In the next two years, I predict that community reporting fellowships will become increasingly important in diversifying newsrooms and strengthening local news ecosystems. As DEI efforts to diversify newsrooms stall, these fellowships will help journalists of color to gain experience and share stories that reflect their communities, while filling important information gaps.
Local news outlets are a vital part of civic and community life, particularly for people of color, who are more likely to trust local news organizations, feel connected to their primary news source, and depend on the media as a check on individuals in positions of power.
But despite this demand for and trust in local news, and despite recent diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across the news industry, these communities remain underrepresented in U.S. newsrooms.
Here in New Jersey, the state’s largest news organizations, Gannett and N.J. Advance Media, have fallen short of promises to diversify newsrooms dominated by white men. Without the sustained intention and ability to not only recruit but also invest in and keep journalists of color on staff, DEI efforts, however well intended, will continue to be just that — efforts, not transformative accomplishments.
Such initiatives are commendable, especially given that the alternative is more of the status quo. Still, the solution to meeting community information needs and building local news outlets that are more reflective of the news audience also rests beyond the traditional newsroom in the wealth of stories, media savvy, and experiences of the communities covered.
As part of my work at the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University, I seek to connect with and support journalists, media professionals, and various stakeholders in New Jersey’s local news ecosystem. Part of this work involves championing DEI initiatives intended to open doors for more journalists of color and promote newsrooms that reflect diverse communities across age groups, races, gender, abilities, and ethnicities. But there’s also the opportunity to work outside of traditional channels to help support journalists and storytellers, particularly those who live in communities identified as news deserts.
In the past year, my work with the South Jersey Information Equity Project has afforded me a better understanding of the local news landscape. I’ve also had the pleasure of working with emerging journalists and storytellers to build media skills while sharing community-driven, restorative narratives often neglected by mainstream media. The experience has convinced me that local news fellowships like SJIEP will continue to emerge as a powerful tool against newsroom inequity and information gaps (or misrepresentation) in communities of color, particularly those in regions with limited sources of local news and information.
The Center launched SJIEP in partnership with the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists in 2019 to help increase the quality and quantity of local news and information produced by and for communities of color in New Jersey, primarily in Camden, Burlington, and Gloucester Counties. We hosted SJIEP’s first fellowship cohort this year to build community support, recruit local reporters, target information gaps in South Jersey, and specifically support Black media makers by connecting them with resources, funding, and platforms.
We worked with four gifted and highly motivated storytellers, all early-career professionals with varying levels of media and journalism training, to produce stories on topics ranging from community policing to youth development, health services, and thriving entrepreneurship in a pandemic economy. The fellowship included hands-on training, co-editing sessions, networking opportunities with veteran journalists based in South Jersey, and, early on, the chance for direct input from the community through a series of convenings. We also worked with media outlets dedicated to covering communities of color in South Jersey to co-publish the fellows’ stories.
Next year, we’ll expand the program with a new cohort of fellows and a new roster of media trainings, career development workshops, and a dedicated mentorship track. With each iteration of the SJIEP fellowship, we strive to build on our investment in journalists of color and, by extension, the communities they belong to, the neighborhoods they represent, and the people they serve.
Relatively speaking, it’s a drop in the ocean when confronting the historic societal inequities and injustices that have played out in the media and harmed communities of color.
Still, such fellowships provide the training that equips more storytellers and journalists to tell our stories in spaces that are just as important, if outside of traditional newsrooms.
Cassandra Etienne is the assistant director for membership and programming at the Center for Cooperative Media.
In the next two years, I predict that community reporting fellowships will become increasingly important in diversifying newsrooms and strengthening local news ecosystems. As DEI efforts to diversify newsrooms stall, these fellowships will help journalists of color to gain experience and share stories that reflect their communities, while filling important information gaps.
Local news outlets are a vital part of civic and community life, particularly for people of color, who are more likely to trust local news organizations, feel connected to their primary news source, and depend on the media as a check on individuals in positions of power.
