I was getting a massage when the seed for what we now call the Trusted Elections project was planted eight years ago, give or take. I was lying face down on the table in the old classic Jackson YMCA facility just off Interstate 20 in Jackson. My fantastic massage therapist, now retired, is a Black Mississippian who loved to talk about all things Mississippi in the little room in the back of the Y. I was then the editor-in-chief and CEO of the Jackson Free Press, which I had co-founded in 2002. Let’s be honest, the JFP quickly had become the paper of record for a capital city that corporate media loved to hate on. Seeding hope is a strong drug in journalism.
That morning, he started talking about voting in one of our adjoining suburban counties where so many white people had fled to after forced integration. His people lived out there, and he mentioned that many of them were afraid to go vote.
“Why?” I asked.
“They moved their voting precinct,” he said. And “they” didn’t just move it; it had turned up near a part of that county known for white gangs, including Aryan Nation types. “They’re afraid of the KKK,” he said of Black relatives. Made sense.
“Wait, did they alert voters that polls were moving?”
He told me that this time they had found out ahead of time—he tended to think the announcement could be a veiled threat, an understandable concern whether intended or not. But, he shared, they moved polls around all the time, and people often didn’t know until they turned up at the wrong place. I was shocked.
“I didn’t know this was happening,” I told him. “That’s horrendous.”
“Yep,” he answered.
‘Does This Happen Around the State?’
At the “low-profit” Jackson Free Press, as my life partner and JFP Publisher Todd Stauffer called it, with a much smaller reporting team than I have now at the statewide Mississippi Free Press, I just didn’t have the resources to investigate this abomination. But I believed him, and I was haunted by this clearly systemic problem that had drawn no media attention, showing disconnection with communities and their concerns—at best.
“Does this happen around the state?” I kept asking myself, figuring that it did.
Was it an intentional, nefarious plan to scare Black people away from voting? Maybe, maybe not, but it clearly was having that effect. The need to report on it started to nag me. It so happened that, around the same time, Ashton Pittman joined the Jackson Free Press first as a contract reporter, then full-time. I told him about it, but the JFP resources weren’t up to it then.
But I’m not one to let a systemic need go any more than I allow a great newspaper to die on the vine. When I lit on the idea of (finally) starting the statewide Mississippi Free Press, which I’d wanted to do since 2002 (the URL was reserved since then), I knew two things: We would focus on systemic challenges surfaced through connections to the people and Solutions Circles, and we would report potential solutions, damn it. Nobody else was doing either here effectively, and to me, systemic-solutions reporting is the only real way media can move real needles in Mississippi, or anywhere. Publishing endless horse-race fanboy political journalism centering the powerful certainly is not the way to change things that matter to people’s lives.
The need to finally do the “precinct project” helped drive me to start the MFP in 2020 and figure out how to raise the money to do this hard work. Ashton agreed.
That’s why just weeks after we launched the MFP with $50,000 and more than one prayer, literally days after COVID hit Mississippi, I started looking for a way to pay for the precinct work. Ashton’s husband Liam, a diligent researcher and brilliant infographic maker, stepped up to help do it. As Ashton likes to say now, they had no idea what an inconsistent mess they were about to find across 82 counties, requiring them to reach out directly by phone before each state election since then to check the state’s official poll maps—compiled from info locals send them. Whew.
We launched knowing our potential and with a lot of sass, not to mention deep, abiding love of Mississippi and its people (certain ones notwithstanding), but we didn’t exactly have a nonprofit journalism network or direct lines to foundations then. No billionaires had called and asked us to do this. Bless their hearts, the American Press Institute bit and gave us a few thousand dollars to do the first investigation. The MFP was 6 months old. State officials declined to comment, probably thinking no one would pay attention anyway. And the rest is journalism, and now legislative, history in Mississippi, which you can read fully about in the stories here.
Since November 2020, the Pittmans have discovered hundreds of “official” but incorrect poll locations. National and state civil- and voting-rights organizations demanded change. State officials talk to us about it now. And the Legislature finally passed Jackson Rep. Zakiya Summers’ bill to prohibit polling-place location changes less than 60 days before an election. Over the last year, Ashton reported on potential solutions, thanks to a generous Pulitzer Center grant to take the work to the next level. And this year, we’re expanding our scope to look at other voter-access issues that slip under more sensationalistic media’s radar, as well as start publishing localized precinct and access data on our bureau pages and developing a tool legacy newspapers across Mississippi can pick up.
But here’s the thing: This is still not a partisan issue that fits the two-headed horse-race “political journalism” mold. The mistakes are in both Democratic and Republican districts. We’re quite confident that many are unintentional due to a long-time broken system, even if it opens the door for bad actors to do the nasty.
Put simply, this work explains our team’s shared theory of change that makes the MFP different from all other media in Mississippi and most across the nation. For us, it’s about the systems, stupid! (Note: Not calling y’all stupid.)
