Doing what’s right for journalism and myself

Two-thirds of the way through orientation, I half-jokingly told fellow Chipster Olga Munoz that I was waiting for the "breakthrough" portion, with revelations and "a-ha" moments.

Well, they came on the third day. The workshop, “A Conversation about Our Differences" (by Poynter’s Keith Woods), was easily the most emotional part of the orientation for me. We talked about incidents in which we felt that we were being singled out because of our respective races. Events ranged from the blatantly racist to the frustratingly ambiguous. How can we as journalists separate how we feel when we perceive that our identity is being attacked or slandered? This was a question seen earlier this year in Mary Ann Hogan's “Ask the Coach” column about the use of offensive language.

The hardest part about dealing with offensive comments is that I have to put my job as a journalist first. At the same time, I don't want to put up with prejudice. It's hard to take my Hispanic heritage out of the situation, but I know it's what I must do. At the end of the day, I hope that I can do what's right for journalism and what's right for myself.

-- Charles Menchaca, University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, The Wausau (Wis.) Daily Herald