Background

As artists, our ability to honor Black stories often relies on journalism, most especially, local journalism. Local journalism shines a necessary (and often singular) light on the political, economic, and social structures in areas often left underserved by national and international news. But local journalism is fading.

“We can measure the loss of local news in recent years in two ways: the loss of newspapers and the loss of journalists. In the 15 years leading up to 2020, more than one-fourth of the country’s newspapers disappeared, leaving residents in thousands of communities – inner-city neighborhoods, suburban towns and rural villages – living in vast news deserts. Simultaneously, half of all local journalists disappeared, as round after round of layoffs have left many surviving papers – the gutsy dailies and weeklies that had won accolades and Pulitzer Prizes for their reporting – mere “ghosts,” or shells of their former selves. Compounding the problem, there has been a lack of capital and funding available to support a variety of for-profit, nonprofit and publicly funded news organizations attempting to thwart the rise of news deserts.”

– Penelope Muse Abernathy. “News Deserts and Ghost Newspapers: Will Local News Survive?” pp 8. University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Hussman School of Journalism and Media. 2020.

Since 2004, more than 1800 newspapers have closed around the United States. In addition to our increasing consumption of digital media since the new millennium, we’re also becoming increasingly accustomed to consuming information for free. While consumer behavior certainly contributes to the decline of local newspapers, these stalwart fixtures of local accountability also face another rising threat: private equity.

Private equity and leveraged buyouts are behind more than half a million lost retail jobs and around 750,000 related supplier/distributor jobs over the past 10 years, and this destabilizing trend has not only expanded to local news, it’s resulted in the loss of hundreds of jobs and dozens of newspapers. Moreover, as dozens of local newspapers continue to shutter in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, we are only beginning to see how this public health crisis will heap gasoline on this particular fire.

Your Story

Qualifying stories must be relevant to Black people in your hometown. For the purposes of this program, your “hometown” can be a place where you are from, have lived, or are currently residing. The hometown must be a news desert, which will be defined as an area that does not receive dedicated news focus by more than 1 media source (i.e. a quarterly paper or local blog.)

We recognize that your story is in development, so focus on sharing the “who, what, when, where, how, and why.” Give us all the relevant context, and let your writing samples take on the labor of showcasing the quality of your writing.