‘We Were Attacked and Disparaged’
Let’s break down systemic reporting, shall we? First, what it’s not. It’s not about taking down a bad politician. That might happen (keep reading), but it may well not, and it’s not the primary goal. At many journalism outlets, editors wouldn’t green-light this labor-intensive series unless they have a clear idea in advance of catching a big fish doing something terrible, or steering a nefarious scheme, so they can bring their asses down, thank you very much, then take victory laps and win a few awards.
That’s deciding the desired outcome before you do the reporting work. Yikes.
This is a major reason that complicated system breakdowns get ignored; they’re not sexy enough for the traditional journalism field. Or, they might offend bosses and board members, their universities (school-spirit journalism is a huge problem in Mississippi that I don’t suffer from), or their funders. Thus, problems that started from bad deeds or questionable decisions or broken systems morph and multiply.
Put simply: Too much of the journalism world doesn’t bother to ask “why?” if it won’t help snag a shithead politician, preferably one they hate. This is the worst of horse-race logic, and it leaves so much vital journalism undone as everybody rushes to scoop each other. Blech. I’m not in journalism to play old-school glory games. I, and our team, are here to help change Mississippi for the better by finding and reporting truth that may be complicated. People being able to vote when they try is our kind of impact, and cheers to the Pittmans for continuing to stay the course.
Trusted Elections is not our only example in the last six years; systemic reporting drives everything we do. That’s why I coined the phrase for this kind of fearless reporting of what so much other media don’t or won’t touch. MFP’s early defining systemic project, supported by the Solutions Journalism Network, was our “(In)Equity and Resilience: Black Women, Systemic Barriers and COVID-19 Project” with multi-award-winning systemic-solutions work by Black women journalists Torsheta Jackson and Aliyah Veal, as well as collaborator DeAnna Tisdale of the Jackson Advocate. It went deep on why disparities exist; communities can solve problems if we don’t do this. And journalism can’t motivate others to help if our reporting prolongs fingerpointing and helplessness.
Another was what we call Ashton Pittman’s “UM Emails” series. Put simply—I highly suggest reading the full, hair-raising series—we didn’t break the news of a rich white leader saying offensive and racist things about Black women students that got his name removed from the University of Mississippi’s journalism school. But we uncovered and told the rest of the story that shed light on the others who were involved—the part of the sage that was actively covered up, including by other media that we know had the emails and declined to report them. A cover-up web that ensnares even good people we like a lot is a system that must be exposed. I’m not running for homecoming queen here.
The UM broken-systems series indeed had impact, even as we were attacked and disparaged by the school-spirit journalism adherents. Let’s just say that a lot of j-school, media and PR leadership soon turned over; the ombuds who was scapegoated got to keep his job; and lots of internal reckoning happened. This daring systemic investigation was a classic, and award-winning, example of our 24-year Free Press mantra: “Do the right thing and wait.”
Other systemic examples are investigative reporter Nick Judin’s housing stories in Bolivar and Oktibbeha counties, where his deep look (and earned trust) inside the discriminatory rental structures in Mississippi college counties ended up with a corporate apartment owner debarred and ensured the residents existing in those terrible conditions got legal and material help. You all know Nick’s viral immigration work by now, but taken together, you can see the systemic throughline at play through the series. That includes how his reporting transcends garden-variety politics, both in the detention of immigrants of various races (and political stripes) and the wildly unexpected mix of people who can come together to demand their release. We never allow partisanship to cloud either our judgment or good reporting.
Nick’s intimate interviews with the Makoka brothers and their host family showed the need for his reporting throughline in ICE reporting, as no other reporter here would. And his and Kevin Edwards’ careful coverage of the tragic Trey Reed hanging, now nominated for a National Association of Black Journalists award, really says more about other media’s (and society’s) herd system of jumping to one conclusion or another rather than telling the story straight. All our Trey Reed coverage emanated deep respect for Black Mississippians’ deeply embedded system of historic fears—for very real reasons.
Now, we’re focusing on health-disparity and gun-violence crises, and their systemic intersection, so stay tuned. Let’s just say that this quote from a former nurse at a recent Greenwood public forum about its impending hospital closing—in a county with arguably the highest gun-violence rate in the country as Gerard Edic of the Greenwood Commonwealth recently reported—proves our point: “I would like to see the hospital be saved. … And for us to be more informed about the things that are going on.” Another asked: “How did we get here?” Clearly, political coverage of Medicaid-expansion debates in the state Capitol has not answered that question for people across the state. We can all do better. I don’t blame resource-strapped local newspapers, but we now have the capacity to help and collaborate on this work.
Again, the key is to radically center people, history and facts, no matter where they lead and how juicy or not they’re considered. Of course, big systemic stories are our most viral, so we’re onto something here.
