25 Nov Reflection on the Lenfest Reimagining Philadelphia Journalism Summit

BY KRISTAL SOTOMAYOR

The Lenfest Institute for Journalism hosted the 2023 Reimagining Philadelphia Journalism Summit on Monday, November 13, and Tuesday, November 14, 2023. The third annual summit was an opportunity to have open conversations about how to build equity in the Philadelphia journalism ecosystem.

Representing the cinéSPEAK Journal, I took part in the “Philly’s News Source Melting Pot” panel moderated by Shawn Mooring (Head of Philadelphia Programs at Lenfest). The other panelists included Larry Platt (Co-Founder & Co-Executive Director of The Philadelphia Citizen), Ashanti Martin (General Manager at WURD Radio), Matt Dennis (Assistant News Director at NBC10), and Irving Randolph (Managing Editor at The Philadelphia Tribune).

The conversation was framed around the new Lenfest report entitled The News Philadelphians Use: Insights from a new study of the city’s news media landscape. Mooring explained the findings, including a disconnect between the coverage that local outlets produce and what Philadelphians want to see. The panel discussed opportunities and challenges in trying to produce news and journalism that supports local residents.

The panel was a great opportunity to discuss bias, connecting with audiences, and collaborations between newsrooms. As the youngest person on the panel working for the smallest publication represented, it was important to me to center community media and storytelling from a place of working within neighborhoods. When talking about how to build trust with an audience, I made a point of bringing up the importance of treating journalists and employees equitably. If the writers trust in the workplace and have the time and energy to report thoughtfully, it becomes easier to build trust with readers and community members. For me, it’s important to keep bringing up issues such as labor practices, transparency, and power dynamics when given these platforms. There were notable differences in perspectives between the people representing more established traditional news sources and the panelists speaking about their newer independent media outlets.

After the panel, various conference attendees told me how much they appreciated my presence on the panel. While we have a lot of valuable lessons to learn from industry veterans, it’s also clear that at least in some spaces, the conversation is starting to change. More people want to talk about unions and fair labor practices for writers and workers. People want to talk about equity in how stories about marginalized communities are told. People want to acknowledge that all writing involves perspective and that we shouldn’t keep pretending to be “unbiased,” especially when that stance typically leads to implicitly siding with the oppressor rather than the oppressed.

As the Editor-In-Chief of the cinéSPEAK Journal, it’s important to me to be in conversation with other folks in the journalism industry and have hard discussions about how we can best support our communities. The conference gave me the opportunity to build new connections and relationships in the Philly journalism world, which is essential for a small publication like ours that wants to do things differently. The cinéSPEAK Journal aims to fill in some of the gaps of film and arts reporting in the city. We work to pay writers fairly, allow time for thoughtfulness in our articles, and be clear about our values. It’s an honor to be part of these conversations and the efforts to build a more equitable journalism culture. I hope that these discussions can continue in the city as other small outlets try to fill in the gaps of the news and information ecosystem in Philadelphia.

*Featured Image: Image of the “Philly’s News Source Melting Pot” panel. Image credit: Zamani Feelings.

Kristal Sotomayor is a bilingual Latinx freelance journalist, documentary filmmaker, and festival programmer based in Philadelphia. They serve as the Editor-In-Chief of the cinéSPEAK Journal and Programmer for SFFILM and Frameline.