A View from the Field: Fighting for Equity and Justice

A View from the Field is a biweekly feature that highlights the efforts of Free Press’ team of organizers, advocates and leaders. Every other Friday, we’ll provide their updates from the field as they work alongside our amazing allies and activists to create a more just and equitable media system.

• In October, Outlier Media, in partnership with Free Press’ News Voices: New Jersey project and Stories of Atlantic City, evaluated data to identify information inequities in the Atlantic City region. News Voices: New Jersey Manager Vanessa Maria Graber has since helped convene two community meetings to discuss the survey findings and co-create solutions.
• Vanessa and Campaign Manager Madeleine Bair hosted “Community Organizing and Journalism,” a two-part Spanish-language workshop for Latinx journalists in the United States and Latin America.
• Vanessa collaborated with a dozen journalists of color on the design committee that planned the Lenfest Institute for Journalism’s BEYOND conference. Vanessa spoke on the panel “Momentum: Journalists of Color Share How Journalism Can Meet This Moment”. 
• Organizing Manager Alicia Bell also took part in the BEYOND conference, where they discussed Free Press’ groundbreaking media-reparations project, Media 2070, in the panel “Reclaiming Our Stories”.
• Alicia and Senior Director of Strategy and Engagement Joseph Torres talked to a graduate class at Columbia Journalism School about media reparations. The conversation also tackled the U.S. role in global imperialism, media ownership, consolidation and the need for structural change in the news industry.
• News Voices: Colorado Manager Diamond Hardiman and Madeleine led a two-hour training with the TRENDS Reporting Fellowship on information needs and ways to share and build power.
• Co-CEO Jessica J. González spoke on the panel “How Stop Hate for Profit Captured America’s Attention and What’s Next for Holding Big Tech Accountable” at the Never Is Now conference. Free Press helped organize last July’s Stop Hate for Profit Facebook ad boycott, which inspired more than 1,000 companies to pause their advertising on the social-media platform.
• News Voices: Philadelphia Project Manager Tauhid Chappell is taking part later today in the symposium “Black Media-Makers and the Fierce Urgency of Now”. Organized by Sarah J. Jackson of the Media, Inequality & Change Center, the event is exploring how Black media-makers “work to tell stories with compassion and depth despite stagnation in industry diversity, censorship, misinformation, and the weaponization of ‘objectivity.’” Tauhid’s panel this afternoon will examine how independent and grassroots media outlets center issues, voices and stories that are historically excluded from mainstream coverage.