The Transformative Impact of BIPOC Media Collaborations: How to Build True Power and Sustainability for Black and Brown Communities

7:30PM Aug 24, 2023

Speakers:

Keywords:

community

media

url

audiences

work

organizations

serving

black

epicenter

story

share

content

duck

ricardo

create

support

question

building

people

newsrooms

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we just do it. Hello, thank you for coming. I this conversation is about bipoc newsrooms and collaboratives and power, economic and content and audiences. Thank you for coming. I am joined by three icons and and I want to have each of them just say hello to you and a little bit about the companies that they represent and what they do. If you Sarah, would you

Hi everyone. I'm Sarah Lomax. I'm the president and CEO of Wu rd radio here in Philadelphia. We are celebrating our 20th anniversary this year and we are one of three black owned talk radio stations remaining in the country. The only one in Pennsylvania. So I'm very proud that we are celebrating 20 years because it has not been an easy 20 year journey and I've been running word since 2010. And my family owns the station. And we welcome to Philly. And I'm also the co founder of URL media. I'm the president and co founder with Mitra and we are really excited to share kind of our learnings, our experiences about building this bipoc multi platform network that shares content and revenues and amplifies each other's content to build greater sustainability.

Hi everybody and thank you to the amazing Karen randlett for moderating us today which is not an easy task. In the spirit of bipoc coalition building Karen has been the ultimate ally to URL media. So I just wanted to give her a shout out at the top of the panel. So um, I'll begin with my local news outlet I run Epicenter NYC. We launched in the spring of 2020 in the middle of a pandemic that devastated the neighborhood of Jackson Heights Queens which if there was ever an emblem of bipoc coalition building it would probably be Jackson Heights are the most diverse neighborhood on the planet. And really reeling from the effects of COVID 19 on an immigrant neighborhood that didn't necessarily fit the standards of terms like quarantine and social distancing. And so we were born out of trying to serve and center our community. And in the process of launching epicenter, it really dawned on me that being small, really helps you serve your community very well. You become trusted pretty quickly and you help one person and suddenly you hear from six more or you might hear from that person again. But it's really hard to be discovered on Google or Facebook or Twitter. And so in the process of that frustrating experience, just to be honest, about discoverability of local news online. I was at CNN at the time I was the senior vice president and of course we did not have that discoverability issue at CNN. We basically run the internet right and so I kind of looked at what was working for a CNN and apply that to epicenter. And so Sarah and I, a few months after epicenter was born formed another company called url media. She just mentioned, URL stands for uplift, respect and love. We're a network of community media organizations. Like Epicenter like Wu rd, and an amazing organization you're about to hear about called kelabra. We started with eight such organizations today we have 21. And really our entire ethos of why we launched is kind of the spirit of building bipoc alliances, but not losing who we are and what each of these entities represent in their communities in order to be a part of a broader collective.

And hi, thanks for this nice setup. My name is Ricardo Sandoval palos. I'm actually at PBS. I'm the Public editor at PBS, which is the new fancy name for the ombudsman. So I'm complaint Central. If you have any problems with Elmo, give me a call. And you'd be surprised how many people have a problem with Elmo. But you know, one of the things that happened right around the time when I was starting the job at PBS, I was also in discussions with some folks at an HJ the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, which at the time was experiencing a membership explosion. Interestingly enough, half of the membership that was coming into the group was freelancers or independent journalists, which I think was kind of a bit of a wake up call for a lot of folks, in that the organization started asking itself what are we doing on behalf of our freelancers? I mean, the traditional model is that you help someone try to find a job within established media. And I had long been arguing that for too long, we'd been on the sidelines, waiting for a place at the table. And the number of people in an HJ had heard me say that maybe we build our own damn table. And and so that's in 2018, is when we decided with the help of Alberto Mendoza and BA Schneider came to me and said, Hey, let's start this publication that is going to serve the freelance population of N H. J. and become a platform and outlet for the freelancers. They asked me what we'd like for you to edit it and what would you like to do? How would you like to start it? And I said, two things I need. I need a commitment that we're going to pay on time. And we're going to pay a competitive fee. So we're at $1, a word right now for the experienced writers, and everybody hopefully gets their money within a week, or a week after publication. Which is I think, doing a lot better than a lot of other properties in the freelance business. But the important thing that in my mind came came up was the opportunity to start it with a quality value built in. The only money that I kind of did it as a volunteer for almost two years. In we put all of our money into paying the Freelancers but also into creating a network of experienced, retired and semi retired copy editors and editors who become mentors, and then copy editors for the stories themselves. Because you don't you if you get noticed, for one thing, it shouldn't be the quality of your work. Right. And I think that that, plus the exposure that we got through URL, which is something that we jumped into, right away because I saw this potential for the collaborations all across the board and how wonderful it could be for us to really kind of maximize our presence and and create a flow of content. The cool thing is, is that is that that all led to commercial agreements for Palo Alto, which is now syndicated by advanced local and Microsoft news in commercial agreements. So it's not like they're given us a grant or anything else like that. They're paying us for the content. Now, I've since stepped aside and later, Fernandez, who's an amazing editor in Arizona, is is steering the ship. And it's amazing to see how it's all flowering and growing, and just creating what I believe is a true opportunity to show what we can do when we're given the right set of tools to jump into the fray on our own.

