The Atlanta spa shootings exposed the flaws in news coverage of immigrant communities. Here’s how we can change it.
Building journalism that puts communities first
Nearly a year ago, on March 16, 2021, a gunman shot and killed eight people — Daoyou Feng, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Paul Andre Michels, Soon Chung Park, Xiaojie Tan, Delaina Ashley Yaun Gonzalez, and Yong Ae Yue — at three spas across my home of metro Atlanta. Six of the eight victims were women of Asian descent, and the killings occurred during a national uptick in anti–Asian American violence.
In the days that followed, I was filled with grief, horror, and anger for the victims, their families, and my communities. As one of the few Asian American freelance reporters in and from metro Atlanta, I felt a responsibility to be out front, to try and make the coverage as accurate and representative as possible. Thanks to the recommendations of well-intentioned fellow reporters and editors, my phone buzzed and my email pinged with messages from news organizations across the country, looking for a local stringer who could cover the shootings. But something stopped me from entering the competitive fray of reporters descending on the victims’ families and these communities: I politely declined every assignment, or let my phone go straight to voicemail.
I was struggling with larger questions about the impact and systems behind this work. Why did it take so long for local media to learn more about the victims, and why didn’t metro Atlanta — long seen as a Black-white racial binary — prioritize assigning or recruiting reporters to and from these communities? Why did news organizations think that I, the child of middle-class Gujarati-speaking South Asian immigrants, would be able to make a special connection with the family of a working-class Korean-speaking woman? And were most of the hundreds of stories written about this tragedy actually meant to serve the communities directly affected by it, to improve their lives and agency? With notable exceptions, the answer was a resounding “no.”
These questions, and my longstanding frustration with them, are what drove me to apply for a John S. Knight Community Impact Fellowship at Stanford University last year. During the last several months, I’ve spent time with residents without the pressure of a story deadline; connected with leaders concerned about the unmet needs of our neighbors; and gained inspiration from the work of other journalists across the country, fellows in my cohort, and colleagues at Canopy Atlanta. As a result, I’ve begun to transform my anger at journalism that has rarely served immigrant communities well into solutions that fully invest in their well-being.
With journalist Sophia Qureshi of 285 South, a newsletter uplifting metro Atlanta’s immigrant communities, I have been exploring how to create journalism for and with, and not simply about, communities like the ones impacted by the Atlanta spa shootings — and not just when an emergency happens. Using principles of design thinking that are part of the JSK Fellowship, we’re building solutions that are directly responsive to the real and ongoing needs of our neighbors. For months, we’ve been listening to the librarians, pastors, organizers, school counselors, lawyers, small business owners, and everyday people who serve and make up metro Atlanta’s immigrant communities — especially lower-income communities like those around Norcross, Forest Park, and others — to identify those needs.
Sophia and I both grew up in metro Atlanta immigrant communities, and our backgrounds have shaped our approach to this work. We’re drawing from the philosophies of fellow community media — having a sustained presence in residents’ lives, understanding folks’ daily needs, and creating reciprocal relationships with our neighbors. As journalist Mario Guevara of local Spanish-language publication Mundo Hispánico says, “If you can do something for this community, you do it.”
We’re hearing so much about desires to see community vibrancy and resources, not just problems, reflected in storytelling; about the need for more detailed information about accessing government resources in Spanish, Vietnamese, or Korean, among other languages; and about the lack of connection to or knowledge about local civic processes that can affect their daily lives. We’ve heard the need for more investment in deeper, investigative pieces on issues like housing, and less investment in news about crime in their neighborhoods or updates from their countries of origin. And we’ve heard about how the news media’s absence in some immigrant communities has impacted residents’ trust, and their abilities to hold local decision-makers accountable. We’re also mapping and collaborating with the ecosystem of advocates and community media that already serve these communities — through print publications, WhatsApp groups, bulletin boards, and more — to help fill these gaps. We’re excited to share more about our findings soon. (If you’d like to support us or join us in this work, please reach out!)
This week, the profusion of anniversary articles about the Atlanta spa shootings may provide much needed remembrance and national dialogue for many. But in metro Atlanta, I’m hopeful that we are planting the seeds for collaborative solutions that may flower in months or years — solutions that always put our communities first.
