The Objective

Author photo of Sarah J. Jackson by Andrea Kane. Cover of A Second Sight provided courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers. In 2020, newsrooms local and national — from the Kansas City Starto the Los Angeles Times and NPR — issued apologies for past racist coverage and pledged to commit themselves to more equitable reporting and hiring. But even then, Black journalists talked with University of Pennsylvania associate professor Sarah J.

Collage of images by James Salanga. Handshake vector via Amtec Photos, top headline from a 2024 Women in Journalism release and bottom headline from a 2025 article in The Guardian. When I left the newsroom in 2023, I did not yet see the scope of what I would face as a freelancer. At the time, I knew freelancing would offer me flexibility to write more of the arts criticism I loved after spending years as one of the only writers of color in a legacy business newsroom.

Photo credits, clockwise starting from left: Screenshot from an Inquest Q&A with Christopher Blackwell; excerpt of an issue of The Prison News via JSTOR archives; the collected author photos for John J. Lennon, Phillip Vance Smith II, Blackwell, and Kwaneta Harris; the headline for the Bridging the Gap conference program, courtesy of Haymarket Books. For years, Christopher Blackwell attended journalism conferences the only way he could: calling in remotely from prison.

Now-independent journalist Joy Reid at NBC Politicon in 2018. Photo via Wikimedia Commons and mouse cursor via Siemens. While on vacation, Amber Ferguson received a generic email that would alter the trajectory of her journalism career. She had worked at The Washington Post for nine years as a senior video journalist for the watchdog publication’s Metro section before covering online trends as a rapid response culture reporter.

Archival photo of journalists in the Radio-Canada/CBC newsroom in Montreal, Canada. Speech bubbles have text from the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2026 ethics week and Anthropic’s Claude interface, edits by James Salanga.

A memorial for Alex Pretti on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, where federal agents killed Pretti on Jan. 24, taken Feb. 3. The memorial, consisting of flowers, candles, and signs, was erected following Pretti’s death. Photo by Chad Davis. In January, federal agents in Minneapolis publicly executed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, inciting growing U.S. and global anxiety around escalating fascism and authoritarianism in the U.S. government.

Three of the many Self Magazine articles discussing chronic illness and disability. Collage by James Salanga. This story was originally for Mother Jones and is republished with permission. Last week, the publishing conglomerate Condé Nast shuttered Self, a women’s health publication that in recent years had turned to publishing service journalism on chronic health conditions that was both practical and normalized living with chronic illness.

An illustration from the Journalism + Design Lab. Visual credit to Kiss Me I’m Polish. Who in your community is keeping you connected and informed right now? Maybe it’s a journalist, but for many, newsrooms aren’t the only — or even main — places people are getting their news and information. Librarians, community organizers, elders, and social media influencers are stewards of news and information in our communities right now.

An edit of the One World Trade Center, where the Condé Nast offices are located. Image by Praneeth Thalla, via Wikimedia Commons. Edits by James Salanga. Whether relationship advice on dating within your friend group or rollbacks to trans rights, Them has been a publication where campy culture coverage thrives alongside essential news for the queer community online.

Image courtesy of Ravenous, logo by Sara Hartley. Sometimes, a chef will think: Oh, I wish I could run this restaurant with this philosophy of service and style. Then, they’ll meet a chef with a similar idea, and decide to work together — maybe months, maybe years after they hatched their initial plan. That’s what happened with Ravenous, the newest worker-owned food journalism cooperative, said co-founder Ashok Selvam.