Sexual Orientation Issues in the News - Gay Issues Media Press Coverage Journalism Education Lesbian Homosexual LGBT Annenberg USC

Leroy F. Aarons Summer Institute on Sexual Orientation Issues in the News
This summer AEJMC convenes its convention in San Francisco, a city known for its active Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender communities. Journalism educators wishing to advance accurate and fair journalism of these communities are invited to the second annual Leroy R. Aarons Summer Institute on Sexual Orientation in the News. The Aarons Institute features presentations on key sexual orientation issues and discussions of how to better prepare ourselves and our students to understand and cover them. July 31-August 1, 2006, San Francisco, California.
Learn more»

SOIN: A Resource Center for Journalism Educators from USC's Annenberg School for Communication

The Catholic hierarchy blames a gay subculture in the priesthood for the sexual abuse scandal. A transgender murder raises the issue of how to characterize identified gender preferences. An ex-NFL lineman comes out and another player decries "faggots in sports." Gays in the military, the schools, the workplace, the Scouts, the churches.

Today's newsrooms demand journalists who can cover sexual-orientation issues with as much sophistication as any other civil rights issue. Starting at day one on the job. Can your students?

"I wouldn't walk into a newsroom not knowing about Martin Luther King," says one broadcast student in the Annenberg course. "[Sexual orientation] is a civil rights issue, and this is something I need to know about as a journalist, as a student and as a person."

The Program for the Study of Sexual Orientation Issues in the News at Annenberg's School of Journalism wants to help you make sure they can. This site offers our research, examples of inclusive curricula and much more.

Use this site. Enhance your curriculum. Tell us how we can help you by taking our virtual survey. Check out the latest live issues. Explore how an Annenberg Journalism class is examining media coverage of sexual-orientation issues and equipping students to think and report critically on these issues. And feel free to contact us.