Executive Leadership Program

2008 ELP Class, San Francisco. Photo by Albert Lee.

The Asian American Journalists Association is proud to provide a program to help Asian American and Pacific Islander journalists become outstanding newsroom leaders and executives.

The AAJA Executive Leadership Program (ELP) looks at how Asian American and Pacific Islander values relate to high-level decision-making processes and leadership development. The two-session program explores the responsibilities and challenges in the newsroom. Each participant will develop individual career paths to leadership positions. There are 360 graduates of the Executive Leadership Program since the program began in 1995.

In a recent survey of Executive Leadership Program graduates, 55% of all respondents received 1 or more PROMOTIONS within their company or at new companies. Of those who received promotions, 83% rated the program 3 or above on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the highest, when asked about the impact of their ELP training on their promotions.

The AAJA Executive Leadership Program is founded and directed by Dinah Eng, columnist for Gannett News Service, freelance writer and former AAJA National President.

The 2008 ELP Introductory Session took place March 12-16, 2008, San Francisco, CA. The next Introductory Session location will be determined in fall 2008.

The ELP Mentor Program took place March 10-11 in San Francisco, CA and will continue July 23-24 in Chicago, IL.

The ELP Advanced Session will take place July 22-23 just prior to the UNITY: Journalists of Color Convention July 23-27, 2008, Chicago, IL.

The 2008 Introductory Session was supported by a new two-year grant from the McCormick Foundation, with additional sponsorship from Hearst Newspapers, New York Daily News, People, ABC7 (KGO-TV/DT) and KTVU Channel 2.

For more information on ELP Introductory Session, go here. Check back in winter 2009 for the next Introductory Session application. For additional information, please contact Albert Lee.

Newsroom Statistics

Unfortunately, as with other communities of color, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) are underrepresented in this country's newsrooms. The American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) 2008 newsroom employment survey showed that 423 of the newspapers responding to the survey had no minorities on their full-time staff. This number has been growing since 2006. AAPIs make up only 3.22% of all newsroom employees, a slight gain from the 3.20% in 2007. On the other hand, AAPI's comprise 2.3% of all supervisors in newsrooms, down from 2.5% last year. Of the total AAPIs in the newsrooms, 20% are supervisors. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, AAPIs comprise 5.19% of the total U.S. population.

In broadcast, the percentage of Asian Americans in television newsrooms throughout the country is 2.7%, up from 2.3% in 2007 according to a 2008 survey released by the Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) and Ball State University. Asian American Television news directors comprise 1.7%, up from 1.0% in 2007.

The data covering radio newsrooms shows that 0.4% of the radio newsroom workforce are Asian American (down from 1.1% in 2007). Only 0.8% of radio news directors are Asian American (down from 1.9% in 2007).

Read more about the 2008 ASNE Newsroom Employment survey.

Read more about the 2008 RTNDA survey of minorities and women.