Honored for nearly three decades of reporting that elevates underrepresented voices and strengthens inclusive journalism

PennLive/The Patriot-News reporter Ivey DeJesus was recently honored with the Lenfest Institute Diversity Champion Award for her work covering issues affecting marginalized communities. Over nearly 30 years in journalism, DeJesus has built a reputation for elevating voices that are often overlooked, producing reporting that is both deeply informed and deeply human.

Her commitment to inclusive coverage dates back to the early 1990s, when she worked as an editorial clerk at The Washington Post. While sorting and delivering mail, DeJesus volunteered for small reporting assignments and soon found herself covering stories few others were paying attention to, including an in-depth investigation into the AIDS epidemic within Washington’s Latino community. She still considers that work among the strongest of her career and an early example of how mainstream media at the time was failing to adequately cover underrepresented communities.

As a Latina journalist fluent in Spanish, DeJesus quickly learned that she could enter Latino communities with a level of credibility and trust that opened doors. Over time, sources came to see her as someone who would listen — in English or Spanish — and report their stories fairly and accurately.

DeJesus is deeply passionate about the role diversity plays in journalism and democracy.

“Prioritizing diversity in your newsroom is so crucial to safeguarding democracy,” she said. “We can’t tell the truth if we’re only telling one truth, one homogenous perspective. In order to do our job as the Fourth Estate, we need to make sure underrepresented voices are reflected in our coverage, especially in communities that are often silent or invisible.”

She added that the country’s founding ideals demand that breadth of perspective. “Our country is supposed to be this great experiment in diversity — a melting pot guided by shared ideals,” she said. “We can’t live up to that with just one homogenous viewpoint.”

For reporters new to covering diversity-related issues, DeJesus encourages looking beyond the most visible or powerful voices.

“We live in a world where, by and large, the steering wheel is held by a white, male-dominated structure,” she said. “It’s incumbent upon us to find ways to report beyond those voices and to peel back the layers when covering policies or issues that affect underserved communities.”

That approach is especially important, she noted, when covering communities often treated as a single group.

“I do a lot of reporting on the LGBTQ community, and there is tremendous diversity within it,” DeJesus said. “The experience of a 68-year-old transgender person is vastly different from that of a 16-year-old transgender student. A Black transgender child has a different experience still. Even within discrimination, there are important nuances we need to understand and report.”

She emphasized that diversity extends far beyond race and ethnicity. “Those are critical,” she said, “but we also need to think about gender, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic factors and religion.”

Receiving the Lenfest Institute Diversity Champion Award, DeJesus said, was both meaningful and motivating.

“It was an incredible honor and recognition of what I’ve been advocating for throughout my career — the importance of diversity not just in storytelling, but in the newsroom itself,” she said. During her acceptance speech at the Keystone Awards luncheon, she used the moment to reflect candidly on the challenges still ahead.

“As I looked around that predominantly white room of journalists, it was a reminder,” she said. “We’ve made progress, but we still have a lot of work to do.”