IV. RELATED CHALLENGES

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Most newsrooms still don’t reflect the communities that they cover, and participants draw a straight line between that lack of representation in the newsrooms and in the coverage. “That’s a lot of what limits us — just that we aren’t there; we aren’t in the room to make the decision,” Harvey said.

Newsrooms without a cultural knowledge base make mistakes, Pope said. The industry needs more Black and brown people making decisions about what’s going to make the front page, what headline is going to be used if a mug shot’s going to be used. “We see it all the time — white guy shoots up a club, and they show a glittering picture of his family and his kids. Black kid shoplifts: ‘Oh, let’s put his mug shot up,’” Pope said.

Several participants, including Harvey and Obineme, spoke about the need for people of color in leadership and decision-making roles. While representation can be symbolic, in general, having more people of color in newsrooms and positions of power offers a certain comfort or license to tell stories fully and truthfully, Harvey said. Without that critical mass and psychological safety in the newsroom, “very often, this work is discouraged,” he said. “It’s an uphill battle for folks in newsrooms trying to get stories about Black and brown young men told in a very honest and creative way.”

Most of the reporters he’s met at the Chicago Tribune or WGN live in the suburbs, Harvey said. “They don’t know what it’s like living in Chicago. They don’t know what the average Chicago teen goes through,” he said. “They don’t know what the average Chicago mother or father goes through when it comes to making sure their kid is safe out on the street.” Harvey said he doesn’t expect people who don’t have that lived experience to be able to tell the deeper stories of folks who experience the “harshest conditions of Chicago.”

Another factor might be that, as newsroom staffs have shrunk, more reporting is now done by freelancers, who have less say in broader editorial decisions. “When you’re a freelancer, you get a pitch here and there, [but] you might not ever get to see the light of day for a lot of ideas that you might have,” Harvey said. “These people that you interviewed who had these important stories might never get heard by the masses.”

The issue of diversity and who is telling the stories extends beyond news, of course. Touzin points to the work of filmmaker Ava DuVernay. “She’s like, ‘I can’t trust you all to do it. You haven’t done it. I’m going to do it,’” she said. “I think it really has to be just a shift in terms of who are we trusting to do the work and are they then being held accountable to doing the work. I think it has to come from the community.”

Beyond newsroom diversity, diversity of sourcing is also important, Moore said. “If you write a story about sexual assault on college campuses and not include any women, that’s no good,” he said.

Lack of Media Education

Another factor for why media portrayals don’t reflect the realities that people in the communities see may be a lack of media education and literacy. “There’s a huge dearth of media education in Black and brown communities,” Harvey said. “You could be at a high position in education, a great job in law or even in the medical field and have no idea how media works,” he said, such as the editorial process, what an editor does or the difference between a commentator and a reporter.

“These types of things are very basic information about media that people never get introduced to, but they’re important because these are people who are shaping the stories of the world around us. … It ultimately tells us how to look at the world. And when we have these one-dimensional displays in the media that are often crafted by folks who have no experience in what they are talking about, they don’t know anybody who has experience in what they are talking about, then you’re going to get these misconstrued perceptions,” Harvey added.

The bar for media literacy is so low that it’s in the ground, Moore said. Friends and family often ask him whether something is true or not because they don’t know how to find out on their own, he said, adding that he’s in favor of more critical thinking. People often share stories that fit in with their beliefs, he said. “If you think Chicago is Iraq, and everybody’s shooting each other as soon as you get off the airport, you’re going to share those stories, and you’re going to see those stories on the timelines of your friends.”

The Challenge of Building Community

Obineme is quoted later in this report as observing that the Black community in Chicago is not homogenous, including native Black Chicagoans and firstgeneration Black immigrants. Johnson noted that church membership is declining and skews overwhelmingly older.

Black churches are no longer the meeting place for a cross-section of every segment of the Black community that they were, Johnson said. “We can’t continue to look at church.” In addition, the whole concept of community has changed, as families no longer live in the same house forever but tend to move around more, he said. “We have to rethink what community looks like. We have to think outside the box,” he said. “All the politicians, a lot of people, go right to the church to try to solve the problems in the community, [but] the problems have not been solved.”

Block Club Chicago, as one example, organizes its coverage by neighborhood. All these represent different lines along which to organize a community. Part of the challenge is determining which communities are an outlet’s target audience and then building the relationships that allow it to integrate with that community or communities.

News outlets also face a challenge in creating awareness of their brand and differentiating it from other outlets that may already be in the space. To the extent that audiences are aware that a news outlet exists, the news outlet must regularly demonstrate and sustain the value of its coverage to its audiences. Its product must be relevant and authentic and timely to its audiences. For example, if an outlet is only publishing one or two stories per week, then audiences have to see the impact of those stories in proportion to the time that went into their production.

