Keith Woods, dean of the faculty at the Poynter Institute, said the best thing journalism educators can do to advance diversity in America is to give students the tools to do great journalism.

“The very least we can do in times such as these is to honor our students, the ones who are before us, with the skills they’ll need to do great journalism, which is what doing diversity should mean,” he said.

Woods spoke Friday at a luncheon sponsored by the Scholastic Journalism and the Minorities and Communication Divisions.

To illustrate his point, Woods shared an anecdote about two women who questioned him during a recent convention in New Orleans on race, media and Hurricane Katrina.

One asked if journalists were referring to one group when they reported on race and Katrina.

“She meant black people,” Woods said.

Another asked if the news media had looked into which races were benefiting most from the reconstruction effort.

“She meant Mexicans and white people,” Woods said.

“If you slide that anecdote under a microscope for closer inspection, you find the DNA for the problem that diversity is trying to cure,” he said.

He did not identify his questioners by race because he said their race was irrelevant.

“When we do diversity well, we discover the universal sameness of difference,” he said.

Woods said stories about people’s troubles and misunderstandings make journalism stronger and more meaningful. He said reporting based on the “common humanity” of people yields stories that are inclusive of different groups in society.

The stereotypical American journalism student is a white female from a middle- to upper-middle class background and the diversity of the nation’s newsrooms is not much better, Woods said.

Diversity is difficult to discuss and many rather avoid the topic altogether, he said. “The American journalism classroom does not look like America,” he said.

Woods believes teachers can address diversity with their students, even though it is a difficult topic. Teachers don’t have to be experts in diversity to teach it, he said. They just need to be dedicated to continuous learning.

Returning to his New Orleans story, Woods said he asked the first woman what she meant. The woman replied “black people,” which led to a lengthy discussion.

“We spent some time on that one, talking about how words like race and diversity seldom mean the same thing to two people,” Woods said.

Ultimately, Woods answered, “yes” to the woman’s question.

He said had he told his audience of educators that avoiding the question would have done himself and his questioner a disservice. It’s important, he said, to get the root of the discussion.

“Your students need to climb into those deeper matters to confront the confusion, estrangement, suspicion, cynicism, ignorance and fear,” he said. “That’s where the truth of our times reside.”