When I think about what people need to sustain themselves — like a living wage, access to food and clean water, empathetic healthcare and shelter — and how current power structures make having those needs an exception, not a rule, I wonder: How impactful is simply chronicling people’s stories?
This question has been rattling around my head this past year. But I’ve found, if not an answer, some clarity about moving forward in organizer and abolitionist Mariame Kaba’s focus on transforming harm.
“I want to figure out how to transform harm in every possible context because I have been harmed, and I have harmed other people,” she said in a 2019 interview with writer, scholar, and cultural organizer Eve L. Ewing.
Next year, I want more people to ask: What would journalism premised on harm reduction look like?
It would be one aware of reporter-source power dynamics — how journalists, under the apparatus of news-gathering and especially in times of crisis, have made people feel like their pain is trivialized.
It would take steps to acknowledge historical breaches of trust while being transparent about how interviews are being used and what the interview process looks like.
It would be clear-eyed about the harm the legal system can bring to survivors of violence and assault and critically evaluate police press releases, instead of assuming good faith when speed is needed.
It would commit to acknowledging and apologizing when commitment to so-called neutrality has misrepresented the stakes of violence against trans people, and to developing — then pursuing — a plan to do better.
It would outline what resources exist for people in their communities and invest in ways to share information with people where they’re at.
It would affirm that there is no “post-pandemic” — that millions of people have died and are dying from COVID-19 or from complications after they’ve been infected — and share information about the most useful ways to keep each other safe.
There are people already asking about what a journalism grounded in harm reduction would look like, but I hope next year brings more.
The work I do at The Objective, while separate from my day job, is also intimately connected to it: It can be hard to imagine doing journalism differently without examples of experiments in progress, whether that be chronicling the movement journalism pursued at places like Scalawag and Press On or looking at the importance of giving student journalists credit for their work.
Through the partnerships The Objective makes and the pieces we choose to publish, I hope it can be one of a growing number of blueprints for how to build a journalism rooted in harm reduction not just for the stories that get told, but for the journalists, present and future, who are making them.
There is no one answer or one specific strategy that will get us closer to a less harmful journalism — there is only the effort we make together.
Janelle Salanga covers Sacramento communities for CapRadio and co-founded The Objective.
When I think about what people need to sustain themselves — like a living wage, access to food and clean water, empathetic healthcare and shelter — and how current power structures make having those needs an exception, not a rule, I wonder: How impactful is simply chronicling people’s stories?
This question has been rattling around my head this past year. But I’ve found, if not an answer, some clarity about moving forward in organizer and abolitionist Mariame Kaba’s focus on transforming harm.
“I want to figure out how to transform harm in every possible context because I have been harmed, and I have harmed other people,” she said in a 2019 interview with writer, scholar, and cultural organizer Eve L. Ewing.
Next year, I want more people to ask: What would journalism premised on harm reduction look like?
It would be one aware of reporter-source power dynamics — how journalists, under the apparatus of news-gathering and especially in times of crisis, have made people feel like their pain is trivialized.
It would take steps to acknowledge historical breaches of trust while being transparent about how interviews are being used and what the interview process looks like.
It would be clear-eyed about the harm the legal system can bring to survivors of violence and assault and critically evaluate police press releases, instead of assuming good faith when speed is needed.
It would commit to acknowledging and apologizing when commitment to so-called neutrality has misrepresented the stakes of violence against trans people, and to developing — then pursuing — a plan to do better.
It would outline what resources exist for people in their communities and invest in ways to share information with people where they’re at.
It would affirm that there is no “post-pandemic” — that millions of people have died and are dying from COVID-19 or from complications after they’ve been infected — and share information about the most useful ways to keep each other safe.
There are people already asking about what a journalism grounded in harm reduction would look like, but I hope next year brings more.
The work I do at The Objective, while separate from my day job, is also intimately connected to it: It can be hard to imagine doing journalism differently without examples of experiments in progress, whether that be chronicling the movement journalism pursued at places like Scalawag and Press On or looking at the importance of giving student journalists credit for their work.
Through the partnerships The Objective makes and the pieces we choose to publish, I hope it can be one of a growing number of blueprints for how to build a journalism rooted in harm reduction not just for the stories that get told, but for the journalists, present and future, who are making them.
There is no one answer or one specific strategy that will get us closer to a less harmful journalism — there is only the effort we make together.
