a reporter at fox and i was told we don't celebrate new lunar year. i am a full time professor.

i just got tenure.:3÷ about a year ago the head of vice president of -- excuse me, vice chancellor at the city university of new york they run a television station, the executive in charge of television production contacted me about starting a show called asian-american life. they wanted me to be a part of a program that will focus on the fastest growing community in new york and the united states. and we were basically given the opportunity to create a show from scratch. i was able to actually put together a team. it is new york so we got together this team of veteran broadcasters. the one thing is that we don't -- it is a state run school so we don't have money like most companies in media. so a lot of the folks have to

have other jobs if they are going to work for our show. we are able to find part time moms wanting to come back to work and other folks. we created this show with an amazing team of veteran broadcasters from new york. what we do is a monthly magazine show focusing on the asian-american community which is 40 different ethnic communities in the tri-state. 140 different languages. when folks say are you going to do translation, we are like how is that possible? every month we focus like segments running from five to eight minutes long. and it ranges. our september show, we went on hiatus over the summer, another cool thing about working for public tv you can go on hiatus in our september show which we are debuting in two weeks we are

focusing on a number of segments on education, for instance. so one of our segments that we are working on, really this is a segment that really pertains to the community at large, for us for all new yorkers about diversity in literature, diversity in children. i'm sure for those of you who read books like "the hunger games" are wondering what happened to the asians in the future like they just disappear. right? and so we interviewed a number of young asian authors coming out with books in september. they started a campaign. the "new york times" did a story. we focused on the asian part of it. asians make up 13% of the population in new york. the number of asian characters in children's books is less than like 2%. something really crazy like that. that is a story, an eight-minute piece. in local television eight

minutes is a long time to spend on a segment. we like to look at ourselves as a cbs morning show but it is monthly. we are working on something called the bamboo ceiling in colleges. we are talking about president's office. yes a lot of asians at universities across the country. but what happened to the asians in the administration at that level? we talked to a couple of presidents that were recently appointed. another story that is going to air is tonight is the met life south asian spelling bee. many of the winners of the south asian metlife spelling bee have gone on to win the big one. scripts. so we are going to talk about why indian-americans in particular dominate the spelling bee. bee.ange of different stories covering really a massive community when

you really think about it. what is interesting because we are kind of korean heavy on our show right now. one of our -- we just happen to be. >> you mean like staff wise. >> yes, staff wise. one of our producers said you know every segment in our june show was about a korean-american. that is something we have to think about. we have to make sure that we actually include other communities, communities that people don't even think about. there are 40 different groups in new york alone. so for us that is our biggest challenge is reaching out to all of these different communities because there is not just one china town in new york, there are four china towns in new york. we can't leave all of those china towns out. that's it. ñ this must be the filipino side of the table. i like to call myself

american-filipino because i like to turn things upside down. you will have to reyo? columns to figure out why i say that. i am a reporter, columnist, blogger. i blog for the. my reporting days began a long time ago more than 30 years ago. i guess this is kind of the veteran side of the table. i can relate to everything these guys have said on this side. i have mispronounced my name professionally. i have corrected people professionally. my very last story on npr was about how to say guillermo. if i say guillermo, i'm mexican or spanish. if i say guillermo i am asian. and that's the thing about filipinos because i honor the filipinos and not the colonizers.

that is why i say guillermo and that is the way they say it. ask any filipino on the street, right? double ls. anyway, this is a special convention for me because 25 years ago i was named the first asian-american host of npr's "all things considered." i just did the math here. i had to do it several times. it is 25 years ago. i left in 1991. since that time there have been zero hosts. now maybe that is because i did a bad job or there has been bad management, but i see here from this convention a number of really good npr voices here on the panel and out there in the audience. and i hope that they sooner than

25 years become a host at npr. and of "all things considered" the flagship show and not one of the side shows like "tell me more." it was odd to go back to npr at the reception. i wasn't expecting a red carpet. i wasn't expecting even a yellow carpet. they didn't give me any carpet. they didn't know who i was. this is the thing about diversity. we still have a fight. we still have a long way to go. when i was first in 1989 i thought this is going to be a we have a lot of breaking through to do. now, the story i want to relate to, a short one. this may, may 3, my cousin stephen guillermo was murdered in san francisco. i didn't cover the initial story. i couldn't cover it. i was too close to it so i gave it to "the san francisco chronicle" and let them cover

