by Huy Huynh
AA E-Zine Editor-in-Chief Emeritus

This coming May seven of the current SBU AA E-Zine editors will be graduating. None of us were interested in the field of journalism when we got involved, we are engineering, pre-med, and pre-law majors, but our involvement taught us a great deal about how we, as Asian Americans, are portrayed.

For the first time the Editor-in-Chief of the E-Zine will be someone who does want to be a journalist. The fact that so much of his staff will no longer be here was part of the reason for the theme of this issue. Many of us attended the ECAASU Conference last month and came back invigorated about making sure our voices are heard. The only way there will be a sea change in how Asians and Asian Americans are portrayed in American news is when Asian Americans themselves help to make those portrayals real. 

So if you are interested in journalism, or simply in having the voice of Asian Americans heard, get involved. This article looks beyond academia to the real world in some senses, to the professional organization started by Asian American journalists, AAJA, the Asian American Journalist's Association. 

AAJA is not just for professionals though. Almost one-third of its members are students! It is part of AAJA's push to bring young people into the news business. 

The following was taken from AAJA's About Us webpage. AAJA was founded in 1981 by a few Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) journalists who felt a need to support one another and to encourage more AAPI's to pursue journalism at a time when there were few of their faces in the media. 

It is a non-profit organization with approximately 2,000 members in 20 chapters across the U.S. In addition, AAJA has a growing number of members working throughout Asia, which underscores the rapid growth of media on that continent. 

AAJA is proud to include among its members some of the top journalists in the country, from network news anchors and reporters to Pulitzer Prize-winning writers, editors and photographers, to national radio show producers and major magazine editors. 

And hopefully some day one of the readers of the AA E-Zine, or one of its staff, will be part of it as they join the ranks of journalists in America. And come back to be on the Advisory Board of SBU's new School of Journalism since like the rest of American media - it too is sorely lacking in Asian Americans faces.

AAJA : www.aaja.org

NY Chapter : http://chapters.aaja.org/NewYork/

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