 Welcome everyone and thank you for joining. I'm Anusha Ali Khan, Senior Director of Communications at the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimedia is the non-profit that operates Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects. And I'm happy to be joined by our co-host today, the Asian American Journalist Association, the non-profit membership organization advancing diversity in newsrooms and ensuring fair and accurate coverage of Asian American and Pacific Islander issues. Today we're bringing together experts from across the journalism, non-profit, and technology landscapes to discuss a critical topic, the representation of AAPI communities across the media, internet, and on Wikipedia. May marks Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month here in the United States, as a lot of you know. It's a time to celebrate AAPI culture, history and communities. Now is an especially important time for us to come together to pay tribute. Over the last year, we've seen an increase in violence and xenophobia against people of Asian descent. While this hate isn't new, a recent California State University study showed that these attacks against AAPI people have risen by almost 150 percent in major cities in the last year, emphasizing the danger of misconceptions and stereotypes that we see in the media and the larger media ecosystem every day. Wikipedia is the largest collection of open knowledge and human history. We want everyone to be able to participate in it. Every Wikipedia article requires reliable secondary sources to come to be, so we have a common goal to support a vibrant journalism industry. Both journalists and Wikipedians are accountable to the public. We both aim to serve a higher mission and keep them informed. We're also falling short right now. The history and the stories that are told in the news media and on Wikipedia don't represent the diversity of our world. Currently 89 percent of U.S. Wikipedia contributors identify as white or Caucasian. Similarly, news organizations continue to struggle with making the stories of diverse communities more visible and bias-free. Each of our panelists today is leading critical work to improve representation of AAPI voices. With them, we hope to leave you with tangible ways to get involved and help close gaps. Each panelist will deliver a brief talk and will follow with a moderated conversation. You can submit any questions that you have anytime via the Q&A box and will answer them at the end of the main discussion. As we begin, I do want to make particular note that while unified solutions are vital to overcoming some of the issues being discussed, that Asian-American communities are not and cannot be viewed as a monolith. And this is one of the areas that we'll discuss. There is, of course, incredible diversity within these communities that must be recognized in their own right. So I'd like to introduce our first panelist, Laurie Matsukawa. Laurie is an Emmy award-winning broadcast journalist with more than 40 years in the industry, having spent 36 of those years as an anchor and reporter at King TV in Seattle. She is a co-founder of the Seattle chapter of the Asian-American Journalist Association and the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington. Thank you, Laurie. And next, I'd like to introduce Joreen Amam, the director of Social News Gathering at NBC News, and a founding member of Women Do News, the organization dedicated to elevating the voices and profiles of women journalists online. Prior to joining NBC, Joreen was the former head of social at CBS News. In 2020, she was named one of IWMF's Lauren Brown Fellows for her achievements in media. Joreen is also a current AAJA member. Thank you, Joreen. I'd now like to introduce our final panelist, Andrew Lee. Andrew Lee is a professor, longtime Wikipedia and a noted expert in online collaboration, digital news innovation, and linked open data. Andrew currently serves as Smithsonian Institution's Wikimedia at Large, where he works to make open knowledge connections between the institution and Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons. Thank you all for being with us today. So, let's launch in. I think we're beginning basically with some lightning talks, and Laurie, we'd like to start with you, so I will pass the mic. Anusha, thank you so much for having me. I'd like to thank Wikimedia Foundation and AAJA for setting up this stream, because it's so important that we discuss our diversity and our appearance within social media on the internet in all platforms of media. And it's very important that we be there so that we can tell our own story. Being journalists, we want to have that original source, that first person source. We don't want other people telling us the story. We want to tell our own story. We want to hear it from the persons themselves. So as a journalist, it's very important to tell our own story. And to that end, some of us at AAJA are working on a 40th anniversary book to put some of our stories down so that it's available for academicians, for just people in the future. We want to have a solid story in place for future generations. I can't believe that it's been 40 years since we started the Asian American Journalist Association. And over that time, we have made many great strides, but there's a lot of work to do, as we've seen recently. So I'd also like to thank, you know, the efforts of Jareen and all the people in Women Do News, because we want to make sure that as we talk about our story, we are inclusive when it comes to women. And the women of AAJA are so important. While putting together this 40th anniversary book, we notice that most of the national presidents of our organization have been women, mostly in the print area. And so that tells you a lot about the leadership, the talent that's out there that has to be amplified and shared. So I'm just going to leave it at that. I'm just thrilled to be here. Thank you so much, Lori. I'll pass it over to Jareen now. Thank you, Lori, so much for this shout out and for everyone that is hosting us with Comedia AAJA. As was mentioned, my name is Jareen. I'm one of the founding members of Women Do News, an organization that we, me and a few people during a fellowship created in 2019 and formalized in 2020. And the goal really was to elevate the notable women in journalism, because we were seeing throughout history that there was this essential erasure of women and their contributions across media since really