How I became woke producing the Black Lives Matter Impact Project
A year ago I was writing clickbait and becoming more frustrated each day by the lack of meaning in some of my work.
Little did I know a year later that my thesis and practicum project would have just as much of an impact on me as it has on Black Lives Matter. I became woke, meaning my coverage of BLM helped me stay informed and be able to develop critical analyses on these racial justice issues.
In November 2015, I attended a New York Association of Black Journalists general body meeting hosted by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. There, admissions talked a new M.A. program in social journalism.
When my frustration hit an all time high and my budding career was at a standstill, I decided to pivot in December 2014. I became determined to further my education in journalism. I wanted to make sure no one else could ever deny the amount of passion, talent and hard work that I exemplify in my skill set. I wanted to be a new media force to be reckoned with, and the innovative principles of social journalism were going to help me get there.
Between Thursday, Dec. 4 and Thursday, Dec. 18, I started the admissions process and got in a year ago on the date that my cohort is graduating this year. BOOM, we did that! I did this amazing program… in a year.
I came into this program with two end goals: I wanted to be a social media/engagement editor upon its completion, and I wanted my work to have a deeper meaning. For the latter goal, I had no idea that deeper meaning would result in human impact. It became something much larger than me.
In my “What is social journalism, really?” piece for Medium, I defined social journalism as recasting journalism as a service to help solve problems, engage and work more collaboratively with communities.
At the beginning, we had to pick individual communities to engage with. I knew my project would serve under the umbrella of Black Twitter, but I decided the virtual community was too broad and moved too fast to tackle.
Although not Black Twitter as a whole, I had to serve a community that I directly identified with, and hence, be able to create an impact through my participation in covering their narratives.
During the process of listening and source building with the community, it was introduced to me that Black Lives Matter is an intersectional movement that has members with diverse identities.
This means Black Lives Matter focuses on the interconnectivity of gender, sexual orientation, age and class within the Black race.
News media’s focus has been on Black men who are victims of police and state violence, ever since news organizations saw the social media campaigns around Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.
However, BLM’s goal has been to affirm the lives of all Black people, and how the Black diaspora is impacted by the dehumanization of systemic racism.
In my earlier coverage I focused on the overlooked Black female victims of police, state and intraracial violence, and Black cisgender and transgender women on the front lines of the movement with: The Three Women Behind The Black Lives Matter Movement, #BlackLivesMatter Means Black Trans Women Victims And Leaders Too and Why Do We Keep Ignoring All The Black Women Who Died From Police Brutality?.
For my final (fall) semester, my ultimate goal was to continue this coverage and engagement with the Black Lives Matter community in a four-part intersectional final project.
I covered the misconceptions about the community and racial justice issues at the Daily Dot; I curated my own original content; I rebuilt Black Narratives Matter (BNM), a watchdog and resource site for news media on how to cover Black narratives; and I documented my process and impact here on Medium. All four parts developed the amount of human impact I’ve created and this impact the community has had on me.
BLM faces a variety of other challenges that I covered: co-optation, racist trolling, and counter-narrative arguments.
At the Daily Dot, I addressed these challenges with deeper context: “Inside the grassroots effort to track police violence in the U.S.,” a piece about We The Protesters’, who is a popular activist group in the movement. The piece is about Samuel Sinyangwe, Johnetta Elzie and popular activist DeRay Mckesson, and their new comprehensive database Mapping Police Violence, which focuses on Black people who are being disproportionately killed by police.
I wrote a Q&A about Clifton Kinnie, an 18-year-old activist from Ferguson, who was there on the front lines and was featured in a documentary about it one year later, “Ferguson activist talks civil rights in America since Michael Brown’s death.”
Next at the Dot, I moved into writing about the misconceptions specific to the BLM organization including, “The Black Lives Matter guide to racist trolls.”
My next feature focused on providing context about BLM’s strategies and political demands with, “What Black Lives Matter really wants from 2016 presidential candidates.”
Yet, my coverage still centered on Black women, queer and trans organizers in the movement. “How 4 Black Lives Matter activists handle queerness and trans issues,” and “Following Spring Valley video, Black Lives Matter NYC launches protest campaign.”
My coverage at the Dot isn’t the only way I addressed the community’s challenges. I produced content on racial literacy via collaborative essays, how-to guides and quick facts for BNM. The site features ethical guidelines, resources and a glossary of terminologies.
I organized and moderated the mixer and panel, “Black Narratives Matter: How to Source Build as Black Journalists w/ BLM Organizers.” The panel included Yamiche Alcindor is a reporter national politics at New York Times; Tamerra Griffin is a breaking news reporter at BuzzFeed; Arielle Newton is a Black Lives Matter: NYC organizer, and the founder and editor-in-chief at Black Millennials; and Terrell Jermaine Starr is a freelance journalist and Black Lives Matter: NYC activist.
The event resulted in more than 360 tweets with great impact and positive feedback from the audience. I wrote about this impact in “Black Lives Matter activists and Black journalists talk how to report on race.”
