O’ahu and Maui have been enduring a storm that has prompted some of the worst flooding in years — but disaster reporting on the Hawaiian Islands has often lacked context. That’s linked to the history of Native Hawaiians’ exclusion from legacy journalism and the colonization of the islands. So this week’s Objective digest looks at how Native Hawaiians and new newsrooms are trying to shift the culture of journalism across the islands. 

An abbreviated version of our media links is on Instagram each week, focusing on what a handful of those stories say about how power and identity impact journalism. (Previous week’s here!)

—James Salanga

Hawaiian storytelling models have been pushed out through colonization, as with the 90-year school ban of the ʻŌlelo Hawai‘i language. And Native Hawaiian leadership has been more visible in community projects like Hawaiʻi Community Journal and resident efforts like the Hāmākua Times than in the executive staffing of Hawaiʻi’s dominant legacy newsrooms. 

So a wave of newsrooms has been seeking to reconcile the failures of legacy media in Hawai’i by centering Native Hawaiian values and needs, along with hiring Native Hawaiians as part of mastheads.

Read the full story.

🫂 Heartfelt tributes for Diana Fuentes celebrated the late Investigative Reporters & Editors executive director, who had just crossed five years of leadership when she passed away unexpectedly last week. A second-generation Texan and a “pillar of light,” Fuentes was the first journalist of color to lead the organization. IRE plans to honor Fuentes’ legacy by establishing a training fund in her name. 

❌ The New York Times mischaracterized an American Medical Association statement in support of access to and provision of gender-affirming care. AMA leaders said they sent a letter to the editor requesting a public correction, and wrote in a recent newsletter that “our recent response to questions about ASPS’s [American Society of Plastic Surgeons] position statement was intended to preserve — not diminish — access to gender-affirming care.” 

⚙️ ProPublica’s union became the first in the U.S. newsroom to authorize a strike over banning layoffs prompted by generative artificial intelligence. The guild is currently bargaining, but 92% of the workers represented by the union voted to withhold work if the newsroom doesn’t agree to their contract terms.

📉 Shifting right might not be working the way legacy newsrooms hope. Under Bari Weiss, CBS’ ratings for its morning and evening news programs have fallen over the first quarter of 2026, while Alliance for Audited Media found both the Washington Post and L.A. Times’ circulation fell around 20% between March and September 2025.

✍️ Generative AI “as a collaborative editor” in major newsrooms’ opinion sections? Undisclosed? It’s more likely than you think. Newsrooms including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal have said they permit the use of AI in opinion writing — as long as it’s disclosed. (Semi-related: English-language Wikipedia has officially banned the use of large-language models like ChatGPT to generate or rewrite article content.)

Have a story you think we should include in this section of next week’s newsletter? Let us know here or by responding to this email.

This issue is by James Salanga. Thanks for reading. We’ll have more for you next week.

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