Last week, we announced the launch of the New/s initiative, a three-year project designed to nurture the ideas and talents of diverse innovators who are already constructing tomorrow’s journalism — who are “already, without realizing it, serving as ‘future architects’ in the news field.”
For those in the field, of course, the future of journalism is not a new topic. The industry has been in economic freefall for many years, as first the Internet, and then social and mobile media, undercut the business models for ad-driven print and broadcast news. Numerous commissions, conferences, grants, hackathons, reports, and experiments over the past two decades — a number of which I’ve had a hand in — have grappled with questions of how best to support public interest journalism, and to counter the hollowing out of newsrooms by private and commercial interests.
Unfortunately, too few of these efforts have prioritized the persistent problem of lack of representation and advancement in newsrooms. Too often, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ and, women reporters are still missing from hard news beats, investigative teams and op-ed pages, as well as from the highest ranks of editorial and business leadership. What’s more, they face bias, harassment, and dismissal at higher rates, and are less likely to receive grant funding or investment for the projects and outlets they launch.
