Aug 06, 2004  |  By: ADRIAN BRUNE  | COMMENTS     

Its bright multi-colored logo comprises the symbols of four powerful minority journalist associations, representing black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian American journalists from across the country. But despite years of lobbying, several other prominent journalist groups, including the one for gay meda professionalists, will remain silent partners in Unity’s quest for newsroom diversity.

As more than 7,000 journalists gather in Washington, D.C. for the massive Unity: Journalists of Color 2004 Inc. convention, nearly 100 members of the 1,200-member National Gay & Lesbian Journalists Association plan to actively participate in the five-day event, holding panel discussions, intermingling at receptions and staffing an information booth.

They do so unofficially, however. After repeated requests to formally join Unity, the organization uniting journalists of color has decided not to extend the parameters of its big tent past its founding mission.

Leaders of NLGJA and the South Asian Journalists Association — the other minority group that appealed to Unity for official recognition — say they have gradually come to accept their second-tier status. Both still have a place at the table, they say, although it might not be marked too well.

“We don’t have that piece of paper that makes us official, but we’re still doing almost everything the main organizations are doing,” said Pamela Strother, the executive director of NLGJA.

“Right now there is not a push to make it official. Unity is supportive and welcoming of our ideas for collaboration, and we are a presence at chapter events beyond the convention.”

Bush, Kerry to speak
This year’s Unity conference — its third in 15 years — takes place at the Washington Convention Center through Sunday and promises to be its most celebrated event. The convention features President Bush, who turned down appearances at the nation’s largest black and Hispanic civil rights groups earlier this year, and Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry among its speakers.

Shortly after former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Will Sutton, who is black, and Juan Gonzalez, a Hispanic writer for the Philadelphia Daily News, formed Unity in the late 1980s after forging a bond over beers and a shared idea to join their disparate minority organizations, NLJGA sought an equal partner role.

However, the Unity Board nixed that idea almost immediately, voting to exclude all but the original four minority journalism associations — the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association, and the Native American Journalists Association.

Then, in 1998, Unity incorporated under the “Journalists of Color” name. After that happened, the NLGJA said in a statement that the name change discouraged “hopes that the organization and NLGJA might ever merge.” The best the organization could achieve was official affiliation under the Unity umbrella.

A year later it came knocking on the door of Unity’s second convention in Seattle with a proposal granting NLGJA that designation.

Unity’s board pledged to take up the proposal at its annual meeting that fall and the NLGJA leadership left the convention sure that its 19 chapters in the U.S. and Canada and eight percent ethnic minority membership guaranteed at least an alliance. But the board ultimately rejected the NLGJA’s proposals and allowed the association a presence, but not an official one.

After a decade of trying, the NLGJA says it is ready to move on.

Leroy Aarons, a journalist who helped establish both groups, said that some of the NLGJA’s goals serve Unity’s mission in supporting racial and ethnic inclusion. However, he asserted that the NLGJA is a mature enough organization to stand on its own without the help of Unity, according to the convention’s daily newspaper, the Unity News.