Q&A: Vanessa Maria Graber on building people-powered movements with collaborative journalism
Vanessa Maria Graber is the News Voices Director at Free Press, where she brings local communities and newsrooms together through engagement, advocacy, and collaboration. Graber is also a lead facilitator for the New Jersey Community Media Collective, as well as a member of the planning team for the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium.
We caught up with Graber to hear about how she combines community organizing with collaborative journalism to better serve information needs in New Jersey.
WF: How did you get into collaborative journalism?
VMG: More broadly, I got involved in media justice back in 2010 when I joined an organization called Prometheus Radio Project. They were trying to expand community radio in the US and fight for our rights to communicate. I worked on net neutrality, digital privacy rights, anti-surveillance, and funding for public access TV. The fight for media justice is about seeing communication as a human right. That’s really at the heart of what I do. Part of that is informing people. It was very clear when I started working in radio as a reporter that many communities of color were not being served by the current media ecosystem. It was important for me to join the fight to expand radio because it was a way to build more infrastructure so these communities could be served.
When I co-founded WPPM, one of our main priorities was to directly engage the community about what they wanted to hear on our station. I did a lot of community organizing all over Philly, meeting with groups and doing listening sessions, having town halls. We gained an understanding of the kind of programming that’s needed to serve Black and Brown communities in Philly, which makes up the majority of the population. One of the things we heard repeatedly is ‘our stories are not told.’ So not only did community media give a physical platform — a FM frequency, studio, and space — it also allowed people to tell their own stories.
One of the other things people told us is that they wanted discussion and debate around issues — they didn’t just want the news reported to them. They wanted to be included in conversations and discuss ideas and solutions for the problems that affect their communities. Through that work, I began collaborating with journalists who wanted to work with the community and join this movement and network of folks who weren’t competing against each other, but sharing resources and helping each other out.
WF: Why have you found it so important to collaborate with not only journalists, but also the community directly?
VMG: I work to serve the community in everything that I do. And in order to do that, you ask the community what it wants and needs. I’ve found that communities say they want to work with journalists, they want to be sources of information, they want to help guide the way their communities are portrayed, and they’re being harmed by the existing coverage — either by being excluded from it entirely, or by negative coverage that creates harmful stereotypes. When you’re out there in the community regularly — I’m an organizer and a resident — you talk to a lot of people. I’ve talked to hundreds of people. This is what the people want. I don’t really follow the guidelines and perspectives of corporate media owners and establishment media when a lot of their conclusions are not rooted in community. I take my direction from the people that I’m serving in the markets that my media and journalism reach.
At Free Press, we believe that journalism is a public service. The whole point is to inform, empower, and liberate people. And in order to do that, you have to work with them. There’s so many different ways to work with the community. They don’t have to write a story for you — but they can guide you, give you perspectives that you haven’t heard, or raise potential solutions to problems. That’s how we’re looking to work with people: building relationships, getting feedback, and being held accountable for the ways we’re using their words and portraying them on a massive media platform.
WF: What gets you most excited about the work you’re doing now?
VMG: I am always most excited about building new infrastructure. We’re organizing to get resources and training people to build new local media, whether it be online or digital media, podcasting, or social media. Many of these new organizations that we’re working with as part of our NJ community media collaborative did not exist five years ago. The stories that they’re telling and the information that they’re providing are serving a much-needed purpose and filling gaps.
When we first started working in NJ, we organized town halls to hear from people about the local media crisis. And now, there are new groups working to address those very things people commented on. There’s now a civic information consortium that receives public funding to support local journalism, and that money is actually reaching many people across the state.
We’re part of the architects who are building this new infrastructure. Imagine what it will look like in 10 or 15 years. It’s all about the long game. And right now, we’re planting a ton of seeds across NJ, and if we continue collaborating and supporting one another, we just know that it’s going to result in a very beautiful garden of local, community-centered journalism outlets that will be serving the people.
WF: What are some of the biggest challenges or difficulties that you face in this work?
VMG: Well, there still aren’t enough resources. Even though money has been provided by the governor and NJ tax dollars, it’s still not enough. We don’t have enough philanthropists funding journalism projects in NJ, or really across the US.
It’s always really difficult to be a startup and build a news organization. Many of these newsrooms are very small, and capacity is always limited. We really need a huge investment of resources in order to address the crisis. What we’re doing right now is really good, but it certainly doesn’t serve every community across the state.
WF: How have you seen the state of collaboration change over the years in journalism?
VMG: There’s definitely a lot more connection and visibility. A lot of us were always working in silos. When I was a radio reporter, I often didn’t talk to people at my station, or other stations or media outlets. I worked alone a lot of the time. For that reason, I didn’t feel like I had the power to change anything. I couldn’t even imagine it.
Now, these movements have started to form to get more community-centered coverage, people have spoken up, and there are tons of opportunities to collaborate. I’ve seen a lot of progress in terms of people-power and organizing to be in a position to change the media.
WF: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned in your work?
VMG: You have to listen to people. Showing up for people without an agenda — whether to write a story or get them to do something — is a really important lesson to learn. It’s been one of the hardest things to get journalists to change about the way they interact with the public. Going to a community meeting just to listen, or a networking event just to meet people. Not everything has to result in a product.
When we approach journalism as a public service, and we’re looking to listen and have empathy and solidarity with people, that relationship really changes. And that’s something I learned over time, not really as a journalist, but as a community organizer. We’re always learning how to find new people, connect with communities, and listen to them better.
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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 grant-funded program of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. Its mission is to grow and strengthen local journalism, and in doing so serve New Jersey residents. The Center is supported with funding from Montclair State University, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, the New Jersey Local News Lab (a partnership of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, and Community Foundation of New Jersey), and the Abrams Foundation. For more information, visit CenterforCooperativeMedia.org.
