Native American students from tribal colleges around the country spent a weekend at the J-school in mid-February as part of a new online class. Upper row: Deborah McDonald and daughter (in blue), Lela Schwitzer, J-School professor Michael Downs, Lailani O'Donnell, J-School grad student Gwen Lankford, J-School professor Denny McAuliffe. Second row: Rhondelle Emery, LaNada Peppers, Gerri Williams. Bottom row: Rik Yannott, Louis Montclair, Llona Tucker, and Manny Gullatt.     photo by Luisa Kirby

Native American journalism
Students end weekend forum jacked about journalism

By Adam Weinacker
J-School Web Reporter

To Gwen Lankford, being a Native American journalist means being different in an important way.

"As Indian people we have something that is unique to nobody else in the United States," said Lankford, a graduate student in broadcast journalism at UM. "We have to keep our feet in two worlds to succeed."

Lankford was one of four Native reporters who shared real-world experiences with students in a new online class led by J-School professor Michael Downs. The class, called "Reznet: Journalistic Principles On and Off the Reservation," brought 10 Native students from tribal colleges across the country to Missoula Feb. 13-16 to meet Downs and to learn what it means to be a journalist, especially as an Indian.

Photo by Louisa Kirby

Jennifer Perez (left), a reporter for the Great Falls Tribune, said covering Indian reservations as a Native American can be challenging. Gwen Lankford, a reporter and part-time anchor at KECI-TV, also participated in the panel. "There are things that we do different as Native people," Lankford said. "Our culture is really based a lot more on shaking people's hands and saying hello."

"You have to remain true to yourselves as Indian people," Lankford said.

Lankford, a member of the Gros Ventre and Salish tribes, participated in a panel discussion about the roles Native Americans play in the news business. She is the first American Indian reporter for KECI-TV in Missoula. She has learned that being a Native reporter requires respect, an understanding of heritage, and a quick eye to catch insensitivities toward American Indians that can creep into the newsroom.

When Lankford reports for broadcast, she said, she has a responsibility to represent her community, family and ancestors. She knows the difficulties of respecting Indian culture while trying to be an objective reporter.

"You really struggle as an Indian person to keep that balance," she said.

Paige Parker, a Northern Cheyenne, said she has had no opportunities to test that balance.

As a Native American, she understands her importance in the newsroom and she wants to focus on Native issues, but she said her boss at the Oregonian wants her to churn out beat stories to help fill the paper. Parker covers a school district that has only 400 Indian students out of 35,000.

Photo by Lisa Hornstein

Llona Tucker (left) Lailani O'Donnell, Rhondelle Emery and Louis Montclair share a joke during the reznet reception Feb. 14 in the Journalism School library.

"In two and a half years I have not written a single story—a single story—about an Indian," she said.
Parker said her desire to be a reporter started as a child when her father criticized media coverage of Native Americans in their community. His wish for objective reporting on the reservation nudged Parker along the journalism path.

After graduating from the J-School in 2000, she hoped to cover Native issues for the Oregonian. While she was at UM, her professors let her pursue stories she wanted to write, especially in classes such as Native News.

"I was really, really encouraged here," she said. "And then I left."

She now works for a paper that has no room for her longing to cover Native topics, she said. Before she arrived at the Oregonian, her dream job — the Sovereign Nations beat — was cut in a revamp that left Indians with little news coverage. She now has no outlet to write about Native Americans, she said.

"I came into it just really excited and wanting to make a difference," she said. "Now I’m at this paper that is really great and has lots of resources, and I’m doing jack."

Manny Gullatt Jr., a student in the online class, said he hopes to be a reporter who can bring attention to American Indian struggles.

Photo by Lisa Hornstein

J-School professor Denny McAuliffe (left) shows Louis Montclair (upper right) and Lailani O'Donnell the reznet Web site in the Journalism School library during the reznet weekend Feb. 13-15. Montclair and O'Donnell were among 10 students who were at UM to kick off an online class called Reznet: Journalistic Principles On and Off the Reservation."

"It sounds very challenging, but it will be worth it," he said. "The bigger the challenge the better the rewards."

