How founding the first investigative unit at a Black newspaper created a virtuous circle

As a reporter, photographer and now editor, I’ve always been motivated to tell the stories of those among us whose voices are least heard and represented in our media. Over the past three decades that desire has led me to report on communities of color around the world and throughout the United States, primarily for the Black press and other independent news organizations. It also led me to found Blacklight, the first investigative unit at the Amsterdam News, a legacy Black newspaper in New York City. It’s also the newspaper where I started my journalism career while still in high school.

I started Blacklight to fill a specific need: to help the paper better serve our community by adding investigative capacity and to provide a home for investigative journalists of color. At the same time I believed investigative journalism would help drive revenue. For decades the Black press has struggled to get its fair share of advertising revenue and as I noted in an op-ed I co-wrote “from 2013 to 2017, $1.1 billion in grants were awarded to the flagging journalism industry — but just 8.1 percent was given to outlets that serve so-called “ethnic” communities, women and LGBTQIA+ communities.”

This chronic under-investment in media outlets that serve marginalized communities means that newspapers like the Amsterdam News have limited resources to do the vital work of holding our democracy to account when it comes to the promises made to our communities of color. Five years ago the Amsterdam News had only two staff reporters to cover a city with a Black population of nearly two million. Today the paper has five reporters, due in large part to the audience and fundraising growth fueled by our investigative work.

My goal for Blacklight was to also create a kind of proof of concept, to prove to both others in the industry as well as to funders that with the right vision and resources Black and Brown journalists at a news organization of color are capable of producing watchdog investigative journalism of the highest quality. Over the past three years, we’ve won lots of awards for our journalism and helped expand our readership and better serve our community, but my larger goal of expanding investigative capacity at other news organizations is still unmet.

I’ve come to the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford to create a blueprint for community and news organizations of color to be able to create their own investigative units and capacity. For me, creating the first investigative unit at a Black publication was amazing, but true success won’t come until we have been able to replicate the Blacklight model elsewhere and create a thriving ecosystem of investigative reporters of color.

A recent report from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists places in stark relief the challenges that journalists of color face when it comes to becoming investigative reporters and editors.

Every single minority group is underrepresented in the ranks of investigative editors and reporters. Rather than continue to primarily fight for inclusion in mainstream media that, since the release of the landmark Kerner Commission report, has failed to create a media corps that reflects the diversity of our nation, I believe we must increase the capacity of our news organizations of color to be able to train and hire investigative journalists.

Blacklight has shown that investigative journalism can create a virtuous circle: investigative journalism attracted philanthropic support which in turn created freelance and staff capacity for us to do ground breaking journalism. This in turn garnered industry awards and community recognition which increased our audience and revenue through increased subscriptions and donations as well as advertising and sponsorships. This proved to funders that our model was viable and attracted additional philanthropic support.

In 2019 our newspaper had never received support from journalism philanthropy. Since then we’ve raised in excess of $1.5 million including support from some of the largest foundations including MacArthur and Knight. None of this would have been possible without our investigative journalism.

But the news media, and news organizations of color in particular, continue to face strong headwinds as the public gets more and more of its information from non-news sources. The challenge I seek to solve is not isolated and neither is the solution. Investigative journalism can help legacy, community rooted media outlets deepen and reconnect with their audiences and serve them in ways that their mainstream counterparts cannot or will not. This work can help to grow audiences by providing them with news and information they can’t get anywhere else and attract funding from philanthropic and community sources, providing a much needed revenue lifeline for outlets that need to diversify their income streams.

I still believe that journalists, and especially journalists of color, play a vital role in both protecting our democracy and holding our society to account. But in an increasingly crowded information landscape we must do more to serve those who have been ignored and to help our audiences understand why the work we do is both different and vital when compared to the tsunami of infotainment that floods their digital devices. Here at Stanford I am seeking to build connections and learn the strategies I need to build a framework others can build upon.

As part of my work, I’d like to hear from you: If you’re a newsroom leader, what are you looking for in a blueprint? What kind of questions would you like answered when it comes to doing investigative work or getting philanthropic support? If you’re a funder looking to expand into this space, what kind of vision or details are you looking for from a potential grantee?

I’m also hoping to learn the secrets of scaling a successful small idea from the business leaders on and off campus. If you have some insights or suggestions, please drop me a line!