Fundraising

But, of course, one of the biggest challenges is funding. Pope explained that “the big hurdle is gaining capital, having money and having those resources. We got to do what we can to access those. Part of that’s going to be people in positions of power working to unlock that and help train people how to unlock that, right? Part of that is showing pathways for young people, that they can do storytelling, they can be the change-makers [and] they can have a way to combat these narratives.”

Ballesteros was skeptical that private capital has the will or the resources. He argued that “philanthropy will not fix this. Rich people will not care enough to fix this, at least to the point where it needs to be. I really do think that there is no other alternative: There has to be government funding.” Both participants are correct that funding is essential, as the money buys time, and time is the foundation of good journalism: To be done well, reporting very often takes a significant investment of time for individual reporters and for outlets; cementing a relationship of trust with an audience is a slow burn (but can be squandered quickly); and marketplace conditions make quick profits unlikely.

Likewise, building a movement to drive narrative change will also take a sustained and prolonged effort, which requires significant investment. Such a movement should consider multiple avenues that could include:

• Educating audiences to make them more media literate and more aware of media tropes to put them in a position to demand a change from existing media outlets

• Creating incentives for existing media companies to accelerate diversity in hiring to put more empathetic journalists in positions of authority within newsrooms

• Providing seed investment to establish hyper-local media outlets to provide service- and communityoriented coverage

As noted, depictions of young Black men in local media coverage help to shape what the community — and the young men themselves — see as possible. Reporters and editors have to resist easy reductions and stereotypes when covering these stories. (Among other things, this means examining what an outlet’s coverage looks like in the aggregate: If the story “writes itself” or the story Tuesday is indistinguishable from the lead story Friday, then there is a problem.) The remedy is to embrace nuance and context and to expand the scope of the coverage at the level of individual stories and organizational approaches.

‘Embrace Complexity’

Ballesteros spoke at length about the need for the media to “embrace complexity”: “I just think we’re very complicated, and I don’t think we should shy away from those complications because ... they reveal very intense and historical roots as to why things are the way they are.”

Embracing complexity also entails speaking to audiences and including them in coverage. Obineme pointed out that “Black people aren’t a monolith; we are a whole diaspora. And Chicago is filled with concentrations of African immigrants, and we don’t see a lot of coverage on folks [who are] either directly from the continent or [who are] first-gen that have made generations here in Chicago.” Reporters and editors have to reconsider and shift their thinking on what qualifies as “newsworthy” by focusing instead on “stories around the everyday humanity of boys and young men of color.”

News subjects can also embody complexity. As mentioned earlier, crime stories seldom have “the perfect victim” (whose victimhood may be minimized or dismissed in some quarters via the “no angel” trope), while imperfect victims can force reporters to dig deeper into the systems that led to their circumstances.

“There’s a lot of people doing bad things in bad places all over the country, all over the globe, and that doesn’t reflect the reality of who they are,” Touzin said. From her experience as an elementary school teacher and from her work with boys at the ExceptionAL Project, she knows that a person can shoot someone and still be a remarkable human being, she said. “Doing a terrible thing does not deny the fact that you are a worthy human being.”

The fact that a certain number of people were shot over a weekend, for instance, can be “real and true, and it is a part of the story. It’s not the story in and of itself,” Touzin said. She wants to know: “What were all the things that weren’t in place? What were all the messages and images and stories and supports that weren’t in place that allowed you to land in the position that you were and — worst yet — had you believing that was where you were destined to end up?”

Explore Root Causes

McGhee also wants media outlets to explore the underlying issues behind the stories and to ask more fundamental questions about “the systems that cause the problems that we usually see in the news.” He normally sees a “quick hit” about, say, a mass shooting that happened this week but not an exploration of what’s been taken away from the community or what’s happened over time to create the situations behind it.

Add Context

Journalists have to make the effort to include historical, political and sociological expertise in their coverage — by educating themselves and putting experts on the record — to help audiences understand the forces shaping their lives and the ways to influence and improve them.

Follow Up

Obineme noted that local coverage often doesn’t stick with a story beyond the drama of its beginnings: “We also need to address the aftermath of certain situations, whether it’s gun violence or a health epidemic — even with COVID — understanding that it doesn’t stop at the incident.” Simple things such as circling back to a neighborhood to see how a mom is doing after a shooting can make a big difference but often doesn’t happen, McGhee added.

Such a shift requires newsrooms to move away from coverage that resembles the traditional tabloid staple or crime blotter and toward a selective but in-depth approach to individual stories. In some cases, a shift requires dedicating a reporter to a beat. Both approaches take time and resources to look at context, to develop and talk to multiple sources (not just the police), and to commit to following a developing story through to a conclusion that may not be as neatly delineated as a corresponding court case.

