Journalism department receives gift

Next to Ivan Roman's desk sits a stack of salsa compact discs.

What he loves most about the music, besides the tropical rhythms, is the diversity of the music itself, which combines the rhythms and music of different cultures.

Diversity is important to Roman, whether it's in the music he listens to, salsa, or in his profession -- Journalism.

For 12 years he has worked as a journalist in such places as Miami, San Juan, Puerto Rico and Rochester, New York, covering the diverse minority neighborhoods of each of those cities. At the same time, he has been an advocate for more diversity in the newsroom and fair coverage of minority communities.

In June Roman became the new Executive Director of the Center For Integration and Improvement in Journalism (CIIJ) at SF State, taking over for the Center's founder and first director, Jon Funabiki. Funabiki stepped down in February of this year to take a position at the Ford Foundation.

The CIIJ was started by the Journalism department in 1990 through private funding.

Among the Center's tasks are recruiting professional journalists to serve as coaches and mentors to all journalism students, conducting summer workshops for ethnic minority high school students and organizing numerous programs designed to promote the hiring of ethnic minority journalists and improve the coverage of ethnic minority communities.

"We are unique in what we do," said Eva Martinez, project director for CIIJ. "No other center does such a variety of things that we do."

For Roman it was that type of variety which interested him.

"What interested me in this job was the mix of things I could do in one job," Roman said. "This is a job where you can be an educator, learn about the training of journalists and what kind of things journalists and students can do to be more marketable. You also get to be a fund-raiser, administrator and an advocate for diversity, which is what I have been doing for the last 12 years in all the newsrooms I have been in."

Roman was born in the South Bronx in 1962. At the age of 12 he moved to Puerto Rico where he attended high school and part of college. After studying business for three years at the University of San Juan, he decided he wanted to study journalism. After finding out the university he was attending did not offer journalism he transferred to Temple University where he got a B.A. in Journalism in 1983.

In 1983 he went to work for the Rochester Times-Union. As a minority affairs reporter, a position that was created for him, he brought a missing voice to a community mostly ignored by the paper in the past.

"I fashioned the beat. I figured out how to best cover these communities that had never been covered before," Roman said. "I learned how to get these communities to connect with the paper."

In 1985 he left Rochester to work at the San Juan Star, the only English-language daily in Puerto Rico. After two years there he then went to work at the Miami Herald in 1987.

There he worked on the Herald's twice-a-week magazine "Neighbors" which covered the different communities of Miami's inner city.

In 1989 he left the Herald to work on their Spanish language paper, the Nuevo Herald, covering the large and diverse latin community of Miami. He worked there until getting the job as the new director of the CIIJ.

Along with his experience as a reporter Roman is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, where he served as secretary and at-large director from 1987 to 1991. He also served as president of the Florida Association of Hispanic Journalists from 1988 to 1991 and from 1993 to 1995. "He impressed me as being very knowledgeable about dealing with diverse groups of people. He is also committed to the same ideas the Center is committed to," said associate professor of journalism Austin Long-Scott, who was a member of a panel of multi-ethnic, multi-gendered professional journalists and journalism educators who picked Roman for the job. "He's energetic, engaging and personable and is Knowledgeable about what's going on in journalism today."

Roman is already developing a plan for the center in the future.

"I see the Center increasing its national scope without losing focus on its main goal of being a service to our students," Roman said. "At the same time I see us being more involved in research and advocacy for diversity issues."

This summer Roman worked with High School students from around the country on the CIIJ sponsored Golden Gater Junior newspaper. "Our main goal is to get students involved in journalism and encourage them to be part of the business," he said.

His new job provides more lasting satisfaction than his work as a reporter did, Roman said.

"I was really moved by these students," he said. "They had so much enthusiasm, I could see something sparking in their lives."

[ back to Golden Gater Online September 7, 1995 ]

[ back to top ]