Throughout 2020, journalists across the country have shared their best practices for working through the pandemic. As we approach 2021, we’re asking what they learned this year and what they hope to learn in the year to come.
Names: Alicia Bell, Collette Watson & Joseph Torres
Current role: Three creators of Media 2070
Previous Institute Q&A: How Media 2070 seeks to transform news
What are the main lessons you learned this year from your reporting that you’ll use next year?
Media 2070: We learned that people, both within the media and journalism sector and beyond, are really ready for transformative change in this space. We saw it in the newsroom reckonings happening from New York to LA, but we also heard local community organizers and residents lifting up the ways that newsrooms and newsroom coverage impacted their communities during elections and throughout the various Black liberation uprisings. When we released Media 2070: An Invitation to Dream Up Media Reparations, so much of the response was: “Tell us what to do.” We were prepared to process the information with folks and help bring folks into aligned dreaming and visioning but we really underestimated how ready so many people would be for media reparations right now. We’re taking that urgency and the need for change yesterday alongside the continued desire to move in alignment and vision into 2021.
How did your work change during the pandemic?
Media 2070: As much as we’ve loved the innovation and experimentation in trying to adapt new technologies or old technologies in new ways, the thing we’ve missed most is being able to gather with people in person. That’s really shifted our work because you build deeper trust and relationships when you’re able to at least have in person touchpoints and we haven’t had much of that at all this year. Our team is remote with folks from North Carolina to DC to Arizona and we’re organizing and strategizing with people across the country, so we’re accustomed to remote work, but the remote work without opportunity for in person connection is difficult. At the same time, this pandemic has forced us to be reflective, even when timelines speed up and that balance is something that we really appreciate.
What do you hope to learn or cover in the coming year?
Media 2070: In 2021, we’ll be building out a platform for media reparations across cultural, institutional, philanthropic, and governmental sectors. We’ll be building that with a consortium of people — technologists, artists, community organizers, journalists, entrepreneurs, funders, lawyers, etc. If you can name a person that has a role to play in the media, we’re looking to collaborate with them. We’re so excited to figure out what lives in that platform so that we can develop the strategies to make the platform real. In addition to that, we’re hoping to get answers to questions like:
- What is the financial value of media reparations? What is the cost of exclusion from ownership, leadership, generational wealth, etc.? What are the equations that help us calculate that amount?
- Where could funds for a media reparations fund come from?
How are you taking care of yourself now that you weren’t at the beginning of the pandemic?
Bell: I’m saying yes less in order to deepen and sharpen what I’ve already said yes to. This year has taught me so much about right sizing pace and commitments and that’s something I’m hoping to lean into more in 2021. I’m also checking my phone less in the morning and starting my days with movement, usually turning on some music and dancing before I start the day.
Watson: I’m taking a step back more often to think about “why,” instead of just ticking off the to-do list. I’m taking lots of morning walks and weekend hikes — looking at the stars at night and taking time to enjoy nature.
Torres: I started hiking for the first time, searching out and exploring different trails. I am also reading about issues of structural racism in other sectors such as housing and the environment in an effort to learn about potential policy solutions that can work to achieving media reparations.
In other words, put your Tin Hat back on? Why don’t you Start by Freeing Julian Assange? There’s still time from grassroots organizing!!