Focus Area: Equitable Journalism

As funders move swiftly to respond to the information needs of COVID-19, it’s critical to consider the following tips to ensure that the communities most disproportionately impacted by the pandemic are not left out.

*Newsroom executives and managers: Looking for concrete ways you can uphold diversity and inclusivity values during COVID-19? Sisi Wei, director of programs at OpenNews has you covered.

There has been an influx of emergency funds created across a wide variety of sectors in rapid response to the crisis, but it’s also critical to remember that characterizing the coronavirus as the great “equalizer” is inaccurate. We can’t afford to neglect using a justice lens in designing these emergency funds to ensure that all communities, including those already struggling in information deserts, receive life-saving information during these unprecedented and challenging times.

The effect of the coronavirus on the local journalism industry has been extraordinarily complicated and profound: communities have become desperate for timely, accurate information on an unseen, unknown villain that seemed to take away all of their loved ones, their freedoms, and feelings of safety and security overnight. The economic impact of sheltering in place additionally devastated small businesses, including local news organizations that depended on ad revenue to provide vital civic information to their constituents.

I, along with many others, have been working on the importance of ramping up cultural competencies to improve coverage of our communities utilizing a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) lens. I’ve been grateful to see reporting that has shown the ways in which communities of color are disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus — from the racialization of the virus precipitating hate crimes against Asian Americans to the ways in which Black constituents experience significantly higher rates of COVID-19 exposure and fatalities compared to any other demographic.

Key things to consider when deploying an Emergency Response Fund:

• Include partners with strong credibility working with communities of color, including newsrooms led by people of color, in the design and decision-making phases of the grantmaking.

Moving swiftly can be challenging for funders new to utilizing an equity and inclusion lens because they typically depend on existing networks and partners for efficiency. This is problematic because without ever spending the time to build trust with new partners and stakeholders of color, particularly those that work with undocumented constituents, funders will not likely include them in their existing networks. As such, working with place-based funders or non-profit organizations that clearly have a strong footprint in the targeted communities is a strategic starting point to ensure that the request for proposals will reach communities with whom you have not yet worked.

• Address the inequity gaps in your language and criteria. Be open to creating space for new models and forms of journalism beyond legacy and mainstream media.

Dana Kawaoka-Chen of Justice Funders and Lori Villarosa of Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity offer clear outlines of key values on how and who to fund for social justice in response to COVID-19. Applying this framework that many health and economic development funders have already embraced for meaningful impact would be transformative for journalism and its role in improving access to resources for historically marginalized communities. For example, the Akonadi Foundation has announced a $1 million emergency fund for people-of-color-led organizations and projects in Oakland addressing the racial inequities exacerbated by the public health crisis.

The Robert R. McCormick Foundation in Chicago, along with other place-based funders in the area, has launched the Chicago COVID-19 Journalism Fund with criteria that specifically prioritizes smaller news outlets serving communities of color, including media that is offered in languages other than English.

Additionally, the Economic Hardship Reporting Project is offering mini grants for freelancers and journalists to commission stories on COVID-19 utilizing an equity lens, as well as those who might benefit from an emergency hardship grant that simply asks for a short, 350-word explanation of why the funds are needed, which significantly reduces the burden of submitting a lengthy proposal and increases access for folks new to writing an application for a grant. Other similar resources include journalist-organized grassroots funds such as the Journalist Furlough Fund and Microloans for Journalists, which also lists other relief funds for journalists.

Finally, the Facebook Journalism Project in partnership with other funders has also prioritized newsrooms reaching underserved audiences by making grants to boost coronavirus coverage. The grants prioritize independent and family-owned news organizations, which includes for-profit groups. This criteria addresses the fact that many people-of-color publishers operate small for-profit organizations and are not often eligible for grants from private foundations.

• Support newsrooms serving communities that do not speak English as their first language.

The majority of the rapid response funds made available to journalists and journalism organizations have been English-only (both in the request for proposals and criteria set for applications). Partnering with initiatives such as the Center for Community Media (which also disseminates a newsletter tracking grant opportunities), Ethnic Media Services or Translators Without Borders — an organization that is providing translation services via mini-grants will broaden access to news organizations specifically targeting communities that do not speak English or depend on the information source in their primary language to access critical public services.

• Coordinate with existing resources and efforts.

