Q&A: Cierra Brown Hinton on how collaboration drives impact
Cierra Brown Hinton is the publisher of Scalawag, a nonprofit journalism organization focused on the South.
Brown Hinton leads audience growth and business strategy, and has found a clear connection between collaborating and financial sustainability. She also coaches on these practices for Blue Engine Collaborative.
We caught up with Brown Hinton to hear about Scalawag’s principles and making an impact with strong values and collaboration.
WF: How did you get involved in journalism?
CBH: I didn’t get involved in journalism on purpose. Scalawag was the first time I worked in journalism, and I came to Scalawag because of the mission and focus on the South. I’m from North Carolina and I’ve lived and worked in several places across the region. I have a deep love and commitment for the South. I met Scalawag’s founders and learned about the work they were doing and I was really excited about their commitment, too, and that’s what made me join the team. Along the way I learned a lot more about journalism, especially the business and audience side of the work, which I became really passionate about.
Scalawag focuses on telling untold stories of the South and disrupting the mainstream media narratives that get told about the region. There has been a real belief in how our work drives impact, and we’ve really been trying to figure out how our work can drive transformational change in the region. We’re not just telling stories to tell stories. We want our work to do something in the world. That drew me to Scalawag and that’s what makes us different as an organization, we do have a theory of change, and we are really clear about the impact we’re trying to drive and we understand how to get there.
WF: What is Scalawag’s theory of change? How do you think about your role?
CBH: Our hope is that as folks read our work, their awareness is raised, and they become more engaged in their community or a social movement. We understand ourselves as part of a larger group of people who are leveraging tools and skills — in our case journalism, narrative, and storytelling — to try and galvanize people to build power and then drive action. Community organizations, community organizers, people trying to build power, they are our audience for sure, but they are also our partners. We work with them, too. Organizers are a part of our base, because especially for marginalized or oppressed people, we often have to do work in community with our folks because we are all fighting for freedom.
I’m an organizer, too. I just use journalism and storytelling as my organizing tool. I think that’s true for everyone who works at Scalawag, in the same way it’s true for electoral organizers, getting folks to turn out and vote for elections. Or folks might be organizing around reproductive justice, and thinking about the different tools they can leverage to fight for bodily autonomy. Our work isn’t the exact same, but in that same way, we are thinking about this question: How do we use this tool to build a base and galvanize people? It makes our work inherently collaborative. There’s no way we would be able to drive the type of impact and reach our vision if our work wasn’t collaborative.
WF: How do you achieve this mission? What’s an example of a recent project where you’ve seen this happen?
CBH: Our work around the Stop Cop City Movement in Atlanta. We collaborated with movement organizers in Atlanta, as well as other values-aligned media organizations like the Atlanta Community Press Collective and Mainline Zine, which are two media organizations in Atlanta that are doing community-rooted reporting. The mainstream narrative around Cop City and the understanding that folks had outside of Atlanta about what was happening there was not aligned with what folks who were organizing around this issue were seeing. There was a desire to shift that narrative and help folks understand a different perspective. We collaborated with these media organizations to produce storytelling that provided that perspective, and was responsive to what folks were experiencing on the ground. We had folks who were actually doing the organizing and involved in that movement being the ones who were doing the storytelling.
From the start, we led with listening, and had a community listening session to make sure that everything we were producing was in alignment with what folks were actually experiencing. Doing that in coalition with those media organizations allowed us to build awareness and shift that narrative more effectively. It was also happening at the same time as other organizers were building campaigns through direct action and raising awareness. Working in collaboration and coordinating those efforts helped make more of an impact.
WF: Why is collaboration important in this work? How can it help drive more impact?
CBH: We are an organization that centers Black folks from the South, as well as any folks with oppressed identities from the South. We know that all of our stories and experiences have been overlooked by traditional media or co-opted in ways that are really harmful. A lot of folks have real distrust in media because it has been harmful in pretty significant ways. So the work that we do, this collaboration, is a form of repair. It’s a shift in practice, and by removing some of the gatekeeping and white-centered ways of doing journalism, we are making journalism more just.
Our hope is that we can show journalism doesn’t have to be inherently harmful to communities — it’s about how you practice the journalism, what you value, and who you are doing it with and for. We are committed to doing it differently and showing how it can have impact — how it can actually better sustain organizations and contribute to more growth.
WF: You also are a coach with Blue Engine Collaborative, where you teach others about these strategies. How does collaboration make sense from a business perspective, too?
CBH: We do coaching and consulting with all types of organizations, but mostly newsrooms on how to grow audience and revenue. It draws on my experiences working at Scalawag. It’s just a lot of studying and learning around good practices for audience growth and revenue generation. I’ve been coaching since 2020 and I’ve definitely become a better coach with time. I ask myself a ton of questions. What are the trends I’m seeing across the 20 teams I’m coaching now, compared to the ones I was coaching before this? Because we are a collaborative, what are the other coaches seeing and what are their learnings? How can we make sense of all this to best support the people we work with?
Collaboration plays a big role in the success of newsrooms, especially audience growth. How do you collaborate with others and also tap into their network, reaching folks who you might not have been able to reach otherwise? Collaboration can also expedite the trust-building process. If I have partnered with an organization that you trust, and that organization is saying they trust my organization, you are then more likely to trust that newsroom — and perhaps more willing to build a relationship and become loyal to your brand, engage with your products, and become a subscriber, member, or donor. Collaboration can make things more affordable, like doing events, which is a strong engagement tool. You can also collaborate around fundraising, or bundling subscriptions for more access, it comes up in all different types of ways that can support real business growth.
WF: What is one of the biggest lessons or learnings in your career?
CBH: I think journalism used to be inherently valuable because it was how a lot of people got news and information, and they had to get it through a newsroom. But with social media and the democratization of journalism, it’s easier for folks to start publications and build their own platforms. So, journalism from newsrooms is not inherently valuable in the same way. People aren’t getting their information from a traditional outlet. Because of that, we have to really be clear about what our value is, who we are doing it with, and who we are doing it for. Are we actually delivering on that value? That’s what is going to sustain our work.
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Will Fischer is a journalist covering the intersection of technology and media. He’s worked for Business Insider and New York magazine and conducted local news research for City Bureau. Follow Will on Twitter @willfisch15 or email him at willfisch15@gmail.com.
About the Center for Cooperative Media: The Center is a primarily grant-funded program of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. Its mission is to grow and strengthen local journalism and support an informed society in New Jersey and beyond. The Center is supported with funding from Montclair State University, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, the Independence Public Media Foundation, Rita Allen Foundation, Inasmuch Foundation and John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. For more information, visit centerforcooperativemedia.org.