But despite this demand for and trust in local news, and despite recent diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across the news industry, these communities remain underrepresented in U.S. newsrooms.
Here in New Jersey, the state’s largest news organizations, Gannett and N.J. Advance Media, have fallen short of promises to diversify newsrooms dominated by white men. Without the sustained intention and ability to not only recruit but also invest in and keep journalists of color on staff, DEI efforts, however well intended, will continue to be just that — efforts, not transformative accomplishments.
Such initiatives are commendable, especially given that the alternative is more of the status quo. Still, the solution to meeting community information needs and building local news outlets that are more reflective of the news audience also rests beyond the traditional newsroom in the wealth of stories, media savvy, and experiences of the communities covered.
As part of my work at the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University, I seek to connect with and support journalists, media professionals, and various stakeholders in New Jersey’s local news ecosystem. Part of this work involves championing DEI initiatives intended to open doors for more journalists of color and promote newsrooms that reflect diverse communities across age groups, races, gender, abilities, and ethnicities. But there’s also the opportunity to work outside of traditional channels to help support journalists and storytellers, particularly those who live in communities identified as news deserts.
In the past year, my work with the South Jersey Information Equity Project has afforded me a better understanding of the local news landscape. I’ve also had the pleasure of working with emerging journalists and storytellers to build media skills while sharing community-driven, restorative narratives often neglected by mainstream media. The experience has convinced me that local news fellowships like SJIEP will continue to emerge as a powerful tool against newsroom inequity and information gaps (or misrepresentation) in communities of color, particularly those in regions with limited sources of local news and information.
The Center launched SJIEP in partnership with the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists in 2019 to help increase the quality and quantity of local news and information produced by and for communities of color in New Jersey, primarily in Camden, Burlington, and Gloucester Counties. We hosted SJIEP’s first fellowship cohort this year to build community support, recruit local reporters, target information gaps in South Jersey, and specifically support Black media makers by connecting them with resources, funding, and platforms.
We worked with four gifted and highly motivated storytellers, all early-career professionals with varying levels of media and journalism training, to produce stories on topics ranging from community policing to youth development, health services, and thriving entrepreneurship in a pandemic economy. The fellowship included hands-on training, co-editing sessions, networking opportunities with veteran journalists based in South Jersey, and, early on, the chance for direct input from the community through a series of convenings. We also worked with media outlets dedicated to covering communities of color in South Jersey to co-publish the fellows’ stories.
Next year, we’ll expand the program with a new cohort of fellows and a new roster of media trainings, career development workshops, and a dedicated mentorship track. With each iteration of the SJIEP fellowship, we strive to build on our investment in journalists of color and, by extension, the communities they belong to, the neighborhoods they represent, and the people they serve.
Relatively speaking, it’s a drop in the ocean when confronting the historic societal inequities and injustices that have played out in the media and harmed communities of color.
Still, such fellowships provide the training that equips more storytellers and journalists to tell our stories in spaces that are just as important, if outside of traditional newsrooms.
Cassandra Etienne is the assistant director for membership and programming at the Center for Cooperative Media.
Ariel Zirulnick Journalism doubles down on user needs
Matt Rasnic More newsroom workers turn to organized labor
Parker Molloy We’ll reach new heights of moral panic
Pia Frey Publishers start polling their users at scale
Tim Carmody Newsletter writers need a new ethics
Joni Deutsch Podcast collaboration — not competition — breeds excellence
Kerri Hoffman Podcasting goes local
Susan Chira Equipping local journalism
Ryan Kellett Airline-like loyalty programs try to tie down news readers
Mar Cabra The inevitable mental health revolution
Ryan Gantz “I’m sorry, but I’m a large language model”
Jakob Moll Journalism startups will think beyond English
Jody Brannon We’ll embrace policy remedies
Sam Guzik AI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results.