From Phantom to Real Impact
I went to the Collaborative Journalism Summit in Philly (not the Mississippi one I’m from) this month looking for ideas and deeper thought about communicating the MFP’s (and JFP’s) rich and deep impact and to help me think about what the nonprofit world calls a “theory of change.” I found inspiration in two sessions: one on impact tracking and another about the “theory of change” concept—which I don’t hear much talk about in journalism circles, frankly.
What is often positioned as journalism impact, as was discussed in the first panel, involves what I’ve started thinking of as “hopeful impact” or, in my more cynical moments, “phantom impact.” That is, impact is often supported by a newsroom’s reach, how many people click on stories, how many this or that or the other. How many publications pick up your stories, how many awards you win, how many people attend your events, and so on. Mind you, all those metrics are important, and we were mighty proud to reach over 4 million views in 2025, and to have won over 100 awards since 2020, and for our work to have shown up in a New Yorker story within three weeks of our 2020 launch.
Sure, brag about that stuff. We do.
But it’s the journalism that changes people’s lives, choices and access that actually matters. I’m still proud of the years of intense reporting I did at the Jackson Free Press 20 years ago that put a bad mayor on trial … twice … after I probed how and why an entire (and diverse) business-political class turned their heads for so long and helped Frank Melton spring young men from the juvenile-detention center to go live in his raucous home amid guns and free-flowing alcohol.
I’m proud that a Klansman went to prison after my 2005 story series that corrected old bad reporting that he was dead even as, perpetually, other media that published tried to erase our work. And that our still-ongoing Two Lakes/One Lake environmental coverage has literally stopped questionable development/anti-flooding projects for two decades in Mississippi. (And I love that Illan Ireland has picked up the torch with the help of the Ag & Water Desk.)
True impact is about something deeper than he-said-he-said word games. It’s about what our journalism leaves behind or forces to be changed. Mayor Frank Melton’s antics, trials and errors were juicy, mesmerized our readers—and he predictably beat the charges. But systemic journalism hits below the surface and pulls at the roots, at its best with riveting storytelling. My proudest moment in my five-year Melton saga is when the woman DA he despised used my reporting to get all the minor boys living in the alcoholic’s home and swimming in his pool out of that house of horrors after I went there and told the stories as other media pandered to him. True impact is also a new law making it hard to publish bad precinct lists and holes finally being patched in a system no journalist had ever bothered to care about.
Impact is new, impressive leadership—many of them women—in a journalism school that went off the rails and twisted itself into pretzels trying to defend their power brokers’ messes and blame the messenger. True impact is a debarred slum landlord, and safer apartments for women and children. True impact is the kind of penetrating, seed-sowing writing that explains why deep, intentional inequities—and racist assumptions—persist across our state, why public schools were left to crumble and how white flight destroys community potential, and how it all can be new again.
Be clear, though: Like with early Trusted Elections work, those history-grounded stories linked in the last paragraphs don’t lead to change overnight; they stoke the fires of the people to, stick by stick, light up a community to demand change together. Maybe they even rise up across partisan, racial and income lines to successfully pressure two Republican U.S. senators into helping bring two Congolese teenagers back home to the Gulf Coast.
True journalism impact is listening to the people, then writing stories that teach us about solutions they need; if we’re invested and patient enough, our stories help a tipping point happen. Systemic journalism, done right, never centers power or treats it like our only hope; it teaches the effects that the powerful have on the people—and then what is possible. It fosters efficacy and the people’s sense that something can change. Systemic reporting invests in the belief that people will join in the work if they have enough information.
At the Collaborative Summit, the last session nailed it. Nicole Lewis, formerly of the Marshall Project and now with ProPublica, had a slide showing how journalistic strategies for change often land on influencing elected officials to fix something, damn it. (My words, not hers). She then told us how to leave this lawmaker-obsessed goal behind and do journalism with true impact on people’s lives—by working to center them, their knowledge and needs, not to mention the reasons for their challenges. I was giddy and wanted to hug her afterward. This is exactly what I preach and teach.
Politicians cannot fix our problems or our societies. Sure, they’re an important cog, but with occasional exceptions, elected officials are not going to take meaningful action unless the people demand it—long before they arrive for a legislative session with pre-ordained outcomes. And if the people don’t know enough about what’s broken and why, thanks to the gross horse-race partisan fixation, they don’t know what to yell at their elected officials about at the grocery store so that they get their asses back to Jackson and do something useful for a change. I understand this well as someone who has been stopped at the supermarket for nearly 25 years now by people who want to talk about our reporting in the Free Presses.
Oh, and by the way, no YMCA now exists inside Mississippi’s majority-Black capital city after moves to the suburbs led to swankier ones there. The youth basketball program popular at my downtown Y—an organization first created as “a refuge for young men seeking escape from the hazards of the streets”—had to look for a new home. There’s another huge abandoned facility that used to be the Flowers YMCA in South Jackson, a once-thriving middle-class area that is now a largely Black community suffering from white disinvestment and too few things for kids to do.
That YMCA saga, which I’ve also thought about for years, is a systemic story waiting to be fully told.
This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.
