It's All Journalism

The broccoli of media-focused podcasts.

  • Podcast
  • Blog
  • FAQ
  • How to Podcast
  • Newsletter
  • Take a Survey

#371 NLGJA continues to transform how newsrooms cover LGBTQ issues

August 29, 2019 by Amber Healy

Twenty years ago, the media landscape was very different for the LGBTQ community. Years after Ellen DeGeneres became the first mainstream actress to confirm she was gay, the sitcom Will & Grace brought prominent gay characters into American homes on a weekly basis in a way that wasn’t shameful or audacious.

Sharif Durhams

It was also about 20 years ago that Sharif Durhams first started working as a professional journalist and, shortly thereafter, he joined the NLGJA — The Association of LGBTQ Journalists.  As an “out” gay man himself, he wanted to learn more about how to be a full participant in his newsroom.

Now president of the organization’s board, Durhams says things have gotten much better in terms both of coverage of LGBTQ issues and of the language journalists use when covering such topics.

“The industry was so different back then,” he says. “A lot of the discussion back then was, would some of these large organizations have policies that recognized they’d treat LGBTQ people the same” on matters of insurance, in particular, as well as other workplace benefits. “That’s a big fight NLGJA led. If you were to google it and find when large companies adopted these policies, it’s because of NLGJA. Since then, things have changed so much. We’re looking at the policies of newsrooms, are they using appropriate language to describe our communities.”

Now the new coverage emphasis is on issues relating to the trans community, but there’s a new challenge here that goes beyond how a person identifies.

“Unfortunately, we’ve been dealing with so much violence against trans people and so many trans deaths, where people can’t speak for themselves,” he says. “We’ve had to school news organizations, making sure they get the terminology right, making sure they deal with issues when the police misgender someone, making sure that they might be diving into a story in a well-meaning way but making sure they have the information they need.”

While newsrooms have received information and stylebook suggestions from NLGJA on pronoun use, sometimes the organization needs to get ahead of the news cycle. They issued a press release immediately when Chelsea Manning affirmed her name and identity, which happened to occur during the organization’s annual meeting. The editor of the New York Times happened to be speaking at the meeting the next morning and confirmed she’d informed her newsroom that the suggestions from NLGJA were immediately adopted as the paper’s official terminology.

NLGJA’s suggestions aren’t taken to heart because of the advocacy of its members alone, but because they’re journalists talking to other journalists about a community of which a reporter might not be a member.

“It’s that kind of ability to connect that’s been very valuable,” Sharif says.

Producer Michael O’Connell is joined this week by Sharif Durhams, a senior editor for CNN Digital and board president for the NLGJA — The Association of LGBTQ Journalists, discussing how media coverage for the LGBTQ community has changed in the past 20 years and where it needs to go next.

#362 What is the future of LGBT media?
Share Button
If you like this post, please share it along:

Previous Post


Survey: What tools do you use to do good journalism?

Next Post


#372 Algorithms are changing how journalists do their jobs

Leave a Reply Cancel reply




Related Posts

  • Jen Sorensen#102 – Comic satire with the Bob Woodward seal of approval
  • "Church and State" by Adam Zyglis (May 7, 2017)#254 – Cartoonist Adam Zyglis and the all-consuming news cycle
  • Melanie Deziel#119 — Branded Content: The New York Times finds new life in old business model
  • #21 – ONA’s Joshua Hatch knows how to use data visualizations and so should you

Learn How To Podcast

Turn Up the Volume equips journalism students, professionals, and others interested in producing audio content with the know-how necessary to launch a podcast for the first time. It addresses the unique challenges beginner podcasters face in producing professional level audio for online distribution. Beginners can learn how to handle the technical and conceptual challenges of launching, editing, and posting a podcast.

Order this new book by It’s All Journalism Producer Michael O’Connell.

Take a Survey, Earn Some Swag

If you haven’t heard, we created a five-question online survey to help us assemble a toolbox for journalists that we’ll share on our podcast and website. Please take a few minutes to share the tools that help make your job easier.

We’ve also just launched a new survey on how to improve our podcast. Let us know how we could do better.

To those people who complete one of our the surveys, we’ll be sending out a limited number of It’s All Journalism coffee mugs while supplies last. Show your support for good journalism by taking the survey and get a reward in return.

Help Support Our Podcast

Promoting good journalism is essential in a democracy. By donating to the It’s All Journalism Patreon page, you will help ensure that we continue producing the weekly podcast that focuses on good journalism. You’ll also help to boost us to the next level with live events and exclusive content. Donate here.

Sign Up for Our Weekly Newsletter

Latest Posts

  • 387. Lead reporter in Sandusky case now investigating barriers in school data reporting
  • 386. NewsMatch, INN and good news for independent, investigative news
  • 385. LA Times podcast unravels 15-year-old mystery in Room 20
  • Better News: Iconic southern newspaper undergoes digital-first transformation
  • 384. Memes, manifestos and 4chan — making sense of a toxic online culture

Copyright © 2019 · Pintercast Child Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in