the, for a long time, since the 1800s or even beyond that. And we wanted to go back and look for historical context for women's contributions and how they shaped media. But then as we were doing that, we also saw that even today in modern newsrooms, there are incredible women who are telling stories, making impact, changing things like legislation or communities. And sometimes we wouldn't even get a byline or credit on a package. And that was alarming to us. So we wanted to see how we could help. And the reason why we decided to really think about Wikipedia in a strategic way is because we live in an age of information pollution. It is really hard to build a brand to highlight notable, successful stories and achievements of women in news. And so Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world. It is a major resource. And having the opportunity to spotlight these notable women can really fundamentally make a difference, not only in the industry, but also in order for us to close the gender gap. So I just wanted to close this out by sharing a couple of stats in starting in 2020. So far what we've achieved at Women Do News is that we have published 30 Wikipedia articles. We've improved 10 as well. And we have 116 nominations for other women that people are hoping to have Wikipedia articles on. And we have more than 100 active volunteers. So I'm very excited to be here. And thank you. Thanks so much, Doreen. Andrew, I'll pass to you. Andrew, are you still with us? Yes, sorry. Are you hearing me now? Absolutely, thank you. Okay, great. Sorry about that. Thanks a lot, folks. I'm a big fan of Doreen and Laurie, so I'm so happy to be on this panel with them talking about something really important. So if you have the visuals, I wanted to show you some things I thought would be relevant. And just three basic points here. One is, I think one of the things that we're trying to, even in our own Asian American community, is trying to understand ourselves. And a lot of that has come up in 2021 that we don't even understand, as Asian Americans, our own history and the diversity of the experience we've had in the United States. In the formal schooling that we've had, it was barely brought up. You might have learned about Japanese internment. If you're lucky, you might have heard of the Chinese Exclusion Act. But we're really not getting a full spectrum of understanding of the Asian American experience. In fact, even making a college program in Asian American studies has been controversial in the past, which is just a shame. So we're ourselves only trying now to understand and absorb this. If you didn't know, the history of Asian Americans goes back to 1587 with the landing of Filipinos in Morro Bay, California. So until recently, I think a lot of Asian Americans had not even realized that. One of our good friends in the AJA community, Corky Lee, who just passed away recently, unfortunately from COVID, was Seminole in bringing some of these things to light. He was the one who orchestrated the creation of the Utah Golden Spike photo with Chinese Americans in there when he realized growing up that the only photos he saw were of white men celebrating this accomplishment and no Chinese were allowed to be in that photo. So he took it upon himself to do this on his own, which I thought was quite inspirational. He was a longtime AJA member. He's the unofficial photographer of Chinese America. If we want to go to the next slide. So what are some things that we can do in this area? Just to highlight some of the things that lay ahead of us, we're trying to look at the diversity of the Asian American community. We saw this cover of Time Magazine back in the 80s, I think, where it says, the whiz kids, this whole model minority myth, and it was all East Asian kids. So not only do we have a problem with the model minority myth, but it wasn't even a diverse model minority myth there. And as Anusha mentioned before, this is not a monolith. In fact, one of the challenges is in this whole basket of people of color, Asian Americans are the most diverse in terms of religion, of language, of background, of when they came, yet probably the least studied by the average person in the United States. So that's the challenge we have before us. But even before I started working with Smithsonian, I was heartened to see that they actually had an exhibit called Indian Americans Shaped the Nation and just showed the diversity of these South Asians in the United States, including showing basketball players were fighting for the right to wear something on their head, which is against NCAA policy at the time. So trying to address some of these stereotypes and to try to get better understanding of how we can tell the story better. And then finally, just the Wikipedia relevance, we go to the last slide, just to show you the roadmap that's ahead of us. We actually have here an evaluation chart in Wikipedia that shows where are the most important articles in terms of ranking. So we have top importance, high importance, mid importance, if you look at the purple labels at the top. And then we have the grades of where they sit right now in Wikipedia. And I think the takeaway from this chart right now is the average article about Asian American topics is not very good shaped in Wikipedia. When I first started editing in 2003, I was the guy who had to create the Yellow Peril article. For two years, there's no article about the Yellow Peril. And I helped create a lot of the early articles in Wikipedia about Asian American studies. But there's a lot to do. And then look forward to the conversation here about how we can do better. And from the audience, how you can help contribute to making these better in Wikipedia. Thanks a lot. Thanks so much, Andrew. So we're going to kick off with our panel discussion now. The first question that I have for all of the panelists is the events of the last year are not just about work. They're personal. So I really just want to start by asking how you're taking care of yourselves while staying engaged in your work. And I'm wondering, Jareen, if we can start with you and then Lori second. Thank you. I think this is such an important question. I'm somebody who naturally, when I feel very hurt, especially with the attacks that have been happening at the Asian community, the Asian American community, I'm someone who has a hard time in the sidelines. And I was in New York for a major part of, I live in New York, but I'm currently in Florida. And so seeing some of