OUR CORE VALUES

We commit to creating a publication by and for the people of Philadelphia.

• We aim to support writers, filmmakers, and mediamakers in Philly by creating jobs at the journal and bringing back equity in storytelling to the communities in our city.

• While the journal covers events and films across the globe, we always aim to draw connections to Philly and support Philly writers through our editorial decision making.

We commit to building a leadership structure, editorial staff, Editorial Collective, and communities of contributors that counteract the ways in which both the moving image and journalism industries have grossly failed communities of color and other historically excluded communities.

• Our journal will center the voices of:
  • Black, Brown and Indigenous Peoples of color.
  • Women-identifying people
  • People who are LGBTQIA+, Two-Spirit, Trans, genderqueer, gender nonconforming, nonbinary, and/or queer.
  • Those who are disabled, immigrants, formerly or currently incarcerated, or have other lived experiences that are historically excluded from journalism and mediamaking.

We commit to intentionality in deciding who tells which story.

• Given the ways that the film industry consistently tells stories from the perspectives of the oppressor/privileged, we aim to make intentional choices about who writes each article, taking into account what each writer’s personal perspective and experiences brings to the story.

We commit to a culture of transparency in our collective process.

• We aim to be as open as possible about our internal processes, including how we hire, how much we pay, how we make decisions, who makes up our leadership, and about our core values. 
• We plan to generate an annual report to give our communities a clear and detailed picture of the work we’ve been doing and how the journal affirms its core values.

We commit to a porous and adaptable future where we are defined by the wants, needs and desires of the people of Philadelphia, our writers, and our readership. 

• We are open to learning and recognizing our mistakes as growth opportunities.
• We seek regular feedback from our contributors and our larger communities.
• We value listening, accountability, and healing in our process of becoming the best publication we can be.

‘I think there’s…a silence within the film industry and the journalism industry, that you can pitch to [media outlets] a million times and they will never respond to you. I think that that silence is also seen when people of color try to break through [in the film industry in general]…So, I think it’s important that we’re trying to create a new outlet that attempts to do away with all of that.’

— Kristal Sotomayor, Editorial Collective Member

‘In a lot of media criticism, whether it’s art, music, film…it feels like the default mode or practice is hiring white people to explain the entire creative world to the rest of us…That practice, that kind of ‘cultural safari’ sort of thing, is bad practice number one…Because it just continues to allow for art to be boxed up in this set of Eurocentric intellectual frameworks and cultural frameworks.’

—John Morrison, Editorial Collective Member

‘I think it’s very important to have the space where writers, especially writers of color, can just come and pitch what they want to pitch…We have seen so many inner circles of writers and editors, and they keep passing pitches within themselves. Just to be able to be part of a process that brings that is very important.’

—Bedatri D. Choudhury, Editorial Collective Member