Grant documents, financial records, correspondence and e-mail, notes, published reports, organizational membership lists, publicity documents, newspaper and magazine articles, lecture drafts, course syllabi, journalism resources, subject files, floppy disks, images from newspapers and magazines, flyers, survey and content audit forms, and other material,1890 to 2003, documenting journalist Leroy Aarons' tenure as director of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism's Project for the Study of Sexual Orientation in the News (SOIN) from 1999 to 2003. The collection documents Aarons' central role in developing and implementing the USC/Annenberg School's SOIN project and its three constituent parts: a model journalism course intended to help students "to understand the complex issues around gay men and lesbians as represented in today's media"; a survey of the perceptions of gay and lesbian journalists regarding their news organization's coverage of sexual orientation issues; and a content audit of coverage of gay and lesbian issues in a sample of national newpapers.

Leroy Aarons was born in a working class neighborhood of New York, New York in 1933. He graduated from Brown University, then later earned a graduate degree in journalism from Columbia University. Aarons spent 14 years as an editor and journalist with the Washington Post before leaving in 1976 to work with friend and colleague Robert C. Maynard at the Summer Institute for Minority Journalists in Berkeley, California. In 1983 Maynard purchased the Oakland Tribune and invited Aarons to join the staff. The Tribune won a Pulitzer Prize and was recognized as a model of diversity in journalism during Aaron's tenure as executive editor and vice president for news.

2.6 linear feet.2 archive boxes, 1 archive carton

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