Covering Communities of Color in Times Crisis: The Evolving Role and Relevance Ethnic Media

This book documents the roles of ethnic media in multiple crises from 2020 - 2022, including the COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustice and hate, and natural disasters that affected communities of color in the U.S. It also offers insights into the strategies for ethnic news outlets to stay viable and relevant during a future crisis. This book gathers a wide range of ethnic-media crisis coverage case studies to construct a new crisis-time journalism model for ethnic media. By assessing the responses of ethnic news outlets to contemporary crises – such as the COVID-19 pandemic, events of racial injustice in 2020, environmental disasters, water contamination, and anti-Asian hate – these authors highlight the unique contributions of ethnic-media. Despite the multifaceted challenges facing ethnic news outlets serving four ethnic groups in the U.S. (African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, and Native Americans/ Indigenous people) provided their communities with information and analysis during instances of crisis. This study therefore provides valuable insights into the strategies that ethnic news outlets can adopt to stay viable and relevant, especially during a future crisis.