The other day I whined about the challenges of covering a multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual beat. Such diversity is a blessing (and I don’t use that term often), but all those story angles can shmear thin an already small newsroom.

It’s something that’s bugged me for a while, though it clocked me square in the face this summer. With a sizable Pakistani-American community here, larger news organizations — namely The Christian Science Monitor and Al Jazeera — tapped residents for their takes on relief efforts in Pakistan’s flood zones, development of a Muslim community center near the World Trade Center site, and the arrest of Faisal Shazad, a Pakistani American who confessed to planting a car bomb in Times Square.

All of them were good angles on national and international news stories, and they offered insight into one segment of the neighborhood. But as a hyperlocalist, would such stories be within the scope of my publication? Would I have to write similar stories around the zillion other immigrant groups in my hood — the Tibetan Americans’ take on China’s activity in their homeland? The Venezuelan-American reaction to whatever Hugo Chavez has to say? And on and on.

It’s enough to drive a hyperlocalist insane.

That’s when the Poynter Institute’s News University came to my rescue. (For the uninitiated, News U offers journalists online training, some of it free, much of it cheap, nearly all of it good.) Its free, self-guided seminar called “Reporting Global Issues Locally” offered tips on how to tie international events with local issues, without driving a newsroom into the ground and without necessarily focusing on only one immigrant group.

First, the course suggested taking inventory of a beat’s ethnic groups, spoken languages and immigrants’ countries of origin. Done. Next was an inventory of a beat’s big industries. In my case, those are restaurants and specialty food shops; grooming services and general retail; medical services, thanks to a nearby hospital; residential real estate; and automotive sales and repairs.

Then the magic happened. The course listed five international-news topics that could influence news on a local level:

• The wars and national security
• Business and the economy
• Immigration
• Health and the environment
• A catch-all heading that included religion, education, culture and sports.

And instead of just tying international stories with the local immigrants’ reactions, the course illustrated how these international events can truly impact everyone in the hood, regardless of their ethnic or national backgrounds. For example, international trade tariffs and product recalls can affect sales at local retail shops, regardless of which segment of the community patronizes those shops. Immigration reform can alter hiring practices across all local industries, whether it’s food servers for the hood’s restaurants, or doctors and nurses at the nearby hospital and its satellite facilities.

In other words, it’s not about the hyperlocal angle on international news. Instead, it’s about the international angle on hyperlocal news. Despite the neighborhood’s global roots, the fact is it is one cohesive neighborhood. Its residents might not share a common heritage or language, but they share the immigrant experience, life as Americans (legally or not), and in the case of my new beat, life as New Yorkers.

The course also discusses possible sources of information, but I haven’t gotten that far into it yet. I’ll save that post for when I get around to it.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user bondidwhat.

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