By ANGEL JENNINGS
UNITY News

This year’s UNITY convention offered 111 workshops for writers, editors and new media journalists.

But the host organization planned virtually no workshops for copy editors, photographers, graphic artists and designers.

Besides the annual Photo Shoot-Out contest and a daylong seminar – neither sponsored by UNITY – photojournalists attending this year found only one session designed specifically for them, and it centered on covering diversity.

Panels, sessions or lunches emphasizing skills pertinent to visual journalists and copy editors also were in short supply.

“It’s not a copy-editing convention,” said Margaret Holt, the chairperson of the 13-member UNITY programming committee that approved this year’s workshops.

The competition to be included in the 144-page, multicolored convention book was fierce. Holt said the committee received more than 600 electronic proposals.
But the absence of programming had convention-goers, such as members of the independent Visual Task Force, up in arms.

“Photojournalists have been fighting for decades to have a seat at the table,” said Boyzell Hosey, a task force member and director of photography at the St. Petersburg Times. “We want to be recognized not just as picture-takers but as visual reporters.”

The programs that made the cut covered a wide range of topics including writing and reporting and covering communities of color.

“It’s inherent with any big organizations for one group to say, ‘Why didn’t they have more of what I want?’ ” said Holt, who assigned two committee members to each proposal so that every submission received a “fair hearing.”

Paul Sakuma, chair of the Visual Task Force and its liaison to the convention committee board, said the committee rejected all 10 of the workshop proposals he submitted, including seminars on Olympics photography, election photography and design.

“It’s a big, multimedia year,” Sakuma said. “And UNITY decided they are going into multimedia because that’s where the (journalism) business is going.”

Photographers are not the only members worried about the lack of workshops for their discipline. Some graphic designers, who also fall under the visual communications umbrella, said they felt slighted as well.

“We have always been the stepchild,” said Brian Henderson, a graphic designer and the task force’s design chair.

“That is why the Visual Task Force was created,” said Henderson, who is also a volunteer with The UNITY News.

Formed in 1990 as an extension of the National Association of Black Journalists, the Visual Task Force now includes members of the four UNITY organizations. Its goal is to create a support system for visual communicators who often feel like outsiders among writers and reporters.

“I would hate to think that (after) all that we have accomplished, that somebody has relegated photographers as second-class citizens,” said Fred Sweets, the liaison between the task force and the program committee for the last UNITY convention.

Sweets said he understands that working with strong personalities as well as competing for space, sponsorship and time, sometimes makes it hard to include everything.

But Doris Truong, a copy editor and secretary of the Asian American Journalists Association, said she should get something from the convention.

“If I wanted to attend more copy editing workshops,” she said, “I would go to the copy editing convention.”

topic: UNITY Convention
tags: graphic artist, photography, seminars, visual task force, workshops

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