In anticipation of the 2008 Presidential Election, the National Minority Consortia (NMC) presents Election Intiative 2008: a multi-platform initiative to incorporate diversity in public media as a central premise to covering a national news event, while also signaling public media’s commitment to diversity in public affairs reporting. The Initiative will bring to PBS and public radio election-related stories from different communities within the growing minority electorate. The initiative is structured around cross-collaborations with broadcast and online news outlets (most notably the Online Newshour), community partners, and young minority journalists.
The NMC’s goal is to reframe the political conversation as viewed through the communities and provide the context and perspectives not covered by mainstream media. Working in partnership with journalism schools we will identify a select group of journalism fellows to report on minority communities and issues within the context of the upcoming elections. The fellows will deliver their stories in a variety of formats from short 5 to 15 minute video or audio pieces suitable for on-line webcasting to articles and opinion pieces.
The NMC introduced our election-year partnership in June 2007 on the All-American Presidential Forums on PBS moderated by Tavis Smiley.
The NMC are five national media organizations funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to deliver programing that brings minority voices to the public airwaves. Members include the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), headquartered in San Francisco; Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB) in Los Angeles; National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC) in New York; Native American Public Telecommunications (NAPT) in Lincoln, Nebraska; and Pacific Islanders in Communications (PIC) in Honolulu.