these attacks happening in major metropolitan areas, and I used to live in Atlanta and in on Buford Highway. So some of those areas that were attacked. And that really was personal for me. And I wanted to think of a way of doing something that can tangibly help. And so at NBC, we were seeing so many conversations from Asian Americans that were on social media, sharing their stories of being discriminated against. And what was so heartening and painful to see were that some of these stories were coming from young, young pre teams to people in their 60s and 70s. And so I decided that it might be worth NBC launching a crowdsourced project, where we asked our audience to share their stories of discrimination or microaggressions or things that they were feeling at this time of pain in the community. And also what was really incredible was that some of these stories, individuals are not only sharing what happened to them, but ways that they were trying to rise above these painful attacks and discrimination, how they were trying to help their community, whether that's organizing neighborhood watches, or helping elderly people go shopping through organizing transportation. And that experience really helped me cope with some of the personal pain I was enduring, because sitting alone wasn't didn't feel like enough. And those responses from the community that we got, we had hundreds of people respond to the project. It was clear that many of those individuals also didn't want to sit on the sidelines. Thank you so much, Joreen. It's so important to acknowledge that pain, but also to be aware of how we can overcome it and work together. Laurie, I'd like to pass to you. Thank you. So proud of what NBC has done and special kudos to NBC News for its ongoing coverage of Asian American issues through its NBC Asian America platform. NBC has been very supportive throughout the years, actually, of the Asian American community in particular. And so I'd like to do a shout out on that. I don't know how much of it has to do with the fact that NBC Universal's Senior Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer is Craig Robinson, who is Black and Asian American. And so kudos to him if that's part of what he's doing. I think for me, this past year especially has been eye-opening and alarming when the very first rumors of a virus started coming out like in January and February of 2020. I was actually afraid to wear a mask in public because I thought it would draw attention to me saying, hey, I'm an Asian American. I'm an Asian wearing a mask. I became a target for the first time. I felt like a target walking in public with a mask. And then I was asked by the then Seattle Police Chief, Carmen Best, to work on a public service announcement. A little video saying, hey, if you're harassed, reported to the police, that's pretty simple. That's pretty basic. And I was shocked at the vitriol and the social media trolls that emerged after it came out. People like sneering at the idea that reporting harassment or assaults was worthy of bothering the police. They would say, oh, it's just words. It doesn't hurt anybody. Why can't you report real crimes to the police? And it was just shocking and frightening. So that was early in 2020. And then as the pandemic went through, and I saw these attacks, I felt even more fear, but then I also felt more anger. And so what I did was I said, I'm going to learn, I'm going to educate myself about these kinds of assaults, not only against Asian Americans, but at the time, African Americans, the whole Black Matters, George Floyd thing was erupting. And I said, I'm going to educate myself. I'm going to get involved. I'm going to do some bystander training. I just kind of personalized my fear, my efforts so that I wouldn't feel fearful anymore. And so that has helped. And then last but not least, AAJA came through. They realized that their members who are Asian American were being harassed while they were doing their jobs, right? They're doing their live shots. They get yelled at. They get spit at. They get criticized for not for wearing masks. And so AAJA immediately assembled a time when they can gather with certified psychologists to talk about how this kind of negative atmosphere and environment was affecting their work and themselves. So AAJA took care of the individual members as well as putting out information about how do you refer to Asian Americans? What are the backgrounds of the different religions in Asia America? So AAJA kind of stepped up as an organization taking care of its members. So I guess this past pandemic era has been take care of yourself as best as you can. And as an organization, take care of your members. It's been very, very gratifying to see. Thank you so much, Laurie. I think you raised such an important point that a lot of the public who isn't within these Asian American communities tends to focus on violent attacks because that sort of is what sparks outrage. But Asian Americans were in fact facing this on a daily basis when it came to verbal and online attacks as well. And that's something that we have to protect against also. Thanks. Andrew, I'd like to move to you. Yeah. I might say something controversial here, but I thought one of the more interesting places to experience the first half of 2021 in relation to all this was actually something like Clubhouse. So I know that Clubhouse has kind of come and is a little bit, I wouldn't say quite fading, but the attention to it is not as great as it was before, but kind of at the height of the Derek Chauvin trial and a lot of the things that were happening with API hate or stop API hate was really honest, really brutally frank conversation happening in Clubhouse, which I thought was eye-opening in many ways. I think as a journalist or reporter, it was fascinating because by just hopping into conversation after conversation, there might be rooms with Asian Americans sharing their experiences, trying to educate each other on what was going on, whether they're Asian or not Asian or being mistaken for a certain ethnicity. There are honest conversations between the Black community and Asian community, some were supportive, some were saying, I can't make space for your community right now. And it was just really interesting. And I thought that was one of the more fascinating things that happened in early 2021. From the Wikipedia aspect, I think one of the funny cliches about Wikipedia, there's is when they, their way of showing concern is to write and document