So we had a very spirited conversation to prepare for this and we are heading heading into 2024, which is an election year. And we had a conversation about community and audience and community is where we live and who we love and audience is a bit of a business term. So I just like to start by asking everybody on the panel, what does community mean to you and what does audience mean? Sara? Sara?

So think that Wu rd, you know, so I kind of I'm going to kind of answer your question, but I'm going to kind of speak to something that I think was very fundamental about the creation of URL. And so my entire career has been in this community media space. That's another new like, amorphous term community media. Well, I've been in Black Media. My entire career. And I know that black media has been under resourced, underfunded for centuries for ever. And I try and share that perspective with younger journalists and media owners. Because if you have been in the trenches, preach 2020 You know that it was a fight for survival every day 2020 After George Floyd was lynched, and the racial justice protests emerged, and there was this outpouring of Oh, damn, systemic racism is real this there there actually is anti black racism that exists. So we're going to do this outpouring all you know, corporations and philanthropies and and so you know, after 2020, there was this upsurge, there was this outpouring of of money and support. Now we know that that has started to dry up that is the retrenchment was almost immediate. And we knew that that was going to happen because history told us that was going to happen, and that's three years at just three years, just three years. And so, so, community is essential for hyperlocal media organizations. And so when Mitra and I came together, we said that there are all these media organizations, black media organizations, organizations in the Latino community, the Asian community that have been doing incredible work for decades, but have been under resourced and underfunded and what could we do to create a community of black and brown media organizations that have audience that have great content that have been doing the work? Now that there are some resources coming in that there's this recognition that we've been disempowered and underfunded for such a long time? How could we create a how could we support organizations like Wu rd like epicenter, who don't have scale like Mitra was saying, but have great content great audience trust and all of that stuff, so that we could create a much more vibrant, sustainable organization? And so we looked at the pain points in each of our organizations as local black brown organizations. What are the pain points? Well, for us pain point, it's always revenue. It's always money. So how do we create a network that's going to bring more resources, more money to black and brown media organizations? And so we created this network where we weren't doesn't have a massive audience, but knitted together with Epicenter and palabora and push black and, you know, all of these entities that are a part of the URL network now, we do have scale. And so we can go to national advertisers and say, Look, if you want to reach these audiences in trusted environments, you can come through us and we will, we will allow you in authentic and honorable ways to reach these audiences. And we can bring money to our network members and that is worked. And so I'm going to stop there.

I think you should actually give an example of money that was brought in.

Yeah, well, I mean, so we've had a number of deals. We have an incredible relationship. There's one and it's taken, I just saw duck LUCAM and duck nose. It took us a minute to prove the model. But we have cultivated really powerful relationships, particularly with this agency in New Jersey called Princeton partners. And so we got this amazing deal last September, I think is when we were notified to do a major campaign around vaccination and, and COVID vaccination for the state of New Jersey. And we were able to deploy those resources to all of our partners that touch New Jersey and that has been an opportunity. So we, the majority of our partners have seen tangible revenues come in now. Not all of them because what what has happened is it's very it can be regional it can be they just want to reach the Native American community. They just want to reach the African American community. So we have had to like slice and dice and become very nimble and efficient at serving these, the requests. And at the at the end of the day, though, we feel like we have been redeemed, that this idea of bringing resources to black and brown organizations that otherwise would not have seen that money has shown that this concept that Mitra and I created, has some has value and is is a part of the answer to building power building sustainability building opportunity in bipoc media organizations.

