The Eagle will use a grant awarded by American University’s School of Communication’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee to print a Spanish magazine in March, Editor-in-Chief Sophie Austin said Wednesday.
The SOC announced that The Eagle won the $500 grant on Feb. 5, and the award came just days after the paper’s first Spanish article was published online under the El Águila section.
Due to changes in the Center for Student Involvement’s rules affecting how clubs can spend money during the spring semester, Austin said that the grant is instrumental in allowing The Eagle to publish a print edition of El Águila. The CSI’s rules were in place during fall 2020 as well.
More Spanish articles will be published in the El Águila section of The Eagle’s website in the coming weeks, Austin said during the paper’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion group’s meeting Wednesday.
The initiative to publish articles in Spanish is part of a larger plan by The Eagle’s DEI group to diversify the paper’s coverage and staff to better represent AU’s marginalized communities and groups. Following changes implemented by the group for the spring recruitment process, The Eagle’s staff is now more racially diverse and younger than it was in the fall.
In other matters, the DEI group discussed its plans for the spring semester, which include hosting a variety of workshops and trainings for Eagle staffers and making internal changes.
There will soon be a workshop about recognizing and combating implicit biases in The Eagle’s newsroom and its reporting, according to DEI members. The group is also planning a media ethics and communication law workshop to be held in the coming weeks.
DEI members are also working with the Copy department to review The Eagle’s Style Sheet for any conventions that may perpetuate biases or prevent the paper from upholding the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics.
Before closing, the DEI group also heard status updates from reporters working on stories that recognize Black History Month and the history of LGBTQ+ movements on AU’s campus, which will be published later this semester.
