This list can help you select among the 100+ UNITY '08 session offerings. Click here to view the entire list.

PLEASE NOTE: Titles and descriptions are subject to change.

Plan to be at UNITY '08. You'll return to your newsroom with a fresh perspective. REGISTER TODAY!

Frank Sotomayor

TAKING CHARGE OF YOU, SPONSORED BY NBC UNIVERSAL
Jackie Hernandez, Telemundo
Congratulations! You’ve climbed the corporate ladder and have either joined the ranks of management or achieved a position where it is a possibility. Now what? How do you navigate the road ahead? Take Charge of YOU is a career development workshop that will provide you with practical advice on how to manage others, while developing your own career. Through this workshop you will learn useful techniques and tangible solutions from key industry players. We want to empower you with the tools and the information needed to TAKE CHARGE OF YOU. To register for this session, please email your resume and contact info to unity@nbcuni.com

INCREASING DIVERSITY IN ENVIRONMENTAL JOURNALISM, SPONSORED BY TOYOTA MOTOR SALES, U.S.A.
Rick Rodriguez

Rick Rodriguez

People of color are greatly affected by environmental degradation. Yet, the field of environmental journalism has relatively few journalists of color reporting about these issues This workshop will examine some of the underlying reasons for this will also include a field trip off site to cover an environmental controversy and a training session on how to cover these topics better.

In the morning, the panelists will take journalists and possibly journalism students out on a reporting assignment about an environmental issue in Chicago. In the afternoon, the participants will come back to the UNITY conference to discuss how to cover this story fairly and accurately. The panelists will also discuss current research done by the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism and other organizations about the number of journalists of color who are reporting about the environment.

MULTIMEDIA STORYTELLING WORKSHOP

Robert Hernandez

Robert Hernandez, Seattle Times
The migration of audiences to online media and the velocity in development of new media technologies has heightened the need for training that will enable journalists to successfully transition to a web-centric environment while also ensuring that traditional journalism standards are preserved in the new digital world. New forms of storytelling must be developed that move beyond simple re-purposing of traditional media forms onto new digital platforms, and instead take advantage of the unique characteristics of digital technologies with integrated multimedia packages that are more compelling and informative. Our proposal is to provide training in the integrated approach used in the Knight Digital Media Center's Multimedia Reporting and Convergence workshops, in which intense hands-on training on the tools and applications as well as storytelling techniques used to produce interactive multimedia news stories. The workshop will cover topics such as storyboarding, digital video and photography, capturing and editing sound, the basics of creating a Flash slide show, and instructions on how to combine all these elements into a multimedia story.

To register for this workshop, please visit http://journalism.berkeley.edu/knight/unityreg/ Registration Code: unity08

Mirna Pineda

COVERING CUBA: SIN PELOS EN LA LENGUA, PRESENTED BY THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HISPANIC JOURNALISTS
Frances Robles, The Miami Herald
When Raúl Castro formally took the helm from his older brother’s 49-year reign, he announced that, among other things, he would thin government bureaucracy with a “more compact and functional structure,” strengthen the economy “to satisfy the basic needs” of the population and allow freedom of expression “so long as it is within the framework of the law.” What, if any, political and economic changes have occurred in the five months since he took office and what does the future hold? We also take a look at how the media covered the story and whether they got it right.

THE ART OF THE LIVE SHOT: HOW TO MAKE THE STORY SING AND ENGAGE VIEWERS
Sid Garcia KABC-TV
How do you keep your composure when the sky is falling? When do you walk and talk? How do you “go live” when the event you’re covering happened hours ago? We’ll discuss all this and more. If you're just starting out, we’ll tell you how to avoid becoming rattled, how to work through technical difficulties and how to find a safe location when covering a dangerous assignment. Veterans will gain tips on how to get better, especially with new technology designed to get you on the air quicker. Panelists will also address what type of live shots most interest viewers and talk about the management perspective on why going live is so important to the newscast. For television and radio journalists, this is our bread and butter.

