One time, I was interviewing football players from my home high school after a heartbreaking loss to their biggest rivals. As I was talking to them, I could tell that they did not have much respect for me for a variety of reasons. For one, I was much smaller than most of them, which was weird for them since I was a year older than most of the team. As a result, none of the players took me seriously and it was hard to get any good quotes out of the players.
After this experience, I learned that I need to do a few things differently as a journalist.
1) Be myself.
When people ask questions concerning yourself, tell them information about you that will make them say, "really, I always thought that..." and "you've changed my way of thinking about certain stereotypes..." This will often engage the person a little bit more into the conversation into keen interest and even a bit of fun debating.
2) Go against the grain of a stereotype and accept it.
If you're constantly aware of a certain stereotype that you perceive as negative, strive to tweak it in the way that you want. In addition, once you have accepted the stereotype and who you are as a journalist, it's so much easier to move with things rather than against it. You have to realize that you are different and there are a lot of other people that are different from the stereotype.
3) Walk in their shoes.
To relate or develop empathy for yourself or someone else, a good exercise to combat negative stereotypes is to role play a certain stereotype group. In other words, pretend you are someone from that group in terms how they think, how they act, and how they want others to view their stereotype group. It's good to experience what it feels like to have certain responses from the public, people you know or strangers. Doing this also increases empathy on the negative feeling that may develop from negative stereotyping.
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