How can we help Santa Clarita Valley to start listening with their heart?
A few things woke up the nation in 2020: One of them being the widespread social movement that was sparked by the murder of George Floyd. It wasn’t enough for our society to experience this horrific event on the news, but also altered our own self-reflections on race in our nation. Every single event thereafter with the protest marches in our communities in the name of racial justice; People wanted to be a part of the change in society with humanity.
Being born and raised in Santa Clarita Valley feels more like a confession of a sheltered privileged life. The lack of exposure to crime, homelessness, or the majority of what occurs in a larger metropolitan like Los Angeles. According to the City of Santa Clarita Valley website, “the city of Santa Clarita is the third-largest city in Los Angeles County,” there is still a small-town mentality.
I was naive in thinking I understood how to listen to my Latinx and the Black friends in our community. I could take to heart what was their experiences with empathy, but I could never fully understand. I only had my white background to reflect, so the shift of having the stories by impacted individuals gave more power to their stories.
The two majority races and ethnicities in Santa Clarita are Latinx and White, according to Census Reporter, with the median age of 36.6 will be getting their news from Facebook and online according to a study from Pew Research Center in 2021.
My key questions will be directed to the 4% of Black and 34% of the Hispanic population in Santa Clarita Valley that are underrepresented in local news. I would want to make sure we are representing the complete racial range in Santa Clarita Valley.
By engaging the online community and gaining a thorough understanding of why they feel they are underrepresented in local news, I will be reporting on behalf of the underrepresented and often overlooked.
To get ahead with the project, and with my best intentions, I posted on social media to reach into the community to pull out experiences and the result was less than expected. While I thought social media is a wonderful tool to extend a larger network to the Santa Clarita community, it reaped few results.
“I need your assistance: From The Signal and SCV Breaking News find an example of when you felt represented in the media and what it looked like. I want to hear about your experience!” on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram in English and Spanish.
I shudder now at how that must have been perceived with this and am surprised that I actually did receive some response. It was actually two replies, one was a curious CSUN alumnus, and the other was from a Santa Clarita Valley resident and nonprofit leader. She is a Black woman, who responded that she would love to provide help, but “couldn’t find anything in the local news as an example.”
It was there that I noted that I was asking the wrong questions. I needed to pull from what I learned from the George Floyd movement and proceed with empathy to listen to the community I was trying to involve.
With new self-reflection, I am going to restructure my questions:
What would you like to see in local news sources in the future to better represent your nationality? Where would you like to see stories of your community? How does it make you feel to see stories that reflect your community on local news sources? Who does it help to share these stories? Why do positive news stories make an impact on how you see your community? What is the best way for the local news to share more uplifting Latinx and Black community efforts?
My new proposal is to share a multimedia experience with graphics, charts, photos, videos, and stories from Santa Clarita, and put together some more probing questions to get into the “how can we do better,” and “what can we do,” to make this our Latinx and Black populations feel seen and heard in our community.
The two examples would be simliar to the presentation about News Inside and Race In LA with a Google form.
Sources:
Santa Clarita, CA — Profile data — Census Reporter
Social Media Use in 2021 | Pew Research Center
Black Lives Matter: The Story of the First 10 Years (nymag.com)
Home — Black Lives Matter
The Santa Clarita Valley Signal | #1 source for breaking and local news | Santa Clarita Valley Signal (signalscv.com)
Population | City of Santa Clarita, CA (santa-clarita.com)
Latino, Hispanic population in Santa Clarita doubles over last two decades (signalscv.com)
https://laist.com/projects/2020/race-in-la/race-in-la.html
https://awards.journalists.org/entries/news-inside/