Thank you. I

just invited my colleague Doug Liu up here we are collaborating in real time. So he's now joined the panel everyone I want to say that duck and I worked together he was new to Knight Foundation when he started working with Sarah and Mitra and didn't completely think it was going to work and I think you should share how you've been a convert.

That's that's that's boy, we're really getting into bipoc coalition building and I hope it stays that way at the end of this panel.

less stress, less stress test this duck I'd love to hear from you. Oh, thank

you, Kevin. I really appreciate it. I I am really happy to be here. Thank you for this. I promise you this is this is unprompted on unscripted I, in my first initial conversations with Sarah and Mitra after having not known them, I was deeply impressed with the level of insights that they had about the struggles that bipod publishers had when it came to monetizing, growing and growing their audiences and reaching advertisers. But I admit, after conversations I was skeptical I was deeply skeptical about the approach not because of the work they had been doing, but from the empty promises that I felt that that national advertisers were making when it came to serving and and meeting some of those racial equity and equality goals that they had stated. Right when URL media had started up. It wasn't anything they were doing. Obviously, I need to see the numbers that these that these advertisers are telling us because like, ultimately, this is an ad network. We can measure the success of this, right like it's measured by the dollars that go back into the pockets of these publishers. And if we don't see those dollars, then what are we talking about here? Fortunately, I stand before you a man that is that was wrong. I was just wrong. And I think that part of the success for you our media has been the relentlessness and what Sara and Mitra have been able to do to put together the team to put together the right story in order to talk to the advertisers. And I'm really proud to be able to say that and we are also proud to say that as a result of the conversion night foundation continue to support for Euro media with another $1 million grant in order for it to continue to develop their operations grow and include more publishers. So I think ultimately what I'm really excited to see beyond the growth of URL media itself, is that we're able to put value to black and brown audiences like these are valuable audiences that deserve advertisers looking at them and saying that I need to pay money in order to reach these folks, because they're the ones that I need in order to buy my products know about who I am be part of the culture and having a place like your elmedia be the intermediary for that to happen, I think is an incredible way for them to do it.

Well, I appreciate that duck was willing to be corrected.

Yeah. So publicly. This is pretty remarkable for a funder to come on a panel and say that so thank you duck i

i do want to say to duck is is the one who really brought the investment back to the team and said this is worth supporting. So I just

I wanted to share that became like our biggest champion. So we are we are like very grateful. But what I will say is that and this was kind of the rub with us, between us and duck. Because what I know is that generating revenue for black and brown anything takes a long time. And so I was saying Mitra and I were saying Yo this is going to work, this is going to work. This is going to work but it's going to take time and duck was like well, I don't see it happening. I don't see you gotta you gotta show me the money was basically with duck was saying and fortunately, you know, and I didn't know what the timeline was going to be. But fortunately we got this deal and we were like Yo look it's manifesting

the pull of Jerry Maguire on me and they showed me the money

out of the money. But But I but none of us knew all I knew was from my experience. It takes a it takes a long time to educate and convince and show that your audiences are actually valuable because this country is predicated on not valuing black and brown audiences. So when you are serving black and brown audiences, and that's your priority. There is an inherent bias against our value and fortunately night and you know, these these other advertisers, they are seeing that yes, there is value and you do deserve to be supported.

Thank you. Um, so we were really talking about an effective ad network. I really do want to talk about some of the content sharing. You know, a lot of us come to this work because we want to give voice we want to have voice. So that's an important piece of what we're talking about today. Mitra, would you talk a little bit about the content sharing work and and how you how you at Epicenter have also worked with palabra to

