This week, I’m excited to share the news about a new column coming to The Objective — about movement journalism as an antidote to the flagging status quo journalism ecosystem and practice. The limited column series, written by author and activist-journalist Lewis Raven Wallace, will marry actionable strategies with theoretical grounding to etch out movement journalism’s purposes and what it looks like in action. Tell a friend to tell a friend! I’m really looking forward to it. Also, The Objective is going on spring break next week. We’ll be back in your inbox the Friday after next — see you on May 9th.

In this issue:

And also: Washington Post inks deal with OpenAI, PBS lays off all remaining Communities Initiative reporters, what’s happening with Columbia Journalism Review, and WaPo columnist Karen Attiah to run a public class about race, media, and international affairs. And the resource of the week is a guide to reporting and narrative strategies against criminalizing migrants.

—James Salanga

There are plenty of reasons to feel disheartened and disillusioned by the current media landscape. Disinformation is running rampant. Journalists showing solidarity to their counterparts in Palestine are censored and targeted. Those controlling our news sources are increasingly aligned with authoritarianism.

Yet we still need news, even if we have complicated feelings about how it’s getting to us. Enter movement journalism. For The Objective, Lewis Raven Wallace is authoring a new limited-run column to make the case for the longstanding tradition as an alternative to status quo models of journalism. Wallace authored The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity, and he’s also the Abolition Journalism Fellow at Interrupting Criminalization.

In each of the forthcoming ten columns, he’ll present a purpose of movement journalism, along with examples of how those purposes are already being born out. They call the column taken in whole their “draft theory of change for movement journalism.”

“This column is deeply influenced and inspired by the hundreds of people and organizations who have been doggedly building movement journalism infrastructure for decades — including Press On, the members of the Movement Media Alliance, and legacy-building reporters like Marvel Cooke, Ruben Salazar, and Ida B. Wells,” he writes.

Read his full introduction to the series, “The Case for Movement Journalism,” on The Objective.

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As U.S. government data collection and archiving faces an uncertain future, the parallels between government data and journalism reveal both the hypocrisy and naivete of the news industry. Read more.

Washington Post inks deal to hand over reporting to OpenAI: Any financial benefit the Post received from the deal was not listed in the press release. The deal adds to the rolodex of over 20 newsrooms whose reported work ChatGPT features in generated responses to users’ searches. The Post says it remains “LLM-agnostic.”

⚙️ Read the story in A.V. Club.

Last reporters in PBS NewsHour’s Communities initiative laid off: One journalist was the last remaining Black journalist on PBS News’ digital team. The initiative spanned five U.S. cities and covered stories from underreported areas — the reporters were based in Oklahoma, Missouri, and Michigan. “Their loss will be keenly felt,” the union said in a statement.

🎙️ Read the PBS NewsHour Union statement on X.

Behind Columbia Journalism Review’s firing of top editor, financial troubles: Former editor-in-chief Sewell Chan was dismissed last week after an hourlong meeting where “several participants cried” recounting concerns with his behavior. New York Times media reporter Benjamin Mullin also chronicles the backdrop of the 64-year-old magazine’s struggle to raise money as its cash reserve dries up and Columbia clashes with the Trump administration.

🗞️ Read the story via archive.ph.

WaPo columnist opens course on race, media, international affairs to public — after Columbia cancels: Karen Attiah will be offering the course on a sliding scale from $100-500, covering “how constructs of race and identity are formed, and how mass media has historically shaped our understanding of race and the global order.” A portion of proceeds from the 4-6 week online course will go toward mutual aid efforts.

📚 Read more in Karen Attiah’s Substack.

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 week’s resource is … a guide to resist criminalizing migrants, written by Migrant Roots Media and Interrupting Criminalization.

Hey! It’s James here (still). Beatrice is off this week and will be back with another column installment in our next newsletter on the 9th.

Immigrants to the U.S. — especially Black and brown immigrants — face increasingly intense criminalization under this administration. The current violence has only exacerbated the longstanding targeting of migrants, especially as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents seek to meet increased quotas.

“How we talk about migration and borders has a direct effect on how we respond to escalating state violence against migrants,” the guide’s authors write.

This guide offers narrative strategies for journalists looking to include migrant voices without increasing risks or stenographing harmful rhetoric. (Good companion pieces from The Objective are Kate Morrisey’s story about questioning assumptions about migration and Jen Ramos Eisen’s piece on the dehumanizing rhetoric used in articles about international baseball players.)

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

Thanks for reading. We’ll have more for you next week.

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