“Are shifting voting locations and outdated intentional suppression? Or is it about poor systems and oversight and general half-assed ‘good enough’ approaches that too often make excellence in Mississippi so difficult? I suspect it’s a combination of both.”
In Austin, Texas, Publisher Kimberly Griffin accepted a Lion Publishers Community Engagement Award on behalf of the “(In)Equity and Resilience: Black Women, Systemic Barriers and COVID-19 Project” team, which also includes DeAnna Tisdale Johnson, publisher of the Jackson Advocate, Mississippi’s oldest Black newspaper.
“Our existence challenges the media and leadership status quo, how news is done and what communities are served,” Kimberly Griffin writes.
Free press journalism requires tough skin, Donna Ladd writes. “Changing systems and power structures is hard and often thankless work.”
“First, not one person on our team is fixated on being first. Getting it right is our goal,” Kimberly Griffin writes. “We aren’t sitting around decrying other journalists covering the story. That’s not helpful. It’s harmful because Mississippians deserve as much good information they can get because, Lord knows, power brokers are hiding it from us.”
“Our team covered the deep causes of the first round of the Jackson water crisis, and are covering this one, like both professional journalists and Mississippians who love their home state and its capital city.”
Deputy Editor Azia Wiggins and Publisher and Chief Revenue Officer Kimberly Griffin are helping lead a new, three-pronged approach to journalism in Mississippi and the United States: systemic reporting. Now, they’re both nominated for national nonprofit-news awards.
MFP Co-founder and Publisher Kimberly Griffin reflects on takeaways from a national journalism conference in Chicago, highlighting the continual growth of diversity in media. “‘Diversity’ is an overused word, yet I can’t think of any better word to describe the rooms filled with more Black and Brown folks, more young people, and more people from the LGBTQ+ community,” she writes.
“Kimberly and I have assembled a team at the Mississippi Free Press who aren’t easily fooled, who believe in difficult proactive reporting, and who report causes and then solutions,” Donna Ladd writes. “Our team is not lured by the two-way horserace model that lets so much vital reporting slip through the cracks and helps ingrain the kinds of public and media ignorance that led us to this moment. We don’t bow to politicians or parties of any stripe, and we work to anticipate the story, not scramble to catch up later.
As someone told me last week in Los Angeles: ‘The MFP model must spread.'”
Mississippi Journalism and Education Group is a a 501(c)(3) nonprofit media organization (EIN 85-1403937) for the state, devoted to going beyond partisanship and publishing solutions journalism for the Magnolia State and all of its people.
125 S. Congress Street #1324
Jackson, MS 39201
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601-362-6121
The Mississippi Free Press is a project of the Mississippi Journalism and Education Group, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit journalism organization (EIN 85-1403937).
