From the state house to our city streets, Bay Area journalists are responding to the dramatic news exploding out of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter uprisings. At the same time, the heightened awareness to matters of health, racism and social inequality tied to the twin crises has pushed journalists to confront their own vulnerabilities and shortcomings.
These were the top insights that leaders from the Bay Area’s most prominent nonprofit newsrooms shared during a recent conversation hosted by Renaissance Journalism. Conducted via Zoom due to shelter-at-home restrictions, it offered a rare opportunity for the journalists to set aside deadlines and share experiences.
The twin crises of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter uprisings have laid bare deeply rooted systemic inequities and racial inequalities that have long plagued our nation. In light of this unprecedented inflection point, Renaissance Journalism is launching the Equity and Health Reporting Initiative. The project’s goal is to stimulate news media coverage, storytelling projects and/or community engagement activities in the San Francisco Bay Area that explore and investigate the impact of systemic inequities—exposed by the twin crises of 2020—on the health and well-being of our region’s most vulnerable communities. We are currently soliciting proposals from Bay Area journalists and news organizations for ambitious, in-depth and community-centric health reporting projects.
The horrific killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers and the COVID-19 pandemic’s ruthless attack on communities of color has galvanized people’s attention to the vast inequalities and systemic forms of racism that permeate American society. Rev. Al Sharpton declared at Mr. Floyd’s funeral in Minneapolis that there is hope for change because the swelling protests show that it is “a different time and a different season.”
With hopes that we can move from anguish to action, Renaissance Journalism is taking new steps to help journalists tackle inequality, systemic inequities and racism in America, which is at the heart of our mission.