Journalists are working harder than ever to provide content daily to fulfill the essential information needs of our communities. Some news organizations are reporting that they are now creating four times the content they were producing on average, pre-coronavirus. So funders need to work together and coordinate these opportunities, to make it easier and less time-consuming for journalists and news organizations to identify support. Right now, there are many opportunities that seem to be announced in piecemeal fashion.

Media Impact Funders has also convened the funder community to brainstorm and coordinate ways for funders to strategically leverage and connect various efforts in addressing COVID-19. Funders interested in sharing insights and analysis, as well as their own rapid response grant efforts should contact Roshni Melia (roshni@mediafunders.org).

Funders might coordinate with place-based opportunities and other networks targeting vulnerable communities to ensure journalism funding is not left out in broader efforts to support community resilience. One example is the NDN COVID-19 Response Project which targets efforts specifically serving indigenous communities. Funders can collaborate with the Native American Journalists Association and NDN Collective to create clear pathways of support for tribal media organizations.

Other tools journalism funders can deploy during this crisis beyond making grants:

• Advocate for local media to be included in any coronavirus stimulus package

Organizations such as PEN America and Free Press Media are leading coalition-building efforts to ensure funding for local media is included in the coronavirus stimulus package. This effort highlights small to mid-sized news organizations that serve hard to reach populations where local news ecosystems have already been fragile and are heavily supported by other small businesses in the region that are on the verge of shutting down due to shelter-in-place restrictions.

• Share best practices on innovative collaborations to support capacity to address the information needs and demands of underserved communities

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has seeded and supported innovative local and regional journalism collaborations since 2009, across a wide array of diversely sized organizations serving many different constituent groups. Leveraging the public media network and applying lessons learned on how these collaborations expanded the overall capacity for newsrooms to serve information deserts are ways funders can help newsrooms make their news operations more innovative and streamline content production.

• Fund affinity expert organizations such as the Asian American Journalism Association, National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Association of the LGBTQ Journalists, the Maynard Institute, and identify other resources to ensure newsrooms abide by rigorous journalism ethics in covering COVID-19 and its disproportionate impacts on vulnerable communities.

The Asian American Journalism Association created a guide on how to responsibly cover the coronavirus utilizing a diversity, equity and inclusive lens. The guide has been widely circulated in response to xenophobic attacks perpetrated against the Asian community as a result of COVID-19 misinformation.

• Elevate and protect diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) values by holding newsrooms accountable in the face of imminent layoffs and disappearing internships.

The News Integrity Initiative has been working with a cohort of journalists of color, the newsrooms in which they work (along with their managers and editors), and OpenNews to reform what managers prioritize as skills and competencies for next generation audiences and news providers. There is a danger that layoff decisions and shutting down internship programs will disproportionately impact journalists who are the most vulnerable.

Sisi Wei of OpenNews has written practical strategies and tips for managers to navigate these decisions while continuing to uphold DEI values. Her work highlights the need to deploy hiring best practices within the context of the pandemic crisis (using efficiencies to speed up the process without sacrificing the integrity of the process), and how to use data responsibly and equitably to make difficult decisions, like layoffs.

Funders can support newsrooms to uphold these values in a few ways:

• Work with journalism education and training institutions to help subsidize internship program shortfalls.
• Support the disaggregation of existing data collection efforts to track layoffs, furloughs and pay cuts across newsrooms. The News Integrity Initiative is working with OpenNews and the journalists of color community at large to be a resource for time-strapped managers that may not have the capacity to see how reactive personnel decisions might decimate previous DEI efforts.
• Figure out ways to coordinate and support the work of existing diversity committees in newsrooms.

As newsrooms have come to greatly depend on philanthropic support, we are in a moment where the leadership of funders who care about the provision of high quality civic information is critical in saving people’s lives — in particular, the lives of the most vulnerable. The business of journalism may not look the same after we’ve recovered from the pandemic, but philanthropy can be proactive in taking the right steps to ensure we are making thoughtful, inclusive and equitable decisions for the future, to support a vibrant democracy that celebrates and supports all lived experiences and stories.

It’s early Friday morning, and Siyad Salah drives his taxi around Cedar-Riverside in Minneapolis-St. Paul. He looks out the windshield, examining the neighborhood even though he’s been in the area many times. When he asks questions, he can be mistaken for an undercover cop rather than a taxi driver. He has a camera and tripod in the cab’s compartment. His pen and notebook are by his side.

Salah likes to talk to people he meets. From time to time, he stops by a gas station or a local grocery story, and then chats with some immigrant workers there. In a state where more than 8 percent of residents are foreign-born, Siyad knows that any interesting story about or for his community — whether it may come from a passenger or something that he’d find while driving — could unfold anytime.