Jesse Holcomb Buffeted, whipped, bullied, pulled
Al Lucca Digital news design gets interesting again
Karina Montoya More reporters on the antitrust beat
Jennifer Brandel AI couldn’t care less. Journalists will care more.
Martina Efeyini Talk to Gen Z. They’re the experts of Gen Z.
Kirstin McCudden We’ll codify protection of journalism and newsgathering
Dana Lacey Tech will screw publishers over
Larry Ryckman We’ll work together with our competitors
Peter Sterne AI enters the newsroom
Cassandra Etienne Local news fellowships will help fight newsroom inequities
Anna Nirmala News organizations get new structures
Jonas Kaiser Rejecting the “free speech” frame
Raney Aronson-Rath Journalists will band together to fight intimidation
Cory Bergman The AI content flood
Don Day The news about the news is bad. I’m optimistic.
Julia Beizer News fatigue shows us a clear path forward
Alexandra Svokos Working harder to reach audiences where they are
Priyanjana Bengani Partisan local news networks will collaborate
Delano Massey The industry shakes its imposter syndrome
Paul Cheung More news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact, not eyeballs
Jacob L. Nelson Despite it all, people will still want to be journalists
Mauricio Cabrera It’s no longer about audiences, it’s about communities
Eric Thurm Journalists think of themselves as workers
Bill Adair The year of the fact-check (no, really!)
Sarah Stonbely Growth in public funding for news and information at the state and local levels
Sue Cross Thinking and acting collectively to save the news
Brian Stelter Finding new ways to reach news avoiders
Nicholas Jackson There will be launches — and we’ll keep doing the work
Eric Holthaus As social media fragments, marginalized voices gain more power
Basile Simon Towards supporting criminal accountability
Nikki Usher This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!)
Sarah Marshall A web channel strategy won’t be enough
Daniel Trielli Trust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil.
Rachel Glickhouse Humanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor
Zizi Papacharissi Platforms are over
J. Siguru Wahutu American journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies
Anika Anand Independent news businesses lead the way on healthy work cultures
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau More of the same
Andrew Donohue We’ll find out whether journalism can, indeed, save democracy
Andrew Losowsky Journalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter
Jaden Amos TikTok personality journalists continue to rise
Molly de Aguiar and Mandy Van Deven Narrative change trend brings new money to journalism
Tre'vell Anderson Continued culpability in anti-trans campaigns
Alex Sujong Laughlin Credit where it’s due
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Mission-driven metrics become our North Star
Simon Galperin Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media
Gina Chua The traditional story structure gets deconstructed
Lisa Heyamoto The independent news industry gets a roadmap to sustainability
Francesco Zaffarano There is no end of “social media”
Nicholas Thompson The year AI actually changes the media business
Alex Perry New paths to transparency without Twitter
Taylor Lorenz The “creator economy” will be astroturfed
Jenna Weiss-Berman The economic downturn benefits the podcasting industry. (No, really!)
Jim Friedlich Local journalism steps up to the challenge of civic coverage
Sarah Alvarez Dream bigger or lose out
Esther Kezia Thorpe Subscription pressures force product innovation
Ståle Grut Your newsroom experiences a Midjourney-gate, too
Mael Vallejo More threats to press freedom across the Americas
Barbara Raab More journalism funders will take more risks
Felicitas Carrique and Becca Aaronson News product goes from trend to standard
Anthony Nadler Confronting media gerrymandering
Ayala Panievsky It’s time for PR for journalism
Moreno Cruz Osório Brazilian journalism turns wounds into action
Sumi Aggarwal Smart newsrooms will prioritize board development
Janelle Salanga Journalists work from a place of harm reduction
Wilson Liévano Diaspora journalism takes the next step
Bill Grueskin Local news will come to rely on AI
Dominic-Madori Davis Everyone finally realizes the need for diverse voices in tech reporting
Cindy Royal Yes, journalists should learn to code, but…
Elite Truong In platform collapse, an opportunity for community
Christina Shih Shared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials
David Skok Renewed interest in human-powered reporting
Janet Haven ChatGPT and the future of trust
Peter Bale Rising costs force more digital innovation
David Cohn AI made this prediction
Jim VandeHei There is no “peak newsletter”
A.J. Bauer Covering the right wrong
Laura E. Davis The year we embrace the robots — and ourselves
Alan Henry A reckoning with why trust in news is so low
Kavya Sukumar Belling the cat: The rise of independent fact-checking at scale
Nicholas Diakopoulos Journalists productively harness generative AI tools
Laxmi Parthasarathy Unlocking the silent demand for international journalism
Burt Herman The year AI truly arrives — and with it the reckoning
Sarabeth Berman Nonprofit local news shows that it can scale
Mario García More newsrooms go mobile-first
Johannes Klingebiel The innovation team, R.I.P.
