The Objective

Collage by James Salanga. Photo of Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore; photo of journalists at 2014 N3Con courtesy of the Asian American Journalist Association’s Asia chapter. This year’s N3Con in Bangkok was a shadow of its former self. Once attended by upwards of 300 attendees — Asia-based journalists and editors writing for American or European media — the latest conference’s attendance fell to less than half that number.

A quote from the USA Today Co. newspaper unions’ statement against the USA Today Co.-Palantir partnership, via the NewsGuild-CWA, atop a photo of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement visit at Canton, Mississippi, in 2019.

Collage by James Salanga. Headline via Axios, air purifier image via . At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many access needs — like remote and hybrid work, which disabled people had been long asking for — became the norm across journalism and other industries.

Despite industry uncertainty, historically Black colleges and universities have offered respite for Black student journalists, including me. My classes at Tuskegee University centered the Black experience as the status quo — I was part of the majority living in a world where I would always remain the minority.

The Objective is proud to announce that its co-executive directors — James Salanga and Gabe Schneider — have received the Asian American Journalists Association’s (AAJA) 2026 Award for Leadership in Diversity & Solidarity. The award recognizes individuals, teams, and organizations that consistently demonstrate a commitment to AAPI diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging in media.

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.