AAJA: Asian American Journalists Association


ELP Media Demonstration Project

The Executive Leadership Program (ELP) Media Demonstration Project looks at media consumption habits in the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community in order to engage Asian American ethnic media, young people and other communities in emerging technology platforms.

The project is designed to develop potential business models for how news organizations can reach these underserved populations.

This project, which began in Chicago in June 2010, continues through 2011 with workshops currently taking place in Detroit and New York--three cities with large AAPI populations.

From ELP graduates and technology companies to educators and members from an array of multiplatform media, the ELP Media Demonstration Project brings together different constituencies to talk about common interests. It also offers the opportunity for these groups to learn new skills and develop financially sustainable strategies to serve not only the AAPI community, but to reach all communities of color.

The ELP Media Demonstration Project is funded by a grant from the McCormick Foundation with additional support from the Ford Foundation, Journalism That Matters and Microsoft.

Here is a look at the three components to the project:

Chicago

The "Ethnic Journalism and Technology" digital training event and summit, held on June 4, 2010 at Columbia College, brought together ethnic media and mainstream journalists, academicians and funders. The panel sessions dealt with new media and social media and included training on how to get access to local and state government as well as brainstorming sessions on innovative ways to bridge mainstream media outlets with ethnic communities.


Detroit

Suni In this segment, AAJA works with a class of 7th grade and 8th grade middle school students in Dearborn, Michigan, which is home to the largest and most influential Arab-speaking population in North America. In addition to developing a curriculum for the students, AAJA's coordinators also provid them with multimedia tools to create a "Living Textbook," which tells their families' stories through their own eyes. As a complement to "The Living Textbook" website, the students' photographic works were exhibited at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, MI from July 2-August 14.

New York

The "OurChinatown" piece of the demonstration project endeavors to utilize smart phones and mobile-optimized blogs enriched with mobile-friendly video, images and audio podcasts, as well as bilingual/multilingual content to reach the often overlooked community. By developing a hyperlocal news site, residents of the neighborhood are able to receive real time news stories that impact them.