it. and then i took over. as an opinion writer and as a blogger. as a person who could do the story they stopped the story after the first day they talked about the law and the legal issues. they couldn't talk about the historical context which is what you can bring as an asian-american. 3y"& here is my cousin 26 years old, came to america at age 8. my father came to america in the 1920s. here is my cousin who lived in a one-room apartment, five to a room, that is a little better than my father who lived ten to a room. here is my cousin in 2014 who is murdered in a tent ament in san francisco actually recycling the kind of life that my father had almost 90 years before. this is the kind of context in the community that asian-american reporters can

bring to the story if they have the courage to tell that story and if their editors have the courage to let them tell that story. so many times they do not. i have to tell you a very disheartening tale. i went to the investigative reporters conference in june before this and an asian-american reporter came to me. she was an immigrant starter and had a fairly well off upper middle class life and she said i don't know how to be an asian-american reporter. i don't know how to cover this story. she was a chinese-american. her parents were taiwan intellectuals. this is a typical story out there. there are asians in the communities. their stories need to be told. maybe the first story they need to learn is what it means to be asian-american, what it means to be an asian-american now and in

2014. as well as when they first got here. we have been telling the stories over and over again. when i was at npr in 1989 i thought i was going to be telling it the last time and then we can begin to talk about new things. but we have to tell the stories over. you covered the lunar new year several times. if you're a young reporter, young white reporter, old white reporters said, you put a new twist on that story i did 20 years ago. we're telling it now with a different flavor and different tone because we're asian-american and we have a different perspective. that is our goal. that sour commitment. to diversity. because diversity, inclusion equals coverage and employment. if coverage is 0 and employment numbers is 0 then diversity is 0. we've got improve that. thank you, phil.

can anybody recall perhaps obstacles or -- >> this is a true story. it goes back a ways. and maybe different now. but i practically had to give a census book to my editors and say, look, asian-americans really are here.

now i'm not talking about corey keeno, i'm talking about corey keeno, bino keeno. he was assassinated on kro tv, affiliate of the newsroom. 300,000 filipinos in the bay area. they didn't know what to do with the story. did they send the filipino-american? they asked me and i said this is a story. they said not sure. as i said, i practically had to give them -- we didn't have the internet them. i had to say look at the numbers. they are not just in daly city. then they finally sent me. it was 1983 in august so that is when there was the i was able to cover the story. for the local affiliate.

since then in 1987 when the philippines fell every station sent an anchor to cover the story because they knew how important it was. so that is a way that a failure turned it around and it became a big story. >> you backed it up with numbers. >> they expect numbers from asians. >> when i was on the morning show "good day new york" on fox a for ten 5 for ten years in new york. for ten 5 for ten years i york.for ten 5 for ten years in york.or ten 5 for ten years in york.r ten 5 for ten years in n york. ten 5 for ten years in ne york.ten 5 for ten years in ne5. i remember pitching the story because i had heard when i first moved to new york and i didn't believe this when i first moved to new york that there had never been an asian-american in state or local level in politics. i said this is a great story, this young person running for office, john lu, he became a councilman and i think he is running for something again. they said that doesn't sound like a good story. it is really sometimes about who

you are pitching to. so you go to someone else in the news room. so i pitched to someone else, just keep repitching. so the executive producer of "good day" said that sounds like a great story. i work on the morning show so it meant i had to work on the story on my own time afterwards. get it? for those of you who work morning shows it means working a super long day when i am supposed to be sleeping. sure enough the story ran and the ratings, there was a blip. it went up. they saw the spike. so i was able to do a three-part series after that that did really, really well. so sometimes it just has to be pitching it to the right person. sometimes the news room is diverse, people from the newsroom may not get it. they have to find people who may get it and find it to be an interesting story and like me having to work it almost on your free time.

>> i am trying to think of a good example where it bombed terribly. i think part of the issue that can come up with covering immigration and being product of immigrants is that you can sometimes be your own worse enemy. i mean it in a good and bad way, i guess. my example is we wanted to do a story about the smithsonian had an exhibit beyond ballywood and the up with about indians in america. and the jersey of the sikh wearing a jersey, the basketball player. i thought that would be pretty neat. i don't do radio. radio show.

our producer was like why don't i was like what? why? so i started freaking out but i was like i can do this. he is based in texas. so we did a phone interview. it was great. i asked him a lot of questions. he said my mom is the one who taught me basketball, this older indian sikh woman who is like 6 foot tall, too. i was like, oh, my god. i was very impressed. she was the biggest spurs fan. help me. yes. san antonio spurs. >> the mavericks and rockets, too. >> i was like basketball cool. she is the biggest spurs fan. she was talking about how she would shout at games and basketball players are like keep it down. i was like this is awesome. you are a vibrant woman. this is great. got her interview and his interview. things were going well. story airs and does okay. i think it did pretty well, i guess.