AMERICA'S RACE TO INCARCERATE: LOCKING UP COMMUNITIES OF COLOR

Arboleda

Angela Arboleda, Director for Civil Rights and Criminal Justice Policy, National Council of La Raza
More people are incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails than anywhere else on earth. Decades of punitive policies have expanded sentence length and incarcerated a growing proportion of the population. If current trends continue, one of every three black males and one of every six Hispanic males born today can expect to spend some time in prison. In the federal prison system, there are 3,470 Native Americans incarcerated - more proportionately than any other racial group. And, among women of color incarceration rates are rising rapidly as well.

MEDIA SPOTLIGHT: CONFRONTING THE NATION'S MOST PRESSING HEALTH ISSUES
Soledad O'Brien

Soledad O'Brien

As healthcare dominates the political landscape this election year, it is important that we focus on the health needs of multicultural communities. Despite the progress and advancements made in the last 20 years, there are still great inequalities in healthcare access and disease management. These disparities are caused by a number of issues including cultural differences and lack of awareness, socioeconomic barriers and lack of access to quality healthcare. This workshop will focus on mental health, diabetes and the under representation of diverse participants in clinical trials. Leading journalists, civic group and public health officials in the areas of clinical trials and healthcare will share their insights on how health disparities impact multicultural communities. Panelists will discuss solutions to combat the nation’s most pressing health issues including education, the development of community programs, increasing access to healthcare and increased minority participation in clinical trials. Through participation in this discussion, journalists will understand the need to alter the nation's dialogue on healthcare by placing a spotlight on the most pressing health concerns impacting multicultural communities.

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING WITH SHRINKING BUDGETS
Manny Garcia, The Miami Herald, With belt tightening at newsrooms around the country, the resources to produce hard-hitting investigative stories have become scarce. And yet, news organizations must remain a public watchdog, or else becoming its lapdog. An executive editor, director of IRE and others discuss strategies on finding time and money to serve the community with these stories.

Maria Hinojosa

GUÍA PRÁCTICA PARA BÚSQUEDA DE DATOS EN LA WEB
Luis Rafael Matos
Aprenda secretos y trucos para evitar información y fuentes no confiables. Familiarícese con herramientas de acceso a bases de datos y navegue con las técnicas más avanzadas para hallar documentos, personas, data, sonidos, videos, blogs informativos y mapas, de aplicación práctica para las redacciones.

WHAT IS RACE?

Lori Robinson

Lori S. Robinson, journalist, author and founding editor of VidaAfroLatina.com., VidaAfroLatina.com
The candidacy of Barack Obama, the discovery by Al Sharpton that his ancestors were owned by forebears of Strom Thurmond, the mixed-race census category and the decision by the Cherokee Indians to expel descendants of the black people known as Cherokee Freedmen have heightened the discussion of just what race means today. DNA research is identifying ancestry and redefining who we think our ancestors were. How is our conception of race changing? And what will race mean in the future?

William Flores

MISSING THE BEAT IN PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

Lori Montenegro

Lori Montenegro, Telemundo
The Presidential campaign is being touted as the most diverse group of candidates in the nation’s history - a woman, an African American, Mormon, Italian American and a Latino. But what about diversity in the press corps? A study commissioned for the last UNITY convention showed just one in 10 writers, editors and bureau chiefs in the Washington daily newspaper press corps are journalists of color. The majority of reporters, pundits, editorial writers and talk show host are White males. Could minority journalists be missing out on the biggest political story in 2008? The panel will explore what's blocking minority journalists from making it into this close knit circle of political coverage and what skills are needed to get there. The beat is glamorous, thankless and all encompassing at the same time...but it can be one of the most rewarding journalistic experiences you’ll ever have.

BREAKING IN, BREAKING THROUGH: THE WORLD OF MAGAZINE WRITING
Angelo Figueroa, Tu Cuidad Magazine
What does it take to make it in magazines? A keen sense of observation, love of the written word, nerves of steel, and a well-placed contact or two. Our guest panelists will give participants the lowdown on pitching, the politics of freelancing, and making the switch from newspapers to magazines.

