By VIRGINIA TORRES and ANDRES CABALLERO
The UNITY News

Twenty years after the first-time leaders of UNITY’s journalist associations met over a crab dinner at a Baltimore restaurant, board members of the four organizations reconvened yesterday in a sterile conference hall in Chicago.

In the first meeting at a UNITY convention between leaders of the Asian American Journalists Association, National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists and Native American Journalists Association, the organization heads commemorated its history and addressed the enigma that surrounds its direction.

Despite leaders’ reassurance of their commitment to UNITY to the dozens of journalists gathered for the 40-minute meeting, some said the organization is not fulfilling its original mission.

“The goal was to come together and have strengths in numbers and demand the industry to change or else,” said Sidmel Estes-Sumpter, who helped incorporate the four organizations into UNITY in 1994 when she was a former NABJ board member.

Now, surrounded by journalists of color facing the imminent threat of layoffs, UNITY co-founder and NABJ member Will Sutton said the alliance should gather more frequently if they hope to meet the goal of greater diversity within America’s newsrooms.

“I really felt in 1988 that we were on to something,” he said. “No, there is no need for the UNITY alliance to disappear. Yes, we really need to keep working at it.”

topic: UNITY Convention
tags: UNITY Convention

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