ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (June 28, 2018) – The Poynter Institute, a global leader in journalism, announces today that The Washington Post homepage editor and former Asian American Journalists Association president Doris Truong has been hired as the organization’s first director of training and diversity.
The role was created to grow Poynter teaching, both online and in-person, and embody Poynter’s mission of increasing diversity in all aspects of its programs.
“Doris has spent the past 15 years on the front lines of The Washington Post’s transformation from traditional media to one of the most dynamic, forward-thinking digital newsrooms in America,” said Poynter president Neil Brown. “Her distinguished record of journalistic achievement, passion for training and experience elevating diversity within the industry will help Poynter add to and improve its programming.”
As director of training and diversity, Truong’s duties will include evaluation, execution and creation of Poynter training. She will focus not only on developing content that elevates journalism about under-covered communities and examines cultural issues in society, but also on recruiting more diverse participants and instructors for all Poynter programs.
Current Poynter programs designed to support journalists of color, like The Power of Diverse Voices: The Poynter Minority Writers Workshop and Poynter-NABJ Leadership Academy for Diversity in Digital Media, and programs geared specifically toward women in journalism, like Leadership Academy for Women in Digital Media and Women’s Leadership Symposium, will also benefit from Truong’s thought leadership and expertise.
“I'm excited to be working with such a respected name as Poynter and even more excited to be helping to further the important cause of diversity in the journalism industry,” Truong said. “And I'm happy to be leaving my snow shovel behind.”
For the last five years, Truong was the homepage and weekend homepage editor at The Washington Post, editing stories, directing breaking news coverage, using analytics to respond to real-time trends and ensuring that the Washington Post is a top multimedia news site. Over the course of her career at the Post, Truong worked on all platforms and is versed in journalism distributed on tablets, texts and email newsletters. She has been involved in coverage ranging from Democratic and Republican national convention sections to sports and suburban news. Before the Post, she spent five years as a copy editor at the Dallas Morning News.
From 2011-12, Truong was the national president of the Asian American Journalists Association. She supervised the AAJA’s paid staff, managed the organization’s budget and developed programming for national journalism conventions attended by as many as 2,000 journalists, recruiters and industry leaders.
Truong also served on the board of UNITY: Journalists for Diversity, including as the organization's vice president. In 2014, Truong won the Leadership in Diversity Award from Wayne State University.
Truong will start as director of training and diversity on August 2, 2018. She will report to senior vice president Kelly McBride, who oversees the Institute’s teaching, faculty, fundraising and development.
About The Poynter Institute
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a global leader in journalism education and a strategy center that stands for uncompromising excellence in journalism, media and 21st-century public discourse. Poynter faculty teach seminars and workshops at the Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, and at conferences and organizational sites around the world. Its e-learning division, News University, www.newsu.org, offers the world’s largest online journalism curriculum in 7 languages, with more than 400 interactive courses and 330,000 registered users in more than 200 countries. The Institute’s website, www.poynter.org, produces 24-hour coverage of news about media, ethics, technology, the business of news and the trends that currently define and redefine journalism news reporting. The world’s top journalists and media innovators come to Poynter to learn and teach new generations of reporters, storytellers, media inventors, designers, visual journalists, documentarians and broadcast producers, and to build public awareness about journalism, media, the First Amendment and protected discourse that serves democracy and the public good.
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