Recognize Individuality and Humanity

Johnson suggests setting the bar in the context of the personal and the communal: “For one young person graduated from high school is an achievement, but for another, him getting a job is an achievement.” Reporters must make an effort to engage with different communities to understand the unique challenges and concerns that face sometimes drastically different but overlapping constituencies.

Johnson would also like to see more stories that portray the humanity of the Black person. “I would love for news and journalism and media to depict people living life … people who get up every morning to go to work, they stop and get their coffee, they drop off their kids, they go to work, they labor through a lot, they have to fight — all types of stuff that normal people do. As opposed to just this narrative of fear and violence and all this other stuff — the other side of the life that we’re actually living.”

Report with Empathy

All these situations and approaches should be informed by and can be improved through empathy and a desire on journalists’ part to report every story with compassion and authenticity. (That this hasn’t since been the result in the existing industry is because of the current state of local news coverage and the demographics of newsrooms across the country.)

As Harvey said, “When we have these one-dimensional displays in the media that are often crafted by folks who have no experience in what they’re talking about [and] they don’t know anybody who has an experience on what they’re talking about, then you’re going to get these misconstrued perceptions of Black folks.” Part of the solution, then, is working to support local news organizations working to improve representation, as well as newer organizations that explicitly serve Black and brown communities.

Grow DEI

Harvey laid out the benefits and challenges of producing nuanced, empathetic journalism while working as a person of color in a newsroom: “There’s a comfort of knowing that you are sitting next to another Black person and another Black person — and when your boss is Black — so that if you write this story and tell it truthfully and fully, and maybe that requires you calling out the mayor, maybe that requires you calling out the superintendent of police, you feel that you at least have somebody who’s going to back you on it. There’s somebody who’s going to be behind you, who’s going to encourage this work. Very often, this work is discouraged. It’s an uphill battle for folks in newsrooms trying to get stories about Black and brown young men told in a very honest and creative way on this.”

So hiring people of color and developing them into newsroom leaders is key. “Who is in position in these stations and companies and newsrooms to make these decisions?” Pope said. “Bottom line: [We’ve] got to get more Black and brown people in the industry. And not just in the industry but in positions of power within the industry.”

The Associated Press reported in October, last year, that researchers looking for insights into the current state of journalism were disappointed in the response rate to a survey that looks at representation in newsrooms. And as University of Southern California professor Robert Hernandez noted in that article, “There is no pipeline problem. … We are producing diverse students. The reality is they’re not being hired, they’re not being retained, they’re not being promoted.” (NiemanLab reported on the ultimate results from the report and the “crushing resistance” that researchers met from some quarters.)

One thing that community organizations could potentially do to encourage diversity in newsrooms is to follow and support the reporters and the publications doing it. Many of these organizations are underresourced, Ballesteros said. For example, Injustice Watch is “10 people doing the work of 50,” he said. “That’s the case in so many of these small nonprofit orgs that are trying to fill this gap but are playing with one hand tied behind their back, and they don’t have enough money for copy editors, for all these other positions that make a newsroom function.” (It is important to note that the Robert R. McCormick Foundation awarded Injustice Watch $1.5 million over the next three years to grow its editorial, audience and revenue efforts. Block Club Chicago, Capitol News Illinois and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications are also among the receipients of the foundation’s $7.5 million investment announced before the publication of this report.)

We have to develop a new generation of media professionals who are committed to telling the complex narrative of what it means to be Black and male in America, Touzin said. “And it’ll be nuanced because it’s not all positive — it’s just nuanced, and humanity is complex and complicated.”

“I often think: What would it take to have more Ava DuVernays?” she said. “What would it take for, no matter where you look, the likelihood of seeing at least four different narratives instead of the single kind of narrative that continues to be projected?”

The key to getting more Ava DuVernays — people committed to telling powerful stories about their communities and supporting other projects that do the same — is more capital, training and role models to show young people these paths exist, Pope said.

He named Tyler Perry, Oprah, Ryan Kugler and Issa Rae as other examples of positive momentum. “We can get more of those, more people to lift others up. We can flood the market. We can make sure that these stories are told, these uplifting, positive representations of us are out there.”

But doing that will take building an army of kids who want to tell the stories in their communities, one person at a time. “We’ve got to find a way to reach young people, educate them and equip them with the tools [they need],” Pope said.