and to edit the heck out of something on Wikipedia to high detail. And when we're talking about whether it's legal cases or specific attacks or phenomena happening, we found a whole fleet of folks, Asian and non-Asian that were willing to go on Wikipedia spent a lot of time to document these things. So that was something I was really encouraged to see. And I think one of the fascinating things also is just this blend of the role of the news and encyclopedia in Wikipedia and museums. And there used to be three very distinct circles, right? You wouldn't mistake a newspaper for an encyclopedia like Britannica, a world book, if people are old enough to remember those. And a museum, they used to be three very different things. And if you think in 2021, they're completely overlapping. And that's why, as Dreen said, women do news, we're trying to write more women journalists into Wikipedia because they're covering this thing on the front lines. You want to know who's reporting the news, you want to look it up in Wikipedia. You want museums to bring their expertise and the force of their research to it as well. And that's why I think it's so powerful to have these three areas working together of the news industry, Wikipedia editors and the museum world, because it's what's what I would call documenting public knowledge in real time. And all three entities have that as their specialty now. And that's what's so fascinating. Absolutely. Totally agreed. Let's draw that out a bit more with our second question. From your perspective, what is the interconnected role between Wikipedia and journalism when it comes to providing people with trusted information? And why does it matter to have this representation in both? And I think this is a good question for Dreen and Andrew. Andrew, if you just want to give us a little bit more perspective, because I feel like what you said about this media ecosystem and how they relate is so important. Yeah, just to quickly elaborate a little bit more on that. The thing that used to be the adage about history is like the winners get to write the history books. And I think the era of social media and Wikipedia is that no, anyone who's motivated can write the history books. And that's kind of the revolution of Wikipedia. I wrote a book called the Wikipedia Revolution, How a Bunch of Nobody's Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia. And that tagline is something that I kind of used in jest. But then the publishers really loved that tagline, because Wikipedia editors kind of see themselves as not superstars. They're just doing the work of the people. And the fact that Wikipedia is six, seven million articles strong in an English language edition and growing through just volunteer effort is super powerful in terms of what it means for the public record. So I'd love to hear what Dreen has to think about that as well. Thank you, Andrew. I just want to highlight that Andrew is so instrumental in the work that we do at Women Do News. He has been a champion of our work and has guided us actually. And he is just incredible. I was like on Twitter telling people to follow you, but then I realized, Andrew, that tons of people do. But anyway, I agree with everything you're saying. What's really interesting with Women Do News is that as we were essentially reaching out to journalism communities, at first there was a great hesitancy from journalists to contribute to Wikipedia. And it was everything that we were hearing from the user interfaces and that was something that was a barrier. Another barrier was this idea of not knowing who the editors were, who are the gatekeepers, and having to communicate that actually this is a community volunteer-based system. And that's truly one of the things that we were seeing in our data was that there weren't a lot of women editors on Wikipedia in general. And so that creates kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy of if you have a lot of male editors, a lot of the articles will be skewed to that perspective and be male-oriented in some capacity. So when Andrew says history is documented and recorded by the winners, it's also the people who are present. And so we at Women Do News want to make sure that there's a presence, an increased presence, the barrier to entry, to understanding how to use the platform is not that difficult, it's not that scary. And that you can be a part of this rich community that's hoping to spread knowledge. And we have seen that if we give simple instructions, if we walk someone through an edit-a-thon, that they feel more empowered and become essentially in some ways we've seen repeat contributors, not just a one-off edit, but we have seen volunteers come back and say, how else can I help? And I think in relation to AAJA and this talk, we would love to see that happen in the Asian American community because those biographies are very slim online. And there are ways that if we lower the barrier and let people know that it's not that difficult to contribute, we can, through anecdotal evidence, assume that we will start to see more visibility of these really important stories and biographies online. Could I just jump in briefly, Anusha, if I could? Absolutely. I think one of the hesitancies or barriers has been this belief that journalists are objective and that they cannot bring their life experience, their opinions, their thoughts to their work. But they have, I think that has to change. I think people have to realize that every journalist is bringing their biases, their experiences, their thoughts to their work. All we ask of our journalists is that they be fair and that they be thoughtful and that they document accurately. But you can't just leave your experience at the front door. You have to bring everything with you. And so being invited to document and write a Wikipedia article is kind of scary for the traditional journalist who's been taught you have to be objective. You cannot be an advocate or you cannot have an opinion or you cannot have an idea to share. So we have to redefine what it means to be a journalist and a responsible one that will kind of tell the story. Again, document the story, tell our story. And very quickly, to Jenine's point, we really have to be visible. It's very important that there are women, that there are people of color in Wikipedia because, as Billie Jean King said, if you see it, you can be it. It's so important for so many young people in America today to see that people of color, women, can do and be things, be