Is Movement Journalism What’s Needed During this Reckoning over Race and Inequality?

From the editor

In her piece on movement journalism, Tina Vasquez reports on this evolving strand of reporting, which aims to produce community-focused, solutions-based stories, but she also writes about writing the piece itself. She struggled with the assignment for months, in part because of how it intersects with her own experiences as a journalist of color navigating toxic newsrooms and in part because of the overwhelming task of trying to define an emerging form.

These two challenges feel like journalism’s challenges, too, as our industry grapples with this moment of racial reckoning in newsrooms, and as we collectively try to define what journalism can and should be in a period of political, social, financial and technological tumult.

The stories we’re sharing seek to address some of these challenges:

• If protests in support of Black Lives Matter are to be accurately portrayed, visual journalism must stop privileging conflict over collaboration and community.
• As disinformation campaigns target the November vote, when is it responsible to use material from hack-and-leak operations?
• Why and how the historically competitive media culture is becoming more collaborative.

These stories show how the coronavirus pandemic and the racial justice movement are exposing underlying problems in journalism but accelerating their solutions as well.

Sincerely,

James Geary
Editor, Nieman Reports

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