Community Outreach

Ethnic Media Fellows

Ethnic media document the everyday life of the people they serve, offering an intimate portrait of their problems and their dreams. At the same time, especially if they cater to immigrant communities, they bring the rest of the world closer. The combination leads to fresh angles that show how trends, including genetics and the development of systems biology, touch on real people’s lives. Ethnic Americans and immigrants - who represent a growing percentage of the country – often rely on community-based newspapers, magazines, television, radio stations, and online media for their information.

SoundVision is committed to strengthening science news content for ethnic minority populations and rural communities, which historically have been underserved by the mainstream media. We are partnering with New America Media, an ethnic media consortium, in order to extend the reach of The DNA Files research, programming, and community engagement into these communities. New America Media is a nationwide association of over 700 ethnic media organizations representing the development of a more inclusive journalism. Separately, SoundVision continues to build on its strong relationships with public radio networks and consortia that serve Hispanic/Latino, Native American and African American audiences.

In our ethnic media fellows program, participating journalists develop stories that build upon the documentary series in order to show the impact and issues of genetics research on their own audiences. In all, we have funded 10 news or feature stories for ethnic media print outlets to run in target markets. New America Media and SoundVision have provided story development help and some mentoring during the reporting and editing phase. These individual science journalism fellowships are designed to encourage print and broadcast science content development and best practices.