As the United States and American media companies grapple with seismic fractures over race, social justice and gender equity, Felecia Henderson of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education helped National Press Foundation “Widening the Pipeline” journalists of color navigate these “fault lines.” 

Henderson noted that the U.S. is still confronting the same urgent societal fissures identified in the 1967 Kerner Commission Report: “If the media are to report with understanding wisdom and sympathy on the problems of cities and problems of the black man, they must employ, promote and listen to Negro journalists.”

Nine years after that conclusion, the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education was formed to address the absence of people of color covering the social and cultural unrest of the 1960s and 1970s. Henderson, a veteran reporter and newsroom manager and now the director of Cultural Competency for Maynard, spoke about the divides inside newsrooms and the nation and how to deal with assumptions, aggressions and other barriers to journalists’ career ambitions.

Speaker: 

Felecia Henderson, Director of Cultural Competency, Maynard Institute for Journalism Education

The Widening the Pipeline fellowship is sponsored by the Evelyn Y. Davis Foundation, Bayer AG, J&J and Twitter. NPF is solely responsible for the content.