Navigating White News

NCA Asian Pacific American Caucus & Communication Studies Division Outstanding Book Award 

Combining critical race studies with cultural production studies, Navigating White News: Asian American Journalists at Work is the only academic book to examine the ways that racial identification and activation matters in their understanding of news. This adds to the existing literature on race and the sociology of news by examining intra-racial differences in the ways they navigate and understand White newsrooms. Employing in-depth interviews with twenty Asian American journalists who are actively working in large and small newsrooms across the United States, Navigating White News: Asian American Journalists at Work argues that Asian American reporters for whom racial identities are important questioned what counted as news, questioned the implicitly White perspective of objectivity, and actively worked toward providing more complex, substantive coverage of Asian American communities. For Asian American reporters for whom racial identity was not meaningful, they were more invested in existing professional norms. Regardless, all journalists understood that news is a predominantly and culturally White institution.
 

DAVID C. OH is an associate professor of communication arts at Ramapo College of New Jersey. He studies Asian Americans and media, transnational reception of Korean media, and Korean media and alterity. He is the author of two books, including Whitewashing the Movies, and Second-Generation Korean American Adolescents and Transnational Media.

SEONG JAE MIN is an associate professor of communication studies at Pace University’s NYC campus, where he studies journalism and political communication. He is the author of two books, As Democracy Goes, So Does Journalism, and Rethinking the New Technology of Journalism. He was a reporter in many news organizations.