Yeah, this is a great question. So um, so in sort of that feeling of being small that I described. There's a few ways and this does actually get to your other question about defining community, because I actually think of the term as many overlapping communities that we all belong to. Right and in our kind of mainstream framework of local news, it tends to be a pretty bordered, look at people's identities based only on where they live, right. And there's no group I can think of, that better kind of defines overlapping identities. than black and brown people in America, right? Whether it was centuries ago or two weeks ago, everybody has come from somewhere else. In the case of the indigenous community. We've done a lot of work to educate our own members and use native News's content one of our partners to talk about the very real history of the indigenous population in the US, but also efforts to obliterate that population. And so kind of this idea of being defined by being other is actually unifying, right? And so that's, I think, one framework to think about from a content sharing perspective. You know, I'll give you one example with palabra. One of epicenters. Early stories was about the efforts for the undocumented population in New York City to get vaccines. And we're focused on New York City but I got a tip from someone saying there's a group of women, Latinos in Maryland who are organizing on Facebook, to do it kind of similar to what epicenter is doing for its community in Jackson Heights. And so I reached out to palabora And I said, do you guys think this is a story and so not only did they do a story, I don't know if you remember Ricardo, he works at PBS. So he also did a video on it. And we got a translation of that story in Spanish. So suddenly, there's three pieces of content that are in Maryland, right? That's not a local news story for epicenter, and yet this process of helping undocumented immigrants get access to vaccines is 100%, a local news story for epicenter. And so we ran the story. We ran it in Spanish, we share that on our platforms. We share that across social media. And there's something in that moment that makes you feel bigger than you really are which is a lot of what Sarah's talking about the resources and the crunch that I mean, we're all I see people nodding like every morning, you're like, how am I going to how am I going to attack this news agenda? Right? I don't have enough people to do it. And so the beauty of what I just described as it's multi platform, it's multiple languages. And it's also immigrant centered in its approach to coverage, so I feel a trust. So one other way to think about community is that we're also in community with each other. In some ways what we represent in sharing content and revenue is so disruptive to how capitalism and media work, right? If you think about how journalism schools train people, it's sort of this like old school City Hall model of like, elbowing each other at a press conference. And you get the thing first, right that's absolutely the opposite of how we work. And there is this ethos, not just of content sharing, but also sharing, like news tips in the case of Calibra. Just one other thing I'll say is that another way that I think we've worked together is in the measurement of this impact to talk about the value of our audiences. You know, mainstream media again, like we operate in an era of web impressions, but 2023 alone has shown us the economic downsides of that if you look at the implosion in digital media, and thankfully, our partners measure impact through well how many people learned about that at the food pantry, or, you know, did this story run in multiple URL media partners? Were we able as we work with an outlet that all of you should know, that's also a URL media partner documented? If we share tips on how to get your kid into New York City public schools and tests into gifted and talented kindergarten on Spanish speaking WhatsApp platforms, like how many people did we reach that way that we otherwise wouldn't have gotten? So those are some examples of how for Epicenter the being tethered to something greater than ourselves is not just transformative, but actually a necessary part of our journalistic model. The last thing I'll say on that is that there's no we're not strangers to journalism networks, right. Gwinnett McClatchy all represent this same idea of working at scale, but where they failed, was not in resourcing from a community perspective. They tried to create cost centers and we while there's a lot of efficiency that we're bringing, really it's rooted in serving communities. The word serving is used constantly when our partners talk among each other.

Thank you. Yeah, I think that's critical Lanta and I think the the thing that I really love about the URL media idea and now the reality is that it does represent what I believe is for too long, had been considered in other in, in the media landscape in the US, where there were niches for Latino Media. There were niches for for the black. Press right for so long. And all across the spectrum. There were all these little niches that we had. And it was there was a resistance I think and natural resistance to these niches coming together. And what I love about this is that it shows that we're not an other we are actually the mainstream. If you look demographically across the US, and what I what I love about it, is that it gives us an opportunity to tap into other sources of content that can resonate with our intended audience as well. As a story we did early on at palabora, was about Evanston and the and the local attempts to for reparations in Evanston. So people would say, Well, what is that a Latino issue? Well, not specifically, but it is an issue that resonates it's an issue that can show a broader audience how a community is standing up and and holding everybody else to account. And, and I think that kind of story resonates across across the board. I kind of like to to think that it really reminds us reminds me at least, of just our origins, I mean, I was born with a a bruise on my butt, right? That I called it back it's the stain right that the the odd name for it and I really hate the name but it's a Mongolian stain, but it's an indication of your genetic origins. And Mexicans have it Native Americans have it. My daughter had it. Yes, my daughter had it has it still. So if you got that little thing on your bumpers and you're on your butt and you're part of that, but imagine it's across the country, how many communities share that stain. And I think then we can just conceptually take that to the next level and start thinking that we actually share a lot more than than we realize. Just look at it. That the Latino population in the US 25% of Latinos in the US self identify as Afro Latino. And how long has that group gone without a specific voice or a way to get out and up and out with with their messaging? So there's the opportunity is tremendous. I think it's golden.

