The Power of Diverse Voices is a transformative, four-day seminar that helps journalists of color find their voices and build skills for writing opinion pieces and personal essays.
With the support of expert instructors and fellow journalists of color, you’ll develop the confidence and skills to share your unique perspective in persuasive writing. You will learn both through instruction as well as intensive coaching in small writing groups. You will focus on fact-based opinion writing — and using social media to spark a conversation — across platforms.
The seminar is led by Tom Huang, a senior editor at The Dallas Morning News who has been a champion of diverse storytellers for 35 years and who has taught at Poynter for 20 of those years. This in-person, immersive experience will foster the diversity of voices necessary in the profession and train the next generation of opinion writers from a wide spectrum of backgrounds. Additionally, it will explore how opinion writing plays a vital role in explanatory, features and watchdog journalism, and is important in a thriving democracy.
Before this program, I doubted how my unconventional path and story could make me a stronger journalist. In fact, I hesitated to even call myself a ‘journalist’ due to my perceived lack of experience. This all changed the minute I stepped into the first workshop. In three days, strangers became friends, confidants and supporters. There is power in uniting people who are usually overlooked in traditional newsrooms. Being in the same room with journalists of color, looking people in the eye and finding camaraderie not only boosted morale but also affirmed the power we hold with our personal experiences, our stories and the way in which we navigate the world. This workshop encouraged me to wholeheartedly own my identity, embrace the power in our stories and to leverage what I know to be a better person as well as journalist.
— Vicky Diaz-Camacho, class of 2018
Accepted applicants will join an active and successful alumni group. Their work has appeared in podcasts such as This Land series by Rebecca Nagle and an episode of Racist Sandwich by Joseph Hernandez; in local news such as this column about being the daughter of Pakistani immigrants by Shaheen Pasha in the New Hampshire Gazette; and in national outlets such as Iris Kuo’s column in The Atlantic on the ‘whitening’ of Asian Americans and Russell Contreras’s story for the Associated Press about his family surviving five generations of Houston storms.
Apply now to be a part of the Writing Workshop for Journalists of Color community and give power to your voice.