yeah, i think it did. on the web it did well. it was retweeted and shared. which was awesome. we had this guy in our newsroom who would upload the audio at the end of the day. he would come in at end of the day, upload audios and then he left. and he came up to me and said, you're doing that story about the basketball player. yes. i play basketball. you didn't ask him if he gets sweaty. what? what are you talking about? well, he wears a turban while he plays. i thought oh, i never thought of that. i was so busy being, i'm south asian. you're south asian. and we have this mutual understanding and like i'm not going to be like so you are brown, what is up with that? i wasn't going to do that because i wasn't like on this soap box while covering the story.

i was like that would have been such a great question to ask of so you wear a turban while you play basketball. that is crazy. do you get hot. do you like powder or something? what is the tactic? >> he is like, is that rude to ask, i didn't mean to ask you that. i am actually curious, too. it was one of those moments where i was like too busy pretending to be very proud and like we are all politically correct here. that would have been such a simple question. >> a simple question that a lot of people -- >> one of the things he mentioned during our interview was that he is glad seeing more people wearing turbans playing basketball. it is something that would have been interesting to address. i am like i never asked him if he got sweaty. >> what about --

>> huh? >> what about -- >> i didn't ask that. >> the little dagger. >> i don't think he wears one. >> i asked that, like not on air. >> i guess that is my missed opportunity to some degree. >> i guess the story that i can think of is the danny shin story. i was a producer before a reporter. this was when there was a trial happening when the chinese-american soldier from new york china town. he, within months after he enlisted and being stationed in afghanistan, he shot himself and committed suicide in afghanistan after being called lots of different racial slurs and being by comrades. it was a case that got a lot of asian-american activists very concerned about mistreatment

based on race in the military. so this was a story that went on because so many were prosecuted. i pitched we should do an interview checking in on this case. it has been a few months since it happened. we should check in. i didn't get much of a response. and i was disappointed that i felt like this is a story that amongst the asian-american community, this is a conversation. what does it mean when there are so few asian-americans serving in the military. here we have a prominent example and what does that mean? so what i took away from that is when i became a reporter there was an opera recently premiered here in washington, d.c. about him. it was an opportunity to do a story about the opera. and retell the story. i remember a colleague coming up to me saying thank you for doing

that. thank you for reminding us that this happened. this is something that is still really fresh in a lot of people's minds within the asian-american community. so persistence. if you believe in a story is it unfair that you have to think so creatively to wait for another peg? maybe. it is about getting the story out there. if you believe this is a solid story. this is talking about an issue. this is about our community. keep on going at it. look for another opportunity to do it. the other thing is that often at npr we are multi platform. we are known for radio. we have a robust online reporting. many times i come up with a story idea that won't fly on the radio because often we need a hard news peg because the pieces i offer up would be in the middle of a really news-driven news magazine.

if i can offer a news peg, maybe it is a blog post or maybe it is a social media callout. there are different ways of getting the story out there. if you get no within a certain format or platform look for other ways. >> that is a good point. that wasn't around back in 1990. this is an example of what persistence will do. it is also a function of how the media works. we are followers. you go to your editors in the morning. what do they do? they have the clips and look at what the competition is doing. this is a story about a guy named manual furgante. he was filipino. he was in honolulu and was fired by the city of honolulu because he talked like this. he talked with an accent and he said all people did not understand me so they fired me. i am going to sue. so he sued. now you can laugh at that. people now are used to hearing the accent and they think that's

bad lame morning deejay comedian kind of thing. back then, he sued. the case went to the supreme court. at "all things considered" i said we ought to cover this story. they didn't want to do it. look it's in the "l.a. times" they didn't want do it. and the "new york times." after several weeks the supreme court finally came down and said they threw out the case and weren't going to cover it. so you can still be sued for accent discrimination because the supreme court did not take up that case. miguel fergante. look it up. that was back in 1990. very important case. you don't hear about it much. we did finally ultimately cover it because the editors at major news organizations do look at what they are all doing.