leaders, be trailblazers. They have to see it, and then they can be it. And it's borne out. It's borne out in our history. Thank you so much for that, Laurie. I'd actually like to draw that out a little bit more, your comment on essentially bringing your experiences to work. And I know that you've been a champion for diverse newsrooms in your career as a journalist. And at Wikimedia Foundation, as Andrew said, we're similarly trying to recognize that need to attract diversity of editors and fill our content gaps. I mentioned in the beginning that the majority of our U.S. editors, 89% are white men. So how did you see what stories are told and the ways in which they are told change with more newsroom diversity? And can you discuss the impact on trust with readers as well? One thing that I wrestled with, and I think many journalists do yet today, is I don't want to be pigeonholed as the minority reporter, right? Oh, there's a story involving a minority community, Sanloria, right? I kind of hesitated to be pigeonholed that way. But then after a while, it got to the point where darn it, if I don't do that story, and it could be any community of color, if I don't do that story, no one's going to do that story. So I just decided I would, I would be that minority affairs reporter. And I went out and I got to know the community and I told their stories as best as I could. And, you know, it actually made things better. The management was like more open. In fact, every time there was a story involving a community of color, people say, hey, Laurie, who do we call in the blank blank community? And I'm like, folks, you know, but you know, that's the way it was, you become part of that. So over the over time, it actually improved things to the point where there were more people of color hired in positions in the newsroom. Producers, news directors were women and reporters, anchors. And the funniest thing was just recently, I found myself arguing with a reporter and a producer of color. There here we were, three people of color arguing about how we were going to cover a story. And I was, I had to step back. I said, this wouldn't have happened 10 years ago. But diversity and thinking strategically about hiring people of color in the newsroom makes a difference because then these conversations happen. How do we cover the use of the N word? How do we cover this kind of assault on a certain community? It happens. It happens if you are intentional. That's absolutely right. I'd actually love to get Jureen's perspective as well on what advice do you have for covering events like the attacks that we saw over the course of the last year with respect while also keeping the public informed? Yeah, I think that's such an important question. And I think one of the biggest things is for newsrooms to lean into the expertise that they have in house. And I want to talk about actually something as Lori was talking about, you know, getting started in journalism and not wanting to be viewed as the minority journalist by covering and pigeonholed in this, a certain area or demographic or topic. Very similarly, Lori, I was in the same situation. I did everything in my power when I started off as a crime reporter and then producing for CNN to not be viewed as an Asian reporter. And I learned techniques like social forensic techniques. I wrote science stories, things that completely removed me in some ways from identity. But that doesn't work because we're human. And it came to that realization came to me when there was a horrible terrorism attack that happened in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and I'm Bengali. And I was the only person in the newsroom at CNN that day who knew Bengali and who had been to Dhaka, who had intimately, who had lived in that city and was capable in that moment to cover breaking news for the entire network as a 24 year old. And I had spent so much of my time in journalism before that, trying to run away from who I am and hide the fact that I was Asian. And in that moment, the network needed to tell this really important story. And over that really changed my point of view of really thinking about my identity as an asset. And likewise, during this past year, my team actually at NBC News was the first team at NBC News in January to identify that there was a mysterious virus going around in Hubei province. And the reason why we were able to figure that out before any major news network or broadcast network in the US or any department at NBC is because many of my reporters come from diverse backgrounds. I had a reporter tie, she has a ton of friends in Hubei province, and so do I. We were getting WhatsApp messages at the start of January saying something weird is happening. And that really showed that if we didn't have those connections, we didn't have that intimate knowledge, we probably would have been late to the story. But we were able to start reporting on the story immediately and track the virus until they got to Seattle and then New York and then spread around the world. So leaning in for newsrooms to identify that they have exceptional people with history backgrounds that they can leverage to tell really important human based solution oriented storytelling. Yeah, if I could, if I could echo some of that. And one of my favorite reporters on air is Christy Lou Stout. Somebody may know her and CNN International. She's based in Hong Kong and, you know, she's an Asian American working in Asia. And she had a great line about when people say, well, you're Asian American, don't you feel like you're going to neither here nor there? You're not enough. You're half Asian, you're half American. And I love her line. She goes, I'm not half anything. I'm both. Right. And I think that that same advice is kind of the same for folks who are like worried about being pigeonholed as, you know, if I'm the Asian American person, they consult about language or ethnicity or editing this headline, then maybe I'll be seen as half a business reporter or half a beat writer. And I think hopefully we can help as AJ folks to reframe it as like, no, you're both, you have a superpower. You have a superpower that no one else has. It doesn't make you less of anything. It makes you more of something. And I think, Laurie, that's a great thing that you bring up is that we should embrace this. And, you know, I was a board member for AJ New York for many years and also AJ Asia. And I think this has changed with the better over the time. But this has always been a