Ricardo, we also talked to we talked about business, we've talked about content. We also talked about the tensions in our own communities. And how journalism can journalism and reporting and giving voice can work to change those to change our narratives about each other to change our tensions about each other. And we were we were talking about Hispanics Latin ex Latino, not a monolith.

Yet you know, it's it's very true. I mean, I think for too long, I have been in the business for 43 years now. And I can't remember the last time I saw a truly diverse panel say of folks, experts talking about the Latino vote, right? It's, it's usually dominated by and please forgive, like Cubans, right from Miami who are always seen as, oh, how is this bloc going to vote without realizing that 60% of the of the Latino population in the US is actually Mexican American in origin, or in actuality. So it represents a diversity of the vote in the US and that it's not a monolith. And I think that as we rise in medias as organizations and tell these stories, we start realizing that we're actually again, I come back to that point, we're actually America. We're actually the United States and it's true diversity. And the more we do that, I think, the greater our potential audiences are, because then we start resonating within these communities.

I just Can I Can I jump in because I think that and this is something that Mitra and I and the URL team we talk about all the time is that you know, while there is this incredible opportunity, and there's this power in coalition building, across black and brown communities, we also have to look honestly at the kind of racial riffs that are, you know, that exist and have existed. We saw it with the affirmative action. decision and the plaintiffs were Asian American in that thing, and that's a very strategic you know, deliberate plan to get somebody who's not necessarily white to come at an attack opportunities that have traditionally really empowered black people and other people of color. And so I think that for us at URL, to be honest about this coalition building we also have to create space for talking honestly about anti black racism. In Asian communities, in Latino communities in other communities. And we have to talk honestly about what, what that means and how that impedes our ability to work across cultures. And that too, I think is a tremendous opportunity to cross pollinate and to share resources and information across our media outlets, so that we can begin to have those conversations in authentic honest, humane ways because without it, you know, like, bipoc is a great acronym, but, you know, let's be real, you know, there, there is still a lot of anti black racism that runs through all of these communities.

I think just for one note, because you mentioned 2024 Karen, I think, for those of you who were kind of looking at what this coalition building could look like, in the middle of a really contentious election year. While we coalition build, I just encourage all of us to also think about the work we have to do within our own communities. And that plays out journalistically because the language that we're using, or the format's that we're using of stories, probably matters more than ever. And so I'll give you an example. Of course, New York City, you've all seen has been over and over in the news for the influx of migrants is something that you know, within our own communities is creating a lot of riffs as both Ricardo and Sarah have alluded to. And so from a coverage perspective, we sort of go back to the journalism school of on the one hand, on the other hand, right, some immigrants are welcoming the new neighbors with open arms, and some people hate their existence and then we sort of say, okay, good luck to all of you, right. That's how we write these stories. And so if you're epicentre that really doesn't serve anybody, right? So remember the focus on content that Karen asked me on? I think the, the, the core difference is that I'm trying to serve you with content that might make you do something or think differently or learn something. And so, as we've been covering this, our civics writer Felipe Padilla, who's who's excellent, you know, we kind of said to him, how are we going to cover these riffs right? And so in a very plain speaking way, he said, Well, let's, let's address them head on. So, one concern we were getting over and over is I came the right way. I'm seeing groups that are being put up in a hotel room and getting kind of assistance. I did not get any of this right, this this sounds familiar. I'm sure a lot of communities are hearing that type of language from immigrants themselves, and then the use of the word illegal, right? And so Philippe said, seeking asylum in the United States is a perfectly legal right. So for you to say somebody is here illegally, is actually factually inaccurate, right. And so the semantics of how we're even addressing stuff that in the mainstream, I sometimes don't think the time is taken to even strip down the terms and define them. And also with like a whole aside, and we could I'm not gonna get into immigration policy today, but the coverage of legal ways to enter the United States is very flawed. And so we sort of take it upon ourselves to cover it that way. So I just wanted to make sure that as 2024 is looming, that we're thinking about those as conversations with our community. So my hope is somebody reads Philippe's work, and it almost becomes the script, with which we can then go back to our own communities and combat a lot of the inaccuracies that are pervading them.

