I left public radio because it wasn’t listening
How might we authentically grow local media in Milwaukee?
Earlier this year, before a global pandemic and national protests to stop police from killing Black people, I had a meeting with the head of my public radio station. I told him what I was hearing, “People don’t come to us for their news because they don’t know us.”
I was talking about Black, brown, indigenous people — people I had spent years building community with in New Hampshire. I had ideas on how we could counter how invisible our newsroom had been in these communities, that is, of course, until there was some catastrophe to report.
What I was told cemented my decision to move on from my public radio station: “Diversity is a priority, but it’s not a top priority. It’s secondary right now.”
Shortly after that conversation, and during the initial surge of COVID-19 cases, I moved back to Milwaukee, my home city, to address info-need gaps in communities of color. Familiar with the media landscape, and my family and friends’ lived experiences, I knew that there was already a criminal lack of information to address basic information that would improve residents’ quality of life.
How do you apply for unemployment without the Internet? Or claim your stimulus check? What options did parents have to feed their kids who received free or reduced lunch with schools now closed? What options are available for people being evicted amidst all of this?
Media, even public media, are usually not in relationship with the communities we report on. And in my career, that’s never been more obvious than this year. We don’t know what information people need and want, or what’s the best way to share that reporting, or even if residents interact with our reporting.
That’s what I’m looking into addressing as I start my work as a JSK Community Impact Fellow at Stanford this year. But instead of being invisible to the community I’m reporting on, I’ll be an active part of it and looking for their input all along the process.
Here’s how I’ve sketched out the work so far: part one, the foundational work, has to begin with intentional listening.
Every place I’ve worked, even addressing info-need gaps this past year, begins prescriptively some way. Reporters and editors think they know the problems and what needs to be reported on. Sometimes they do, but the starting point is rarely community-based.
This listening includes multiple points of entry, forming an advisory board that consists of community members, and working with the community to share skills and help them tell their own stories. This way, when the media drops in and out of their neighborhoods, they’ll have more autonomy over their own narratives.
The second part of the process is taking all of that information that residents wanted to know more about and reporting on it. This will happen together with our community reporters since they know their communities better than outsiders ever could. For my part, I’ll be sharing interviewing skills, how to report ethically and other fundamentals of multimedia storytelling.
After, and on-going through the reporting process, I’ll be sharing findings in the ways our community has told us would be most useful. Is that through SMS, considering a lack of Internet? Will it be through canvassing safely at a distance and meeting people at their doorsteps during a potentially harsh Wisconsin winter? Maybe it will be through flier distribution and public art displays? These are all questions I’ll be asking.
And finally, after hitting publish, I’ll want to know what the community thought of our work together. In a post-COVID world, this includes live events, but for now, we’ll use surveys about what worked and what didn’t and consulting with our advisory board. Everything will be done to tighten the feedback loop and better sharpen the process going forward.
While I’m creating something new in a city thirsty for innovation around local reporting, this model is anything but original to me. It has been pioneered by some of the most incredible journalists out here doing the work today. I’ve been inspired by City Bureau’s Documenters program, where community members are trained to cover local government, Sahan Journal’s tight focused reporting on new American issues in Minnesota, and Outlier Media, which designed the blueprint for so much of this work through sharing info via SMS text.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter covering racial injustice for The New York Times Magazine and creator of the landmark 1619 Project, recently said that “most newsrooms have a crime beat and not a poverty beat. That’s not objective.”
In Milwaukee, with a Black poverty rate of 33.4% (the highest rate in the country) and child poverty at 21%, we need more context reporting and outcome-focused reporting that will improve our community’s material conditions. But that’s harder to monetize than crime reporting, which often draws higher numbers of clicks and engagement, which translates into dollars for news organizations.
That problematic framing couldn’t exist if all constituents were included in shaping a newsroom’s beats. That framing is why so many institutions are viewed as harmful to under-served, and under-invested, communities of color. I’m working to address those issues by continuing the work of so many people I admire in a place I love. If you’re interested in working with me or learning more, please comment below or email me: jimmygtz@stanford.edu.
