Our Mission
 Our mission is threefold:
    1.     To encourage Asian American and Pacific Islanders to enter the ranks of journalism
    2.     To work for fair and accurate coverage of Asian American and Pacific Islanders
    3.     To increase the number of Asian American and Pacific Islander journalists and news managers in the industry.

Our History
The Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) was founded in 1981 by a few Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) journalists who felt a need to support one another and to encourage more Asian American and Pacific Islanders to pursue journalism at a time when there were few Asian American and Pacific Islander faces in the media. AAJA owes its founding to the vision of a small group of Los Angeles journalists. They included KCBS-TV News Anchor, Tritia Toyota; Los Angeles Times Business Editor, Bill Sing; and Los Angeles Times Fashion Editor, Nancy Yoshihara. AAJA's expansion into a truly national organization took off in 1985 with the formation of additional chapters.

As a nonprofit membership organization with more than 2,300 members in 19 chapters across the United States and Asia, AAJA's largest membership bases are generally concentrated in metropolitan areas on the West Coast (Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle), East Coast (New York City and Washington, D.C.) and Midwest (Chicago). Members are also organized in other areas throughout the United States (Arizona, Atlanta, Chicago, Florida, Hawaii, Michigan, Minnesota, New England, Philadelphia, Portland, Sacramento, Texas and San Diego).

In addition, AAJA has a growing number of members working throughout Asia -- in Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangladesh, which underscores the rapid growth of media properties in Asia and points the way to future expansion of the organization. Close to one-third of AAJA's members are students, attesting to the organization's emphasis on bringing young people into the news business. AAJA has also relied on leadership in the community and Asian-language media.

AAJA is proud to include among its members some of the top journalists in the country, from network news anchors and reporters to Pulitzer Prize-winning writers, editors and photographers, to national radio show producers and major magazine editors.

The Hawaii chapter was founded by a small band of journalists in 1987. The idea of a local chapter took seed with a telephone call from AAJA co-founder Bill Sing to then-Honolulu Advertiser reporter Sandra Oshiro. He asked whether she would be interested in helping to organize a chapter of AAJA in Hawaii.

Sure, she said, knowing little what it would all spawn.

Sing visited Hawaii in 1987 to meet with a group of Hawaii journalists, including KITV anchor Paula Akana, Hawaii Herald writer Karleen Chinen and other representatives from Honolulu's media outlets.

Many of the members came together because of a common concern over the lack of Asian Americans in the state's newsrooms, particularly in the management ranks. In a state where most of the population is Asian, the disparity was clear and disturbing.

From the beginning, the chapter's goals were not only to promote opportunities for Asian American journalists, but for Pacific Islanders as well. Encouraging Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders to enter journalism remains a major priority of the chapter.

In 1995, the chapter hosted the AAJA national convention, attracting nearly 700 participants and more than 100 recruiters. The Hawaii convention was the first to feature a World Wide Web home page, reflecting the convention's emphasis on skills-building for the new century. Hawaii has been again selected as the convention site and will be the host in 2006.

Presidents of the chapter have included Oshiro, Marvin Buenconsejo, Nestor Garcia, Mark Matsunaga, Andy Yamaguchi, Lucy Young-Oda, Teri Okita, Gordon Pang, Jaymes Song, Jill Kuramoto, and Stephen Tsai.

A FOOTNOTE:

AAJA uses the term "Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders" to embrace all Americans--both citizens and residents -- who self-identify with one or more of the three dozen nationalities and ethnic groups in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific Islands. We use this term to refer to our communities at large, as well as to our membership which includes representatives from all these regions.

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