Today’s digest features our first story for our upcoming print magazine, Since 2020, coming out later this year. (More info on how to order the magazine coming soon!)

Reporter Fallon Brannon spoke with professors and students at historically Black colleges and universities to contextualize how havens of Black journalism and learning have been affected by the Trump administration’s attacks on equal rights policies as industry promises in 2020 have flagged.

This week’s bit more media section includes updates on shrinking science desks and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staff’s union paper, among others. Find an abbreviated version of our media links on Instagram each week. (Previous week’s here.)

—James Salanga

Despite industry uncertainty, historically Black colleges and universities have offered respite for Black student journalists, including journalist Fallon Brannon.

“My classes at Tuskegee University centered the Black experience as the status quo — I was part of the majority living in a world where I would always remain the minority,” Brannon wrote.

Among the over 100 recognized HBCUs in the U.S., more than 30 offer degrees in journalism or communications-related fields. But those universities are under attack in today’s political climate while administrative censorship and press suppression are actively impeding the advancement of student reporters. Still, journalism professors across HBCUs say they’ve adapted curriculum to ensure they remain present to guide aspiring Black journalists, and their students agree.

“At HBCUs, we’re not fearful, because we’ve been denied so much historically,” Texas Southern University assistant professor Serbino Sandifer-Walker said. “We have to move in a certain way, but we will always tell the truth.”

Read the full story.

SPONSORED CONTENT: This issue was sponsored by Press On.

You're invited to Press On's virtual Movement Journalism 201 workshop on Wednesday, August 12, 2026 1:00-3:00pm ET / 12:00-2:00pm CT / 10:00-12:00pm PT. Register here by August 5th to save your spot!

In this Movement Journalism 201 session with Prism features editor and Press On Freedomways Reporting Fellowship coordinator Tina Vasquez, participants will learn how to sharpen what the industry vaguely refers to as “news judgement.” Considered a core editorial process, how newsrooms discern what is newsworthy is anything but objective. Using the principles of movement journalism, participants will determine how to hone in on the story they want to tell, examine inventive reporting formats for centering the most impacted, learn creative strategies for safely reaching impacted sources outside of nonprofits and other organizations, and receive training on how to navigate sticky issues that often arise in reporting.

Register by August 5.

This training is intended for participants who already have an understanding of movement journalism principles and commitments. If you would like to review them, they are broken down in Press On’s Movement Journalism 101 zine. We ask that each registrant make a sliding-scale contribution ($1-$125), but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Hope to see you there!

📉 With the threatened removal of media ownership caps on broadcast TV (the FCC chair Brendan Carr is friendly with major media conglomerates who stand to make a lot of money from these mergers), local TV news could become almost entirely right-wing.

🎙️ Transparency… is good? Sports journalist Pablo Torre interviewed with Variety about why his podcast is so popular, and it turns out people seem to like knowing where their journalism is coming from. “If you can illustrate how you arrived at your findings, people might come to appreciate that the journalistic process is harder than it otherwise looks, and there’s value in that.”

📝 A top foreign correspondent at CNN has only renewed her contract for a year out of concerns of a Bari Weiss take-over. Weiss has been a point of controversy after being appointed “editor-in-chief” of CBS, where she has been accused of requesting last-minute alterations to stories and pulling investigations critical of the current administration.

🔎 The news media is missing this context: Our government is (at least in part) responsible for the explosive diarrhea parasite. Columbia Journalism Review spoke with KFF Health News editor-at-large and CBS’s Céline Gounder about covering science after American science has been gutted.

🪦 FOLLOW-UP: The last dedicated science reporter at the Wall Street Journal has announced her departure from the paper. This follows a general trend of shrinking science desks, seen at the Washington Post, NPR, cable news and other publications — even as climate change worsens and government data grows more opaque.

📰 FOLLOW-UP: Remember the Pittsburgh Union Progress, the union outlet run by striking Pittsburgh Post-Gazette workers? In the wake of the paper’s owners announcing their intent to close the Post-Gazette, followed by its acquisition by Baltimore Banner, a new worker-led news organization has emerged: the Pittsburgh Progress, preview coming July 27.

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 was written by Marlee Baldridge and James Salanga. Thanks for reading. We’ll have more for you next week.

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