when it was in the "new york times" they said you can talk to him. we did a two-way with him. his voice was on npr on "all things considered" on the weekend where they stick the minorities on the weekend. but the story was out. you are doing a great job right now. you have come a long way. >> just to be fair, part of the switch which is part of a larger unit which is culture and identity unit. we have teams in place. that sounds like a story that we would run with. >> you would run with it now, but 25 years ago -- >> before we go down another rabbit hole, i want to open it up to questions because we are running out of time. i wanted to open it up to you guys. you guys have at it. questions for our panelists or me, too. >> i will make a comment.

you and i were talking earlier, i think it is great that -- i love all the stuff you are doing and your team is doing. and npr they needed to do that. npr had a reputation of not being diverse in the coverage. they had to hire a vice president of diversity to adjust the news coverage a few years ago. i guess my comment is that ultimately the goal should be that we don't have to label these stories, code switch stories. it is great they are mixed in whether morning edition throughout the day and the week and the stories are dropped in as much as when you go to the web that you have to look for them. maybe it is good that you look for them under a category. where you feel like it is a race story.

if you are liberal and progressive and interested in race issues, if you are a person of color you can go here. so i look forward to a day when we don't have to do that, but that we pitch stories and they get covered because they are important stories and they don't have to be labelled a certain way. and but i love the stuff that you are doing. i applaud you for that. >> thank you. éh>ç >> if i can quickly respond. i totally hear you. what we are striving for at code switch we have the culture identity unit, all three projects focus on stories about race but we are trying to tell them in a way that hopefully no one else in the country, no other media outlet is doing, trying to come up with ways that we are covering stories that are in the headlines like the trayvon martin case, for example. every media outlet was covering it. we were trying to come up with angles to get it on radio that

no one else was doing. and another thing that we are also doing at npr which i hope that other news organizations are doing is the increased push for diverse sources not just in our unit that national desk editors, reporters are thinking about stories about the economy, about jobs, other kind of regular beats that we are looking beyond just our regular go-to people. that equally is important. >> yes, in front? >> could you talk about some more about other stories recently that are impacting asian-american communities that you think were uncovered in the international media? >> i would say almost anything. >> i think that story was under covered in the media. i interviewed the parents. and it took a lot of work to get the parents to talk to us.

they are reeling from the loss of their only son. they don't speak english. we have to find -- they don't speak mandarin or cantonese. we had to find someone to do the interpretation for us. that was difficult to find. there was also the after math. i think it is like the mainstream media, i worked in local news for so long. you are in there when it is bad and then you leave and you don't really follow up to see did anything happen since then? what laws were passed. president obama signed antihazing laws. just recently they unveiled danny chin way down in china town where he grew up. that is where he was born in china town. our show was able to do that follow-up. you are not going to see that in mainstream media. >> there is a lot of -- take the

-- it is not important. if there is an asian figure they won't mention it. take the elliott rogers story in santa barbara. i knew -- well, i didn't know. i had a sense he was half. he looked half. he was half. his mother on his mother's side and on the blog i immediately started writing about that aspect. you saw that it is really one of q" aspects that is most recent. you can see asian aspects in stories that just aren't considered important enough. ljy maybe on a story. long walk off a short pier. it is up to asian-american reporters to identify that. if there are asian-american editors that would make it even easier.

hopefully that is the failure of the generation that came before a lot of you millennials that a lot didn't get up to that status or not enough so that they can make those decisions. more are, but we still have these stories that are under covered. and that is really -- that really fails a society that needs to know what america is becoming. they need to know these stories. >> i think numbers. we don't have a lot of numbers, data about the asian american community. i am talking about health statistics and voting statistics. the reason is because of the vast diversity, the language issues. can you find enough survey takers to speak so many different languages to get a truly comprehensive look at all of the different communities within the asian-american community. so i think we need to do more stories about where are the holes? that has so many implications regarding policy and influences

how different politicians think about what is going on in their districts and communities that have a specific need within the asian-american communities. i think we need to break apart the idea that by numbers asian-american community is a small group within the united states. there are parts of this country where asian-americans are becoming the majority. i did a story about the congressional race in the silicon valley. it is a fascinating look at the only second congressional district in the country after hawaii that is asian majority. it is fossa fating to see what happens when two of the candidates are asian-americans. what does it mean regarding participation? it hasn't happened before.

this is happening. it will happen more so. asian-americans are the fastest growing racial demographic right now. this will become the new reality. this is not breaking news. unfortunately, a lot of news rooms it is. >> also, don't forget the diversity within the asian american community. you will see it in the affirmative action story where you have more conservative asians or people who feel they have been victims of affirmative action rather than people who have been helped. i think you find asian-americans have been helped more than they have been victimized. that is the ongoing debate especially among young people who see the numbers at college admissions level trying to figure out where asians on that issue. i think if you cover that story you know it is a difficult story to get at it. >> i am a journalist from the san francisco area.

