This week’s top story is the next column in Lewis Raven Wallace’s series making the case for movement journalism. In it, Wallace argues that the “slam dunk” purpose of the work is to create archives — and preserve stories of struggle for future generations to draw hope from.

In this issue:

And also: A new worker-owned outlet focused on reproductive justice, Vox Media Union calls for support on eve of contract expiration, data breach at Lee Enterprises, and Poynter working on a tool to track threats to press freedom. Plus, the resource of the week is a digital safety kit to beef up your online security.

—James Salanga

When authoritarian governments want to make dissidents and queers disappear, one of their first moves is to extract us from the archives.

In just the first two months of the second Trump administration, hundreds of pages disappeared from government websites. Pages honoring Black, Navajo, and Japanese soldiers and pilots, pages recognizing LGBTQ history and the Stonewall uprisings, pages with any mention of transgender people, immigrants, women, or diversity all went away as archivists and activists raced to preserve them. (Some, such as Department of Defense websites about Navajo Code Talkers and the Tuskegee Airmen, were later returned to view after a public outcry.)

State and local governments are actively pursuing authoritarian book bans inside of public schools and libraries, and in many state prisons, many materials that revealed resistance or discuss race or gender have already been systematically censored for years. 

I think of archives as possibly the simplest and most attainable purpose for movement journalism — the “slam dunk” purpose. What we create doesn’t have to reach a large audience. It doesn’t have to contain every voice or address every angle. It just has to document the truth right now, to get a story of struggle or survival into an archive that lasts long enough for another generation to see.

The threat to our stories of liberation and justice is real and ongoing. But through archiving, even if we lose our fights, the next generations have a shot at learning what we attempted and how — and countless people have been inspired by the unlikely documentation of courageous acts in history, from Spartacus’ slave rebellion to the tales of Haitian Revolution, the underground railroad, and global LGBTQ movements.

“When I saw archives of Black women organizing, or of queer folks surviving and thriving in the 20th century, it was foundational to my identity formation,” said Ashby Combahee, a librarian and archivist at Highlander Center. 

Read the full column on The Objective.

—Lewis Raven Wallace

—————

The mom of a trans girl pleaded with a New York Times producer not to use audio captured in a vulnerable moment. Against her will, the company is slated to use the clip for its new podcast. Read more in The Objective.

Autonomy News, new worker-owned outlet covering reproductive justice, launches: The newsroom is “created and owned by reproductive rights and justice journalists” Garnet Henderson and Susan Rinkunas, whose aim is to “write about bodily autonomy and attacks by politicians and activists who want to undermine it.”

🧬 Read the announcement in Autonomy News.

Vox Media Union seeks support as contract nears expiry: The contract is set to expire in 7 days, and union members say they’re looking for support to push Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff to agree on their proposals “on pay, benefits, use of AI, layoff protections, creating one union for WGAE members at Vox Media, and other open items before the June 12 deadline.”

✊ Read the petition at the Writers Guild of America East.

Data breach at Lee Enterprises affects nearly 40,000 people: The newspaper giant was hit with a ransomware attack in February and learned 39,779 people were impacted by the data breach. “Lee is one of the largest newspaper publishers in the U.S., and provides publishing technology and web services to more than 70 publications,” reporter Zack Whittaker noted.

💻 Read the story in TechCrunch.

Poynter set to launch tool tracking press freedom threats: “We’re here to document and describe the erosion of press freedom — clearly, publicly and before it’s too late,” Poynter managing editor Ren LaForme writes. The newsroom’s media business reporter Angela Fu has also pivoted to covering these threats to media, and Poynter says the online resource tracking threats to the First Amendment will launch “soon.”

📰 Read the story in Poynter.

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 digital safety kit curated by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The tips curated in this digital safety kit are meant to help journalists keep themselves and their sources safe, and are intended as a “general starting point for journalists looking to increase their digital safety.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists has also compiled more detailed security advice in its Safety Notes.

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

— 30 —