I have known Salah for more than a decade. I first met him when I was with New America Media, and we organized a press event on immigration in the Twin Cities. Siyad works as a taxi driver by dawn and a journalist by noon. A refugee from Somalia, he once told me that he does journalism for the Somali and other African communities in Minnesota, and he drives a cab to earn a living for his family.

“When my family first came to America, there was no television show in Somali. We didn’t understand what was happening around us. My mother felt so lonely and isolated,” he said. “That was how I got motivated to be involved in producing a show called ‘Somali TV’ in our native language.”

Today, as immigration and race continue to be a profoundly complicated issue in Minnesota and U.S. politics in general, more Somali and other African media outlets have remained robust across the state — both to inform both newcomers and those immigrants and refugees who have already settled into a larger American society and to reduce stigma by magnifying the community’s positive contributions.

The Minneapolis-St. Paul region has the largest Somali population in the United States. Many of them first came as students or businesspeople, and in recent decades as refugees as a result of the Somali Civil War. To date, the Twin Cities have had a number of Somali programs and news outlets — including Somali TV, the state’s first Somali television program to air on Minneapolis Television Network (MTN) and other online platforms, Somali American, Somali Link Radio on KFAI, KALY Somali American Radio and Tusmo Times. The area also has a diverse African media, such as The Africa Paper, Mshale (Kenyan) and Zehabesha (Ethiopian).

“The [African] news outlets greatly help our communities integrate into the American life,” said Abdulkadir Osman, a Somali American community leader. “At the same time, they connect us all to our relatives and loved ones we left behind in our home countries.”

Osman, who founded Somali TV and brought it to MTN with Salah in 1997, says these African news media have played an important role in keeping his community civically engaged. They’ve helped to produce American politicians, writers, and activists, including Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, Nuruddin Farah, and Abdi Warsame.

Minnesota’s other immigrant enclaves

In the late 19th century, European immigrants — mostly those from Scandinavia, Germany, Ireland, and Italy — came to Minnesota and made it their home. Then, in the early 20th century, the next wave of immigrants were Poles and Mexicans. From the late 20th century till present, immigrants from Southeast Asia, East Africa, and Central America have settled across the state. The immigrant community has ultimately made Minnesota one of the most diverse states in the U.S., in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, age and educational attainment.

With the recent increase of the Asian immigrant population, Minneapolis-St. Paul has established strong and reliable Asian media. There’s one Chinese-language news outlet, China Tribune, in the Twin Cities. Still, the Hmong-American community is the most dominant market. Two of these prominent community outlets — Hmong Today and Hmong Times — are weekly publications. However, it’s Hmong radio stations have the largest audience-base in the Hmong community.

Wameng Moua, editor and publisher of Hmong Today, told me that most of the U.S.-born or raised Hmong Americans tend to read the online English edition or on social media, while the first-generation and Hmong immigrants prefer to get their information from radio stations.

“Most younger Hmong Americans interact and get their information on Facebook. So, it is a must to have a social media account for the paper — and it is less expensive to run,” he said.

Martha Vickery, publisher of the English-language The Korean Quarterly, said that the Asian population has greatly increased in the Twin Cities. “We are seeing more and more Southeast Asian immigrants — Thai, Cambodians, Filipinos and Vietnamese — immigrating to the area,” she said. “They could surpass the Hmong population in the coming years.”

Most recently, the Sahan Journal launched in August 2019 with coverage for and about Minnesota’s immigrant communities, led by Somali-American journalist Mukhtar Ibrahim. “We want to show how these communities are transforming, what they’re going through, and be a professional news website that produces high-quality, highly edited stories,” said Ibrahim.

That means community-based and led media will be all the more important in the Twin Cities and across the state, as this niche market continues to inform and engage different immigrant populations, connecting them to their home countries while creating new ties in their current one.

Oni Advincula was a former editor and national media director for New America Media and a correspondent for The Jersey Journal. Currently, he works as a media consultant and and a freelance journalist. He is the co-author of “The State of Ethnic and Community Media in New Jersey” and has worked with ethnic media in 45 states for more than 20 years.

Last June, Mayor Edward Terry walked into the Clarkston Community Center’s meeting hall for a panel discussion on the upcoming census. The hall was packed with community leaders, legislators, refugees, and immigrants. For a small city located east of Atlanta, Clarkston has become the most ethnically diverse square mile in the United States.