That that's a critical point because I think it really exposes the need for a cultural competency. And on your on your staff and, and that's why this is one of the important things about the your media URL media network is that I mean, each of the entities has its own set of experts in cultural and competency, right? Because we're the ones who know the context. We're the ones who know the nuances of the reality, for example, on the border, and we know where to go find answers to the question. Why are so many Latinos in South Texas supporting Donald Trump? Well, we can tell you because we know who they are. We know where they are. Why is the issue of border enforcement so complicated? Along the border? With so many families and it's because many of the jobs held in border enforcement are actually held by Latinos? And they're working in positions where they have to enforce a border against their own people, you know, sometimes that you from their own communities back in their native countries. So it's these nuances that are often overlooked in what we loosely define as this mainstream media. But I think it's the reality that hopefully, we can bring out more through through the network.

We do want to open it up for questions. There is a microphone right here if anyone wants to join i Are you joining us we would. Yes, the microphones right here. Ducks taking two questions.

The lights feel like they're brighter here aren't.

I am approaching this is just total fan girl. So I really appreciate you all and I I've had the amazing fortune of working with many of the URL partners and pull them

up to the microphone. So we should tell everyone who you are and what you do, which is pretty amazing too.

I'm Angelica I'm the CEO and editor in chief of Charlottesville tomorrow collabora contributor, as well. Our partnership with palabora allowed us to cover immigration detention in central Virginia. And my question, I'm looking for wisdom here. We're in a small community. Even the term bipoc media is hard. We have amazing black press that we work with very closely. And also a lot of the readership is white. A lot of right. We're a small community, right. So there's no it's really hard to break it up right and say you're a particular kind of bipoc media we we have to have multiracial coalition building. So I'm wondering how you approach that like, how do you think about that question of what, what makes bipoc media and sort of as an add on to that how do you what about multiracial? What about like you know, we have our fastest growing racial population, in a lot of ways is multiracial. So I'd love your wisdom

so I just want to be clear, I'm understanding the question. How do you reach out to white people if you have that question? I wasn't what I

know. My question. My question is we're in we're pretty rural community in central Virginia. So we have like, Charlottesville tomorrow works in Okay, I'm gonna try to make this quick. I'm so sorry. Charlottesville inclusive media. is a coalition of media organizations in central Virginia. And we work with a very amazing black press. And the black press in our area. Also, a lot of their audience is white. So they actually are not just serving black community. They're they're serving people who are hungry for connection in a very segregated society. So I guess my question is, how are you? How do you define bipoc media? What makes bipoc media bipoc media in situations that are very multiracial?

So is your mantra Well, you know, what I'm gonna get. So ownership to me, matters. Ownership is essential. And so you know, the URL so URL media a lot started with, you know, black and brown owned media. Organizations. And we quickly had to evolve from that because nonprofit media organizations are not necessarily owned by, you know, a black and brown person, but so it's owned or LED. Now, but you know, that that so, but to me, I've really feel like ownership gets to the heart of your ability to set an agenda to prioritize who and what you're going to do what your values are, and it speaks to your how you empower your your, your staff, your community, all of those things. Because, you know, like, and URL was founded as a for profit entity. And we did that very intentionally because we believe that the racial wealth gap that persists it's I was looking at the stats I don't remember I think for for black family, their wealth is like $24,000 annually for a white family. It's eight it's like 125,000 You know, so and that's something that is not budging, that that gap. And so we wanted to create URL as a response or as a part of a response to this racial wealth gap. And having the organization as a for profit entity, there's a possibility for creating more opportunity, wealth, creation, all that stuff. I don't know if I'm answering your question. But I know that bipoc is kind of problematic in the black community yet.

