The 19th* provides the rest of the news
The reality of our news coverage is that there are not enough resources at any news outlet to cover everything. So choices must be made. As a former news editor, I can testify to the difficulty of deciding what news will be reported and what will remain on the newsroom floor. Those decisions are usually based on what the editor considers important or interesting to his audience. My use of the male pronoun “his” is intentional, because the vast majority of top level editors at mainstream news outlets in this country are (and have always been) male. And so the news has a male-centric bias. It’s inevitable. Well, about four years ago, a group of women journalists got together to start a news outlet that would cover the stories important to women, those stories that male editors did not see fit to print. Led by experienced editors like Emily Ramshaw and Amanda Zamora, a new online news source was born just around the time that Covid-19 hit. Since it was the 100th anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote, they proposed to call their new journalism The 19th*, with the asterisk reminding us that the 19th Amendment still did not guarantee women of color the right to vote. Being born just as Covid-19 was shutting down the nation, this would be a very unconventional news outlet from the start. First, it would be a non-profit organization. It would rely on grants and donations, not on advertising or a pay wall, to fund its operation. Second, it would not be a bricks and mortar operation. All its reporters would work remotely and communicate with their editors by Zoom and other electronic means. Third, all other news outlets would be invited to republish all stories reported on The 19th. In the words of the outlet’s statement of purpose, they provide “Free-to-consume and free-to-republish journalism that reimagines politics and policy coverage through a gender lens.” Of course, journalism has always had a gender lens, but up until now the gender was male. The 19th* provides the other half of the news. According to its statement of purpose, the goal of The 19th* “is to empower those we serve — particularly women, women of color and the LGBTQ+ community — with the information, resources and community they need to be equal participants in our democracy. We will do this through deep-dive, evidence-based reporting that exposes gender inequity and injustice, and reveals surprising and original stories on the issues that most deeply affect the lives of women and LGBTQ+ people, from health care to the economy.” I think this is the future of journalism. There will be niche news outlets like this that will specialize in certain important areas of interest that mainline outlets underserve. That does not mean that we should ignore the mainline news outlets. It just means that we need to seek out news sources like The 19th* to supplement our information diet (see them at 19thnews.org). Finally, if you want a fabulous behind-the-scenes look at how The 19th* got off the ground and the amazing women who made it happen, please seek out a documentary called “Breaking The News” made by Heather Courtney, Princess A. Hairston and Chelsea Hernandez. It has been winning awards at film festivals around the country and rightly so. For information where the film may be seen near you, check out https://www.breakingthenewsfilm.com/seethefilm. And if there’s no screening in your area, please note that the film will be shown on PBS on its Independent Lens program on February 19, 2024.