worry for AJ members is saying like, do I want to be that person? That's the go to person's like, because you don't want to be have a stigma like, oh, let's let's ask the black guy or the Asian guy if you know, noodles are okay this way, you know, it's like, but I think we need to embrace that. And I think we've gotten more sophisticated in that area. And it's also important to have allies in management. I remember when I was assigned to cover for NBC, I guess it was like to cover the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor for NBC affiliates. And so I was doing all the live shots. And, you know, I didn't be known to me, my news director was getting a lot of hate calls from people outraged that they would send a Japanese woman to cover Pearl Harbor, the attack on Pearl Harbor. And he would get on the phone, he would get so upset, he would get on the phone himself and he would yell back at these viewers who are calling and criticizing the choice of sending Lori to Pearl Harbor. And so you do need allies in management. And that's important. And you should, you know, people should support and encourage allies wherever they may be, and make that progress step by step. But the first thing is, you have to embrace who you are and say, okay, dang it, I'm going to cover these issues because it's important. It's a superpower. I love that word, Andrew. It's a superpower. Terrific. Thank you so much. Before we move to audience questions, just one more for Andrew in particular. I wanted to shift gears and actually emphasize that this is an anniversary year for both Wikipedia and AHA. I know Lori mentioned it was AHA's anniversary year, but we turned 20 just in January at Wikipedia. And Andrew, you've been involved in the Wikimedia movement for such a long time. How have you seen the coverage of AAPI-centered topics and history evolve during that time? And how have partnerships like the work that you're doing with the Smithsonian and cultural institutions contribute to that change? Yeah, that's a great question. As I mentioned, even though I was two years at Wikipedia, there are a lot of fundamental topics about Asian American history and culture that were just plain missing, which was quite fascinating. Now, 2003 is still quite early. But even since then, there hasn't been a gigantic systematic effort to improve the Asian American topics in Wikipedia across the board. So that's something that we could still use a lot of work on in Wikipedia. About five years ago, we were heartened though. For the first time, we had the Smithsonian Asian Pacific America Center collaborate on doing what we call a WikiAPA editathon. And that was really successful five years ago. We had like eight or 10 meetups across the country in the United States. And we had 20 or 30 folks at some of these in Los Angeles and New York. And we had scholars interested in helping out. So I think we need to systematize that in a way that keeps that as a regular drumbeat. We just had a Smithsonian Wikipedia editathon this past month. But we can certainly use more work there. But I think it's great that Wikipedia at 20 years old is this touchstone. I wish I had Wikipedia when I was growing up, because how would you find out about even the basics of Asian American history? You have to buy expensive academic texts and things like that. You know, they just were not available in mainstream sources. So Wikipedia, although it's not spectacular in terms of Asian American topics, it's a heck of a lot better than life before Wikipedia. Can I add very quickly? I know we have a lot of questions, but I think it's very valuable that once we have these Wikipedia articles that we encourage people to use them to read them and share them. As you mentioned, Jareen earlier, this is not a monolithic, even Asian America is not monolithic. There are all these generations and all these different ethnicities, but there are also new Asian Americans, people who are newly arrived from Asia who don't know the history. So once we get those Wikipedia articles in there, we have to encourage our new Asian Americans to read them and understand them and educate themselves to catch up on the history of what it means to be Asian American. And so we don't have these misunderstandings between newly arrived Asians and the long timers. I find that kind of a concern. Completely. Thank you so much for that, Lori. I'm going to move to audience questions. If you have any questions, please put them in the chat and we will try to get to all of them. I'm going to start out with a question for Jareen. We know that lack of equitable representation isn't just a US issue. Around the world, women and minority communities struggle to get equitable and fair coverage in the media and on Wikipedia. How can we as readers and consumers of media and of Wikipedia advocate for more representation for these types of stories to be told? I love this question. So it comes on the heels of a training that I had just completed for journalists in South America that we're very interested in how to highlight the voices and stories of individuals, female reporters that were working in some really hostile state run areas such as Brazil. And one of the challenges was that essentially that there are certain types of infrastructure, whether that's political, whether that is media based that prevent women and their biographies and their work from being elevated. So one of the biggest things that we encourage is that if you have a person in mind that you would like to nominate, that you go to womendonews.org and you can actually nominate that individual. And what that does is that name goes into our database and we have more than 100 volunteers that look through this database. And what we do is we try to find third party related material about that individual. And that could be maybe a publication in a local newspaper. It could be them joining a chapter of an organization, but we then start to compile that information to form an article. So the first step, and if you want to get involved in any way, the first step is nominating somebody. And that's kind of the way that you can try to break the cycle. And that's what we want to do. Great. Thank you so much. And we have a question from Kerry for Andrew. As a communications professor who teaches an introductory mass media course, I welcome advice on how to reach white students who don't see the issue of Asian American representation in the media as a problem. And I actually think Andrew and both Lori can