A Letter To Listeners

To our listeners — and non-listeners — of color:

In this letter, I want to share some of the steps we’ve taken, and plan to take, to create journalism that serves communities of color.

To state it clearly: We haven’t done this well in the past. We’ve had blind spots in our coverage, not recognizing issues that are important outside of white Nashville — in part because our staff used to be almost entirely white. We’ve reported on the struggles of people of color without acknowledging the systems and history that led to those struggles. We’ve relied on officials to speak for communities. Some of our work has outright harmed people of color, and for that I sincerely apologize.

As you’ll read in this letter, we’re thinking deeply as a newsroom about the power we hold as a media outlet. We know that when we shine a spotlight on an issue, people in power pay attention. We also know that our existing audience, which was 84% white over the past year, wants to learn about communities other than their own. But we don’t only want to edify our current listeners — we also want more people to find empowering information and context in our coverage. We want to tell you stories for your community, rather than about your community.

Talk and good intentions aren’t worth anything without action, so I’m sharing what we’re thinking about in the hopes that you’ll hold us accountable to doing what we say. I also want to hear your thoughts. What should we be covering? How can we serve your community better? Please get in touch at [email protected].

— Emily Siner, News Director

P.S. I’m writing this letter specifically to people of color because most of the people I talk to about the newsroom’s work — donors, community leaders and our existing audience — are white. But this letter will be enlightening for white readers as well.

Covering Policing And Criminal Justice Differently

The initial coverage of George Floyd’s murder highlighted problems with how many journalists cover shootings and killings involving police. Put simply, newsrooms tend to over-rely on police after these incidents, even though there’s an obvious conflict of interest when one of the parties involved is a police officer. We’ve seen instances in Nashville and elsewhere of police departments providing incomplete information early on, and in many cases this has pushed unfounded blame onto a Black person who was harmed. If we don’t do our due diligence as reporters to be skeptical and confirm facts before publicizing them, that’s also harmful.

So this past year, the WPLN newsroom created a new process for covering shootings and killings involving police. This includes filing requests for documents and recordings after each incident and, until then, treating the police narrative as just one side of the story. You can read about our current philosophy on this coverage here: How we cover public safety, policing and criminal justice

We also know that criminal justice is not just about police. We’ve expanded our reporting on this topic over the past few years and prioritize stories that help explain the system, as opposed to the traditional news model of covering crime: for example, looking at safety questions in private prisons, creative efforts to identify domestic violence and the effects of new gun laws.

Telling More Stories About Equity, Blackness And Joy

We’ve prioritized hiring more reporters of color over the last three years, but our reporting still tends to center white people and their stories. This isn’t a subjective statement: In 2018 and 2019, people of color made up less than 25% of people we quoted on our air. (By contrast, people of color made up 45% of Nashville and 29% of Middle Tennessee, according to the census data.) That lack of representation serves no one. If you’re not hearing your own experiences reflected on the air, there’s no reason to listen at all. We also know that people in power listen to this station, and they need to hear the breadth of experiences and viewpoints in Nashville.

Over the past year, we’ve attempted to meaningfully change the kinds of stories you hear on our air, thanks in large part to Black and Latino reporters challenging us to center the voices of people of color. You can hear some of their excellent work in our Breaking Points series, stories about domestic workers during the pandemic, our podcast Versify, and many stories about Nashville’s summer protests. Our white reporters have also focused on integrating race and equity into their beats, so that they’re consistently looking for how issues impact communities of color — even when officials aren’t talking about it — and understanding the historical context of racism in Nashville and Tennessee.

To be clear, stories about race and equity should not focus on pain and marginalization. That, too, is a disservice to the community. We want to cover the joy that comes with building spaces around identity and shared experience, the value and support surrounding community-owned businesses, and the role that minority groups play in politics and power.

This year, we are aiming for at least 35% of our sources to be people of color, and we have started publishing our source diversity numbers each quarter so you can hold us accountable: 2021 Source Tracking. (As you can see there, in our first quarter, we missed our race/ethnicity diversity goals by four percentage points.)

Engaging With The Community Meaningfully

We have lofty goals. We want to be the primary source of news for Middle Tennessee and to help people become more informed and active in the community. But these goals to serve the public fall flat when we don’t have one crucial component: an understanding of what the public wants from us.

To be honest, community engagement is one of the hardest parts of my job as news director. It’s hard to pause and ask for feedback when our primary goal is getting news out each day. But it’s on me as the leader of this newsroom to facilitate more conversations with the public, incorporate your feedback and ideas into our everyday news operation, and make sure the entire station is supporting this work.

We have started to build the foundation for it. Last year, former WPLN reporter Sergio Martínez-Beltrán launched a partnership with Nashville Noticias, a local Spanish-language online news outlet. Our reporters now appear on their Facebook page twice a week to share news in Spanish. This year, WPLN’s Metro reporter Ambriehl Crutchfield launched a project called Nash in the Know, aiming to empower people to be more involved in local government. We’ve sought out opportunities to talk to community groups like the Ethiopian Community Association of Nashville, the Salahadeen Center and others.

Now, we need to build on that foundation. Our 2021 newsroom goals lay out a vision for starting new partnerships and community engagement work. I invite your ideas and suggestions as I work on that strategy.

Thank you for reading. We ask that you hold us accountable to serving you.