Dori Maynard, president of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and one of the nation’s most effective advocates for representative media and excellent journalism, died on Tuesday at her California home. She was 56; the cause was lung cancer. Tributes are pouring in today from at least two generations of journalists (See #DoriMaynard to follow on Twitter). Many had been touched by Maynard in some way, if not by her personal kindness or hand in their careers then by the nearly 40-year-old Maynard Institute, an institutional beacon for black, Latino, Native, and Asian-American journalists in a predominantly white and "color-blind" media landscape.

"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," Bob Butler, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, wrote on the MIJE site. Maynard, he said, was a founding member of the Chauncey Bailey Project. Bailey, an Oakland journalist who edited several African-American newspapers covering the Bay Area, was gunned down in 2007 for seeking to expose crime and violence in the community. 

"We cannot stand for a reporter to be murdered while working on behalf of the public. Chauncey’s death is a threat to democracy," Maynard is reported to have said. "We will not be bullied."

Maynard reportedly said that her middle initial, "J" stood for Journalism. She is the daughter of Robert C. Maynard, the African-American owner and publisher of The Oakland Tribune and co-founder of MIJE.

I met Maynard once. She was warm and welcoming to me, then, a cub journalist, and I’ll remember that. But most of all, I will remember her for helping to create spaces in newsrooms throughout this country for journalists of color and for continually insisting that representative media is the foundation of excellent journalism.