Janelle Salanga covers Sacramento communities for CapRadio and co-founded The Objective.
Andrew Donohue We’ll find out whether journalism can, indeed, save democracy
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Kathy Lu We need emotionally agile newsroom leaders
Snigdha Sur Newsrooms get nimble in a recession
Mael Vallejo More threats to press freedom across the Americas
Emily Nonko Incarcerated reporters get more bylines
Laxmi Parthasarathy Unlocking the silent demand for international journalism
Alex Perry New paths to transparency without Twitter
Raney Aronson-Rath Journalists will band together to fight intimidation
S. Mitra Kalita “Everything sucks. Good luck to you.”
A.J. Bauer Covering the right wrong
Alexandra Svokos Working harder to reach audiences where they are
Joshua P. Darr Local to live, wire to wither
Michael W. Wagner The backlash against pro-democracy reporting is coming
Janelle Salanga Journalists work from a place of harm reduction
Sue Schardt Toward a new poetics of journalism
Dominic-Madori Davis Everyone finally realizes the need for diverse voices in tech reporting
Hillary Frey Death to the labor-intensive memo for prospective hires
Jonas Kaiser Rejecting the “free speech” frame
Matt Rasnic More newsroom workers turn to organized labor
Kaitlin C. Miller Harassment in journalism won’t get better, but we’ll talk about it more openly
An Xiao Mina Journalism in a time of permacrisis
Kavya Sukumar Belling the cat: The rise of independent fact-checking at scale
Victor Pickard The year journalism and capitalism finally divorce
Peter Sterne AI enters the newsroom
Surya Mattu Data journalists learn from photojournalists
Ben Werdmuller The internet is up for grabs again
Sarah Alvarez Dream bigger or lose out
Masuma Ahuja Journalism starts working for and with its communities
Amy Schmitz Weiss Journalism education faces a crossroads
John Davidow A year of intergenerational learning
Brian Moritz Rebuilding the news bundle
Pia Frey Publishers start polling their users at scale
Nicholas Thompson The year AI actually changes the media business
Sarah Marshall A web channel strategy won’t be enough
Molly de Aguiar and Mandy Van Deven Narrative change trend brings new money to journalism
Martina Efeyini Talk to Gen Z. They’re the experts of Gen Z.
Rachel Glickhouse Humanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor
Jessica Clark Open discourse retrenches
Ryan Nave Citizen journalism, but make it equitable
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Well-being will become a core tenet of journalism
Errin Haines Journalists on the campaign trail mend trust with the public
Jennifer Choi and Jonathan Jackson Funders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs
Parker Molloy We’ll reach new heights of moral panic
Sam Gregory Synthetic media forces us to understand how media gets made
Mariana Moura Santos A woman who speaks is a woman who changes the world
Johannes Klingebiel The innovation team, R.I.P.
Peter Bale Rising costs force more digital innovation
Jacob L. Nelson Despite it all, people will still want to be journalists
Eric Nuzum A focus on people instead of power
Larry Ryckman We’ll work together with our competitors
Jesse Holcomb Buffeted, whipped, bullied, pulled
Josh Schwartz The AI spammers are coming
Janet Haven ChatGPT and the future of trust
Tim Carmody Newsletter writers need a new ethics
Sumi Aggarwal Smart newsrooms will prioritize board development
Felicitas Carrique and Becca Aaronson News product goes from trend to standard
Taylor Lorenz The “creator economy” will be astroturfed
Juleyka Lantigua Newsrooms recognize women of color as the canaries in the coal mine
Emma Carew Grovum The year to resist forgetting about diversity
Don Day The news about the news is bad. I’m optimistic.
Christina Shih Shared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials
Kerri Hoffman Podcasting goes local
Christoph Mergerson The rot at the core of the news business
Joanne McNeil Facebook and the media kiss and make up
Laura E. Davis The year we embrace the robots — and ourselves
Jakob Moll Journalism startups will think beyond English
Lisa Heyamoto The independent news industry gets a roadmap to sustainability
Moreno Cruz Osório Brazilian journalism turns wounds into action
Anthony Nadler Confronting media gerrymandering
Sarah Stonbely Growth in public funding for news and information at the state and local levels
Julia Angwin Democracies will get serious about saving journalism
Leezel Tanglao Community partnerships drive better reporting
Nikki Usher This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!)