i did a fellowship project that focused on a two-part series on depression and suicide on asian college students. when you mentioned elliot rogers, half-asian ancestry how would you have handled that? >> you know the mental health story there is that he rejected treatment. he didn't take his medicine apparently if you believe his manifesto. he had a dim view of treatment. i think that you cover the facts as they present themselves. and i think -- i don't think -- broadening it out to the general asian-american community i think i would have done -- i would have taken the approach about how asian-americans feel about mental health in general which is they usually see it as not

something for them. i would rather go see the wiseman or the priest or a close family member. that's sort of where i think a lot of the communities are. it depends on which wave of immigration you are on. if you are a recent immigrant you will keep it within the family. if you are like third or fourth generation maybe you have gone beyond because you have a psychiatrist in the family. >> that's a good point about the wave of the immigrant community and that is something for global nation we have been talking about that we are not talking about immigrant community like people who just got here but like the children of immigrants with the name story that is something that cropped up. i think that is important to figure out. i don't think there is a good answer for that but it is something to consider. i feel like on our team we have been talking about like what are

we talking about when we talk about immigrant communities? are we talking about the children of immigrants? those children's children? what are we talking about exactly? i think there is a different take. >> but this is one of those holes because when you talk about mental illness or depression, depression comes up because robin williams has committed suicide. there is no asian-american take on that necessarily. if you are an asian-american reporter you might find a way to delve into that topic. story and talk about an asian-american perspective. on ferguson i just wrote something today about how i was in kentucky recently and nearly got arrested because i was demanding my consumer rights at a rental car place. i was considered unruly. the guy called the police and the police showed up.

he didn't say, can i see your papers but asked me for my i.d. legally you can refuse to give your i.d. but you will incur the wrath of law enforcement. so i gave my i.d. this was a similar situation where i was right up there to the line where if i did one false move i know because i'm an unruly brown -- probably thinks oriental. i was an unruly non-white person. probably some serious stuff would happen to me. these are approaches that as a columnist i can write an asian-american perspective about these real stories and i tried to do that. i tried to take something in the headlines. i wrote about gaza by talking about an asian-american i know who is now in israel and lives there and has taken a totally

opposite view from when he lived here in america. they used to say to me when i was a young reporter there are no uninteresting stories, only dull approaches to interesting stories. and if you are beat there is always a story there. >> a couple more questions. >> quick question because i want to ask you. you are not mainstream media. you are a blogger but you are a blogger that i would guess most if not everybody in this room reads. you are a source for a lot of information. you pass a lot of information through. what is the role of asian-american bloggers because we have a strong voice as you know? the mainstream media and

asian-american mainstream media tends to look down on bloggers what do you think the role is? >> i have never considered myself a traditional journalist and never intended for that to happen. not going through the journey as the blog itself. it evolves over time. now i kind of see myself -- i never really break stories but i always come across stories that i would like to amplify. i understand there are a lot of asian-americans who read my blog. they are coming to the blog because they are not coming through mainstream sources. they o rather composite into one place, according to one person's perspective. i see myself as more -- as kind of the role of a town crier in a lot of ways. i see a lot of stuff that i feel like a lot of people -- my audience is not strictly

asian-american but there is value in having this asian-american community in one place that is kind of the role. i cover a lot of different kinds of things across the board, crime, a lot of pop culture stuff because that is personally what i am interested in. hate crimes and then the racist stuff. a very popular thing on the site is called asians behaving badly. i think people like to see that stuff, too. it is a little more well rounded version of our community. >> are you talking about immigrants or talking about real asians? >> it doesn't matter. >> for the sake of my own sanity most of my coverage is based in the united states or north america. to all of asia there are plenty of like asians behaving badly.

