We saved this question for today -- one month before May 5 -- so that Latino reporters who may be asked more often than they like to cover Cinco do Mayo festivities can get busy lining up their peers.
I'm wondering how to prevent myself from being pigeonholed.
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I try to be a team player and always pitch in to help the city desk when breaking news requires my language skills, but I also don't want to be the perpetual Asian Holiday Reporter. This year I was assigned my fourth Lunar New Year story in a span of two years.
This happened in a meeting, even after another reporter volunteered to do it.
Conspicuous
I've heard of this happening in a lot of newsrooms.
Some minority journalists are happy, at some points in their career, to do these stories. But sometimes, they would like to see these stories spread around. Few journalists want to be typecast as "the Asian reporter" or the "fill-in-the-blank" reporter. Some get assigned to stories about entirely different nationalities than their own because they are thought of as being different.
Fortunately, papers that make assignments in this knee-jerk fashion seldom plan ahead. Get to the editors three weeks ahead of the event, anniversary or festival, and tell them why you need a year off from that assignment. Offer up sources or advice for another reporter to handle the story, and the newspaper will find that it has more people knowledgeable on the subject.
Coming Friday: He is about to re-enter journalism after a fellowship and worries that the short gap between his prior job and the fellowship will be a problem.
