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Not Going To Do It

If AAJA dumped the “J,” it would be “AAA.” Then maybe people could guess what the organization does. I mean doesn’t AAA come out and jump-start your dead battery?

But alas, life is not that simple.

The “J” is there, and does stand for “journalists.” Maybe they can come out and jump-start your car. But more than likely, they will simply stand back objectively, observe, then report on how your car isn’t running.

At least they’d spell your name correctly.

And that, my friends, is the problem of our community’s beloved AAJA, the Asian American Journalists Association, an organization I’ve been a part of off and on for 15 years. I’ve served as a board member and local chapter president. I’ve won their national journalist awards. I even won Benny Agbayani’s Mets jersey at a silent auction.

So I have deep feelings for these folks.

But I’m not going to the convention this year in Dallas.

You’d figure I would be, if only to see my old friends like Cambodian superstar and New York Times photographer Dith Pran. Then again, it was in Dallas where I really got my major market start in TV news. As a young reporter in 1980, I covered a camouflaged mass murderer in East Texas who had burst into a church with an AK-47and killed more than a dozen people. I covered prison riots in Huntsville; a KKK rally. I even elicited a confession on tape from a serial rapist-murderer, and got my own copy of the Zapruder film.

And then there were the fun times with colleagues. The bachelor party of 60 Minutes star Scott Pelley. Got drunk with ex-White House aide Karen Hughes, formerly Parfitt.

All along, I was believed to be the first Asian Pacific American television reporter in Dallas at KXAS-TV. No one knew of any others. There’s a Chinese woman who makes that claim now on KXAS’s website — the new owners. But she’s been there just a few years. I was there in 1980. Maybe it was because with my name, they all just figured I was Hispanic.

That’s how ignorant people were back then. Filipinos were who knows what. If you were Asian, you maybe did restaurant work or karate movies, but you sure as hell didn’t do the TV news.

I did.

Still, with all my nostalgic notions of “Emil in Texas,” I could not be lured this year to yet another AAJA convention. The problem has to do with the organization itself. After all these years, AAJA still doesn’t know what to do.

Should it be more activist in trying to reform an all-white news industry? Or just be a social club for the handful of dreamers who think they actually have more than a token role in the mainstream media of the U.S.?

Negotiating the fork in this road actually requires some fancy footwork when you consider the organization gets it funding directly from the Big Media it’s trying to reform. When big newspaper chains and networks so willingly help keep you in business with their generous gifts, you wonder whether it’s a form of altruism or a form of penance?

I’ve often wondered if media companies at the AAJA job fairs were really there to hire, or just make themselves look good by collecting as many resumes from as many minorities as possible. In this day and age, collecting a resume is as good as hiring a person of color. A resume isn’t just a hiring tool, it’s evidence against a good lawsuit. Nothing like a few thousand resumes to show that you’re actively fighting discrimination! But you want jobs, hmmm. Don’t we have a hiring freeze?

The proof, however, is always in the kim chee. And it ain’t good. Something’s not working, and more than likely it’s APAs in the news biz.

The sins of the industry are pretty glaring. The latest stats actually indicate a return to a historical trend. After a one-year spike, the Radio TV News Directors Association reports that the numbers of APAs in journalism are dropping off dramatically.

In TV news, where Connie Chung continues to be the APA role model, the percentage of APAs in that medium dropped from 4.1 percent in 2001 to 3.1 percent this year.

These are probably APA males who don’t want to undergo a sex change to be the next Chung King. (Hey, I’ll learn karate to become a star. But no sex change! A guy’s got to draw the line somewhere).

The figures are no better for newspapers. The annual newspaper editors survey revealed a drop in minority journalists. And there’s a new twist. Last year, newspapers hired 600 minorities to their first full-time jobs. But at the end of the year, the field lost 698 journalists.

We’re running away from the media. Media folks do hire. They just can’t retain us.

What are we? Too amok for the newsroom? Under-appreciated? Underpaid? Or just too smart for a job where the starting pay is less than a first year doctor, lawyer or investment bank intern?

That may be the problem. Journalists aren’t impoverished. Most of us just don’t make much money. Our community is more obsessed with Katie Couric’s $14 million salary than by her ability to read the truth from a prompter. There may be a few idealists out there. But those who become journalists are prone to watch, not act, which explains AAJA’s inability to be more forceful for the community.

When it does act, AAJA tends to go over the same ground. AAJA in Dallas will tackle the question “Where are all the APA male anchors?”

Of course, you’ve heard that song before. It’s been raised ever since I first joined the organization. But it’s on the agenda like another karaoke disc.

But I don’t want to be so negative about the organization. The AAJA has a real function and it’s social. We’ve still come a long way from situations where one can be the only Asian in the newsroom. Now there are one and three-quarters of us.

At the convention in Dallas this week, AAJA expects hundreds to still knock on media’s door. But as a group, no one’s sure whether to stand politely, or flex up and bring the frigging thing down.

That’s AAJA for you.

Reach Emil Guillermo at emil@amok.com.