“I am truly honored to welcome you to our city, known as the Ellis Island of the South,” Terry said. “The ethnic media in this room plays a very important role to inform our residents who come from every corner of the world.”

Since the mid-70s, Clarkston has welcomed Somalis fleeing civil war, Bhutanese fleeing ethnic cleansing, as well as Cambodians, Nepalis, Croatians, Eritreans, and Liberians escaping violence and religious persecution in their home countries. Now, as Clarkston continues to attract refugees and immigrants from Asian, Central American, and African nations, the city — and metro Atlanta as a whole — has become one of the major hubs of ethnic media in the country.

“Every day, we have programs that are aired in at least 10 languages. And the hosts, mostly volunteers, also have first-hand knowledge of the cultural nuances of their own communities,” said Hussein Mohammad, a founding member and former director of Sagal Radio, a small Clarkston-based radio station that broadcasts in Swahili, Sino-Tibetan, Tigrinya, and Arabic, to name a few.

Recently arrived immigrants from South Korea have also made metro Atlanta their home.

“You go to Duluth [which is part of Gwinnett County, about 27 miles from Atlanta city center], you would think you are not in the Deep South. With rows and rows of Korean establishments, and hundreds of thousands of Koreans who live there, it feels more like Seoul,” said Jong Won Lee, former editor of Korea Daily. “If you speak English, you’d be the minority.”

Notably, metro Atlanta has a huge Korean ethnic media market, perhaps on par with those in Los Angeles and New York. In Gwinnett County alone, the Korean population increased by 155 percent from 2000 to 2017. These numbers don’t take account undocumented Korean immigrants, who tend to be undercounted. When I spoke with Eugene Rhee, Program Director of the Center for Pan Asian Community Services, several years ago, he underscored that the community has a different count of Korean population. By their estimates, there has been a 1,000 percent increase in the Korean population in Duluth — or Gwinnett County — over the last 15 years.

The Atlanta area now has four major Korean news outlets — three dailies (Korea Daily, Korea Times, and Chosen Daily) and a television station WKTB-CD, which is owned by Korean American TV Broadcasting.

The Chinese immigrant population has also been growing quickly, and so are Chinese-language publications. Less than a decade ago, The World Journal was the only Chinese-language publication in the area. Now, there are three other Chinese newspapers within the city limits, namely Atlanta Chinese News, China Tribune, Duowei Times, and The Epoch Times — the Chinese-American media network that covers 21 languages and 33 countries.

“More and more Chinese people are moving into Atlanta and buying properties. They think that Atlanta has more affordable real estate properties, better weather and friendlier people,” said Lily Lee, former publisher and editor of The World Journal Atlanta. “Soon, we will have our own Chinatown here.”

And according to the Pew Research Center, Atlanta ranks 19th among the sixty largest metro areas in the country for total Hispanic population. Nearly 600,000 Hispanics reside in the area; they represent about 11 percent of metro residents, and over half of the almost million Hispanics in Georgia overall.

Mundo Hispanico, the largest Spanish-language weekly in Georgia — and across the Southern states — has expanded its distribution and operation to North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Florida. Formerly owned by Cox Communications, Mundo Hispanico has been shifting to digital, according to its editors.

The other Spanish-language publication, El Nuevo Georgia, has also been thriving, along with television stations Telemundo Atlanta and Univision 34.

Given the long history of African Americans in the South, the oldest media outlets in Atlanta are black newspapers. The Atlanta Daily World was founded in 1928 and The Atlanta Voice in 1956. Both played a significant role during the start of the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South and continue to serve thousands of readers in the city today.

Despite some punitive, anti-immigration laws in Georgia, Teddy Dagwe, publisher of Dinq Magazine, a monthly that serves both the Christian and Muslim Ethiopian communities in metro Atlanta, says that immigrant communities continue to thrive in the area.

“We have each other here in big numbers. And it makes a difference when you have someone like Mayor Terry who understands us, who lives with us, and who listens to us,” Dagwe said.

Many see Clarkston and the greater Atlanta area as a bright spot in the national landscape — a place that has continued to welcome immigrants and refugees, where ethnic media and civic leaders are actively engaging with these communities to respond to their news and information needs.

Oni Advincula was a former editor and national media director for New America Media and a correspondent for The Jersey Journal. Currently, he works as a media consultant and and a freelance journalist. He is the co-author of “The State of Ethnic and Community Media in New Jersey” and has worked with ethnic media in 45 states for more than 20 years.