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22 October, 2001
THE
ROLE OF ASIAN
ROLE MODELS IN THE MEDIA
I never gave much thought to my Asian heritage when I became a writer more than 20 years ago. I was more interested in rock and roll than my roots, and my goal was to be a rock critic.
| Ben Fong-Torres' accomplishments somehow gave my own aspirations credibility. |
I had read Rolling Stone religiously since the early 1970s, and I considered the magazine my main guide to the music I loved in all its aspects. Every month I pored over feature articles with performers, news about the industry and of course record reviews, where critics vented their opinions with loads of attitude and sassiness, and at the same time educated me about the music they loved.
The writers I read in Rolling Stone during my formative years inspired me, and left an indelible impression on my psyche. I wanted to be like them. In the years since then, I've done just that, to some extent. I spent a decade as music editor of Westword, Denver's alternative weekly newspaper. And I wrote freelance articles and music reviews for such magazines as Pulse, Creem and yes, even Rolling Stone. It was a wonderful feeling to be published in the magazine that had been such an important part of my life growing up.
The early writers I admired so much have continued their careers.
Hunter Thompson, probably the most famous of the writers who were featured in the magazine, has become a semi-reclusive celebrity weirdo in Aspen, Colorado. Cameron Crowe, who interviewed many of my heroes and heroines during the 1970s (and who I was shocked to find out was the same age as me, and began writing for RS when he was still in high school), has become a celebrated movie writer and director, most recently with his cute autobiographical film "Almost Famous." I've become friends over the years with a member of the original Rolling Stone staff, John Morthland, who has served as a mentor to me and gave me my first chance at writing for a national magazine when I was still a young and inexperienced writer in the 1980s.
There was another early Rolling Stone writer that had a big impact on my young mind. But while others such as John Morthland seemed almost like gods to me, Ben Fong-Torres seemed approachable, simply because of his name.
Fong-Torres joined the staff of Rolling Stone as an editor in 1969 (he's portrayed in "Almost Famous" as the guy who gives the young Cameron Crowe character his big break), and I often saw his byline on stories in the magazine. I wasn't sure of his actual background, but I figured he must be at least part Chinese American. I thought perhaps he was of Filipino heritage, because of the "Torres" in his name. It turns out that "Torres" was added by his father so he could immigrate to the US as a Filipino, when immigration by Chinese was restricted.
Because of his Asian surname, Ben Fong-Torres was a role model for me.
There were no other Asian names out there writing in any newspapers or magazines that I read (there still are few, if any, that I can name outside of technology columnist Guy Kawasaki). His name was like a beacon, and his mere presence on the national scene helped me find the confidence within me to be a writer too. His accomplishments somehow gave my own aspirations credibility.
I met Fong-Torres briefly at a music industry conference in Austin, Texas a couple of years ago, and shook his hand. I told him what he had meant to me, but he said he really didn't think of himself as an Asian writer, just a music writer. And that's as it should be -- I never thought of myself as an "Asian music critic" when I was in the thick of it either. But now that I'm involved in several Japanese and Asian Pacific Islander organizations, and write a weekly column about the world through my Asian American perspective, I'm much more aware of my role as an API voice in the media.
Plus, in the years since I've left Westword, I've had a number of elderly Japanese folks come up to me at events and tell me they used to read me every week in the paper. That's when I realized my name had an impact, just like Fong-Torres' name once made a difference to me. These people had no business reading Westword. But they followed my writing because of my name, and because they thought it so unusual to see a Japanese name in the Denver media.
The sad fact is that
there are still too few Asian names in the media, whether it's newspapers,
magazines or broadcast outlets including TV.
Growing up the only Asians I saw on TV were Connie Chung and Hank Kashiwa,
who went from being a ski racer to a ski commentator. And though there
may be more Asian faces and bylines on the West Coast, in New York or
Chicago, here in Colorado, I'm not sure there are more than a handful.
There are some Asian faces on local newscasts - Channel 9, the local NBC affiliate, has both Lorie Hirose as a veteran reporter and Adele Arakawa as the primetime anchor. The local Fox station, Channel 31, hired Whei Wong as a reporter. Christina Yao has been a reporter on CBS' Channel 4 for several years. But I still don't see a lot of Asians working at the major newspapers (one of the notable exceptions is my brother Glenn, who's a photographer at the Denver Post).
This despite the fact that Colorado's Asian Pacific American population has grown by more than 60 percent in the past decade.
The other week, after I discovered Fong-Torres has his own Web site, I wrote to him and asked him to think of me as an old Asian man coming up to him to say that I followed his stuff back in the day, and that it mattered to me that he was able to do it.
Hopefully, young Asians today will find enough role models to become the writers and reporters of tomorrow. Maybe one or two will even turn out to be rock critics. Thanks, Ben.
You can read about
Ben Fong-Torres on his home page.
The Asian American Journalists Association,
an organization of Asians in the US media, also has a Web site.