Community organizations and foundations can play a role in:

• Fostering media literacy in students and audiences of all ages

• Giving community members the tools that they need to understand, control their news consumption and to participate in the storytelling process — including joining or starting newsrooms

• Supporting journalists and news organizations that are doing it right with capital and other resources

Create Community Partnerships

Several participants proposed community partnerships to start or sustain school newspapers. As noted in the “Related Challenges” section, one cannot overlook the need to foster media literacy in audiences, particularly in communities of color.

Equipping young men and women of color with critical thinking skills and related online tools is essential to help them navigate and assess not only “the media” in its more traditional forms but also social media communities and platforms. A key example is the 2016 election cycle, when, as the Washington Post reported, Russian disinformation networks targeted Black Americans on social media platforms. As Harvey suggests, “giving people that inspiration does come from things like helping fund a school newspaper, helping inspire schools to add ... media to their curriculum as a requirement. Honestly, I truly believe that that should be a requirement for ... graduation.”

A media literacy curriculum can do more than provide the first step to becoming a journalist. It also provides the opportunity to create young citizens who are equipped to inform and educate themselves into adulthood. It can also shape what news consumers expect from their chosen media outlets, educate them on how to identify misinformation, to engage with reporters and journalists, and show them how to use the press to benefit their communities.

Even when news organizations want to cover positive stories, for instance, community organizations may not be equipped to pitch stories effectively.

“Understanding how to frame these pitches and to frame the coverage that you want is essential, especially if you’re sliding into someone’s inbox who has 30 pitches and tips a day,” McGhee said.

But any partnership should not lose sight of the full spectrum of what is encompassed by the concept of “media” in contemporary society. Community partnerships should consider how to encourage young men of color to express themselves across a range of media, including graphic arts, social media and in video formats — because journalism increasingly relies on novel, multiplatform storytelling and because such skills are relevant to contexts and professions outside journalism. This means ensuring that students have models and mentors to show them how to use various tools, to help students use their media skills to tailor a message to various audiences, to encourage experimentation, and to guide them in best practices for building and retaining a community’s trust.

Lastly, it is incumbent on administrators and educators to help participants understand the ultimate goals of the curriculum, emphasizing the values of embracing complexity, empathy and community service. Individual participants may or may not eventually decide to pursue journalism or another form of narrative storytelling as a career, but that decision should not be the measure of the program’s value. AbdusSaboor warned that society “shouldn’t actually put the onus on the community because not everybody in the community is savvy enough to be like, ‘Let me tell my story.’ Not everybody is inspired enough to do that. ... Journalists and media outlets should have more awareness of that, that they should be operating from a place of ... honesty.” But the program can assess its impact by helping all its participants to a more sophisticated understanding of how media ecosystems operate, what the roles and outcomes are and can be, and how to find their own place in it.

Ideas for MBK and Obama Foundation

Participants were asked to share what MBK Chicago, in connection with the Obama Foundation and Public Narrative, can do to grow narratives and portrayals that are missing when it comes to boys and young men of color.

One of the most popular ideas was about growing media literacy, as discussed above. A lack of media education could be keeping more boys of color from being aware of the many jobs in media — not only journalism but in all media, including producers, web developers and more. “Unless a Black kid happens to see another Black person doing it and they take a liking to it, they often won’t ever be introduced to it,” Harvey said.

“There’s a lot of opportunity, I think, with media to change the world we live in,” he added. “That’s … one of the biggest driving factors for why I do this work, why I love doing this work.”

Ballesteros also said helping more young men of color tell their stories would be an important and powerful contribution. “The ability to tell your own story or to at least tell part of your community’s story, through journalism or other means, is … a crazy power to have,” he said.

Other ideas included:

• Leveraging the power of celebrity and influence associated with the Obama Foundation to raise awareness and publicity for nonprofits doing important work. “You don’t get much media, but if we had some of these notable people showing up at our stuff, then here comes the media, here comes the hashtags,” Johnson said.

• Unlocking more resources and capital to enable more people of color to do this important work, including foundational support; scholarships; fellowships; incubators for Black, Indigenous and people of color-led media organizations; and supplemental incomes for teachers, journalists and/or community groups involved in narrative change.

• Training more young people of color to get involved and enter media professions, including school newspapers, adding media to educational curricula or graduation requirements, and mentorships from other people of color.

• Branding the movement — in the way that the rainbow represents the LGBTQIA+ community — and coordinating an awareness day (such as Black Excellence Day) similar to Red Nose Day, in cities across the nation, could also help raise funds to support the work. This could also include awarding prizes or badging/labeling for media outlets and practitioners successfully reflecting the fuller narratives of our communities in their storytelling.

• Creating a style guide with practical guidelines that media outlets can use to help tell truer narratives. (It might be worth partnering with The Diversity Style Guide to help expand and amplify it, which has done a lot of great thinking on this already.)