>> i know. i think that is the problem with the mainstream, too, because sometimes there is the confusion between asian and asian-american. asian-american baseball players. are the asian pitchers who are immigrants, not immigrants, they are here, they are nationals. are they asian-american? i think if there was an asian-american all star team i would put tim lincecum who is quarter filipino, he had a no-hitter this year. >> i covered that. >> i'm just saying that sometimes you cover this. who is the guy on the yankees who is really good? you don't cover sports? >> we have one more question over here. >> when you are facing pitches

for stories or new businesses or blogs, so much especially in established media is focused on diversity for african-americans and latinos. other than saying it is the fastest growing -- or 2a#c asian-americans are the fastest growing demographic, what are the strategies? >> a lot of buying power. jóót you see it as a vertical. >> it's all about business has so much diversity to go around. >> it just has to be an interesting story. when you talk about the modern minority. the myth of the model minority. you hear that one out of four kids in new york city are not graduating on time. i thought they were all going to harvard. h0bwl that is something that can pique the interest of some producer. it is really finding interesting

stories that make them go, i had no idea that was going on. >> they also have to know the world isn't just black and white anymore. if you look at ferguson you might say 50 years after civil rights it is still black and white. i lived in st. louis. i used to be a broadcaster in st. louis in the '70s. the fact is this is incumbent on the asian-american journalists who say to show them the census and look at the numbers and justify it. saying something about how you look at the poll numbers and they haven't figured out a way to get at a scientifically substantial -- something that is really valid scientifically or a sample size. the sample size is hard. you look at filipinos, we are the worst to poll because they

think we are latino and that is one of the hardest things about doing a poll. is this guillermo a filipino or is he hispanic. i have been complaining about poll methods for the last two decades. some people are getting it right. i had the chance to do an exit poll. some of the guys out of uc river side does a great election poll. he takes the time to get the right sample size so that you know that you are dealing with something that is scientifically valid. it is hard and it costs money. >> i would say it is about education, too. i think it is monday through friday and 3:00 to 4:00. it is happening right now. when the dust settles, like you had asked a great question about stories that were not getting coverage. i thought about the shooting in

wisconsin. we didn't touch it because we were covering unaccompanied minors crossing the border. also valid, also a great story. a lot of issues there. when the dust settled we were like, why didn't we touch that? what were we missing? what was going through our heads during the daily news grind that we were like why didn't we cover this? we have a very diverse news room. there were a lot of questions that came up. people were like -- i feel like this is the lesson where like i don't know if it is okay or not. it is something if somebody that question then figuring out a way to anchor that story like it has been two years since the shooting in wisconsin. what don't we know yet? the shooting happened.

there is always that feature that is like, sikh in america for this long and numbers. i agree with the numbers but people have basic questions like what does it mean? is there a cultural tie-in with this shooting that nobody is talking about? i think that is also like a big issue, having those conversations in the news room. it is very hard to do that especially in a fast paced news room. it is something i think needs to happen more. it needs more coverage than just look at a sim block. >> we have the last question. >> so i'm 1.5 generation born in asia but raised in the u.s. as a journalist who has gone through that work and then affiliated it is very interesting to me that still today managers don't like voices with accents, people who look a little bit too wild, people who

are a bit too exotic. i guess my question is how do you strike that balance that you know is discriminating? you know that managers should be should be considering the voices of the refugees. should be considering so that you don't speak english but you live and have this in the u.s. for decades who continue to be a very big part of america but i'm wondering why did you leave npr for example? >> long story. >> but also how do you navigate that because those are the missing voices in all of these stories often. we can't access that if we can't listen to the accents that are too hard. >> you are saying your managers have told you we don't want that on our air. >> they don't want accents or your accent?

your accent is fine? >> people we are interviewing. i worked in sacramento and in orange county, california and in new york. i never had a manager say that. if it is difficult and it doesn't matter what language they speak -- >> it does happen. i have seen it happen recently. >> not that we don't take them off. we put a translator or something to help. >> put subtitles. i have seen that and i am amazed. i can hear it. this is kind of you know the audience they presume is all white and not very patient and will be turned off by this. and this is why there is this mad rush to get the news into these other channels. it is not going to be mainstream

unless you -- unless there are people who are visionaries who will say this is mainstream america. this is what america locks like. when people realize that california isn't an anomaly but is, in fact, the way of american society, then putting the accent thing will not be a big barrier because they will say we will just subtitle it which is also kind of a little insulting. if it helps in the communication then i'm all for that. i have seen that. i can't recall right now and i know i was kind of shocked myself that they went to that extent. there were some people who are american and who are white and maybe from other parts of the country who are native americans who i would put a subtitle to understand that. >> they subtitle honey booboo's family. i'm serious, they do.

>> i think that is all the time we've got. thank you all for coming. please thank our panelists. have a great convention. >> asian-american life debuted the twitter site today so if you can all follow us that would be awesome. spread the word. >> are we giving plugs here? >> i would like to plug asian-american legal defense and education fund blog.