Our Vision

For over a decade, Renaissance Journalism has been at the forefront of reimagining journalism as a powerful catalyst to advance equity and racial and social justice.

It is this vision that drives us to experiment with bold, innovative approaches to news and storytelling, community engagement and collaboration-building.

Founded in 2009, Renaissance Journalism aims to cultivate an enduring shift in the way journalists think about and cover complex social issues. These are issues that have adversely, disproportionately and historically affected communities of color, the poor and working-class, and other marginalized groups.

Through our transformative initiatives, we give journalists the tools and support they need to produce strong, principled journalism that unpacks systemic injustices, disrupts harmful narratives, educates and empowers, and amplifies diverse voices.

 

OUR APPROACH

We create and launch strategic initiatives that support journalists and their news organizations to produce ambitious, in-depth and compelling stories that reveal and illuminate social injustice and inequity.

Each initiative inspires journalists to expand—and to even rethink—their reporting and storytelling practices and how they frame complex issues.

Through intensive training conferences, coaching and regenerative storytelling retreats, journalists are encouraged to go beyond the formulaic and the status quo when tackling difficult social problems, such as poverty, equity and racism. In short, we help to reshape the way journalists think about, and report on, the critical stories of our time.

We engage a diverse range of journalists—from youth storytellers to veteran journalists, from major news outlets to ethnic media to grassroots nonprofits.

Leveraging the impact of journalism is critical to every project we tackle. Key to our success is forging dynamic and strategic partnerships among news organizations, foundations, academia and nonprofits. And, through social media, our website and community engagement efforts, we seek to broaden the reach and impact of the journalists’ work.

OUR WORK

Since its inception in 2009, Renaissance Journalism has focused on a range of critical social justice issues, such as educational equity, the enduring legacy of Agent Orange contamination in Vietnam, and the fiscal crisis in Detroit and Michigan.

Among our accomplishments:

Renaissance Journalism operates as a nonprofit, fiscally sponsored project of Community Initiatives, which is based at 1000 Broadway, Suite 480, Oakland, CA 94607.