I think it's problematic in a lot of communities, even the white community because they might not know what it means or be. It sort of contributes to the narrative that I'm sure many of you have heard. And we've written about as well. If you're white, you're not going to be a part of this. You're not able to get a job, you won't get into college. So it continues the language of exclusion that white people are feeling and guess what they're acting against it right now, as we're seeing the not just resistance of dei but actively saying we will not fund efforts that support diversity. So I mean, I think one thing i plus one on the ownership just because when you're the media owner of an entity you get to frame coverage in the lens, quite frankly with how you see the world, right? And they used to say like news is what happens to the publishers wife and for so much of my career. I was like, I am the publisher, and I'm the wife right? And so I think like it that lens is yours and when you own it, it's really real, I think just some language and I'm happy to follow up with you on this or if anyone is interested. I think some of the language Epicenter uses for example, when we have events, or events are intentionally inclusive, even if they're members only events, we will turn to community organizations and say, Here's five free tickets because we know that that will diversify. who's in the room and the reason people are members of our organization is because they want a diverse inclusive experience, right? That's who we're serving. And so I really don't have interest in serving people who don't want to be a part of those efforts. And so I think a lot of us, like and I'm sure you all feel this way at conferences, we spend so much time focusing on the people who hate us. Right? And I'm trying to reach people who I think really deserve to be at the table or to be served or need information in ways that they're not being reached otherwise. Um, so I'm happy to share some of that language of inclusion around events because it's been transformative people now, like well send us emails saying, like, we just did a tour of TWA, the new hotel, which is like a mid century modern hotel, and we got an email saying, Hey, we saw the language. My father used to be a baggage handler at the TWA terminal. Can he come on the tour for free? And we were like, Oh my God, that just made such a better tour. Right. So of course we let him come on. So things like that, I think. And then last thing I'll do is just mentioned is that there are communities. So one that comes to mind as we were working on our vaccine efforts, the folks who had time and digital capacity to volunteer was a largely white group. And so coming out of having served a largely immigrant population, the diverse neighborhood of Queens, and I get on a zoom call, and suddenly there's like 200 white women from New York City. Well, guess what I'm going to address that that's not who we are. And so if they're like, We have to be upfront about that. And actually, it led to a lot of thoughtful discussions on how do we serve people and not have whiteness? be saving people write and so I think that's fine to call that out. I

write it just real quick. Add that in HJ National Association, Hispanic Journalists, is not a monolith. I have white friends who are very experienced journalists. who want to participate who wants to help. And the requirement is to be a member of an HJ and this is well I'm not Latino, but you know, you can be an associate member of HJ and our the bylaws rank and file is aware the roster contributors is his rainbow. picture on the contributors page. You can see everybody there. Right. And when we've had contributions, we've done collaborations with NAB j with Aja, we've had some really wonderful stories. About the strife that's affecting Asian Latinos in the US. So it's just a matter of looking at the actual spectrum of people within the organization. So we can't overlook anybody really, the key is the resonance of the story and the quality of the product,

I think, Oh, thank you. I want to I want to give Jack a chance to,

I just want to add, I really appreciate the perspectives of other publishers here and I'm going to speak from my perspective when I was the publisher of The Washington City Paper for about three years in DC and I think there's a real clarity that we have to have as leaders of newsrooms around the outcomes that we want to seek in our communities. Right. I think it at City Paper, one of the initiatives that we led was one where we focused on black moms who have a maternal mortality rate in Washington DC, not just in DC, but in DC where we were serving that is five times higher than white moms. And there was a very simple outcome that we wanted to get there is that we wanted fewer black moms to die. It that was it. That is the outcome that we wanted to have for the community. And what we did, we built an initiative around that we got black moms involved built focus groups to the audience listening did reporting followed up with it, talk to the hospitals talk to the policymakers build that coalition because we knew we had one metric that we wanted to go for and what and so I think having a clear sense of what the outcomes are that we want for our communities, is incredibly important to give clarity to the to the newsroom. And we can call that a bipoc outcome, but it's just a bipolar. There's just it's just something that why wouldn't you want that if you're living in this area, and I'm the sustainability guy tonight. I for some reason I have it in my title. And I think that just to link outcomes and communities with financial outcomes for newsrooms, right? Like the if you think about where the URL media is going to be the reason why it reverses, but where the growth has come in terms of financial outcomes for nonprofit newsrooms has been from philanthropic sources and from individual donor donations. And donors. What do those people care about? They don't care about audience reach, which is what the advertisers that your own media is approaching for. They don't care about that. They care about are you helping me achieve outcomes that I want to make my community a better place to live? And the way to do that is say like, you know, we have these things in mind. We want to achieve these things. We did that. Do you want more of that? Do you want fewer black mom's dime because here's how we helped contribute to that goal. It's measured by this and here's how we did it. And I think that was a very and that's how you end up linking community outcomes with financial outcomes for newsrooms.