Gullatt said he’s concerned about nuclear waste that affects his Paiute tribe in Schurz, Nev. And he worries about a planned road that would cover Native burial grounds near Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas, where he goes to school. These are stories, he said, that most people know nothing about.

"All of these different little stories are all in my mind," he said, "and that’s what motivates me to become a journalist."

Jennifer Perez leads the reporting life that Gullatt described and Parker desires. As a reporter for the Great Falls Tribune, Perez covers Indians on four reservations in northern Montana. Unlike Parker, Perez has the opportunity to cover Native Americans, but she often finds that task demanding, she told the students.

The J-School graduate grew up on the Fort Belknap reservation, where she worked on her tribal paper.

She soon discovered that reporting about the Native community would be difficult, partly because she reports about a community that is afraid of misrepresentation, she said. Fairness becomes a bigger issue because she is Indian, she said: "As an Indian, they have higher expectations of me."

Does she feel added pressure? "Absolutely," she said. "The way that I’m able to handle it is by talking to a lot of people."

But being Native also has helped her uncover problems on the reservations that surround Great Falls, she said.

People often assume that all Native American journalists want to cover Native issues, said panel moderator Denny McAuliffe Jr., the J-School’s Native American journalist in residence. One facet of being a Native American in a profession with few Indians, he said, is that sometimes Native journalists are pigeonholed into writing only Native stories.

"There’s this assumption out there that all Indian people are the same," he said.

Photo by Louisa Kirby

Jason Begay, who is Navajo, said he doesn't look for Indian stories to write on his job at the Oregonian. "I cover these stories as I cover any other stories," said Begay, a 2002 J-school grad. At right is Paige Parker, a 2000 J-school grad who also works at the Oregonian.

But Jason Begay, a Navaho who reports for the Oregonian, said he has never had an interest in reporting only about Indians. Sometimes those stories come his way, but he said he doesn’t do anything differently when covering Native Americans, except question them more extensively.

"If anything," said Begay, a 2002 J-school grad, "I’m a bit hesitant to cover Indian people."

He said he struggles with the idea that he was offered reporting jobs more for his ethnicity than for his reporting skills. "I think I’m always going to have trouble getting over being the smallest minority in the country," he said.

Lela Schwitzer, an online student from Keshena, Wis., said she came away from the panel with a positive outlook. While Begay may have mixed feelings about his ethnicity opening up journalism opportunities, Schwitzer said she is excited about her prospects as a Native American reporter.

Schwitzer has dreamed of being a journalist since she was in the fifth grade. She is majoring in business and finance at the College of Menominee Nation because the school has no journalism program.

"There’s no journalism schools nearby where I live," she said. "It’s just something I gave up on."
The weekend in Missoula showed her that journalism is not closed to Indians, and that it actually offers many avenues for entering the profession, she said: "Before I came here I didn’t realize I had so many opportunities."

Her first opportunity was joining the online course offered by the J-School, which is intended to spread interest in journalism among Native Americans.

Another is reznet, an online publication that gives Native students a way to publish and earn $50 for their stories. It is staffed by 20 Native students across the country and was created by McAuliffe, who also thought of the online course. Reznet operates on a two-year, $250,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that is funding tuition and airfare for students of the pilot online class.

Photo by Louisa Kirby

Four panelists, along with J-School professor Denny McAuliffe, discuss being both Indians and journalists. McAuliffe, a member of the Osage tribe, said he had difficulty being an Indian during his years at the Washington Post. "The way I was an Indian was the way many of us were treated in this country," he said. "I was invisible."

Reznet and the online class are, above all, efforts to increase the number of Native Americans in newsrooms.

After leaving Missoula, Gullatt, Schwitzer and the other eight students began the online portion of the class. The course ends April 22-24 when the students travel to the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota to attend the Native American Newspaper Career Conference.


"I’ve been having a really great time here at the school," Gullatt said of his weekend with Downs and the other students. The class will soon become less personal, but it is a way for him to learn journalism skills. He said he enjoyed the panel discussions, and he hopes to one day do some in-depth reporting on issues important to him.

"I feel it’s important just to have a voice about Native issues," he said.

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