COALITION OR DEMOLITION? THE IMPACT OF IMMIGRATION ON BLACK-LATINO RELATIONS
Roberto Lovato
Blacks and Latinos deal with a lot of the same issues, from crime to environmental threats. There are a myriad of reasons for the communities to be partners in terms of social justice, but the issue of illegal immigration has driven a wedge in black-Latino relations. Currently, there are attempts to build community and professional partnerships and there has been a history of working together. Mayors in New York (David Dinkins), Chicago (Harold Washington) and LA (Bradley) were elected because of a black-Hispanic coalitions. There are tensions on both sides. For example, many blacks, for instance, resent the comparision of illegal immigrant Elvira Arellano to civil rights hero Rosa Parks and consider themselves in competition for jobs with newly arrived Latin American immigrants. This panel will also address the displacement issue and use the 2010 census as a backdrop.

COVERING CLIMATE CHANGE: WHY NON-WHITE COMMUNITIES COULD BE HIT THE HARDEST, PRESENTED BY NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO
Javier Sierra
Long before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast of America, poor, predominantly black communities in parts of the Deep South were struggling against bad water, poor air quality and other environmental hardships. Listen and learn as this panel of top writers, producers, and editors describe the wide range of climate change, and other environmental stories to be found in and around communities of color and low-income communities in the US and elsewhere. From radio reports on a Washington, DC youth group that is working to clean up the Anacostia River, to photo essays on Native Americans protesting logging in the Pacific Northwest, the panelists share their strategies and techniques for exploring the new frontier of environmental journalism in America.

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: NEGOTIATING YOUR BROADCAST PERSONAL SERVICES CONTRACT
With massive changes in the broadcast industry, there are competitive pressures in the marketplace that affect both print and broadcast journalists. In an age when those pressures trickle down to employees who gather and report the news, it can be difficult to negotiate a personal services contract that provides adequate protections in the areas of wages, hours, job duties and working conditions. Learn from seasoned broadcasters, negotiators and agens what you can do to negotiate the best deal possible, choose an agent or a manager, switch markets and protect yourself from a non-compete clause if you find yourself between jobs when the market is tight.

FINDING STORIES AND JOBS IN A WEB 2.0 WORLD
Danny Sanchez, Orlando Sentinel
Useful workshops provide a little laughter, some drama, story ideas and perhaps insights on how to do your job better or why you need a new one. The members of this panel have navigated successfully through the journalistic estuary where old and new media meet and now want to show others to paraphrase the title of a 20th century movie: how to stop worrying and love technology and the Web.

MULTIMEDIA STORY TELLING ON THE CHEAP
Russell Contreras, Boston Globe
This panel will provide basics to journalism students and entry-level professionals who are interested in multimedia reporting. We will begin with an overview of multimedia newsgathering, move on to how one can start assembling a good set of multimedia tools using free software and inexpensive equipment, and then conclude with a demonstration of a simple way to put together a multimedia presentation for the Internet. Additionally, methods for gathering multimedia material in various situations, such as breaking news and features, will be covered. The audience will also be shown a handful of multimedia stories and will be led through the process of how they were reported, from editing audio to putting together a quick slideshow. Attendees will leave with a good understanding of how they can start using multimedia in print articles, as well as how to choose which stories work best with multimedia. The workshop/panel is aimed toward tribal, small and medium newspapers with limited resources.

WRITING FOR RADIO NEWS
Stephanie Ramirez, Nancy Glass Productions

Ramirez

This lecture/PowerPoint presentation will lay a foundation for the beginning student of broadcast journalism, covering the transition from print journalism to broadcast. Learn how to write broadcast copy that is clear, concise, and to-the-point, how to integrate audio into broadcast copy, how to structure sentences for broadcast and how to use attribution, numbers, abbreviations, formal names, addresses and time references. Hear from panelists who will discuss the importance of radio in today’s society and give a gripping and entertaining example of the use of descriptive words in painting a picture for the radio audience.