weigh in on this. Yeah. So if I'm reading it right, so how do we convince folks or show folks who may not understand the problem that there's a problem? I guess that's the question. That's a good question. I think one of the things, I mean, even if you just start the model minority myth, is a fascinating one. Because honestly, until a lot of this happened in 2020, I really never reflected on where I came from and where I sat in the whole model minority myth. And I think just knowing some key dates are really important. Like 1965, I've really never contemplated what's kind of a pivotal year when they really turned, opened the immigration tap to allow folks from Asian countries to come in waves that we've seen ever since then. But before that, it was a very dry tap, right? Unless you had a really special status, you were going to be of a different, you're not going to be easily coming to the United States. And that had a major effect on the face of Asian Americans in the United States, right? That selective immigration pre-65 made a certain class of Asians in the face of Asian America. But then post-65, especially after the Vietnam War, and you had all these really refugees from Southeast Asia come to the US, that was a different type of dynamic. And then right now, you have all these students coming to the US. So a lot of the immigration are folks who get a student visa and want to stay in the US. And of course, that's another type of selective immigration. So that is feeding into the model minority myth. But in fact, there's a huge diversity of immigrants to the United States or Asian extraction. And in fact, the poorest immigrant class from the people of color are Asian Americans, right? So they are at the top of the list and also the bottom list in terms of being well off, but also being the poorest. So just kind of understanding the numbers and the waves, I think is really important, just looking at like, among communities and high achieving other Asian communities and seeing that contrast, I think is a really good starting point. I'd love to hear from Laurie and Jareen on this. It's not easy because such a diverse set of folks we have in the Asian American community. I've been asked to speak to classes as young as third and fourth grade locally. And I think that's an important thing since this person is a teacher when it comes down to it. You have to sometimes pick a topic and do the deep dive. So this particular teacher was teaching her fourth graders about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, because it happened locally here in Washington State being a West Coast state. And she had them visit virtually some of the camps that were established during the war. She had them listen to interviews done from people who survived the camps. And then they had an interview with a journalist who did documentaries on the internment so that they could just ask questions. And so it behooves educators to pick a subject and do a deep dive. If it's picked 1965, do a deep dive. If it's internment, go ahead, do a deep dive. If it's the railroad, do a deep dive. But you have to kind of take it upon yourself. A lot of this is just taking it on yourself to do something. And I was interested when Jareen was saying, was asked the question, how do you advocate for more coverage? Well, start by advocating. People have to go ahead and call their local editors, write to their local publications, establish themselves on Facebook and with their social media contacts, and be an advocate where you are. Just start it. Start advocating. Start getting involved. There are all kinds of organizations. And Andrews is just one of them that are out there. They're trying to do something. So get out there. Don't just say, oh, there's a lack. Just do it. Just do something. I wanted to also weigh in and just say, I share the sentiment that Andrew and Laurie are saying. And hearing this professor, it's exciting to think that they're thinking in this way. I have like a couple of options to consider. The first is storytelling builds empathy. And so if you have Laurie or Andrew presenting in your classroom, sharing their story of who they are, what they have gone through, the work that they've done, that in itself can help individual students start thinking in a different way. Similarly, what we found at Women Do News, we've actually done some editathons at schools, colleges, where, and this was not just women. It was all students of different races and backgrounds in ages who came in and they got a story or a biography, a name of a female journalist that they were tasked to write a biography for. And they started researching that person. And they started really learning about that person. And by the end of it, we had a bunch of students who were well informed, created these beautiful biographies to enter into Wikipedia. And that in itself, that self teaching it while that community action helps bridge that connection between individuals and communities and helped expand someone's knowledge base. So I would offer those two as possible solutions. Yeah, if I could just add one last thing, I think another great entry point are like legal cases, especially on Wikipedia, because legal cases, if they weren't on Wikipedia are like impenetrable, right, for the average person. So Wikipedia making things very readable. If you look at some of the things like Korematsu versus United States or a case I didn't know much about until I read it recently because of these stop API hate was the Lum versus Rice case, which had this Chinese girl in the South be classified as a colored person. So she couldn't attend the school with white kids. And this is something I didn't know about as an Asian American until recently. So just looking into these cases where prominent American politicians like William Howard Taft, yes, Chief Justice Supreme Court wrote, Nope, that Chinese girl's color can't go to the same school with white people. That is mind boggling. That's to see the average person be like, this does not compete. There's some cognizance here as those challenges that are really useful for teaching. And to add to that, I think once that legal case is in there, then you can start adding the details as they become available. Like very few people realize that DACA, which we associate primarily with Hispanic young people, was actually started because of a Korean American, because of a Korean girl, right? She was brought illegally to America. And so Senator Durbin had to figure out a way to