I wanted to mention to their two stories. There is a reporter who was working in I believe it was San Juan County, Utah, probably paid about $60,000 a year. And through the reporting, figured out that a certain firm was taking money that they shouldn't have been taking $109,000 a year by reporting on that that was uncovered $60,000 To get back $109,000 in taxpayer dollars. You know, there are lots of arguments to be made for the the the financial value of journalism to healthy community. The other thing I want to say really quickly was you mentioned the black press is also read by white audiences who want connection is connection. What the business model is, is that the outcome, that's a great outcome, lots of media is about fear. So, yeah, those were your words. I you know, there may be something deeper to to pull from that.

Let's hope not all the questions get this much answers.

I just want to add, I just want to add one other concrete thing that we do at URL that I think could be valuable for for what you're you're trying to get to. We are very intentional about supporting Black and Brown vendors. So if we are you know, if we are a bipoc organization, we make sure we are like we just did a retreat we stayed at a black owned bed and breakfast we did our dinner at a black owned restaurant. So where you spend your money also is indicative and reflective of your values. And so that's, you know, there's a there's a business component to our media organizations, and we can influence how we support bipoc communities that way as well. Michelle Hello, Michelle

feria, this issue of BiPAC media and how we define ourselves and lumping people of color into this group and making othering of this group makes things very challenging because in fact then by labeling ourselves in that way we see the kinds of activity happening whether it's in the VC world, or on organizations that are pulling together. coalition's to do this work at the local level. We see attacks on their websites, we see attacks on their personnel, we see attacks in lawsuits against them for the very focus on their communities that they're trying to bring. And so what do we need to do in the philanthropic areas to make sure that we're supporting them for the long haul, to be able to do the work knowing that the complexities of their work is far greater than the mainstream media that's serving those communities?

I mean, I do think what Sarah says is worth underscoring that we're supporting not just bipoc media but an ecosystem and so I think I just want to underscore the vendors and businesses and really seeing support as widespread with the goal of power and wealth creation. Right. And just to be explicit that it's okay to be seeking wealth for our communities, as opposed to constantly training our communities to do better, because if there's any lesson of the last few years, it's really not that there was anything wrong with us, right? It's not that suddenly being able to perform will undo you know, decades centuries of injustice is and so, like one area that I think is worth mentioning, um, URL runs a arm of recruitment, that lander Ayala who started in the second row, overseas and inclusive talent development and a lot of talent and training programs looks at people of color with deficit like something's wrong with you, we got to fix you. You got to stay, you know, sit up straighter in a meeting. You need to get rid of your effect. Your accent your you know, you must speak with addiction that's kind of, you know, like, Midwestern plain or what all the things that they teach you. We don't do that we operate from a place of affirmation. So while we're labeling our community, some of it is just an acknowledgement of whether we like it or not, we will be labeled by mainstream America. Another piece of it is being very proud of that. Right and being very affirming in that. And the last thing I'll say, and I think Karen alluded to this with our the economics of our network, but it's also the demographics, right? 80% of the global population is black or brown. And so the numbers are on our side. To not just be the other but actually the majority of the world. So I think I think that's another approach. I don't know Ricardo, if I know you

know, I think I think it's a it's critical, and it's an important point. And I think there's a thing that I've seen in my, again, 40 years, it just kind of shows how old I am. But this transformation I've seen in our business, is that, for example, the accents in broadcast it when I was younger, it was always seen as problematic if you had a heavily Latino accent on air. We actually had a couple of stories in Florida, talked about to people who experienced this in their careers, and how they turned it around. And actually, that's become a strength for them. Right. I spent a few years at NPR and the people who said this would always follow up by saying oh, just joking, but they were always pointing to how beautiful the guest was going to be because they had a great British accent, which by implication was that all other accents and actually did hear a complaint about one guest that I had brought on to the Morning Edition show, who had a Latino accent he was from El Salvador, but he went he attended to went to Stanford, and he was educated. He was a really smart individual, but the accent was something that, you know, put people off. I've seen less than less of that now. Even at NPR, we're starting to see this ship turn as battleship is finally turning. And there is this realization that we are not the other and come back to that point again. And I think that's so critical about the United States is that we are not an other right we are we are the main stream. And I think URL media stands for that. And that's what's so cool about it.

We are at five o'clock. I want to thank Ricardo Mitra and Sarah and our guest star duck Lou.

I want to thank Karen This is the Peregrine. Let's be careful on that right here

guys. Thank you for coming. And please if you have more questions about URL media or palabora, or how to get involved in that, please come up thank you