As the year draws to a close and Donald Trump’s presidency approaches, I’ve seen and heard a lot of discussions from journalists who are examining the ways their coverage has contributed to Trump’s presidential win. That’s how I found out about the Communities Beyond Elections project, which is focused “on people, not on politicians” and covering “the stories of and from the communities politicians use for votes.”  

It’s one of two initiatives launched under the auspices of the Movement Media Alliance, a coalition of 17 different publishers committed to movement journalism. (The other is Media Against Apartheid and Displacement, a hub for anti-apartheid reporting, which The Objective is also a part of.)

I wanted to learn more about the project and how other newsrooms might adopt a similar lens, so I spoke with two of the MMA folks involved with it: Da’Shaun Harrison, Scalawag Magazine’s co-executive director, and Lara Witt, Prism’s editor-in-chief.

Also, let us know your favorite media criticism of the year! We’re still compiling a list for our final newsletter issue of 2024 — reply to this email with the takes you’ve raved over with friends and coworkers, or tried to implement in your journalism practice before this coming Wednesday.

In this issue:

And also: An update to Free Press’s Reparative Journalism series, AI-powered journalism pollutes Oregon’s local journalism landscape, and federal judge rejects the sale of Alex Jones’ InfoWars to The Onion.

—James Salanga

Here’s an excerpt of my Q&A with Da’Shaun Harrison and Lara Witt, which more broadly looks at how the Communities Beyond Elections project is grounded in movement journalism, what it would take for newsrooms to shift their beliefs about what election coverage should look like, and more:

The Objective: What are some of the limiting beliefs around electoral politics and our political structures in general that you've seen play out in mainstream journalism?

Lara Witt: Writing negatively about politicians or questioning the things that they push, as well as their policies or lack of policies, usually limits the sort of access that they [journalists] then have, which then affects the kind of journalism they're going to end up doing.

… It's really up to readers and media consumers as well as movement journalists to present an alternative. CBE, as well as our other [MMA] projects, are a place where people can find their reliable information, because if they can't find it fact-checked and well-sourced and really rigorous within journalism spaces, they're going to start relying on conspiracy theories and social media only, and just get sound bites that are devoid of context. That then leads you to a pipeline of bullshit into a funnel of alt-right stuff to then just sheer fascism. The more people are disinformed, the more that they're scared, the more we see fascism become ascendant, which is what we've witnessed in the last 10, 15 years.

Da’Shaun Harrison: There is this general narrative, I think, or at least one that is budding, that's coming on the back end of a decade since the start of the BLM movement, where folks are like, “Okay, how we engaged electoral politics for these past 10 years has not worked.”

So the question then becomes, then what do we do?

What I think is happening now is that movement media is in a very specific space. We're having to counter the ways that fascism is being built on the backs of fear from people who have either, for a long time, felt the need to move further and further right, or who don't have any real clarity on what it means to move further left — while also navigating cutting through the noise of neoliberals who have made it their business to support establishments.

Witt: Movement journalism is also a form of political education. We're providing people with a critical lens, a critical analysis to look at the systems they live within, and to be able to read a piece at like, NBC, that's parroting anti-trans narratives.

It’s our responsibility to give people the tools for media literacy so that they can spot like … manufacturing genocide shit over at the NYT just within a minute of reading a piece just by being able to identify, who did they source? Who wrote the piece? How come the person who wrote that piece lives in a place that ejected Palestinians from their home in the 1970s and the 1980s? How come so many [news bureau chiefs] happen to have strong ties to the [Israeli Occupation Force] IOF?

We need our readers to be able to ask those questions.

Continue reading the full Q&A on The Objective.

—James Salanga

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Young reporters covering Palestinian solidarity encampments show taking a stance doesn’t sacrifice accuracy and has historical precedent. Read more.

Free Press releases third video in Reparative Journalism video series: The newest video looks at the healing power of storytelling, with Black journalists Tonia Hill and DaLyah Jones sharing their experiences practicing reparative journalism and emphasizing storytelling’s ability to “facilitate individual, communal and societal level healing.” Each video in the series looks to examine how journalists can grapple with the industry’s anti-Black roots and continued harm while embarking on repair.

🔨 Watch the latest video on Free Press’s Youtube channel.

AI “slop” is already invading Oregon’s local journalism: Reporter Ryan Haas covered the takeover of the Ashland Daily Tidings — which shuttered in 2023 — by scammers using generative artificial intelligence. The story, a cautionary tale about unregulated AI and the disappearance of local news in Oregon’s rural communities, comes after Wall Street Journal owner Dow Jones signed a landmark deal with nearly 4,000 news publishers for Factiva, its own generative AI research tool.

🤖 Read the story in OPB.

Federal judge rejects the sale of Alex Jones’ InfoWars to The Onion: U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez cited concerns about transparency in the auction after a two-day hearing in Houston. Families of the Sandy Hook victims had backed The Onion’s bid, and the satire outlet had planned to relaunch InfoWars as a parody in the new year. Now, the trustee who oversaw the auction will determine next steps.

🧅 Read the story in HuffPost.

This week’s resource is the Press in Prison guidebook.

This handbook from Scalawag Magazine provides insights for journalists from incarcerated writers and the editors who work with them. It’s also accompanied with a virtual workshop for journalists about how to create systems to sustain and integrate reporting from prison into your newsroom's workflows.

For more style guides, journalism job boards, and tip sheets, check out The Objective’s resource list.

Thanks for reading. We appreciate you being here, and we’ll have more for you soon.

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