HOW CAN YOU IMPROVE A STORY? JUST ASK THE EDITORS
Gina Acosta, The Washington Post
The art and craft of writing can be painstaking, but it can be made easier with the help of editors. Come hear some tips on how to improve stories from some of the most experienced editors in the business. Learn how to: eschew cliches (and when to eschew the word eschew), look for clever ways to approach stories and fix awkward sentences. These guidelines can apply to stories written for newspapers, magazines, Web sites and even broadcast outlets.

JOURNALISM FELLOWSHIPS: YOUR BEST INVESTMENT FOR THE NEW WORLD ORDER
Frances Robles, The Miami Herald
Dawn Garcia, Knight Fellowships at Stanford
In an era of media mergers and layoffs, blogs and citizen media, what should journalists be doing to navigate through current changing (or tumultuous) times prepare themselves for the chaotic and exciting times ahead? The smartest journalists will seek ways to retool, rethink and become leaders of their own journalistic destinies. One proven path? Journalism fellowships! Listen to three recent midcareer journalism fellows from top-notch programs at Stanford, Harvard and Michigan describe why a fellowship is the best investment you can make in your own journalistic future.

THE TRADE PRESS AND OTHER ALTERNATIVES TO MAINSTREAM MEDIA: HOW TO LAND ON YOUR FEET IN TODAY'S CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENT
Victor Galvan, Web Editor, Automotive News
Major changes, including layoff and buyouts, are sweeping mainstream media organizations leaving many journalists wondering what's next in their careers. In this panel, you'll hear from several veteran journalists who have successfully put their skills to use in places that still allow them to maintain ties to journalism and how they've capitalized on their reporting skills. Whether it's in academia, the trade press or public relations, we'll tell you how to land on your feet if the rug is suddenly pulled out from under you.

COVERING IMMIGRATION AS A GLOBAL ISSUE
Ana Mendieta, Journalism Professor, University of the Basque Country
Immigration is a hot topic in the U.S., but it is being debated in other countries as well. This panel will look at global migration and how immigration impacts other countries. This includes North African immigration to Spain, how South Americans are using Mexico as a immigration route, how people are trafficked in Asia and how refugees are impacting the Middle East. We will discuss global migration patterns and how this impacts immigration to the U.S

GAYS, GUNS AND GOD: THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE'S TOUGHEST TOPICS
Daniel Morales, Toughest Topics
Three of the toughest subjects may divide the American public's vote in the 2008 presidential election: gay civil rights, the war in Iraq and the best proposed exit strategy, and God (including a Mormon candidate, Muslims in the US, and stem cell research and religion). Which candidate is doing well in addressing these issues?

HAS MEDIA CONSOLIDATION HARMED MINORITY JOURNALISTS AND COMMUNITIES OF COLOR?

Torres

Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News
Joe Torres, Free Press
The wave of media consolidation in recent years is causing turmoil in U.S. newsrooms. Newsroom diversity continues to slide. And the state of minority media ownership has been called "a national disgrace." Less than 8 percent of radio stations and just 3 percent of TV stations are owned by people of color. Yet important debates in Congress and at the FCC that will shape the industry receive little coverage despite their enormous impact on the profession. This session will discuss why media policy matters and what the current policy fights in Washington will mean for the future of journalism.

STARTING OUT IN BUSINESS JOURNALISM, SPONSORED BY FREDDIE MAC
Blanca Torres, Contra Costa Times/Bay Area News Group-East Bay Think business journalism is all about numbers? Come hear from four reporters under the age of 30 who have learned otherwise. Business journalism is one of the fastest growing sectors in our industry today and a great way to land a front-page story. Learn how you can turn a business-reporting job into a chance to write stories about the events that move the world economy and the people behind them – from the farmers and assembly-line workers behind the products we use every day to the CEOs of the world’s biggest companies.