PNI Month Notes — September 21 — Shirish
We’ve been taking the People’s Newsroom initiative out into the wild over the last month, with public announcements, coverage in the trade press and a launch event. I’m already thinking hard about the impact we want to make and the change we want to spark though.
Clearly, we hope the project will have a transformative effect on the journalism industry as a whole — shifting the dial so that journalists might become facilitators rather than gatekeepers, creating the fertile environment into which new forms of journalism can seed, germinate and grow. However, we’re already seeing the concrete and tangible impacts that this project will have on individual people and communities — which is perhaps even more important.
It’s been a privilege for me to work alongside and learn from Shazia, as it’s her critique of legacy journalism and the way it’s failed her, her community and many others which really lies at the heart of why we think the People’s Newsroom is so urgently needed. Seeing her elaborate on that mission in interviews, at conferences, in print and on Radio 4’s Media Show, it’s struck me that the clarity of her message is already changing the way many people think about what journalism is, who it’s for and who it should be made by. I sincerely hope that it will also start to change what a career in journalism will look like for her and other people who’ve routinely been marginalised and excluded from by the industry.
As someone much nearer the end of his career than the beginning, I hope the People’s Newsroom will be part of a process in which diversity of identity, thought and perspective will be much more welcomed and prized than it has been in the past. What I know for sure though is that Shazia’s work inspires me and I know will be having an even greater impact on the people who will come after her — whether they’re young Muslim women like her, or indeed anyone who sees how she’s part of building a new kind of journalism that feels more accessible and representative than it has been in the past.
That’s why, as we think about how we’ll measure the success of the People’s Newsroom, we’re aiming to focus on the number of individuals who are supported by and engaged with the program. That’s because systemic change (the ultimate goal) is difficult to measure, but equally we know that it starts with individuals, collaborating and learning together to start to build that wider transformation.
At our launch event, we obviously wanted to signal what that might look like. I hope the panel (with me as chair) looked, and felt, different from the lineups one normally sees at national journalism events. Megan was the only one out of five of us who’s based in England, the majority of the people on screen were people of colour and I was the only man involved. That’s never just a box-ticking exercise for us. It’s a necessary condition for doing the kinds of things we want to do of course, but frankly, I believe the conversations we have are deeper and richer than the “manels” or “whanels” we are too used to seeing. That was definitely reflected in the feedback we received, which was all about how smart, compelling and inspiring Rhiannon, Francesca and Shazia are. If I’m honest, that sometimes feel like people are “surprised” that groundbreaking journalism or innovation can exist or happen outside London. Even if it is that though, I’m hopeful that the more we can showcase the brilliant and diverse community journalism work that is pointing the way to the future, the more the industry will see that there are innovative solutions right before our eyes — if it would just shift its gaze.
These monthly notes are reflections on what The People’s Newsroom team are learning as we build the project. You can read previous notes, and more from Shazia and Megan here.
You can read find out more about The People’s Newsroom Initiative here, and if you’d like to be kept up to date with how the project is developing and how you can get involved, then do sign up to our monthly newsletter.
