The journalism we feed
Journalism’s future is here. Can we let go of its past fast enough?
Fridays were the day of weekly food distributions at an elementary school in Bloomfield, N.J. Every week for nine months, dozens of families would come to this spot to pick up bags of food — mostly canned or dried goods. Often fresh fruits and vegetables, too. Occasionally hot or frozen meals. Donated bread from the bakery one week and Thomas’s Bagels from the grocery store the next.
But this Friday, as people gathered on a breadline in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, no one came. The food pantry couldn’t make it that week. And a dozen families who scheduled their day and the week’s meals around those two bags of groceries were left to go home cold, wet, and hungry on New Year’s weekend.
I’ve witnessed four or five of these missed distributions, moments where all of the injustice in the world seems to align, where it isn’t enough to be hungry and experiencing poverty. But that you must also suffer the repeated indignity of being neglected by the organizations who say they’re helping you when you have few other places to turn. That people with the least time to spare have to gamble it to meet their basic needs. Where something as simple as one text message could improve the lives of dozens of families if only someone were there to relay the information.
That’s why the Bloomfield Info Project, the Community Info Coop’s public service journalism lab, launched our food aid SMS hotline in Bloomfield, N.J. Every week, our nonprofit news organization texts updates about food pantries and other aid to more than two dozen households in English and Spanish. Like updates about:
- Free dental clinics for children
- Free tax preparation services
- Utility and rental assistance
- State aid for undocumented immigrants
We stay connected with service providers so people don’t have to. And we do what we can to marshal resources to meet the needs we identify through journalism and organizing.
It began when the Bloomfield Info Project started coordinating mask distributions at area food pantries in May 2020 with support from SOMA Sewing Volunteers, a sewing collective that formed in the county in response to the pandemic. I spent most Friday afternoons for 18 months distributing masks and food at that Bloomfield elementary school. Eventually, I picked up the food pantry’s truck and ran the distribution myself in its final weeks.
Over time, I shared our SMS service with people I met and built relationships with patrons, volunteers, and providers. It’s how we built trust and witnessed information gaps firsthand — within stakeholder groups and between them.
Now the Bloomfield Info Project is playing a coordinating role between service providers and residents to improve food access in our community — all without publishing a single article.
Is that journalism? Observing, questioning, listening, researching, documenting…all to fill information gaps to improve the material conditions for people experiencing economic hardship in our community. All without pageviews or shaming public officials.
The answer is an unequivocal yes. And if you disagree — I’m afraid I don’t care. And nor does the future that will come with or without you.
This feeling has been affirmed during my JSK Community Impact Fellowship year at Stanford University, having had the chance to spend time with nine journalism leaders across the country who are setting new standards for the field.
In the past, journalistic impact was predicated on conflict and destruction. Expose the destruction of livelihoods by corporations and win an award. Takedown a corrupt official and count the page views. Seek out reactionaries and amplify them in our reporting. Highlight wrongs so they can be righted.
But even if the wrong is remedied, the violence occurred, and the systemic injustice usually persists.
The result is that modern journalism requires the ongoing exploitation of an underclass. Their lives are used for story fodder. Their attention is sold to advertisers. Their labor is bought at the lowest price so their bosses can earn the highest profits.
Now a growing number of journalists and organizations are breaking free of those cycles of destruction. Many come from the communities impacted by them. So they’re taking matters into their own hands to build a better world instead of just documenting its demise.
These journalism innovators are redefining the practice. So much so that the future of journalism no longer lies with The New York Times or CNN or NPR, or any other household brand. Instead, its future is now in the hands of dozens of organizations and thousands of people in local communities using journalism to build cycles of repair — not destruction.
How are they doing it? By developing networks, changing market conditions, meeting information needs, and building community production into how they do their work.
Need to see the future of participatory media? Look to Lawrence Daniel Caswell with Documenters Cleveland. How about new professional networks? Sara Lomax-Reese and URL Media. Community development programs? Jennifer Larino at LEDE New Orleans and Sonam Vashi at Canopy Atlanta. Expanding press freedoms? Talk to Jodi Rave Spotted Bear at the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance. Data reporting that enables justice? Paulette Brown-Hinds with Black Voice News. Reporting that drives us closer to it? Geoffrey King at Open Vallejo and Celeste Fremon at WitnessLA. Multimedia storytelling born from the communities long underserved? Go to David Rodríguez Muñoz.
And that’s just my JSK Fellowship cohort.
These people and organizations are our future. And they’re already here.
But we cannot forget those who won’t let go of journalism’s past — the vestiges of its last 100 years of commercialism and white supremacy.
I wanted to write this post about them — the class of CEOs, investors, trustees, and directors holding the line on the status quo because they benefit from the cycles of destruction. But they know. And they don’t care. So I wrote this post — the third in a series for JSK — about the people who do.
Someday soon, the people who care will take the seats of people who don’t. I wonder what the morning will feel like.
Simon Galperin is a 2022 JSK Community Impact Fellow at Stanford University. He runs the Community Info Coop, a nonprofit leading journalism innovation in the public interest.