In the first semester, we learned to case study and practice how to distribute and optimize content across social platforms and implement a social strategy of engagement. Each individual student produced a curation project on two social platforms to engage with their communities or audiences in our “Social Media Tools” class.
I won’t go into detail about that engagement that resulted from the social strategy I created, but I will encourage readers to check out my piece on “Inside the meaning of the BLK Social Journalist Hashtag,” also known as #BLKSocialJ.
However, my engagement in my final semester wasn’t just about analytics. Quantitative metrics were definitely part of it, but it was the human impact that really made a difference.
Just last week a source told me she appreciates me and the work that I do. I responded with the same; I really do appreciate the work she does; like she says and I’m paraphrasing, “we are getting free.” Ultimately, it’s the little things like this that really make a difference to me.
My work hasn’t simply been about metrics. It’s been about being able to have a community introduce me to the challenges they face and address those challenges in my reporting, social media engagement, creation of a solution tool and in my everyday life.
To me, real engagement is being able to communicate with sources across social platforms, yes, but in real-life as well. It’s to show up at the protests, rallies and vigils, and just talk with people and then, have them recognize who you are. I’m only in the beginning stages of doing this, but I believe I set the right foundation, as some members of the community have told me.
Activism writer Amity Paye on the impact of the Black Lives Matter project:
Organizer Arielle Newton on the impact of the Black Lives Matter project:
Nowadays, I’m called an expert. This is something I carry with responsibility. I have done an “Understanding Black Twitter” panel; spoke with students from a “Race and Social Media” class at the University of California, Berkeley; talked with the class of 2016 at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism about diversity in reporting; led a workshop on the ethics of community beat reporting at SVA NYC; moderated a LGBTQ coverage and talked briefly about queer and transgender voices of BLM; and this all happened before I moderated my own panel on “Black Narratives Matter.”
First and foremost, I’m not an organizer or activist, although I appreciate the work they do. It’s not my job to use this expertise to take away voice from the community or to simply build a brand off the pressing issues they face. It’s my job to participate with the community in covering their narratives. Also, my job is to share this expertise journalistically, and hopefully, help news organizations bridge together the gaps with marginalized communities like BLM.
However, being called an expert has led to some not-so-pleasant debates and deep conversations. I mean, will it ever be easy to talk about systemic racism, race and white privilege? Eh, probably not. In fact, it’s hard, but highly crucial to have these conversations. The moment someone granted me expert status is the moment where critics started blasting BLM to me or trolling my own approach in discussing race.
Nevertheless, I developed my critical analyses on race by being able to add deeper context on BLM’s narratives, as I wrote the how-to guide for BNM.
My biggest takeaway from having these conversations is if we can’t have a conversations about how systemic racism is problematic than I’m not going to waste my time talking to you. Many of these critics’ beliefs are rooted in ignorance and anti-Black racist ideologies anyways.
I especially don’t have to respond to critics under #BLKSocialJ’s moniker who only want to debate race and systemic racism rather than have a conversation about the impact of it.
I’ll rarely debate race. I don’t feel like we’ll get anywhere doing that. I will, however, have a conversation with someone who is LISTENING and then engaging, which are two pillars of social journalism by the way. I will have a conversation with someone can acknowledge and speak fluently on how systemic racism is problematic.
I will have a conversation with someone who might not understand the nuances of discussing race based on their limited experiences, but are open to listening and not push their own ignorant perspectives onto me, and maybe through that, they’ll further educate themselves.
It’s not my job to center whiteness in discussing race and racism. That’s Hollywood’s job :(. It’s my job to participate journalistically in the amplification of voices in this marginalized community — one I identify with — who are engaging in telling their own narratives.
It’s about communities like Black Lives Matter. Who are critics outside of these marginalized communities to say their experiences and how they are voicing them are invalid?
I can provide that context in my reporting and conversations; I can do my research for a piece that’ll include statistics or a study; I can write a data-driven piece on race.
Plus, I have the experience of what it means to be Black in the United States of America and being part of a diaspora who has historically experienced the oppression of institutions that are racist.
I can use that experience to say covering “All Lives Matter” in the same light as Black Lives Matter is inappropriate, that it’s a hashtag with no mobilizing or organizing behind it, although some might use it blindly. It’s simply a hashtag that pops up when Black people are expressing their experiences of how everyday racism is dehumanizing their lives.
I can say that an “All Lives Matter” narrative that covers both sides of the “story” sometimes would mean talking to people who are blatantly racist and that’ll involve inappropriately amplifying voices of hatred, prejudice or white supremacy. I can say no to that!
That’s the impact Black Lives Matter has had on me and how I’ve engaged with a community of reliable sources who are putting in the work for the collective liberation of Black people.
Editor’s Note: This is the final post in a series of critical analyses documenting the process of social journalism and applying it to covering Black Lives Matter.
Follow me on Twitter @DeronDalton, @BlkNarratives, and follow the hashtags#BLKSocialJ (BLK Social Journalist) and #BlackNarrativesMatter.
