Happy Women’s History Month, Hornets!

My name is Analah Wallace, I am The State Hornet’s current Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Editor for the spring 2025 semester. Since fall 2021, The State Hornet has held itself accountable by publishing diversity audits and evaluating the areas where we can use improvement.

My responsibilities as DEI Editor include: auditing our publication’s coverage of centered sources, finding ways to improve our coverage of underrepresented communities and overseeing each section of our publication to ensure they’re covering these communities accurately, respectfully and consistently.

Note: “Centered sources” are newly defined as story coverage that centers around, highlights, or includes the cultural context of underrepresented communities.

Updates Since the Previous Audit

We have decided to bring back the format of two audits per semester – one midway and one near the end. This structure allows the numbers to more accurately reflect the amount of diverse content being published per section, in a way that is mindful of their varying workflows.

This audit will be collective of the beginning of the spring 2025 semester as well as the second half of the fall 2024 semester. The last audit had a small miscalculation: 28 percent of The State Hornet’s content featured centered sources, not 31% as stated.

RELATED: LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: Spring’s end and fall 2024 first diversity audit

Audit Results

Overall, about 30 % of The State Hornet’s content since Oct. 5, 2024 has been diverse coverage. Once again, News produced the highest amount of diverse pieces of all sections, with 61% of its content including underrepresented communities.

I would like to congratulate Podcast for increasing the diversity of their content by nearly 10%!

Out of the 254 pieces of content The State Hornet produced since Oct. 5, 2024, 77 of those pieces contained centered sources. Here is the breakdown of what makes up those 77 pieces of content.

Note: Some pieces count towards coverage of multiple communities, which is why the total is above 77.

Compared to the last audit, The State Hornet has increased its coverage of diverse communities by 2%, going from 28% to 30%. We have primarily increased our coverage on the Black community and the Hispanic/Latin community.

Recommendations and Goals

• The disabled community continues to be one of our least covered communities, and should be receiving more content.
• We should highlight different cultures and traditions outside of just event coverage. I recommend the News and Podcast section for this.
• In light of the recent political climate, mental health resources and stories should be shared.
• The Asian and Pacific Islander community should receive more coverage.
• The Jewish community on campus should be explored more, especially in light of Sac State being one of 60 schools being investigated for antisemitism.

Conclusion

The Hornet continues to increase its amount of diverse content, but I believe we can go even further. With the rest of spring comes more opportunities to cover underrepresented communities.

The State Hornet is committed to producing diverse content to reflect its audience. In giving a platform to underrepresented communities, we aim to promote cultural awareness, understanding and inclusivity.