Ståle Grut Your newsroom experiences a Midjourney-gate, too
Upasna Gautam Technology that performs at the speed of news
Alex Sujong Laughlin Credit where it’s due
Brian Stelter Finding new ways to reach news avoiders
Jenna Weiss-Berman The economic downturn benefits the podcasting industry. (No, really!)
Joe Amditis AI throws a lifeline to local publishers
Alexandra Borchardt The year of the climate journalism strategy
Francesco Zaffarano There is no end of “social media”
Rodney Gibbs Recalibrating how we work apart
Kaitlyn Wells We’ll prioritize media literacy for children
Ryan Kellett Airline-like loyalty programs try to tie down news readers
Bill Adair The year of the fact-check (no, really!)
Jennifer Brandel AI couldn’t care less. Journalists will care more.
Eric Holthaus As social media fragments, marginalized voices gain more power
Ariel Zirulnick Journalism doubles down on user needs
Priyanjana Bengani Partisan local news networks will collaborate
Mauricio Cabrera It’s no longer about audiences, it’s about communities
Zizi Papacharissi Platforms are over
Jaden Amos TikTok personality journalists continue to rise
Joni Deutsch Podcast collaboration — not competition — breeds excellence
Ayala Panievsky It’s time for PR for journalism
Walter Frick Journalists wake up to the power of prediction markets
Sam Guzik AI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results.
Mar Cabra The inevitable mental health revolution
Richard Tofel The press might get better at vetting presidential candidates
Kirstin McCudden We’ll codify protection of journalism and newsgathering
Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen Searles DEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse
Daniel Trielli Trust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil.
Gordon Crovitz The year advertisers stop funding misinformation
Elite Truong In platform collapse, an opportunity for community
Doris Truong Workers demand to be paid what the job is worth
David Cohn AI made this prediction
Tre'vell Anderson Continued culpability in anti-trans campaigns
Gabe Schneider Well-funded journalism leaders stop making disparate pay
J. Siguru Wahutu American journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies
Julia Beizer News fatigue shows us a clear path forward
Anika Anand Independent news businesses lead the way on healthy work cultures
David Skok Renewed interest in human-powered reporting
Nicholas Jackson There will be launches — and we’ll keep doing the work
Jim VandeHei There is no “peak newsletter”
Anita Varma Journalism prioritizes the basic need for survival
Jarrad Henderson Video editing will help people understand the media they consume
Khushbu Shah Global reporting will suffer
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau More of the same
Amethyst J. Davis The slight of the great contraction
Michael Schudson Journalism gets more and more difficult
Dana Lacey Tech will screw publishers over
Barbara Raab More journalism funders will take more risks
Tamar Charney Flux is the new stability
Cari Nazeer and Emily Goligoski News organizations step up their support for caregivers
Paul Cheung More news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact, not eyeballs
Sarabeth Berman Nonprofit local news shows that it can scale
Wilson Liévano Diaspora journalism takes the next step
Al Lucca Digital news design gets interesting again
Delano Massey The industry shakes its imposter syndrome
Mario García More newsrooms go mobile-first
Jody Brannon We’ll embrace policy remedies
Cindy Royal Yes, journalists should learn to code, but…
Karina Montoya More reporters on the antitrust beat
Jessica Maddox Journalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture
Eric Ulken Generative AI brings wrongness at scale
Esther Kezia Thorpe Subscription pressures force product innovation
Dannagal G. Young Stop rewarding elite performances of identity threat
Nicholas Diakopoulos Journalists productively harness generative AI tools
Megan Lucero and Shirish Kulkarni The future of journalism is not you
Basile Simon Towards supporting criminal accountability
Jim Friedlich Local journalism steps up to the challenge of civic coverage
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Mission-driven metrics become our North Star
Andrew Losowsky Journalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter
Susan Chira Equipping local journalism
Stefanie Murray The year U.S. media stops screwing around and becomes pro-democracy
Ryan Gantz “I’m sorry, but I’m a large language model”
Cassandra Etienne Local news fellowships will help fight newsroom inequities
Gina Chua The traditional story structure gets deconstructed
Burt Herman The year AI truly arrives — and with it the reckoning
Sue Robinson Engagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality
Sue Cross Thinking and acting collectively to save the news
Alan Henry A reckoning with why trust in news is so low
Simon Galperin Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media
Cory Bergman The AI content flood
Bill Grueskin Local news will come to rely on AI
Shanté Cosme The answer to “quiet quitting” is radical empathy