Dear M—
I realize that my last email to you was on the salty side, having had another one of those days that comprise one of those careers in the media. This message starts the same, but I assure you, my anger is a means to a beneficial end: the decolonization of the news.
First, let me share this morsel of truth from my friend Kristine Villanueva, a journalist with Resolve Philly’s “Equally Informed” project. During an interview earlier this year, she said of journalism:
Objectivity was made by a bunch of white people who didn’t want to recognize systemic issues.
When the media publishes a Black victim’s irrelevant police record, it sustains white supremacy. When it describes East Asian spa employees only as sex workers, it amplifies misogyny. When it blames unemployment insurance payments and not abysmally low wages for the shrinking labor force, it exploits workers for capitalism’s gain. When it promotes diversity as a brand, it sells colonialism.
The news fools us into believing that we can make "informed" decisions when the system has already decided for us.
In response, I want to develop a news service that functions as mutual aid, something that supports the community’s survival while it confronts the root problems. But the information has to come from the community, be written for the community, to serve the community.
If someone wants to know how best to survive in this neighborhood, then let’s seek out and share our neighbors’ advice—they’re the real experts! If a landlord wants to evict a tenant, let's learn how to keep that renter in her home—and then let’s exercise those rights with our neighbors. If a cop tickets a street vendor, let's look up his disciplinary record with the police department—and then let's publish that cop's prior offenses.
There's a lot of criminal activity happening in our community, but it ain't the people committing the crimes, and it certainly ain’t the existing media reporting it. I want to tear down that media and build something that makes a difference for the better in people’s lives. Let me know if you want in.
Take care,
Jennifer