Early-career diverse staff need your attention

Julie Drizin of Current discusses the publication's Rising Stars effort

Recognition is a crucial aspect of any organization's culture as it fosters a sense of belonging and purpose among its employees. 🤎 This is especially necessary as public media seeks to build stronger bonds with staff of color.

Younger staff, in particular, are an essential component of the workforce who should be acknowledged for their efforts and get attention to keep them engaged. 🚦 Such recognition helps create a positive work environment that encourages innovative thinking and contributes to the development of public media’s success. What’s more, spotlighting early-career employees’ contributions can lead to increased productivity, morale and retention rates while ensuring they feel valued by their public media organizations. 📻

Therefore, opportunities like Current’s latest initiative, Rising Stars, are fantastic for showcasing the talents of early-career staff members. 🔆 In this conversation with Current’s Executive Director Julie Drizin, we cover a range of subjects. From the importance of recognition to Current’s struggles to attract younger readers, Drizin was candid in our discussion. Learn more about Rising Stars the issues below.

Julie Drizin has served as executive director of Current since 2015. She has worked in and around public media for many years, including stints with the Association of Independents in Radio, the National Center for Media Engagement, J-Lab, WETA and WXPN. She also launched two successful national shows, Democracy Now! and NPR’s Justice Talking. 👇👇👇

What sparked the creation of the Rising Stars initiative?

I've been at Current now for eight years and it is something that I have always wanted to do. Part of the reason is that I think it's important for younger, more diverse people in public media to have a voice and to get attention for the great work that they're doing. They are committed to the mission of public media and are making a difference at stations. I don't think that Current has necessarily paid enough attention to younger folks. We definitely speak to executives and to senior people a lot, and so I thought it was important that we shine a spotlight on younger staff. They are more diverse than the executives in our system, just by nature the demographic shifts in the country.

We want to uplift younger people and amplify their ideas in the system and give attention to people who most people are not going to know at all. And, to their stories. That's what it's really about. We're hoping that people look at their institutions and focus in on somebody who may have overcome some obstacles and who brings a sense of joy to their work. Maybe they're a really helpful member of the team, or are simply people who are making a difference, or who the nominator thinks really represents somebody who will ascend to a leadership role at some point in their career.

In addition, even though public media is largely about content, we're looking beyond the content creators. We're looking at people who are in development and engineering and HR and engagement and marketing. We want to spotlight people who are doing the wide range of things that sustain our institutions. So, we're expecting there'll be people from radio and TV, dual licensees, podcasting, and regionally diverse places. And thus far, we've received more than 50 nominations and the submission form has only been open since the very end of April.

I don't know how many we’ll get and I don't know how many people are going to be included in the final cohort, but what my experience with Local That Works indicates is that folks in public media wait until the last minute. More than half of the Local That Works submissions would come in in the last 24 hours. I'm expecting that we will have a lot of nominations and, through these nominations, I'm looking forward to getting to know more people in the system that I didn't know.

Taking a step back to the editorial comments, you mentioned how Current has focused more on leadership rather than early-career staff. Why do you think that gap happened? And is there anything you're hoping to do in the future to address it?

Part of the reason we focus in on leadership is that the leaders in the system are very loyal readers and active subscribers to Current. That's something that has just been a fact for us over the years. Every time there's a changeover, our people column, Comings and Goings, is always one of the most read and most popular because public media is a small. It only employs 20,000 people and a lot of people move around within the system. And every time there's a change in a CEO or GM, we report that as a standalone piece. So that's another reason why there's been a focus in on leadership.

One more reason we're doing the Rising Stars initiative is that public media is having challenges with retention of younger workers and workers of color. Rising Stars is not going to fix that. But when people get recognition on a national level it may help cultivate a stronger feeling of belonging in public broadcasting.

Next week, we're going to publish a database of executive salaries in the top 20 or 25 markets in the country. This is a project that we did in 2015, and have not revisited it. We did a salary survey for people in public media last year. And this is a follow-up to how much executives are making in the system. I think that will be of interest especially to younger people in the system who are curious about the salary gaps at our institutions.

I would expect that one of the challenges for your reporters is, if you've got individuals who are not as recognized in the system or in their organizations, it's harder to source. You've got to know the people who know the people in order to surface those voices and amplify them.

That's absolutely true. Younger people's voices are rarely quoted in the press releases that we receive. It's usually leaders and, in terms of who submits commentaries to us, it's rarely someone who's fairly new to public media.

How critical to is it to you to have talent of color on this list?

It's very important to me and to Current as an institution. I think it's really important to public media. We are doing a fair amount of outreach to people in the system and asking for their help in spreading the word about this to the diverse populations that they reach.

Take me a little bit behind the strategy, because most people would say ‘we put this out publicly and who we get is who we get,’ but you made an intentional decision to reach out to people.

I personally do most of the marketing for Current and the baseline of things that we do is create ads for our own platforms and social media. That's how we reach our most engaged, loyal readers, donors and subscribers. But I'm doing a lot of emailing to people in the system, to every organization that represents BIPOC populations in public media and in journalism. There's a lot of one-on-one outreach happening. I don't know everybody, but I know a lot of people and so I'm tapping into a lot of my personal relationships in order to spread the word about this.

How can people participate?

You can go to current.org and click the nomination form. It's simple. It only asks a few questions, but you have to be thoughtful about what you say. Really introduce this person and what makes them special and why they deserve kudos for what they're doing. Applications will be screened on various characteristics, so writing makes a difference. Persuasive storytelling will be very helpful.

We haven't decided what the final number will be. We need to see how many nominations come in and then pay attention to the diversity of that pool -- racial and gender diversity as well as geographic diversity and the kind of work people do. There's a lot for us to pay attention to as we narrow that field. 🟢

Cafecito: stories to discuss ☕

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El radar: try this 📡

• Cover the health impact of Latinx food insecurity. 🥫 New Hampshire Public Radio published a story on the Hispanic community’s access to food and the lack of protein-rich diets. Such issues have major implications for children and also healthcare systems in the state’s counties.

• And also how patients interact with medical professionals. 💉 WOWT shared how Nebraska doctors are trying to make their services more accessible to monolingual Spanish speakers. Are medical groups in your state trying to help these communities?

• Explore Latine attitudes and AI. ⚙️ Axios just released a survey indicating 53 percent of U.S. Latino/a workers surveyed said they're worried that AI could replace their jobs, as did half of respondents in Latin American countries. How do locals feel?

• See how young Hispanic educational attainment is evolving in your state. 📈 The Census Bureau shared a trove of data on education and Latinos. Your organization may want to look into this and see about local angles.

The next OIGO is in your inbox June 9. We are back with a conversation with Latino Public Broadcasting’s Luis Ortiz. It should be pretty amazing. 🥤 You can buy me a coffee if you’d like to support the newsletter.