Poynter: Advice for Young Black Journalists From An OG Snob

I've gone through every bar of Talking Heads' "Once In A Lifetime."

Especially the line: "How did I get here?"

I've asked myself that on multiple occasions because my road in media was so Byzantine. I went from print reporting to blogging to social media editing to TV writing to nonprofit comms to freelancing to leading newsrooms. The only method to my madness was "get in where you fit in." I had no mentor and no strategy beyond I knew how to write, and I knew what people like to read.

Somehow, against the odds, I got where I was trying to go. But there was no guarantee I'd get there.

Only 6 percent of all working journalists are Black.

It doesn’t matter that Black Americans make up more than 14% of the U.S. population. Or that the United States is now more than 42% people of color. Mainstream newsrooms are often bastions of “well-meaning” white people who say they want diversity, but don’t want it at the expense of their friends being passed over in a zero-sum game.

Diversity is often treated as something “nice” to do when times are good, but when budgets are tight and the pressure is on, it’s the first thing to go. Even though diversity makes money and is the right thing to do, most mainstream newsrooms aren’t dedicated to it — they’re dedicated to avoiding discrimination lawsuits. The minute the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission became a weapon against diversity, many dropped their DEI principles to kowtow to a new order that said Black equals inferior.

But I’d survived the traps meant to destroy me because I was forged in one.

The "trap" I was forged in was that I'm Black, and this industry has been in decline since I started in it. It was always adapt or die.

Because what other choice did I have?

Read my advice to young Black journalists on Poynter.