The Huffington Post has Gay Voices, Black Voices, Latino Voices — plus a section on women (though I must say, that’s more fluff than hard news, unlike the other social minority sections, so it may not count). But where is Asian Voices? For that matter, where are the Asian American voices in our media? Every week, I look for stories in the mainstream media, but find very little. There are constant stories about China, India, and North Korea/South Korea and the people in those countries, but far less coverage of Chinese Americans, South Asian Americans, and Korean Americans. Yet the Pew Research Center tells us that Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the country. What are their struggles? What battles do they fight within their communities? Asian Americans are under-covered by all media except their own, and that is shameful. We need to do a better job of understanding their communities and digging for stories.
Jenna Wolfe is pregnant — and gay
In one of the more graceful coming-outs that I’ve seen, Today weekend anchor Jenna Wolfe came out as gay on the weekday show by announcing that she and her girlfriend, NBC foreign correspondent Stephanie Gosk, are expecting a baby girl. When Savannah Guthrie congratulated her for keeping a big secret, she didn’t mean Wolfe’s same-sex partnership; she meant her pregnancy.
As Matthew E. Berger said on the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association blog:
There has to be a middle ground between being in the closet and announcing you’re gay on the front page of a magazine. Many people live openly gay lives without making headlines … but either do not warrant a public announcement of their sexual orientation or leave that type of advocacy to others. That’s certainly true for some LGBT journalists, who take their role as an objective arbiter of facts seriously and shy away from disclosing personal views and details of their private lives.
We should not assume that the only options are “closeted” and “gay icon.” Many actors, politicians and journalists are out, but just haven’t told you. It was as if Wolfe and Gosk were saying, “I never told you I am straight, so why should I tell you I am gay?” …
What they are saying is that having two gay correspondents shouldn’t make headlines. But that doesn’t mean anyone is ashamed of who they are.
Congratulations to both Wolfe and Gosk. And let’s hope that increasing equality can eventually make being a gay or lesbian reporter a non-issue in every newsroom (and for every audience) across the country.

Your "only" [only write once a wk] is misplaced~~& you write on language?
"Black" is used to include Caribbean Islanders~~which "African-American" doesn't. If language is living & morphs through usage, then Bloomberg, et al. are fine. When people choose 7 syllables instead of 1 [black], they're wasting their tongue & my ears [their fingers & my reading eyes]. Unlikely such time-wasters will have time to become billionaires. When Sec'y of Veteran Affairs Shinseki was asked~~by a reporter~~who's responsible for something replied, "You are speaking to the individual who has responsibility for that problem." Jon Stewart noted, WHAT? You used 12 words when you could've said "me."?!
#1 Posted by zee alexi, CJR on Mon 8 Apr 2013 at 01:09 PM