keep her in the country. Otherwise, she would be deported to Korea, a country she knew nothing about because she was brought here undocumented by her parents. So once these little tidbits become known, we can add to the Wikipedia base the legal case for DACA. And these kind of things enrich and enlarge our understanding of issues that we're grappling with yet today. Terrific. I think this is a great question because we've talked a lot about what newsrooms and Wikipedia can get right. But there's a question here. While there is a simultaneous rise in hate crimes, and there's a general desire to better understand and communicate about those issues, what is one thing you wish the general public would get right? I think this is a good question actually for any one of the panelists. Why don't we start with Jareen? I apologize. You broke up a little bit. Do you mind repeating the last part? Absolutely. So there's a general desire to better understand and communicate about these issues in the wake of the hate crimes that we're seeing. What's the one thing you wish the general public would get right? I think that the general public in itself is also not a monolith. So that's challenging. We all look at life from a different perspective because we all have our different history and baggage and biases. So I think what I would hope in general from the public is that we start to grow towards a more empathetic society because unfortunately, we're moving away from it. We are more anonymous than ever before. We are shielded by anonymity online. You can be anybody online, say anything. It's so easy to target individuals. It's so easy now to be on a subway platform and push somebody and hurt them and run away. And that's what we have been seeing in New York with some of these hate crimes, the ability to disappear. And I would hope that as a society, as journalists, no matter what your background is, to not forget your humanity and that we, although are moving towards a more interconnectedness online, in some ways we are more further apart than ever before. And so if we can find ways of working together on a unified mission that helps people to remember who they are and how we need each other, I think we'll be better as a society. Great points. Andrew, would you like to add anything there? Yeah, this is a great question to prompt one of my favorite pet peeves that I hope we can try to address in the years coming. So when I was active with AJA, I was a proponent for trying to modify the style book for reporting on Asian America because I knew the editor, Tony Ramirez, and we could never really get it through. But to stop using the term Chinese as shorthand for China's government, because that's very harmful that you're lumping in the public's eye. And I'm glad you asked that question about the public or the general public is like, oh, the Chinese, they're all this, they're all in together. They have their annual meeting and they all kind of plan on what they're going to do to take over the world. And if you plan to say China's government, say China's government. If you're saying the Beijing administration, say the Beijing administration. Don't say the Chinese or the Koreans or the Filipinos, because that's not accurate. And you wind up stereotyping anyone that has this look are in it together as this monolith. So I was so heartened to hear recently on Clubhouse, I was on the call with Tammy Duckworth, Senator Tammy Duckworth. And she made this exact point. I never heard anyone in politics make this point. And she said, she's half Thai Chinese. And she goes, I don't like it when we say the Chinese, we need to be precise about our terminology. And I was just like, Amen. I've never heard a politician say that. And that's why representation matters. She gets it. She knows what's going on. And this is not partisan. This is just good practice, journalistically and scholarly being accurate about something. Absolutely. Laurie, would you like to close us out? I definitely would. I don't have one particular piece of advice for the public. I have a few pieces of advice. One, I would urge the public to become more discerning about their media consumption. Okay. I want them to look at information and ask, who says so? What does the data show? What do other people of Stature say about this topic? I want them to become more discerning. One, I want them to become more demanding. Again, if you don't like the kind of coverage you're seeing, you go to that source and say, hey, you are not giving both sides of the story, or you're not giving voice to this, or you're not giving voice to that. So be more demanding. Third, just become generally more educated about history. Why is 1965 significant? What is the Chinese Exclusion Act? All of that. Become educated so that we understand not just the Asian American history, but Black history, Latinx history, everything. Become knowledgeable. And last, this is typical journalist, but support your local media. Become a subscriber to not only community newspapers, but your local paper, Sacramento B, Seattle Times, be a subscriber. It's good to have the New York Times and Washington Post, but really it's your local outlet, your local media, that is telling you the most important information for you, and you have to support them. They're doing really hard work and they need your support. Such an important point about local news and supporting local news. Those are the stories that happen before our eyes and in our neighborhoods. Thank you so much, Laurie. Unfortunately, that is all the time that we have. I feel like we could have continued this discussion for a few more hours. Thank you so much to our panelists for an incredible talk. And thank you to our audience for joining us today for a conversation on this critical topic. We'll have a recording of the event available on the Wikimedia Foundation's YouTube channel. And for those in the audience who are AHA members and are interested in diving deeper on this topic, we still have openings in the upcoming Wiki Scholars Program led by AHA and the Wiki Education Foundation. The Wiki Scholars Program is a six-week free course for AHA members to learn how to add biographies of AAPI journalists to Wikipedia. Participants will be able to develop the technical skills and Wikipedia know-how to increase visibility of these communities in the public. And to learn more and to sign up, my team's going to include a link to the registration page in the chat. Thank you so much for joining everyone. Be safe.