How do we build the journalism ecosystem we need to tell the stories that our movements need to tell? How do we make audible the voices of movement leaders and rank-and-file participants, and provide the narrative frameworks and understanding that can help social movements advance in the public sphere?  

In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion about the crisis of local news. That crisis is very real. Fortunately, it is getting greater attention of late from both local communities (more and more residents are becoming contributors to local news organizations) and philanthropy. No one would suggest that these efforts have been decisive yet—there is still a lot of building to do. But there has been movement. 

Yet there is another crisis of journalism that gets far less attention, and that is the regional and national gap in what a coalition of Southern journalists helpfully termed movement journalism, or “the practice of journalism in the service of…social, political, and economic transformation.”

The recent UPS contract campaign provides a powerful example of what I am talking about. If the 340,000 drivers, dispatchers, and warehouse workers at United Parcel Service were a city, they would be the 57th biggest in the United States, just around the size of Cleveland or New Orleans. These workers handle a massive share of our logistics-driven economy. Had they gone on strike this year, it would have been one of the largest strikes against a single employer the country has ever seen. Fortunately, although this is subject to a ratification vote, it appears that workers have achieved a decent contract—with the strike likely averted.

But this discussion raises a larger question about the nature of the journalistic enterprise. Think about it. Outside of the context of a strike or threatened strike, we don’t hear about this community of package delivery workers much. When we do, only rarely is what we read or see or hear grounded in a narrative of solidarity and economic democracy rather than adopting a corporate gaze that focuses on the potential for disruption. How can the journalistic needs of this massive community and its daily struggles be met?

In the past decade and a half, there’s been a remarkable effort, led by a coalition of innovative journalists and engaged philanthropy, to reinvent the foundations of journalism for local communities. This movement, which has helped catalyze nearly 200 new nonprofit newsrooms since 2009, is driven by the idea that, in the wake of the collapse of local journalism’s traditional advertising business model, democracy at the local level faces an existential threat—and that meeting this threat requires rebuilding the foundations of local journalism, with new models for revenue and engagement.

Read the full article about building back journalism by John Duda at Nonprofit Quarterly.