Reflections on the past year

Hey y'all! We're coming at you with a special weekend birthday edition of The Breakdown. Yes, I know we are one of those people that celebrate their birthday for a week. As you look at your inbox this morning, I hope this can be a nice read from your bed or settle in for a scroll with your weekend coffee.

We're feeling grateful and inspired lately following our one-year anniversary— grateful for our amazing team and our supporters who have been behind us as we go against the grain of traditional journalism and inspired by our community and our contributors who have so much laid ahead for you.

Thank you for helping us bring the AfroLA community together and making our job intellectually satisfying. Scroll down to read from our founder and executive director, Dana Amihere, about reflections from the past year and what's in store ahead.

Happy reading,Shwetha

FEATURED STORY

AfroLA turned one! But, we’re far from done.

by Dana Amihere

How did we get our audience, and who even is reading our stuff?

We are so grateful for the support we garner from journalism organizations, journalism researchers, and student media, but we've been working hard on trying to reach the people we want to serve from historically-marginalized and vulnerable communities. As you might know (or have experienced unfortunately), lot of people in both these groups have been exploited by journalists who only use them as “color” for stories, as witnesses, or as outsiders. Even worse is that many traditional journalists never seem to actually build relationships with the community members they are reporting on. We appreciate the legacy of love ’em and leave ’em by existing local news, especially in the Black community. We hope that through our reporting we can build trust among people who are unfamiliar with us.

Have you ever heard of solutions journalism?

So, "solutions journalism" isn’t about us solving the world’s problems or about writing about them (everyone is doing that). We don't want to keep reiterating the litany of problems that we all already know about. True solutions journalism explains with insight, context, and nuance their impact, who’s accountable, and who they affect.

How are we by the community, for the community?

We are so proud that we have a diverse staff, but sometimes, we are not the best equipped to tell the story. Instead, it should come from a voice in the community. During our first year, we passed the mic to community members to write about personal experiences and issues that matter to them as well as students looking for opportunities to share their stories and hone their storytelling skills.

We're working on expanding the newsroom experience through our learning lab with Santa Monica College where we've hired two of our paid contributors and from our partnership with Da Vinci Schools’ high school programs in El Segundo (you might recognize the inaugural episode of In Living Color from last week which was produced by DVHS students!).

So, what's ahead? I want more!

Book club - We’ll talk about identity, race, justice, and more, centering nonwhite and local voices across genres.

Environmental justice investigations- We are working on two projects: one on racial inequities in the clean transportation transition, and another on a series around how structural racism, such as redlining, has impacted climate and environmental equity in South Los Angeles and for other Angelenos of color across the region. Stay tuned for more info on this in future newsletters!

We hate to ask, but we genuinely cannot do our work without your support. We really see the value of what we're highlighting in our community, and we hope you do too. If you enjoy our content and want to support local organizations, please consider donating to AfroLA 💞 We will love you forever. Seriously.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Every now and then, our AfroLA publishes articles on Medium, to reach a wider audience, give candid thoughts on the state of journalism, and reiterate our sense of purpose as we go out in the world creating AfroLA. Our featured story from this week was originally posted on Medium, so here are some more articles that you should read from AfroLA contributors on Medium:

• Better Black news is key in LA, and beyond

• How To… Be Unapologetically Black

• Meet AfroLA’s Board of Directors

• Your news needs (and wants), Part 1: How we plan to address them

• Your news needs (and wants), Part 2: What we’ll cover, and how we’ll do it

• Los Angeles needs Black news that isn’t one-size-fits-all

What do you think about our newsletter?

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 I'm obsessed!!! I stare at my inbox until the edition arrives.

🔥🔥🔥 It's cool, I read it when it comes.

🔥 Ehhh...it's fine. Maybe I'll skim through it.