Reporter focusing on minority communities joining the Sun Herald staff soon
A journalist from the nonprofit initiative Report for America will join the Sun Herald in June to cover South Mississippi’s diverse minority communities, with an emphasis on the Vietnamese and black populations.
The reporter will spend a year with the Sun Herald, with the possibility their tenure could be extended for an additional year.
“So many Vietnamese immigrants came to the Coast for our seafood industry,” Blake Kaplan, the Sun Herald’s executive editor and general manager, said in an application to RFA. “ . . . We see this reporter tackling stories on race relations, environmental issues connected to the seafood industry and communication with loved ones far away.
“We also see this reporter tackling big-picture issues in our African-American and Hispanic communities.”
The Ground Truth Project, a nonprofit national service organization, started Report for America in 2017 to strengthen democracy through journalism as newsroom budgets shrink with the transformation from print to digital distribution.
The 2019 RFA class of 60 reporters is working in 50 newsrooms across the country.
The Sun Herald, a McClatchy media company, continues to publish daily in print and online at sunherald.com. Its predecessor, The Daily Herald, was first published in 1884.
“We are the longtime voice and agenda-setter for the three coastal counties in southern Mississippi,” Kaplan said in the RFA application. “If it is in the Sun Herald, chances are important people here are talking about it.”
Kaplan explained that minority populations are underrepresented in news stories from our area. The RFA reporter, working with experienced newsroom mentors, will be tasked with building sources and producing relevant content in the Vietnamese and other minority communities.
RFA will support a portion of the reporter’s salary through a grant. The Sun Herald will be asking for community support to pay the remainder of the salary and help keeps its hometown media company strong.
