Dori J. Maynard, an African-American journalist and champion of diversity in news coverage, died Tuesday at her West Oakland home of lung cancer, according to the journalism institute named after her father and which she ran. She was 56.
“Maynard advocated tirelessly for the future of the institute and its programs, reminding all that the work of bringing the diverse voices of America into news and public discourse is more vital than ever,” read the Maynard Forum post on the website of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. “Under her leadership, the Institute has trained some of the top journalists in the country and helped newsrooms tell more inclusive and nuanced stories. New programs are empowering community members to voice the narrative of their own lives."
Her friend, Sally Lehrman,told Maynard Institute columnist Richard Prince that Maynard had mostly kept her illness a secret. Maynard's death comes about two weeks after New York Times columnist David Carr also died of lung cancer.
The daughter of Robert C. Maynard, the former owner of the Oakland Tribune, Dori Maynard followed in her father’s footsteps, working at the Detroit Free Press, the Bakersfield Californian, and The Patriot Ledger, in Quincy, Mass.
In 2001, she became president of the Oakland-based Maynard Institute, the nation's oldest organization focusing on ensuring newspapers, magazines and other news outlets accurately portray overlooked communities.
In fact, the morning of her death, she was discussing plans with a board member to help the institute thrive and to attract funding to support that work, the institute said.
Her stepmother Nancy Hicks Maynard was also an institute co-founder.
Bob Butler, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, said on the Maynard site, "You can hardly put into words how important the work Dori and the Maynard Institute did to train young people of color for careers in journalism and how the institute trained the media to write fair stories about communities of color."
In 2013, she penned an opinion column for the Tribune in the wake of the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, saying that media looking for explanations of America's ongoing racial struggle should look at themselves.
"It's time for us to look at what our distorted coverage of communities of color is doing to the country," Maynard wrote. "It's time for us to look at whether we're meeting our ethical obligation to give our audience factual and credible information necessary to make rational decisions in its private life and about public policies."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