Joe Amditis AI throws a lifeline to local publishers
Kaitlin C. Miller Harassment in journalism won’t get better, but we’ll talk about it more openly
Doris Truong Workers demand to be paid what the job is worth
John Davidow A year of intergenerational learning
Victor Pickard The year journalism and capitalism finally divorce
Walter Frick Journalists wake up to the power of prediction markets
Ben Werdmuller The internet is up for grabs again
Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen Searles DEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse
Kathy Lu We need emotionally agile newsroom leaders
Michael Schudson Journalism gets more and more difficult
Christoph Mergerson The rot at the core of the news business
Alexandra Borchardt The year of the climate journalism strategy
Jarrad Henderson Video editing will help people understand the media they consume
Mariana Moura Santos A woman who speaks is a woman who changes the world
Dannagal G. Young Stop rewarding elite performances of identity threat
Eric Ulken Generative AI brings wrongness at scale
Khushbu Shah Global reporting will suffer
Joanne McNeil Facebook and the media kiss and make up
Rodney Gibbs Recalibrating how we work apart
Shanté Cosme The answer to “quiet quitting” is radical empathy
Kaitlyn Wells We’ll prioritize media literacy for children
S. Mitra Kalita “Everything sucks. Good luck to you.”
Surya Mattu Data journalists learn from photojournalists
Upasna Gautam Technology that performs at the speed of news
Megan Lucero and Shirish Kulkarni The future of journalism is not you
Amy Schmitz Weiss Journalism education faces a crossroads
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Well-being will become a core tenet of journalism
Tamar Charney Flux is the new stability
Snigdha Sur Newsrooms get nimble in a recession
Josh Schwartz The AI spammers are coming
Jessica Maddox Journalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture
Masuma Ahuja Journalism starts working for and with its communities
Anita Varma Journalism prioritizes the basic need for survival
Joshua P. Darr Local to live, wire to wither
Cari Nazeer and Emily Goligoski News organizations step up their support for caregivers
Emily Nonko Incarcerated reporters get more bylines
Sam Gregory Synthetic media forces us to understand how media gets made
Stefanie Murray The year U.S. media stops screwing around and becomes pro-democracy
Hillary Frey Death to the labor-intensive memo for prospective hires
Gordon Crovitz The year advertisers stop funding misinformation
Emma Carew Grovum The year to resist forgetting about diversity
Sue Robinson Engagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality
An Xiao Mina Journalism in a time of permacrisis
Ryan Nave Citizen journalism, but make it equitable
Jessica Clark Open discourse retrenches
Errin Haines Journalists on the campaign trail mend trust with the public
Leezel Tanglao Community partnerships drive better reporting
Amethyst J. Davis The slight of the great contraction
Michael W. Wagner The backlash against pro-democracy reporting is coming
Jennifer Choi and Jonathan Jackson Funders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs
Brian Moritz Rebuilding the news bundle
Richard Tofel The press might get better at vetting presidential candidates
Juleyka Lantigua Newsrooms recognize women of color as the canaries in the coal mine
Sue Schardt Toward a new poetics of journalism
Julia Angwin Democracies will get serious about saving journalism